Sheshbazzar

Unevidenced character assassination. Third

Roo Bookaroo

One Example of How Professional Biblical Scholars React to Doherty’s Writings.

After the Jesus Puzzle was published (1999), no academic biblical scholar has presented a full critical review of the book. 
The critical review presented by Richard Carrier in Feb. 2002 was the only one ever published anywhere. But at the time Carrier was simply an M.A. student going through the moves and rules of critical reviews. He obtained his Ph.D. in ancient History from Columbia Un. in 2008. Since then he’s never revisited his review of the Jesus Puzzle.

After Neither God nor Man was published (2009), no biblical scholar has presented a full critical review of the book. Some have made well-known critical comments, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Bart Ehrman, and Richard Carrier, all mentioned in the Wikipedia article. Carrier, now a Ph.D. has not been willing to invest his time into a full-fledged critical review. Neither has Bart Ehrman. Most likely, no scholar ever will.


The only critical review appearing anywhere has been by an Australian amateur, going by the pen name of GakuseiDon, “Book Review of Jesus: Neither God nor Man”, on his own site (Jan. 2011). It is a substantial article, in 4 parts, and 34,000 words long. Doherty has responded to this critique with his own rebuttal, shown on his site Jesus Puzzle - Reader Feedback #29, which is a 36,000-word article, and has berated this amateur with the most ferocious diatribes.


There is no mention in the literature of this amateur’s critique and of Doherty’s response having been read by anybody. Nobody seems to have been willing to plunge into this 70,000-word controversy.

Recently, Doherty made a big splash by issuing a “Hebrews 8:4 Challenge” on one of the few sites he likes to appear as a “Leading Jesus Mythicist of the World” (Sept. 2012 - March 2013), a discussion repeated on the “JesusMysteries” forum (Jan 8-13, 2013).


In Neither God nor Man, Doherty devoted 9 pages of 4,700 words to the translation of one specific verse of The Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 231-239) accompanied by 6 notes of 1,100 words, for a total commentary of 5,800 words.


The Greek text uses the imperfect in both parts of the counter-factual statement, translated in a straightforward fashion with a present meaning since Antiquity. “If he were on earth, he would not be a priest”. So by Jerome, so by Erasmus, so by most NT versions.

Paul Ellingworth, a theology lecturer at the Un. of Aberdeen, and a translation expert, has published the Epistle to the Hebrews, (Epworth, 1993), considered one of the best two or three Hebrews commentaries (out of 80 published commentaries).


Doherty seized on a passage subtly analyzed by Ellingworth (Doherty, p. 232, Ellingworth, p. 405), where Ellingworth appealing to a German Grammar of Greek (1961), states that: “The second difficulty concerns the meaning of the two occurrences of en. The imperfect in unreal [contrafactual] conditions is temporally ambiguous (BD §360 [3]), so that NEB 'Now if he had been on earth, he would not even have been a priest' (so Attridge) is grammatically possible. However, it goes against the context, in at least apparently excluding Christ's present ministry, and it could also be misunderstood as meaning that Jesus had never 'been on earth.' Most versions accordingly render: 'If he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all' (REB, NJB; similarly RSV, TEV, NIV.. ,).

Doherty grabbed “temporally ambiguous” to claim the use of an exception to the general meaning of the Greek imperfect as having a present meaning. Doherty sees a chance to build an immensely verbose construction of 5,800 words, using an immense stream of words to develop a whole interpretation and produce a past tense for the contrafactual.

He claims, from what he likes to call his “demonstration” that his interpretation, the past meaning, is the only possible one. 
Doherty invokes curious analogies, which seem more appropriate to trying to educate third-grade children on the use of verb tenses, or impress an audience of congenial beer-drinkers: An imaginary trip to Paris in 1888, a consideration of Reagan’s presidency, and a bizarre tale of “Bob and Jim”.


Doherty, in his book, calls this 8:4 verse “a time bomb which most commentators manage to gloss over or ignore completely,” “a smoking gun”, and later calls his own speculative interpretation a “slam dunk”, “an ironclad case” (see debate with Hermann Detering on “JesusMysteries” Jan 8-13, 2013).

Allowing Doherty to triumphantly conclude that “Therefore, he is saying that Jesus' saving act did not take place on earth.” (p. 239). Which Doherty uses, by including 8:3 for his re-write, and using his simplistic popular understanding of “Platonism”, to claim that “ by including the phrase "if he had been on earth," which is contrafactual, he is making the statement that Jesus had not been on earth in the past (p. 237). This becomes Doherty’s “smoking gun” that Jesus had never appeared on earth. QED (“Quid erat demonstrandum”, the basic formulation of Doherty, who, in his autodidact’s mind, naively considers his analysis as solid as a mathematical proof.)

