On Earl Doherty., Homer, and Reason

I told Eddie F. (from edgeoffaith) I'd read Earl Doherty's dismissal of Jesus as historical figure and respond; I read the first third of D.'s essay just now. I found it so non-compelling I can't even begin. I can't begin. That's why I'm posting here instead of on Eddie's blog. When I feel the umph to do so I may, but the fact is even the internet offers at least one scathing criticsm of D.'s book and website.

While looking online for Earl's essay I found a strong response to him, especially his treatment of Hebrews HERE. Whoever Bede is, he drags in Christians and skeptics in his dismissal of Doherty's claims; mostly, he deals convincingly with the evidence we do have. For myself, I've found enough references in Paul's undisputed letters to both gospel material and Jesus as a historical Jew (and lists of these versese are easily found) that to believe otherwise requires more faith than I have. Finally, Doherty's understanding of both Judaism and Hellenism, even for an amateur like me, is painful to read. It's like the writer who argues Mark's gospel is creative fiction derived from the OT and Homer. Homer! How do you figure?

Homer's I and the O are two very different books. In fact, it's hard for me to believe one person wrote/redacted them both from available myth sources. The hero of the I is war; it's slaughter. Whether it's Achilles or Hector, the mood of the text runs highest when some good killing is going on, regardless of cause. The closest thing to ethics I can recall there is when Zeus makes love to Hera (as apart from his other escapades) and sexual married love is (temporarily) elevated; of course, Helen is not presented all that poorly in the I, though Paris, the poor chap who caused it all (under direction from the gods according to other sources) does look pretty wienie compared to his brother who kills for the good of his city (no matter that they were in the wrong supporting the violation of sacred hospitality and should have shoved Paris and Helen over the wall and been done with it).

That's a lame and quick exposition, I know, but I'm looking for the religous mythos behind the I and the O. The gods, nearly without exception, act like capricious self-absorbed nobility in I; Aphrodite is a cowardly whiner on the battlefield; human lives are tossed away because of the Olympian in-fighting soap opera. That's throughout.

In the O the mood is very different. When we see Helen she's nearly a sorceress, almost creepy, though clearly reunited with her hubby, cured, I guess; certainly her other choice was death. But Penelope's fidelity (O himself has several liasions on his way home; some last longer than he wishes, may in part be against his will; it does seem true he really misses P while having other lovers) and more significantly, the all important Greek value of hospitality (which Paris' theft of Helen violated in the first place) are both upheld. That's what makes the suitors in O's house so bad; they're violating hospitality. That's why when O comes and home and butchers them to the man we cheer.

Athena's role as Mentor/Guide really is impressive. She, of course, helps O in his slaughter of the suitors, but she also helps reunite a family, a father and son, a husband and wife, separated by war. Her character in the O, to my recall, is like nothing in the I.

Why am I regugitating all this?

Tell me what the hell it has to do with Mark's gospel? Oh, yeah, a guy falls off a roof in Mark and in the Odyssey. But where are the exorcisms in Homer or in the OT for that matter? Where are the divine healings in Homer (and while I know many, Christians included, point out similarities to Jesus' miracles in the OT he is, to my reading at least, a uniquely miraculous figure in ALL OF the ancient world, in part because he is presented as living, historical fulfillment). Also, nothing in Homer elevates an individual the way Mark elevates Jesus. The religious mythos, the ethical system, behind Mark and Homer are radically different. That to me is key. Mark is not about the family or about hospitality; it's not about kicking out the Romans or rigorous obedience to the Torah; it's not even essentially about Israel's failure to keep the covenant and their subsequent punishment via occupation. It's about a person who does and says things no one else ever did or said.

Reading the Jesus-mythicists is in some ways like reading Joseph Campbell. Both take huge and unforgiveable leaps (unless one is a collective-unconcious Jungian, perhaps; and belief in that takes more faith than belief in Zeus). Fertility gods die and resurrect with the seasons, okay. But there is no historical record of one doing this in a certain time and place, under a certain magistrate, certainly not according to multiple attestations. Of one doing so, not for crops, but to inaguarate the new age of Israel, to make YHWH's salvation open to the entire earth (and N.T. Wright is tough to argue with here).

Overall, the problems in the NT record, like Paul's failure to mention the women witnesses of the resurrection in the gospels in his list of resurrection appearances in I Cor., for me, enhances the historicity of the gospel narratives. Why have women there first? Why portray the male disciples as hiding in fear when Jesus appears to them? If anything, the individuals named in Paul's list feel overly 'official.' The case could also be made that he names individual witnesses that he actually met.

Yes, I still have lots of questions, some of them tough ones. And I look back on some of my responses as quite inadequate compared to what I'm finding in scholars. But the truth is the closer I look at scholarship on the NT and the more I read it, the more I am filled with a vague sense of fear. Of Jesus. Of God.

I'm not done looking. I have many skeptical concerns; perhaps one day I will be able to interact with the skeptical community, though not yet. I was brought into the kingdom in spite of overt anger shoved in the face of a very patient man and I have not forgotten it.

Yet I wonder. I can't forget what Paul says here, and I'm putting in his passage from I Cor. 1 in its entirely. I know most of my friends who read here don't doubt the way I do, don't struggle with their faith almost constantly. But please read this passage with me anyway.

Me, I'm going to go take a hot bath.

Without anxiety.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

Peace to all who read