Roger Pearse

I don't mean to pull anyone's chain here, but... am I alone in finding that this forum is becoming increasingly dominated by marginal theories?

By these I mean ideas which are not mainstream, whatever their merits. I include in this the idea that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, and the oft-reviled yet endless posts that no Christians existed before 325 AD.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I tire of these posts. Every discussion of early Christian origins inevitably becomes polluted by one or another of these theories, which means that the general value of all the threads has been reduced appreciably over the last 12 months.

What do you think? Is any of this true, or is this more likely a symptom that I've been reading this forum too long?

If others share this view, would there be merit in hiving off the JM guys (etc) into their own forum?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Headache

So, are you afraid that any of them would happen to be correct or is it just that they go so against what you believe that they, to you, becomes crackpot theories?

Or do you find that these theories are not supported by facts? If so, they should be somewhat simple to shoot down? I think the mythical Jesus fits quite nicely with the terrain, but then again, I'm far from being a biblical scholar, historian or archaeologist. Or is it that you have too much vested in claiming the historicity of Jesus?

Jack the Bodiless

Well, the notion that Christianity was invented by Eusebius seems to be promoted by only one poster here (unless I've missed something). You could use the "ignore" function on him, if he bothers you that much.

I wouldn't classify Jesus-Mythicism in the same fashion (it's something I'm "agnostic" on). Especially as there are numerous shades of it: Doherty's "crucified in a spiritual realm", quasi-historicist "myth very loosely based on multiple real persons", Christian reworking of Osiris/Dionysius/whoever...

spin

You yourself, when you support more literalist readings of texts, do leave the mainstream yourself. You wouldn't call yourself a hawker of crank theories. Be kind and forbearing. This is an infidel site so we should expect ideas which are outside the mainstream, seeing that the mainstream is mostly populated by religionists. It is the use of evidence that should interest us.


spin

Yellum Notnef

Nothing said by anyone here is as crankish as Jesus rose from the dead and is now waiting for us in the sky. Nothing.

Perhaps you should stick with Christian forums where you are hailed as some sort of hero for endlessly supporting the craziest shit of all time.

Yellum Notnef

http://www.groupsrv.com/religion/about13843.html

Minimalist

What do you want to do, Roger? Read the gospel and fall on your knees in wonder?

The world has suffered through quite enough of that, thank you.

Casper

I have to say that Lee (unless I have him confused with someone else) is/was always very polite and congenial.

Toto

This forum is open to all sincere points of view. When you start to ignore theories that are outside of the mainstream, you risk missing out on the genuine new insight among all the crank theories.

And it's not as if the mainstream of biblical studies has any great track record, either in explanatory power or the social, political, or religious goals that inspired so many of those scholars to focus on the sacred texts,

I do think we have a problem with a few practitioners of the broken record technique, who may be taking up more than their fair share of bandwidth. But that is a small price to pay.

Feel free to report posts that hijack a thread onto some pet theory, or ignore posters who have nothing new to say.

eta: you may report trolls. You may not accuse someone publicly of trolling.

chrisengland

Some people on here seem to present certain theories as having alot more scholarly support than they actually have aswell.