Paul Ellingworth was contacted for his response to the strange use made of his “temporally ambiguous” comment on 8:4. He was provided with a copy of the 9 pages 231-239 of the book, along with the six notes. And the previous commentary of Richard Carrier, in his Feb. 2002 critical review of "The Jesus Puzzle" where the argument on 8:4 had made its debut.
"(x) Appendix 5 (p. 310): Doherty*intuitively*mentions the correct reading, but is evidently unaware of the more esoteric details of Greek grammar that confirm this intuition: an ei...an phrase using the imperfect tense is always a present contrafactual (a past contrafactual would call for the aorist). In other words:*"So, then, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest..."*is the only correct translation. This is not an obscure point in Greek grammar. It is so fundamental to habits of oral discourse that*this is simply the only way to read this passage. This takes away some of the force of his interpretation, but does not contradict it.

But, as Carrier remarked as well that this interpretation, of a past tense for the contrafactual, was more argumentation, speculation than evidence.
Carrier added, about Doherty's peculiar style, a pertinent critique that Doherty does not separate his soft speculations from the hard facts, presenting all his conclusions as hard facts, and confusing the unlearned reader.

There are occasions when it is not exactly clear (without careful attention to context and wording)*what is a fact and what is merely a conclusion*Doherty is making by*interpreting a fact in the light of his theory*(e.g. pp. 98, etc.). The entire book would benefit from an explicit clarity at every turn between fact and theory (maybe by splitting sections into two parts, e.g. "facts" and "conclusions"), as between descriptive and explanatory hypotheses. That is, historians formulate descriptive hypotheses about what was the case, what did happen, and then formulate explanatory hypotheses about why, and every work benefits from keeping the two as distinct as possible. Both points are especially important for a work that aims at overturning a dominant orthodoxy in scholarship.

Ellingworth responded: “Perhaps I should not have used the word "ambiguity" in my Eerdmans commentary: a statement capable of two or more interpretations is not automatically itself ambiguous.”

And Ellingworth refers to his 1991 short Epworth Commentary, p. 65:

"8.4*Now [the author] builds on his previous teaching ... to show how Christ's ministry differs from that of the levitical priests. An unreal condition (compare 7.11),*if he were on earth*(which now he is not), is contrasted with what is*in fact*(v.6) the case. Jesus could not have been a priest during his earthly life. The reason for this is not only (as was argued in 7.14)* because he belonged to the wrong tribe, but also because, so to speak, there are no vacancies in the earthly priesthood. On that level, priests and sacrifices have been provided for in the law.
*
"8.5*But these are not the real priest or the real sacrifice."

Ellingworth shows no interest in going further in that debate beyond the above quotation.

Ellingworth illustrates the fact that British circles do not take Doherty seriously by reporting that only one academic library has a copy of his book (meaning “The Jesus Puzzle”), which is, oddly but perhaps appropriately, the "Arabic and Special Collections" section of Exeter University.

His advice is to let the debate run its course.

Obviously a wise advice, as it is clear that nobody from Antiquity to the Renaissance and Reformation humanists needed the nearly 10,000 words produced by Doherty (including the funny analogies) to get an immediated present meaning of the little verse of Hebrews 8:4. Jerome understood it this way, so did Erasmus 1,000 years later.

It is amazing that Earl Doherty, who is a kind of character, a showman by inclination, an endless gabbing disputationist by cultural habits, who insists on always drowning any critic with a tidewater of rhetoric, has staked so much of his thesis on his argumentation about Hebrews 8:4, making it the exploding “time bomb” and “smoking gun” for his claim that Jesus never came down to earth. This allows him to claim a “distinction” from G.A. Wells, as Doherty’s presentations reflect most of the Wells scholarship.


However, the thesis that Jesus was an ideal, heavenly, figure, had already been established in scholarship by Bruno Bauer, John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, Thomas Whittaker, Albert Kalthoff, and Arthur Drews.

Not being an academic, Doherty must have thought that he had nothing to lose, but gain a bit of notoriety (and sell his self-published books) by amplifying as his own the thesis well elaborated in the 1880-1914 period.

From Ellingworth’s reaction, It seems that in the UK, as in the US, professional scholars, experts in their field, as a rule, stay prudently away from fringe ideas coming from amateurs outside their professional field. Those "independent researchers" always carry a claim of some sensational breakthrough, and usually pass as popularizers catering to the unlearned public.

It's not worth the scholars' time - refutation is useless when dealing with fanatical amateurs - nor the aggravation from cultish followers who fall passionately in love with the new-fangled ideas, which fascinate the public the more that they are out of the mainstream.

