Toto

For the Christmas season, R. Joseph Hoffman will speak at the Center for Inquiry-West in Hollywood on the topic "The Birth of the Messiah Legend: Reflections for Christmas 2006."

I notice that Hoffman has translated Julian's Against the Galilieans (or via: amazon.co.uk) and has also edited Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains (or via: amazon.co.uk), as well as other books on early Christianity and anti-Christians.

Roger Pearse

I hope that someone will go along and give us a report.

His translations, unfortunately, seem only to translate material already available in English. The accuracy is sometimes rather suspect.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

I attended the lecture, which was entertaining. It was a well done presentation with power point slides and visuals, intended to puncture myths about Christmas - sort of a basic Biblical literacy program for the layperson who wasn't aware that the shepherds and the magi would not have been in the same scene. Hoffman emphasized the similarity of Jesus to other mythic godmen without committing any of the common internet errors, such as claiming that Krishna was born of a virgin.

Hoffman was very good at fielding questions from the generally literate audience, including a persistant Afrocentric revolutionary communist who quizzed him on how Alexander the Great stole Egyption secret knowledge.

He did say that he is about "76%" convinced that Jesus was a myth, but that he doesn't find the issue of whether Jesus actually existed to be all that vital. There were stories about Jesus, people assumed that he existed, and the stories had important historical consequences.

The only other unusual claim in his lecture was his speculation that the birth story in Matthew was a reaction to the Jewish Talmudic tales about Jesus being the illegitimate son of a prostitute/hairdresser and a Roman soldier, rather than the Jewish story being a reaction to the Christian myth.

Another purpose of the lecture (besides allowing Dr. Hoffman to escape Amherst NY in December) was to advertise the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, which is sponsoring a conference in January on Scripture and Skepticism, and will be publishing an online e-zine called Spinoza's Lens.

Ben C Smith

Ah, so we can express historicity as a percentage. Good to know.

Ben.

Toto

You can express historicity as a percentage - it's a free country. But I think he was being ironic when he tagged it at 76%.

spin

Do you have any specific examples of this claim to present here, Roger?


spin

Roger Pearse

I had the misfortune to encounter some curious mistranslation in his 'Celsus', and the only detailed review listed in l'Année Philologique commented on this feature of the text also.

His "Porphyry" seemed a better translation, although it was also less widely read, and quite possibly I never noticed the mistakes (I did notice a footnote which made it clear to my eyes that he hadn't understood the text at one point; but that didn't affect how he rendered it). This book wasn't reviewed in any academic journal, and indeed contained a great deal of unscholarly material. But curiously it was a better book, or at least so I thought. His version of Julian I have not seen.

One thing that infuriates me about these books is what is NOT translated; his "Porphyry" contained only the fragments of Macarius Magnes, for which a perfectly adequate English translation exists, but none of the fragments which then had no such translation. His Julian contains the material in the Loeb; but not the surrounding text by Cyril of Alexandria, in whose "Contra Iulianum" it is embedded, which has not been translated (fragments done by me for this forum aside).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

Hoffman's response to Pearse

mountainman

Hi Toto,

Thanks for the report. The talks sounded intriguing.
Can you ask him how he arrived at the figure of 76.
Specifically whether he used a "rough algorithm" or
whether he plucked a number out of a random
generator, in an ironic fashion.

I'd be interested in his response.




Pete

Solo

Hoffmann has made a living with this for a long time. The charge concerning the origin of the nativity narratives was on display in his "Jesus Outside the Gospels" twenty-two years ago. The interesting thing is that Hoffmann wants to believe both, that Matthew and Luke birth stories were an answer to the Talmud's dissing of Mary, and at the same time, that ben Panthera comes from an intentional corruption of parthenos (virgin).

CSER has been around for a while also. Morton Smith and G.A.Wells used to attend its conferences in the 80's and duke it out with choice insults.

Jiri