{"id":2608,"date":"2011-05-10T23:11:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T23:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/05\/chapter-3-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man\/"},"modified":"2011-05-10T23:11:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T23:11:00","slug":"chapter-3-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/05\/chapter-3-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man.html","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 3 of Earl Doherty’s Jesus: Neither God Nor Man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/span>\"\"<\/span>\"Jesus:<\/a>It is certainly an advantageous aspect of Earl Doherty\u2019s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man \u2013 The Case for a Mythical Jesus<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>that it consists (at least thus far) of relatively short chapters, suitable for blogging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3 begins with some general information about the Hellenistic world, before turning its attention to the argument that Paul\u2019s language of Jesus having been revealed<\/em> suggests something spiritual, and does not naturally serve as a reference to an incarnation (p.40).<\/p>\n

This last point I do not disagree with, since I don\u2019t think that Paul thought of Jesus in incarnational terms, at least in anything like the sense of what that has come to mean in subsequent Christian theology. Jesus is not the first Adam, as per Philo\u2019s interpretation of Genesis\u2019 two creation accounts, but the last<\/em> Adam. Even though he attains the status of the heavenly Adam, we are told that the\u00a0spiritual Adam\u00a0did not come first, but the earthly (1 Corinthians 15:46<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Be that as it may, here as elsewhere I can easily imagine someone unfamiliar with ancient Judaism and Christianity finding Doherty\u2019s claims persuasive. To us, the language of revelation might well seem ill-fitting for reference to a historical individual.<\/p>\n

For me as someone who studies the literature of this period, however, my mind quickly turned to the way that Jewish sources speak of the coming of the Messiah, or Elijah, or other figures who they believed to be historical human beings who would appear at the end of history in order to usher in God\u2019s kingdom. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 35<\/a> includes the statement \u201cAnd Jakob proceeded and spread his tent beyond the tower of Eder, the place from whence, it is to be, the King Meshiha will be revealed<\/u> at the end of the days.\u201d (See also the same Targum to 49<\/a>).<\/p>\n

b. Sukkah 52a<\/a> includes the statement, \u201cOur Rabbis taught, The Holy One, blessed be He, will say to the Messiah, the son of David (May he reveal<\/u> himself speedily in our days!), \u2018Ask of me anything, and I will give it to thee\u2019\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Song of Songs Rabbah 8:1<\/a> reads \u201c\u2018And at that shall the King Messiah be revealed to the congregation of Israel\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

And so it seems that there were other Jews in antiquity who thought that this term was well suited to what they expected God to do in relation to the Messiah they were awaiting.<\/p>\n

One should always be wary when one gets the impression that one has stumbled across the \u201ctrue meaning\u201d of texts and that meaning is not something that anyone before you understood them to mean. Sometimes one has genuinely discovered something, but more often than not, there is a good reason why no one previously understood the texts the way you do. In this case, Doherty\u00a0overlooked or was unaware of\u00a0evidence that Jews in later times used precisely the terminology of revelation<\/em> in reference to the appearance of the Messiah. This doesn\u2019t in and of itself determine what Paul meant, but it at least shows that Doherty\u2019s claim, that this language doesn\u2019t fit the traditional understanding of Paul\u2019s Jesus, is not beyond dispute. And presumably ancient Jews, even from a later time, may be closer in their linguistic usage to Paul than\u00a0modern English speakers\u00a0are today. <\/p>\n

At any rate, it is never a good idea to reach conclusions about ancient people and thinking based on an impression about what someone\u2019s words\u00a0seem to\u00a0mean in English translation.<\/p>\n

Doherty\u2019s approach in this chapter is to focus on those passages which are open to being understood in a mythicist way, and he promises to return to the verses which seem to refer to Jesus as a historical figure \u2013 referring to things like his birth \u2013 at a later point. There is nothing inherently wrong with focusing on evidence that seems to support your hypothesis first, and then turning to evidence that appears to tell against it later. But obviously the persuasiveness of a case will depend not only on how well it makes sense of that evidence that appears to fit it, but also how well one can account for the evidence that does not.<\/p>\n

One final thought. Doherty detects the same characteristics not only in Paul\u2019s authentic letters, but also later, potentially pseudepigraphal ones. A question that arises for me is why, on Doherty\u2019s scenario, those works that may have been produced in the period after Gospels had begun to appear do not polemicize against the historicization of their celestial figures by others. If one or more Gospel authors deliberately combined the celestial figure of the epistles with teaching from Q and set them in history for the first time, it might be expected that there would be some controversy about this move, and yet nothing comes to mind in our sources that might provide evidence of such a controversy.<\/p>\n

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It is certainly an advantageous aspect of Earl Doherty\u2019s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man \u2013 The Case for a Mythical Jesus\u00a0that it consists (at least thus far) of relatively short chapters, suitable for blogging. Chapter 3 begins with some general information about the Hellenistic world, before turning its attention to the argument that Paul\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nChapter 3 of Earl Doherty's Jesus: Neither God Nor Man<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It is certainly an advantageous aspect of Earl Doherty's book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus that it consists (at least\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/05\/chapter-3-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chapter 3 of Earl Doherty's Jesus: Neither God Nor Man\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is certainly an advantageous aspect of Earl Doherty's book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus that it consists (at least\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/05\/chapter-3-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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