It's a futile, exhausting, and unrewarding, task to try to rectify the warped conceptions of an untrained public. Scholars, wisely, prefer to watch from the sidelines and not get involved.
They save their powder for articles in the peer-reviewed journals where the real debate is going on, among a community of top experts.

When it comes to discussing Hebrews, there are already 80 professional commentaries in print, and 20 more in preparation. This is where the real debate is taking place.

Whereas the passionate amateurs of Internet sites are having lots of fun, better than TV (not always though), seeing the conversation as a pleasant pastime, an opportunity to practice gabbing and debating skills, without any serious repercussions on the scholarly world. And from the more learned participants, there's always the chance to learn something.

mountainman

mountainman

All of whom are tenured historicists.
Do you know what "tenured" means?

Iskander

Luther response to Erasmus
De Servo Arbitrio
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/bondage.html
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshol...r_arbitrio.pdf
Exordium

Toto

OK - let's stop there. This is a libel on Richard Carrier. His review was a thorough review, not just "going through the moves." He did not actually have a PhD at the time, but he had the training, and submitting and defending this thesis did not suddenly augment his professional skills.

If he hasn't revisited Doherty's thesis, it's most likely because he has been intensely busy earning money to pay back his student loans, principally by writing his own two books on the question. He has just finished the last book and sent it to the printer, and if you read his blog, he does a fair amount of traveling and speaking.

The rest of this bizarre post only repeats what Doherty himself has complained about from the beginning - that professional scholars do not engage with his ideas. You seem to think that this is a critique of Doherty - that these professional scholars would instinctively recognize the worth of an idea, and the fact that they have not taken their time to address an idea from someone they haven't met at a conference is evidence against Doherty. But this is the wrong way to look at it. It shows that these professional scholars are a closed social group who engage in group think and can't open their minds to even consider an idea that makes then uncomfortable.

Roo Bookaroo - please stop this personal obsession with Doherty. I have heard him speak at several conferences, and the picture you paint of him is so far at odds with reality that it makes you look like the crank.

avi

Roo, thank you, for many interesting and substantive posts to the forum, much appreciated. While I too, take issue with some of Doherty's writing, I do not agree with your style, here in this post, of heaping insults on a fellow forum member.

I plead guilty to heaping the same magnitude and quantity of insults on Bart Ehrman, and I am not justifying that conduct here, but, I do believe that it is counterproductive to the goal of understanding the spread of christianity, in the earliest times, to offer personal invective against Earl.

I find myself nodding my head in agreement with you, on many of your posts, but not on this one, though I concur in the sentiment underlying your expression, i.e. that Earl's ideas are not a prescription that can be taken on an empty stomach.

Please use your considerable talent, skills, and knowledge more productively, by addressing an issue, any issue, relevant to second century events, when, I believe, Christianity began. By focusing attention, and detail, on the issues, language, expressions, and concepts of that era, instead of railing against yet another bloke just trying to offer some ideas, you will be helping promote the goals of the forum, with great distinction, in my opinion.

Earl's writing will survive or fail, regardless of your assessment, and people like me, will continue to study Earl's texts, and try to make sense of them, if we can, irrespective of any hostile (or laudatory) comments from you, Roo. As spin wrote, in another thread, let's get back to BC&H.

Cheers,
avi

aa5874

I now consider Earl's challenge to be completely hopelessly flawed because he knew in advance that he had ZERO supporting evidence that Epistle Hebrews represented the teachings of the earliest Jesus cult.

Even if Hebrews supports a heavenly Jesus that was never on earth it may only mean that the never on earth Jesus was a Late development.

No manuscripts of Hebrews has ever been found and dated to the 1st century and before the Jewish War c 70 CE.

Some who post here attempt to ridicule mountainman by stating that he has no evidence that the Jesus cult started in the 4th century yet allow Doherty to make claims about a heavenly Jesus that is without a shred of evidence.

1. Non-Apologetic writers argued that Jesus was a man who was crucified.

2. Apologetic writers argued that Jesus was the son of God born of a Ghost and a Virgin baptized by John and crucified under Pilate.

3. Heretics claimed Jesus was on earth.

4. Paul claimed Jesus was made of a woman

Who in antiquity claimed Jesus of Nazareth was NEVER on earth??

No-one.

The very name Jesus of Nazareth implies Jesus was on earth whether or not he was non-human.

Doherty's challenge is really extremely weak but many here seem terrified to challenge him.

I reject Doherty's claim that Hebrews 8.4 is a "smoking gun" that Jesus was never on earth.

The Jesus character was completely mythological as stated by the Church writers and they also claimed he was baptized by John, and was crucified under Pilate AFTER a trial with the Sanhedrin.

