Neil quotes several scholars whose conclusions reflect our mainstream understanding: there wasn\u2019t one single concept of \u201cthe<\/em> messiah\u201d in the Judaism of this period, not every Jewish author or movement shows evidence of being interested in such a figure, and even those who did use the term did so in different ways. This is\u00a0common knowledge\u00a0to anyone familiar with the current state of our knowledge about ancient Judaism \u2013\u00a0 and very much beside the point as far as my argument about the unlikelihood that any ancient Jews would invent a crucified Messiah. <\/p>\n In connection with my argument about the historical Jesus and the crucifixion (to which Neil was responding) what matters is that we do know a great deal about a range of mediator figures and human deliverers that a wide range of Jews were expecting. And those who were expecting God to restore an anointed one descended from David were expecting the restoration of the role denoted by that anointing (from which the terms \u201cmessiah\u201d and \u201cchrist\u201d derive), namely the institution of Jewish kingship. We have evidence for such \u201cmessianic\u201d beliefs in the Judaism of this period, and conversely, we have no<\/em> evidence whatsoever\u00a0from pre-Christian<\/em> Judaism for the view that the restored Davidic king would die at the hands of his enemies. <\/p>\n The closest one can find is perhaps the reference in Daniel\u2019s pseudo-prophecy to the anointed high priest Onias being killed (Daniel 9:26<\/a>). And it should be noted that there we are dealing with a brute historical fact that the author had to find a way of making sense of, not a mythical invention of an executed messiah.<\/p>\n Another\u00a0major category of resemblance between mythicism and creationism is the failure to realize that what they accuse their opponents of doing, they are doing themselves. Neil\u00a0claims that Jesus was a \u201cGod\u201d for Paul. New Testament scholars are aware that there are no unambiguous or undisputed references to Jesus in this way in Paul\u2019s letters. Mythicists are reading later Christian theology into Paul\u2019s letters \u2013 the very thing they accuse \u201chistoricists\u201d of doing. To the extent that they are willing to adopt\u00a0what is (at best) a\u00a0minority position on the existence of Jesus, because they think the majority is misled by Christian assumptions, why would they not adopt the minority view that questions traditional interpretations of Paul in the same sort of way? Paul certainly shows evidence of exalting Jesus to a heavenly status, and perhaps (depending on the authenticity<\/a> of Colossians<\/a>) also depicts him not only as Wisdom but as one \u201cin whom the fullness of the godhead bodily<\/em> dwells.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, when we look at the aforementioned mythological Wisdom language\u00a0Paul (or someone writing in Paul\u2019s name) applies to Jesus, two major questions arise. First, what is the point of identifying a well-established mythological figure with a newly-invented one? Why did Paul not just talk and write about Wisdom, as other Jews were doing? The flexibility of the figure of Wisdom can be seen by comparing the identification of Wisdom with Torah (see below), the universalization of Wisdom (as in Wisdom of Solomon), the esoteric approach (as in 1 Enoch), and even Wisdom as fallen mother of the demiurge in Gnosticism. Given this adaptability, the question arises why early Christians, if mythicism is true, would have created a new mythical figure and then identified that figure with Wisdom, rather than simply talk about Wisdom. This too is something mythicism needs to explain in order to seem plausible. Once again, the closest parallel from Judaism is perhaps the identification of the Messianic Son of Man as \u201cfull of wisdom\u201d in the Similitudes of Enoch. But there too we are dealing with a figure that the author expected to appear in history in the future.<\/p>\n
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