Jesus mythicism and first-century Jewish cosmology

Longfellow

Longfellow

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,294
Reaction score
391
Points
83
Location
here and there around the world
Some time ago, maybe a year or more, I read that Richard Carrier had proven mathematically that the probability that Jesus existed is in the range of 0 to 1/3. I had to know all about that, to see how well it stood up. From there, I fell into a rabbit hole looking-glass world of Bayesian storytelling, but that's another story for another time.

As I remember it, Carrier has a theory that Christianity began with some Jews worshiping a god similar to some some Greek and Roman gods, but who was crucified and raised in a celestial realm, not on earth. Later, they retrofitted that onto their scriptures. Over time, that story started being told as if it were about a real person. I wanted to see if there could be any grain of truth in that, if I could find any trace of some Jews believing in a purely celestial figure who could have evolved into the Jesus of Christianity. I found not only one, but an entire family of celestial figures in first-century Judaism who not only could have evolved but actually did evolve into the Jesus of Christianity.
 
More specifically for example, these heavenly figures from first-century Judaism were identified with Jesus by his disciples:
  • Wisdom traditions (Sophia/Hokhmah)
  • Logos theology → Philo of Alexandria, later echoed in John.
  • Exalted patriarchs (e.g. Enoch, Elijah and Moses)
  • Angelic hierarchies → 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls.
  • Heavenly intermediaries → angels, archangels, exalted patriarchs (like Enoch/Metatron).
  • Personified attributes → Wisdom, Word/Logos, Name, Glory, Spirit.
  • Cosmic mediators → figures who bridge heaven and earth, conveying divine presence or authority.
  • Melchizedek → heavenly deliverer, priest, bridging heaven and earth
I disagree with Carrier in three ways: 1. I think that there was not only one first century Jewish heavenly figure that evolved into the Jesus of Christianity. There was a whole family of them. 2. I don’t think those heavenly figures themselves were borrowed from Roman and Greek cosmology and retrofitted to the scriptures. I do think that Roman and Greek cosmology might have influenced some people’s interpretation of those scriptures, or at least how they described it 3. I don’t think that the character of Jesus was invented for that purpose. I think that there was already a real person whose disciples associated the same OT passages with him that Jewish cosmology associated with those heavenly figures.
 
Last edited:
Longfellow said:
some Jews worshiping a god similar to some some Greek and Roman gods, but who was crucified and raised in a celestial realm,
Click to expand...
A couple of questions spring to mind. Was he a god prior to the crucifixion and who crucified him and why?
 
rocala said:
A couple of questions spring to mind. Was he a god prior to the crucifixion and who crucified him and why?
Click to expand...
That's a rough outline of Carrier's theory as I remember it. I don't remember all the details. I only mentioned his theory because that's what put me on a trail that led to first century Jewish heavenly figures like the ones that I listed above, which I think are part of the history of Christianity.
 
I’ve been arguing against what I thought was a popular view among scholars, that Paul was the first to say some things that he said about Jesus, but maybe they aren’t saying that anymore if they ever did.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top