Malachi151

Well, yes and no. If the statements are false or the conclusions are unjustified then how is the more scholarly work going to change anything?

Does he arrive at different conclusions in his other work? I doubt that is the case? Are his arguments in his other work significantly different than in this work? Again, I doubt it.

Yes, for scholarly purposes, I agree with you. For a review on Infidels I think that this was a better choice.

By the way, do you have any disagreements with the review? I only had one thing to add which is that I think Hosea 9 should have been mentioned in the section that deals with the Temple scene. Other than that it looked very good to me, though it did perhaps overemphasize the mythicist position in relation to the scholarly field, I think reviewing it from that perspective worked very well.

Peter Kirby

But Malachi151, conclusions are secondary to method. If you want to see the method that Sanders uses in his scholarly work, you go to his scholarship. And, everyone I know who has read both agrees that the later, popular book is inferior and a disappointment.

Peter Kirby

I would add that the conclusions are different--in The Historical Figure of Jesus he adds a bunch of unsubstantiated stuff that finds no place in Jesus and Judaism.

Ted Hoffman

Peter, Peter, Peter. Do you see what this means?
First, those like me who are not historicists will be attacked for being Greekless and lacking credentials and metaknowledge to tell junk from pearls.
Then we will be attacked for senselessly parotting what Doherty writes.
Then we will be attacked for not reading any work by mainstream scholars. I have been attacked by Rick and Gibson for being incapable of telling apart Bultmann's book from my nose.
And when we pick a book by a mainstream scholar with all the badges, medals, PhDs and honorariums, we are attacked for bothering with pulp junk from distinguished scholars.
What next? Are you saying that HFoJ can be lumped together with what Archaya and Freke and Gandy publish? If not, explain how they differ.
Are you saying that even these so-called distinguished scholars engage in publishing potboilers and Grade A prime crap?
Where should our (we who are interested in criticizing the HJ) efforts be spent to achieve the greatest impact? - dealing with inaccessible books that the public have never heard of or dealing with what they have on their bookshelves?
Dont the public read these popular books more than the scholarly ones?
Are you saying that:
One should not read Sander's HFoJ without reading his other books? If so, Sanders does not discourage readers from reading HFoJ and doesnt make reading his other books a pre-requisite.
Is that really my fault Peter?

Can you explain exactly why we should expect his other scholarly books not to contain the apologetic arguments that are present in HFoJ?
Provide an example - does he handle the temple ruckus any better in his other books? Explain how?
If you cannot, then I suspect that you are just moving the bar up arbitrarily. Which would not be suprising (because it comes with the territorry), but which would nonetheless be unfortunate.

You are obviously more schooled in this subject than I am. Could you recommend which HJ book you consider the most scholarly and that would merit a serious treatment by a mythicist. A book that, if I take apart, my efforts will not be dismissed as spent on junk publications.
Okay, make that three. And I am willing to accept free copies. I remember you offered historicists a free copy of Doherty's book for a review and they all chickened out (I dont recall whether GDon summoned courage and accepted the offer or whether he obtained his own copy).

Note, by the way, that when Zeichmann critiqued Doherty, he got a round of applause. When Doherty responded, those that applauded Zeichmann went quiet. There is a detectable pattern that we shall soon be able to nail.

Ted Hoffman

Noted. Thanks.

Malachi151

I just want to say again, thank you for this Jacob, and I think it was an excellent job and you did a great job with the footnotes and details.

Has this review been hosted on Infidels yet?

Peter Kirby

You're welcome. And since my comment did not have the near-cosmic significance you read into it, I'll leave it at that.

