<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But that does not always mean we are necessarily left in the clouds.<\/p>\n
We can analyze the story itself to understand its \u201cproperties\u201d. What is it made up of? What sort of story is it?<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
If we find that it consists of bits and pieces from other literature available and probably known to the author, and even appears to reflect structures and themes of other narratives, then, all things being equal, we have some grounds for thinking the story has been borrowed from those other narratives.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe idea that a piece of literature may consist of \u201cbits and pieces from other literature\u201d seems to reflect the view of the Gospels, so popular at Vridar as well as in the writings of John Shelby Spong, as works composed by taking details from stories in the Jewish Scriptures and elsewhere and using them to compose a new story. <\/p>\n
The subject of genre is then discussed, with a helpful acknowledgment that even some novels from this period were fictional accounts of real person. Godfrey draws the following preliminary conclusion:<\/div>\nSo the short answer to the title question is that story alone must leave us neutral on the question of historicity. Literary analysis, however, can help us understand the nature of the narrative, and from that we may find clues that lead us one way or the other on the question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So far, so good. One important question we need to ask at this stage is whether the alleged genre of taking tidbits of stories and turning them into completely new stories was in fact a genre in this period in history.<\/p>\n
In fact, what is being described seems to have emerged through a process akin to \u201cChinese whispers,\u201d in which something that scholars have proposed gets turned into something slightly different at each step of the way, the further you get from its origin and from a scholarly setting. <\/div>\n<\/p>\n
There certainly are stories in the Gospels where it is possible<\/i> that Christians, lacking information about aspects of Jesus\u2019 life, turned to the Jewish Scriptures to fill in the gaps. Thus, as John Dominic Crossan often puts it, we may be dealing with \u201cScripture historicized.\u201d The inclusion of details in the Gospel crucifixion accounts that say, in essence, \u201cX occurred to fulfill what is written in Scripture Y\u201d could represent this. Even in these cases, however, we are often uncertain whether we are dealing with \u201chistory Scripturalized\u201d or \u201cScripture historicized.\u201d In some instances, at least, the former is at least as good of a candidate for what is going on, with Christians turning to their Scriptures not to fill in gaps in their knowledge about Jesus\u2019 life, but in an attempt to account for uncomfortable details in what they did<\/i> know about him, attributing them to a predetermined divine plan.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
But even if we were certain in such instances that they are all cases of \u201cScripture historicized,\u201d does this lead naturally to the view that all<\/i> the stories in the Gospels are examples of this? Hardly. There are three main issues:<\/div>\n\n
- First, Spong, Price<\/a>, Godfrey and others<\/a> seem to think that this approach to composition is in fact what the rabbis called \u201cMidrash.\u201d It is not. It does not resemble what scholars call midrash, nor does it fit with any known compositional technique for creating entire stories evidenced in any ancient literature with which I am familiar.<\/li>\n
- Second, they seem to think that if you can find a slight similarity with another story, then it automatically becomes preferable to treat the later story as an invention based on the earlier one. That might not follow even if the similarities were clear; it certainly does not when the alleged parallels and points of contact are few and unconvincing.<\/li>\n
- Finally, to the extent that this approach to composition may fit some details<\/i> in the Gospels, this compositional technique makes sense as part of Christians\u2019 attempt to fill in their knowledge of Jesus from Scripture, which they considered an authoritative source. But it makes much less sense as a means of creating a purely fictional Jesus taking inspiration from earlier literature<\/i>. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
And of course, before the Gospels were written, we already had individuals like Paul expressing the belief that Jesus was the anointed son of David and had been crucified. Thus far, mythicists have not managed to\u00a0successfully account for or\u00a0distract attention from potentially the biggest problem for mythicism: it is much easier to account for belief in Jesus as the crucified anointed\u00a0descendant of David in terms of a historical\u00a0individual who was\u00a0believed by his followers to be the Messiah and who was crucified, than in terms of fiction-writing.\u00a0Because it is not simply the telling of\u00a0a story about a crucified messiah that needs to be accounted for. It is the creation of such stories by an originally Jewish movement that was seeking to persuade other Jews that this crucified man was the awaited Davidic anointed one.\u00a0Simply saying that \u201csometimes people come up with strange ideas\u201d doesn\u2019t make the mythicist account seem more probable than that of mainstream historical study.<\/p>\n
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