Tenorikuma

An interesting discussion of the historical Jesus and the competence of Bible scholars to do history has emerged in the comment thread at Exploring Our Matrix that was originally about Vridar being taken down.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/explori...available.html

"Bahumuth" appears to be the handle of one Jefferey Querner.

Toto

Is there an easy way of reading the comments on patheos? I have to keep clicking on "show more" and they are not sorted by time, so I've probably missed some.

Tenorikuma

Don't know; they're always sorted by time for me, with the newest at the bottom.

If I have time later, I'll cut and paste the relevant conversation here.

Toto

Bahumuth seems to have a blog at http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/

He has a review of "Did Jesus Exist?" from last year.

I have found his posts on McGrath's blog, but I keep having to "click here to see more", which makes it a bit hard to follow. Is the RSS feed easier to read?

Tenorikuma

The comments are handled by Disqus, so I don't think you can get them in an RSS feed. (I could be wrong.)

Tenorikuma

Here are the relevant parts of the conversation.

BAHUMUTH: As to the comment about mythicism being to history what new earth creationism is to biology, which both Joe and James have used without the need to lodge a complaint over whoever thought of it first, this is just an attempt to equate a mythical reading of the "important" part of the Bible with a literal reading of an "unimportant" part of the Bible. The Eden story, the flood myth, and the death/resurrection of the Good Son/shepherd/fisherman on Christmas/Easter are all related to the same gods in Sumerian myth, Enki and his son Dumuzi, the latter of whom was worshiped by Judah's women at the gate of Jerusalem's Temple (Ez. 8:14). Had the dominant religion been based on Adam instead of Jesus, no doubt we'd have something like four gospels of Adam, and Joe and James would be comparing those who disbelieve in a historical Adam to those silly science deniers who believe in the literal resurrection of the body. Somehow scholars are able to disagree on what millennium Zoroaster lived or whether King Arthur was a myth without it devolving into these kinds of personal attacks and legal complaints, which proves to me the contention is not based on scholarly credibility but cultural bias.

MCGRATH: On your last point, this has nothing to do with this being about an "important part of the Bible." Historical criticism has shown that much that the early Christians claimed about Jesus was myth, some was legend, and much we cannot tell one way or the other. This is about the fact that there is historical evidence that the myths and legends grew up around a historical figure. That is all my disagreement with mythicists is about: internet denialists setting themselves up as authorities on history when professional historians consistently draw a conclusion different than theirs.

BAHUMUTH: The comparison with New Earth creationism is meant to be a demeaning correlation with science denial, which is very different than the denial of popular history. Historians disagree with each other over what is history all the time. There is no disagreement between scientists over what is science. And unlike science, you don't need technical training to understand and respond to historical arguments. Biblical scholars disagree with each other over whether Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, an ionic sage, or a political revolutionary, so your attempt to paint them as gurus of impenetrable authority dismissing in solidarity the opinions of a bunch of internet conspiracy theorists is not very convincing. There is nothing unique that sets Jesus apart from Adam, Noah, Zoroaster, or King Arthur. Myths predating the Bible refer to Adam. Historians wrote about Arthur. All the "evidence" is filtered through interpretation: Josephus said this part of the sentence but not that part, Mara Bar Serapion said the Jewish "kingdom" fell after "the wise king" died but he must have meant the Jerusalem Temple, etc.

MCGRATH: You're clearly not familiar with the field of philosophy of science!

The natural sciences and history are different, as I have often emphasized. But simply saying "This is easy, you don't need expertise to do it" is not fundamentally different, regardless whether it is done by history-denialists or science-denialists. And your lumping of Jesus with Adam and Noah suggests that either you are unaware of how the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth is different, or you are being dishonest about it. But either way, your comment illustrates that, in the absence of expertise and knowledge of the methods and evidences of a field, one can draw all sorts of dubious conclusions.