Ted Hoffman

Thanks Malachi. Its not yet up on IIDB. This is actually a draft and was hoping to get comments that may help in improving it. I have submitted it and once its published at IIDB, I will take out the pdf from the net. I still expect Gibson to defend his teacher's honour. Or is he willing to watch as Sander's work is characterised as junk?
Yes, I wouldnt envy anyone who can persuade others that in that particular year, in that particular book, Sanders, in his wisdom and years of research and pedagogy fresh and sober, decided that he had no reputation to lose and therefore publishing junk was the right thing to do. That would also require reminding astonished readers that in other years Sanders employed sound methodology and always based his conclusions on evidence and sound reasoning. It means that in NT scholarship, one can publish junk and still be a respected figure. Note that I have said quite a bit about NT scholarship in the review. These comments have far-reaching implications in my view.
I have done my job as a critic. And my job is to show that the main proponent of Jesus as an eschatological prophet does not do such a good job.

Okay. I have never seriously looked at it. I thought it had more to do with the fig tree...
Over-emphasize? I was introducing a different perspective to the mainstream position and wanted anybody who never heard of it to encounter good reasons for considering it. I thought all I did was indicate the current state of affairs between MJ/HJ...
Now, onto Peter's comments:
Thank you.
That sounds like a good suggestion. But then again, (1) I will run the danger of being faulted for picking on a single (average) scholar and leaving the best one(s)[depending on who you ask, the best NT scholar will be different]. (2) I am not motivated enough to be a "Sanders scholar" - I am not sure he deserves that much of my time. Plus, his writing is boring. I really, really loved reading Gunther Bornkamm. His writing was beautiful, poetic and rich of metaphors and the like. (3) If even after his decades of writing, researchwork, reflection and teaching, what he writes in the end is junk, then it is quite likely that all the good-looking methods and stacks of evidence and pages of referenced work and etymological arguments about Greek and Hebrew words in primary sources are just a cover up for junk.

In other words, a pig in lipsticks and stilettoes is still a pig. Either he was never committed to those vaunted methods you talk of, or they were just a cover up for junk.

You are correct that your comments did not have a wide significance and I am sure you meant well. But realize also that your comments come in the backdrop of shifting goalposts by historicists. My own view is that it has the danger of giving legitimacy to such a response and people who are not interested in examining the HJ in a different light will just move him further and further away into the dark recesses of Jesus and Judaism. And when Jesus and Judaism is rebutted, like nomads, they will salvage the pieces of a HJ that remain (in the cover of whatever excuse is available) and go and camp elsewhere, say Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, or whatever else seems convenient. Then, like Jerry in Tom and Jerry cartoon, they will whistle and then beckon mythicists and tauntingly tap a volume of Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. That would be a circus.

Whatever I have argued in that review is not just about the book: I raise several issues that are of relevance to anybody who believes a historical Jesus existed. And I would expect responses to those issues because the review goes beyond Sander's book and because of that, it is not a sufficient response to say that I should have reviewed an actual scholarly effort instead of junk.
Is this unique to Sanders or is it common in all HJ books that promote/present a particular portrait of Jesus?

Solo

It is more than common not just to HJ'ers but to MJ'ers to have a "particular portrait of Jesus" to draw. As Wilhelm Wrede once cleverly said, everyone who is exercised by the subject, does so upon the discovery of "something Jesus-like" (etwas Jesuaehnliches) in themselves. Crossan, in one of his moments of genuine insight, called the charge that the quests for historical Jesus merely reflects one's own intellectual predisposition and ideological bent, the most trivial truism of the NT studies ever since it was uttered by Schweitzer. Proof ? Is there any "Jesus" that you cannot say that about ?

For the evangelicals, the gospel Jesus is the personification of libido dominandi; Jesus is (a church/group controlled) libido dominandi par excellence.

For the MJ'ers - who fight the HJ-academia as proxy for the unsophisticated evangelical literalists -the HJ hypothesis encroaches on their libido dominandi - ergo everyone who holds onto the HJ view, deep down is either a liar, and a crook, or a hopelessly naive ninny molested by liars and crooks.

Jiri

No Robots

Fascinating. I have always seen MJ as the pointy end of the fundamentalist stick. Is this what you mean?