MrMacSon

Ehrmans' post is in response to "why René Salm was put on the program at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting" ... and then blogged

"this meeting is of a learned society and is to be for scholars with established expertise. It is not to be a venue for people without qualifications to spout their wild theories. Salm claims that those who oppose him have a theological or religious bias against his views, but this simply is not true. EVERYONE who is an expert opposes his views – Jewish, Christian, agnostic, or other. There is not a single archaeologist of ancient Israel that gives him the least credit. That doesn’t make him wrong. But it does mean that if he wants to argue that every real scholar is in error, he should get some credentials first."

Members of a "learned society" out to be able to discuss or argue learnedly against his premises, propositions and arguments. He should not need "credentials" other than information to support his argument.

tektronics is an apologetic ministry site.

that is poisoning-the-well ad hominem - how about countering Salm's propositions rather than besmirching the guy?

Toto

No, that is not what anyone calls a lie - anyone who knows what the word means. These appear to be examples of opinion, and opinion that many reasonable credentialed scholars support.

In fact, a lot of people do claim that Paul invented Christianity.

E.g. The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Hyam Maccoby (who is not a mythicist)


Tektonics is not a reputable site. It is run by JP Holding, a former prison librarian and a Christian apologist with a take-no-prisoners approach to internet debate. Any claim made of dishonesty on this site needs more documentation than the mere claim.


See above.

outhouse

The person in question is a blogger, and it only seems fair that I be able to use a blogger against him.

Does not salm in fact claim scholars and anthropologist are dishonest in regards to evidence surrounding Nazareth?

Its OK for him in your eyes because he plays your side of the game.


I will leave Ken Darks scathing review out, because you will pull up another blogger to refute that.


Lets get back at what Ehrman claims

http://ehrmanblog.org/rene-salm-at-the-sbl-2/

In my post yesterday I began to explain why René Salm’s claim that Nazareth did not exist in the days of Jesus is dead wrong and is rejected by every recognized authority – whether archaeologist, textual scholar, or historian; whether Jewish, Christian, agnostic, or other .


Salm also claims that the pottery found on the site that is dated to the time of Jesus is not really from this period, even though he is not an expert on pottery. Two archaeologists who reply to Salm’s protestations say the following: “Salm’s personal evaluation of the pottery … reveals his lack of expertise in the area as well as his lack of serious research in the sources.” They go on to state: “By ignoring or dismissing solid ceramic, numismatic [that is, coins], and literary evidence for Nazareth’s existence during the Late Hellenisitic and Early Roman period, it would appear that the analysis which René Salm includes in his review, and his recent book must, in itself, be relegated to the realm of ‘myth.’”



SO I will ask you Toto do you think it is dishonest, ignoring or dismissing evidence found credible by others when trying to sell as many books as you can?

Because Salms work is not about truth and honesty when cherry picking and throwing out material found to be credible from professionals,
while failing to properly research at the advanced levels of those he questions.

outhouse

First of all I have shown this not to be baseless insults.

He is a untrained author who by Ken Dark and Bart Ehrman accounts, has been ignoring or dismissing evidence.



I think ignoring and dismissing evidence when making a absolute statement applies. And his conclusions make no bones about probabilities.


Remember integrity applies as well.

Toto

What kind of logic is this? Half the world is blogging now, including almost all Biblical scholars. But this is not a battle matching authorities. You are expected to argue from the evidence.

My post was in reference to your charge about Kenneth Humphreys. How does Salm come into this? This thread is about Van Manem and the reliability and dating of the Pauline epistles and related issues.

Toto

What has Bart Ehrman written about Kenneth Humphreys?

Kenneth Humphreys and Rene Salm are two very different people with very different points of view.

Also - you should realize that it is a common technique by Christian apologists to charge that skeptics are "ignoring" evidence, when that evidence is quite unreliable by normal historical standards. You can't just take a charge of ignoring evidence at face value without going deeper to examine what that evidence is.

outhouse

My original statement was directed at salm. His website looked just like Humphreys, I confused the two.

My apologies


Ill go back and recheck the site

Toto

You don't have the right to post this sort of cursory opinion in this forum. The rules of the board are meant to foster discussion of issues, based on facts and arguments, not just personal reactions.

Humphrey has extensive footnotes and sources for what he posts. That doesn't mean that he is right, but it gives a basis for discussion. Your unsupported opinion does not provide anything to discuss, except that you have an overwhelming emotional reaction to his site.

spin

As outhouse has no credentials and is obviously not trained as a scholar or historian, I would say the forum has heard enough of his frivolous assertions of authority and uncritical rejection of views because they are from people who outhouse does not perceive to have enough authority. There is no content in such shambling, poorly-written assertions to contribute to the forum.

outhouse's lurid suggestion that people like Salm and Humphreys are just trying to flog their books is typical in its poorly thought out analysis and can only be seen to be poisoning the well rather than a descent genuine reaction to what either of these people have done. Both had done what they considered a lot of work in their field of interest before producing a book, so their interest is not primarily to make money despite outhouse's silly aspersion, an aspersion which is rather shameful in its meanness, disrespect and obvious fallacy.

The rule of the forum has always been: deal with the case, not the person. If you don't deal with cases you are not offering anything of value to be discussed.

Just replace "Humphreys" in this last sentence with "outhouse" and the writer could be commenting on himself. We don't need this.

outhouse

Except for one problem.

I follow credible people, with real educations. That means real professors spin. Real scholars and historians, not fringe ones. I often rely more on cultural anthropology, not the perversion of it.


You wont find me appealing to ignorance out of sheer desperation to promote my odd bias.


If I have a bias I will try to admit it, and I think a certain amount of appealing to authority is responsible research.