BAHUMUTH: The problem is not that I am unaware of the historical evidence behind Jesus. I have something like 100 books on the subject. The problem is people like you who center their lives on studying Jesus have no concept of the relationship between the Bible and Middle Eastern mythology or the history of other mythical and semi-mythical characters. You think Adam can be dismissed as completely ahistorical because he is just a symbol of man in the Bible, but you have no concept of his persona as a priest of Eridu in Kassite mythology, or the tradition that Noah was a king of Shurrupuk in Sumerian mythology. I'm not saying that proves they existed. I'm saying if the popular religion of our time was based on one of them, then these extra legends providing historical contexts not present in the Bible would be present and you would be using them to prove their historicity in the same manner.

You claim that "professional historians consistently draw different conclusions." Really? Name 10 of them. Not Biblical scholars. Not theologians. Full articles or books on the subject of mythicism written by professional historians. I sincerely doubt you can.

MCGRATH: If you are asking for direct responses to internet bunk that has never been published in an appropriate scholarly venue, then of course historians do not spend their time addressing such things. But if you mean the evidence for the historical Jesus, then you are mistaken. Do historians like Michael Grant from Classics and John Romer from Egyptology (since you seem to want people outside of the immediate field), as well as scholars like Morton Smith, Shirley Jackson Case, Maurice Casey, Shaye Cohen, Geza Vermes, Amy-Jill Levine, Robert Funk, L. Michael White, and Eric Meyers really seem to you to deserve to be dismissed, just because there are others whose theological concerns could be suspected as having biased them?

BAHUMUTH: You're the one who used the term "professional historians" instead of "Biblical scholars," but I guess from your reaction you consider the two to be virtually one and the same. The problem is if you open up "historian" to "scholar who studies history as part of their profession," then that means you'll just have to extend the same courtesy to the other side.

It's funny how you start off with the assumption that mythicist arguments are so out of left field that they do not even merit being addressed even in a short article and then try to turn the scenario completely around and suggest that it is your list of Biblical scholars advocating the almost universally-accepted notion of the historicity of Jesus who are being "dismissed" because they don't fit into your own stated standard of authority. Most of my books are from non-mythicist Biblical scholars so I don't think you can say I dismiss them. In my own opinion, some non-mythicists like J.D. Crossan make equally good arguments for the ahistoricity of Jesus than mythicists, such as the literary problems with "James brother of Jesus" in Josephus (Jesus: A Revolutionary) or the inadequacy of memory and the "Dark age" of the first century (The Birth of Christianity).

No one is going to deny the assumption of a historical Jesus without a valid alternative model. Why would anyone think Jesus was originally a dying-and-rising god unless they looked at the mythological connections? Why would anyone think Jesus lived in the first century B.C. unless they read about the historical connections to that time period? So yes, I am afraid I must insist that your hypothetical historians actually address the arguments that you insist they have authoritatively rejected. They don't have to address "internet bunk", though. Any refutations of Bruno Bauer, G.R.S. Mead, Joseph Campbell, Alvar Ellegard, G.A. Wells, Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, Frank Zindler, Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, Robert Price, etc. would do.

MCGRATH: If you think that Crossan makes arguments for mythicism then you have misunderstood him. And if your definition of historians includes Freke and Gandy, I find it had to believe that you are not simply teasing me.

Perhaps you should read about why Wells changed his mind, to being with?

BAHUMUTH: Your inability to read simple English makes me wonder if you are are the one teasing me. I said "non-mythicists like J.D. Crossan". How much more clear do you need it?? And I asked for a refutation from a historian on Freke or Gandy-- or any of the other names I listed. I did not say they were historians. Dan Brown had plenty of refutations despite the fact he wrote a book of fiction. And as for Wells, perhaps you should read that he has not changed his mind that the Jesus of the epistles and apocrypha came from the first century B.C., as I too believe. He has simply added the belief that the Q sayings do originate from a first century A.D. itinerant Galilean Cynic. I would point out that even if you were right, that would hardly stop you from finding a refutation of his past position, but it's clear all of this is to distract from the fact you really have no concept of what "professional historians" think about mythicist ideas. You're just transposing the beliefs of Biblical scholars onto them.

