{"id":26284,"date":"2014-09-24T07:24:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T11:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=26284"},"modified":"2014-09-24T07:24:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T11:24:00","slug":"mythicisms-missing-middle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/mythicisms-missing-middle.html","title":{"rendered":"Mythicism’s Missing Middle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I remember the powerful ending of the\u00a0movie The Messenger: The Story of\u00a0Joan of Arc<\/a>, in which she is confronted with questions about why she interpreted the finding of a sword in a field the way she did. That it was lost in a sword fight, or even that some passerby decided to discard it at random, are options that she never considered. Interpreting it as a sign from God, other simpler possibilities were simply ignored<\/a>. Here\u2019s the clip:<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nMythicism is rather similar. Its proponents don\u2019t see what is, they see what they want to see. Having decided that the paucity of information about the life and teaching of Jesus in Paul\u2019s letters is a sign that he didn\u2019t think Jesus was a terrestrial figure, other possibilities are simply ignored.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/myth-of-the-gaps.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">mentioned before<\/a> that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/10\/mythtaken-genre-epistles-and-mythicism.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">the genre of the epistles<\/a> could be an explanation. This seems particularly worth considering, since Paul gives even less detail about celestial activities of Jesus than he does about terrestrial ones.<\/p>\nBut there are still other possibilities that mythicists ignore. What if Paul was simply a terrible communicator? Which meshes better with the other evidence we have from early Christianity? A Paul who thought Jesus was a terrestrial figure but conveyed this poorly in his letters? Or a Paul who thought Jesus was a celestial figure (and apparently conveyed this even more poorly, since he has been misunderstood by almost all his readers)? And, since either claim involves Paul being a poor communicator, does\u00a0the fact that this\u00a0discussion is occurring itself prove\u00a0this to be the case?<\/p>\nThere are still more options we could mention. It could be that the\u00a0consensus date for the Gospel of Mark is wrong, and that Maurice Casey and James Crossley are right. Paul may have\u00a0sent copies along with his letters, or known that churches already had them. This may be implausible \u2013 but is it more implausible than mythicism\u2019s scenario?<\/p>\nWhat other options are there, which mythicism simply ignores, preferring to see in Paul what it wants to? How many more alternative explanations can you come up with?<\/p>\nIn concluding, it must be added that mythicism isn\u2019t merely a filling of Paul\u2019s silences with things he doesn\u2019t say, but a filling of Paul\u2019s silences with things that contradict what he explicitly says. And so let me end with this quote from something that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/the-jesus-birther-movement.html#comment-1601947854\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Jonathan Bernier recently said in a comment here<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s not an argument from silence but an argument from putting the volume on mute.\u201d See also <a href=\"http:\/\/criticalrealismandthenewtestament.blogspot.com\/2014\/09\/consensus-and-quackery.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">his post on scholarly consensus, quackery, and the spectrum in between<\/a>.<\/p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-26286\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/09\/Jesus-Mythicism-Mute-Quote-1024x576.png\" alt=\"Jesus Mythicism Mute Quote\" width=\"471\" height=\"265\"><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I remember the powerful ending of the\u00a0movie The Messenger: The Story of\u00a0Joan of Arc, in which she is confronted with questions about why she interpreted the finding of a sword in a field the way she did. That it was lost in a sword fight, or even that some passerby decided to discard it at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":26286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[770,5747,5900,7853,11285],"class_list":["post-26284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","tag-argument-from-silence","tag-joan-of-arc","tag-jonathan-bernier","tag-mythicism","tag-silence"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Mythicism's Missing Middle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I remember the powerful ending of the\u00a0movie The Messenger: The Story of\u00a0Joan of Arc, in which she is confronted with questions about why she interpreted\" \/>\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\/2014\/09\/mythicisms-missing-middle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mythicism's Missing Middle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I remember the powerful ending of the\u00a0movie The Messenger: The Story of\u00a0Joan of Arc, in which she is confronted with questions about why she interpreted\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/mythicisms-missing-middle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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