The Myth Fables called Gospels are really no different than the Myth Fables of Romulus.

The Myth Romulus is the founder of Rome.

The Myth Jesus is the founder of the Roman Church.

jakejonesiv

Roo,

Who contacted Paul Ellingworth and when? Was it you? Could you post verbatim what Ellingworth wrote in reply?

I cannot tell from the above where Ellingworth stops and you take up.

Jake

Roo Bookaroo

TO: JAKEJONESIV

Here is the description of the communication with Dr. Paul Ellingworth.

I contacted Paul Ellingworth in Aberdeen, Scotland.
He was most kind in answering me.
He received:

- The link to the Vridar’s chapter 16 of Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman, about his interpretation of 8:4
- The link to the Amazon page for “Neither God nor Man”
- a full copy of the p. 231-239 of “Neither God nor Man”, on 8:4
- a full copy of the 6 notes #87-92 concerning the passage on 8:4
- a link to the FRDB “Hebrews 8:4 Challenge”
- a link to the JesusMysteries debate on 8:4 (Jan 8-13)
- a link to my Digest of Extracts of the 8:4 debate on JesusMysteries (Jan 8-13)
- a copy of my March 2 posting on “One Example of How Professional Biblical Scholars React to Doherty’s Writings.”, so that Paul Ellingworth knows exactly what I quoted from him.
- and, for comic relief, my little Gilbert-and-Sullivan parody, “THE SONG OF A MODERN MYTHICIST-GENERAL”

Paul Ellingworth’s words: (in purple)
Quote from Ellingworth (Doherty, p. 232, Ellingworth, p. 405), where Ellingworth appealing to a German Grammar of Greek (1961), states that:

“The second difficulty concerns the meaning of the two occurrences of en. The imperfect in unreal [contrafactual] conditions is temporally ambiguous (BD §360 [3]), so that NEB 'Now if he had been on earth, he would not even have been a
priest' (so Attridge) is grammatically possible. However, it goes against the context, in at least apparently excluding Christ's present ministry, and it could also be misunderstood as meaning that Jesus had never 'been on earth.' Most versions accordingly render: 'If he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all' (REB, NJB; similarly RSV, TEV, NIV.. ,).

In correspondance from Feb. 9 to March 2, Paul Ellingworth stated the following (in chronological order):

- Ellingworth responded: “Perhaps I should not have used the word "ambiguity" in my Eerdmans commentary: a statement capable of two or more interpretations is not automatically itself ambiguous.”

- Ellingworth refers to his 1991 short Epworth Commentary, p. 65:
"8.4*Now [the author] builds on his previous teaching ... to show how Christ's ministry differs from that of the levitical priests. An unreal condition (compare 7.11),*if he were on earth*(which now he is not), is contrasted with what is*in fact*(v.6) the case. Jesus could not have been a priest during his earthly life. The reason for this is not only (as was argued in 7.14)* because he belonged to the wrong tribe, but also because, so to speak, there are no vacancies in the earthly priesthood. On that level, priests and sacrifices have been provided for in the law.
* "8.5*But these are not the real priest or the real sacrifice."

- Perhaps I should not have used the word "ambiguity" in my Eerdmans commentary: a statement capable of two or more interpretations is not automatically itself ambiguous.
*
- I cannot become involved in the American discussion to which you refer, but I cannot improve on what I wrote in my 1991 short Epworth Commentary, p. 65:
*
"8.4 Now [the author] builds on his previous teaching ... to show how Christ's ministry differs from that of the levitical priests. An unreal condition (compare 7.11), if he were on earth (which now he is not), is contrasted with what is in fact (v.6) the case. Jesus could not have been a priest during his earthly life. The reason for this is not only (as was argued in 7.14)* because he belonged to the wrong tribe, but also because, so to speak, there are no vacancies in the earthly priesthood. On that level, preists and sacrifices have been provided for in the law.
*
"8.5 But these are not the real priest or the real sacrifice."

[Which is exactly the same words as the previous quote. ROO]
*
I hope this may be helpful.

- The extent to which Earl Dohertty is taken seriously in British*circles is that only one academic library has a copy of his book (though I see it has gone into a second edition in Canada). The library in question, oddly but perhaps appropriately, is the "Arabic and Special Collections" section of Exeter University.
*
I suggest we let this controversy run its course. The only good it could do is to encourage people to consider afresh who Jesus really was !

- I have nothing to add, except perhaps that it is difficult to build a christology on a single verse;


That is all.

On another hand, I would like to know the date of the translation of Jesus Barabbas into English, shown on the German site Radikalkritik. Thanks in advance for the scholarly interest.

ROO, March 4, 2013