Freethought & Rationalism Archive

discordant · 06-04-2011, 08:13 AM

You seem to say that Price gives props to anyone who sits in his camp, but not to anyone else. He criticises Ehrman for being far too conservative, but still calls him brilliant. And it goes without saying that he and von Harnack would argue about pretty much everything.

Either you are factually mistaken, or your category is too broad to be worth using. If you define his camp to include basically anyone he shares some common ground with, then what's the point you're trying to make? That he only recommends a scholar if he can find some merit in their work? How is that an issue?

ApostateAbe · 06-04-2011, 08:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by discordant

You seem to say that Price gives props to anyone who sits in his camp, but not to anyone else. He criticises Ehrman for being far too conservative, but still calls him brilliant. And it goes without saying that he and von Harnack would argue about pretty much everything.

Either you are factually mistaken, or your category is too broad to be worth using. If you define his camp to include basically anyone he shares some common ground with, then what's the point you're trying to make? That he only recommends a scholar if he can find some merit in their work? How is that an issue?

Well, even if I defined that group as broadly as possible, to include EVERY scholar, and if Price truly did give acclaim to all of them, then it would still make the relevant point that Price doesn't discriminate. He will give credit to the well-reasoned scholars the same as the piss-poorly-reasoned authors, such as Acharya S. That said, Ehrman and von Harnack most certainly belong in the same general skeptical camp as Price (highly critical of religious traditional beliefs).

DCHindley · 06-04-2011, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by discordant

You seem to say that Price gives props to anyone who sits in his camp, but not to anyone else. He criticises Ehrman for being far too conservative, but still calls him brilliant. And it goes without saying that he and von Harnack would argue about pretty much everything.

Either you are factually mistaken, or your category is too broad to be worth using. If you define his camp to include basically anyone he shares some common ground with, then what's the point you're trying to make? That he only recommends a scholar if he can find some merit in their work? How is that an issue?

Well, even if I defined that group as broadly as possible, to include EVERY scholar, and if Price truly did give acclaim to all of them, then it would still make the relevant point that Price doesn't discriminate. He will give credit to the well-reasoned scholars the same as the piss-poorly-reasoned authors, such as Acharya S. That said, Ehrman and von Harnack most certainly belong in the same general skeptical camp as Price (highly critical of religious traditional beliefs).

I wouldn't say that Ehrman is highly critical of religious traditional beliefs. His interest is in explaining occasional scribal changes to religious texts (the books of the NT) as products of progressive changes to dogma accepted by those scribes.

If one argues that the NT is inerrant, then Ehrman is a 'radical'. If one accepts that NT literature can be analyzed in the same manner as any other text from antiquity, and this can even include those who argue the autographs were inerrant, then Ehrman isn't so radical.

Ehrman has sat on both sides of the inerrancy debate, but I don't think he feels any pressing need to "proselytize" his current POV. His personal style is - hmmm - "expressive" (brashly self confidant), and I think he frequently shoots from the hip (maybe too much). However, I don't think he is writing apologetics.

Apologetics forces evidence to comply to a preconceived POV. Acharya S and Freke & Gandy are apologists for mythicism. Von Harnack was going where he believed the evidence was pointing, not where he believed the evidence needed to point. Significant difference!

DCH

discordant · 06-04-2011, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Well, even if I defined that group as broadly as possible, to include EVERY scholar, and if Price truly did give acclaim to all of them, then it would still make the relevant point that Price doesn't discriminate. He will give credit to the well-reasoned scholars the same as the piss-poorly-reasoned authors, such as Acharya S.

If there are gems amongst the junk, is it a crime to point them out?

Quote:

That said, Ehrman and von Harnack most certainly belong in the same general skeptical camp as Price (highly critical of religious traditional beliefs).

I'll give you Ehrman, if you like. But von Harnack, to my knowledge, dated the gospels and Acts ultra early, thought the Gospel of Luke was written by Luke the physician, travelling companion of Paul, and according to Kloppenborg "believed Q to be a largely unadulterated collection of Jesus sayings." If you can put such a person in the same camp as Price, then once again I have to question the purpose of the category.

Toto · 06-04-2011, 09:21 AM

If you hear Price talk in person and follow his monthly Zarathustra Speaks columns, he will make mores sense on a personal level. He is culturally a Southerner, and in the best part of the Southern tradition, he values social relations. He believes as a matter of principle in saying nice things about people and finding some good in everyone.

He is fascinated with ideas, and he will evaluate any source for ideas, however disreputable it is in the eyes of the world.

He is an ex-evangelical, and reserves most of his wrath, such as it is, for William Lane Craig and the conservatives who have taken over the field of NT studies and marginalized him. But he accepts his fringe status in the current NT field, because he knows the other side inside out, and he knows that he is right.

When you see him debate evangelicals, you see a performance artist at work.

ApostateAbe · 06-04-2011, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by discordant

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Well, even if I defined that group as broadly as possible, to include EVERY scholar, and if Price truly did give acclaim to all of them, then it would still make the relevant point that Price doesn't discriminate. He will give credit to the well-reasoned scholars the same as the piss-poorly-reasoned authors, such as Acharya S.

If there are gems amongst the junk, is it a crime to point them out?

Quote:

That said, Ehrman and von Harnack most certainly belong in the same general skeptical camp as Price (highly critical of religious traditional beliefs).

