{"id":29915,"date":"2015-04-28T11:12:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T15:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=29915"},"modified":"2015-04-28T11:12:51","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T15:12:51","slug":"myths-messiahs-and-minimalisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/04\/myths-messiahs-and-minimalisms.html","title":{"rendered":"Myths, Messiahs, and Minimalisms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Simon Joseph<\/a> blogged about the myth of the dying Messiah. He writes:<\/p>\n

The myth of the Dying Messiah<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>originated in and was generated by the suffering and death of a messianic Jesus<\/i>\u2026\u00a0Jesus\u2019 first followers suffered from\u00a0cognitive dissonance<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>The predominant model of early Jewish messianism was the militaristic\u00a0Davidic warrior-king<\/a><\/span>. The fact that Jesus did not \u201cfulfill\u201d the role of the conquering war-hero \u00a0\u2013 and was murdered by those he was supposed to oppose \u2013 could have destroyed the movement.\u00a0Their teacher had just been brutally executed\u00a0<\/span>and they struggled to come to terms with this. They turned to the scriptures for understanding and enlightenment and, as a result, found scriptural texts that provided reasons why this might have happened. They subsequently began to\u00a0supplement them with other scriptural resources (including 2 and 4 Maccabees, Isaiah 53, and the\u00a0Parables<\/i>\u00a0of Enoch<\/i>) in order to create and compose \u2013 out of\u00a0sheer personal, historical, and theological necessity \u2013 the Dying Messiah tradition.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Matthew Baldwin<\/a> blogged about Richard Carrier\u2019s definition of \u201cminimal historicism\u201d in his recent book. He writes:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"Carrier\u2019s particular account of so-called \u201cminimal historicism\u201d is more than just a logical starting point. It is an overdetermined bit of theater. It has been shaped by a prior analysis of the data that is normally used in the creation of any minimal account of who Jesus was in history\u2026This game is more than somewhat suspect: it is rigged from the start. The question of Jesus\u2019 historicity has already been decided. By design, Carrier\u2019s statement of the minimal form of the theory of Jesus\u2019 historicity dooms it to failure, since it has been formulated in light of a prior assumption that is deadly to its premises: the only available sources available for investigation of the life of Jesus are so absolutely unreliable that no statements about Jesus based solely on them can be admitted at all. His conclusions also entail a prior rejection of widely shared assumptions about the best scholarly methods for reading these sources, i.e., how to extract reliable historical data from the conflicting narratives of the Gospels. Essentially, on Carrier\u2019s account, every prior historian who has decided to rely on Christian sources for knowing about Jesus has been a dupe, a stooge or tool who has mistaken fiction for fact.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Steve Holmes<\/a> discussed the claim that the name for Easter comes from a pagan goddess named Eoster.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Joseph blogged about the myth of the dying Messiah. He writes: The myth of the Dying Messiah\u00a0originated in and was generated by the suffering and death of a messianic Jesus\u2026\u00a0Jesus\u2019 first followers suffered from\u00a0cognitive dissonance.\u00a0The predominant model of early Jewish messianism was the militaristic\u00a0Davidic warrior-king. The fact that Jesus did not \u201cfulfill\u201d the role […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":26926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1828,2321,2921,2936,4655,4656,5677,7306,7474,7476,7845,7853,10359],"class_list":["post-29915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","tag-christ","tag-crucified","tag-earl-doherty","tag-easter","tag-historicism","tag-historicity","tag-jesus","tag-messiah","tag-minimal","tag-minimalism","tag-myth","tag-mythicism","tag-richard-carrier"],"yoast_head":"\nMyths, Messiahs, and Minimalisms<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Simon Joseph blogged about the myth of the dying Messiah. 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