I'll give you Ehrman, if you like. But von Harnack, to my knowledge, dated the gospels and Acts ultra early, thought the Gospel of Luke was written by Luke the physician, travelling companion of Paul, and according to Kloppenborg "believed Q to be a largely unadulterated collection of Jesus sayings." If you can put such a person in the same camp as Price, then once again I have to question the purpose of the category.

The purpose of the category is to make a point of the indiscriminate tendency of the positive acclaims that Robert M. Price is very generous with. He holds back his acclaim only for the scholars who land squarely in the Biblicist camp. Von Harnack is most certainly not a member of the Biblicist camp, regardless of what Price may complain about him. Von Harnack was one of the founders of higher criticism. If you don't think von Harnack belongs in it, that is fine. My point is that the fact that Price cites Earl Doherty and Stephan Huller favorably is a poor argument of his honesty or curiosity. He will give favor to almost anyone who doesn't think the Bible is the revealed Word of God, including Acharya S.

discordant · 06-04-2011, 09:41 AM

What Toto said.

ApostateAbe · 06-04-2011, 09:43 AM

I have no disagreement with what Toto said.

hjalti · 06-08-2011, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abe

That's correct. When you don't have a lot of facts, then you may not be able to make a conclusive case of any sort. In this topic, there really are a lot of facts--especially the manuscripts of the early Christian writings. Not that we trust the claims of those writings, mind you. The facts are the letters and words on the pages, independent of our judgments of their historical reliability, and they are a set of facts the same as any other ancient manuscripts of extraordinary religious myths are a set of facts. We have a lot of material to be able to explain with historical models of the early Christian religion, be it with a model of fictional beginnings, a model of mythical beginnings, a model of historical+mythical beginnings, a model of purely historical beginnings, and so on. Some models are more likely than others, and we have a large set of facts that help us to judge between the models. I am drilling that point in because I think a lot of us are oriented toward thinking that, if we have a historical claim that isn't true, then it isn't fact, and so if we don't have facts then we don't have explanations. But, any historical writing, be it a reflection of truth, lie, mistaken belief or myth--they are all facts, and we can explain those things historically. For example, the fact is not that there was an empty tomb. The fact is that the author of the gospel of Mark claimed there was an empty tomb. We have an exceptional amount of facts concerning the beginnings of Christianity--all of the claims are untrustworthy, but we can explain them and make sense of them all of the same.

Well, if we think of all the ancient Christian writings, then we have a lot of facts. But when we go to specific events, like the supposed baptism of Jesus, we have very few facts, in fact, then the only important fact seem to me be the story in Mark.

And in that case, even if you think that your explanation of that fact is better than other explanations, it really doesn't amount to that much in my opinion, and we can in no way say that we actually know what happened. At most you would be able to say that it's the best guess we can make. I think it's worth finding out what the best guess is, don't get me wrong, but it seems to me that you often try to insist that the best guess is something that should compell us to actually be confident that it happened.

bacht · 06-08-2011, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

Well, if we think of all the ancient Christian writings, then we have a lot of facts. But when we go to specific events, like the supposed baptism of Jesus, we have very few facts, in fact, then the only important fact seem to me be the story in Mark.

And in that case, even if you think that your explanation of that fact is better than other explanations, it really doesn't amount to that much in my opinion, and we can in no way say that we actually know what happened. At most you would be able to say that it's the best guess we can make. I think it's worth finding out what the best guess is, don't get me wrong, but it seems to me that you often try to insist that the best guess is something that should compell us to actually be confident that it happened.

The general consensus here seems to be that we actually don't have enough solid data to reconstruct events in early Christian history. Pretty much all we have are religious texts, which are secondary, undatable and biased.

There is a temptation for skeptics to build an alternate history of the first few centuries, but afaik this is mostly unsupportable conjecture (it is fun though)

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06-04-2011, 08:13 AM	#31
discordant Junior Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Perth Posts: 57	You seem to say that Price gives props to anyone who sits in his camp, but not to anyone else. He criticises Ehrman for being far too conservative, but still calls him brilliant. And it goes without saying that he and von Harnack would argue about pretty much everything. Either you are factually mistaken, or your category is too broad to be worth using. If you define his camp to include basically anyone he shares some common ground with, then what's the point you're trying to make? That he only recommends a scholar if he can find some merit in their work? How is that an issue?

06-04-2011, 09:21 AM	#35
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	If you hear Price talk in person and follow his monthly Zarathustra Speaks columns, he will make mores sense on a personal level. He is culturally a Southerner, and in the best part of the Southern tradition, he values social relations. He believes as a matter of principle in saying nice things about people and finding some good in everyone. He is fascinated with ideas, and he will evaluate any source for ideas, however disreputable it is in the eyes of the world. He is an ex-evangelical, and reserves most of his wrath, such as it is, for William Lane Craig and the conservatives who have taken over the field of NT studies and marginalized him. But he accepts his fringe status in the current NT field, because he knows the other side inside out, and he knows that he is right. When you see him debate evangelicals, you see a performance artist at work.

06-04-2011, 09:41 AM	#37
discordant Junior Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Perth Posts: 57	What Toto said.

06-04-2011, 09:43 AM	#38
ApostateAbe Contributor Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: MT Posts: 10,656	I have no disagreement with what Toto said.

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