I'll cop to this though: I am not all that familiar with the subject of the "philosophy of science." But that is probably because the admittedly small interaction I have had on the topic has given me the impression that those interested in it are mostly Karl Popper enthusiasts whose background in "the philosophy of science" shows a lot more educational training in the humanities of the former than the technicalities of the latter and who are just as likely to engage in science denial on acid rain or climate change as anyone who is not formally trained in the sciences. But I probably have the same incomplete picture of them as you do about mythicists. If you tell me that perception isn't remotely true, then I will take it on your authority.

MCGRATH: What you wrote is that Crossan is not a mythicist but that his arguments support the ahistoricity of Jesus. Which can only mean that you have quote-mined him, much like those who say "Here is what someone who is an evolutionist says, and it actually refutes evolution."

Can you kindly explain to me why you find the likes of Freke amd Gandy, or Zindler, or Price, more persuasive than the consensus of mainstream secular historians and New Testament scholars? Why pick and choose from proposals at the fringe or outside the relevant field?

BAHUMUTH: The fact that you think I quote-mined Crossan makes me wonder how familiar you are with his work. How much have you read of him?

As to your snubbing of Freke or Gandy, their book "The Jesus Mysteries" provides far more insight than many scholarly books. When I first read it, it did not convince me that a first century A.D. Galilean peasant named Jesus didn't exist. But how anyone can say Freke and Gandy's connections between Christian theology and the Shepherd/ Fisherman god who provides a Eucharist, is hung on a tree on Christmas, rises on Easter, and whose name means "True Son", are nothing but "parallelomania", are beyond me. In my opinion, Crossan and the Jesus Seminar, who I think are all very good scholars, do far more damage to the originality of a historical Jesus by identifying the true sayings of Jesus with the Cynic philosophy of the Greeks than Freke and Gandy do in revealing a historically important proto-Christian death/resurrection tradition since that could always have been appended on later. And it's not like the dying-and-rising god parallels are any less convincing than the Cynic philosophy parallels.

The evidence that convinced me of a first century B.C. Jesus was Mead's and Zindler's arguments that the Toledot Yeshu contains an early proto-Gospel source that puts Jesus in a first century B.C. context, verified by early sources such as the tradition of five disciples from the Toledot in Mark 8:19-21, the Toledot's gardener character in John's gospel, Mara Bar Serapion's dating the "wise king" to just before the fall of the "kingdom", i.e. the Hasmoneans, the dating of Jesus in the Talmud, Tertullian's reference to the Toledot story of stomping of lettuces, another tradition sourced by Epiphanius placing Jesus in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, Delbert Burkett's Sanhedrin Trial Source and 1 Thess. 2:14 having Jesus tried by Jews rather than Romans, and the legends of Honi the Circle Drawer and the Dead Sea Scrolls matching key phrases in Hebrews. The 12th century Spanish philosopher and historian Abraham ben Daud confirms that the Talmud/Toledot tradition of a first century B.C. Jesus was not just a tradition of the Jews, but *the* tradition of the Jews up to the 1100s. Ellegard, who positively identified the author Junius through statistical analysis, managed to deduce a first century B.C. Jesus even without the knowledge of any of those connections, based mostly on the absence of knowledge of the peasant Jesus of the gospels in the epistles and early apocrypha.

http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/the-j...evious-century

MCGRATH: If one prefers parallelomaniacs to the painstaking and detailed work of historians, and allows late sources to trump early ones without good reason, then of course one can "conclude" all sorts of things. But those committed to doing justice to the evidence and using standard historical methods will not find those "conclusions" persuasive, for reasons that should be obvious.

BAHUMUTH: There you go again speaking in the name of historians instead of Biblical scholars without even bothering to comment on my challenge to put your money where your mouth is.

MCGRATH: I mentioned some historians who have addressed the topic, including a Classicist and an Egyptologist coming in from the outside, as well as historians of Jewish history in the relevant period. You seem to think that one can be a historian of early Christianity without being a scholar who specializes in the New Testament literature, which includes our earliest relevant sources. Or have I misunderstood you? Or did you miss that comment of mine?

BAHUMUTH: Bruno Bauer was a philosopher, theologian, and historian. Joseph Campbell is probably the most celebrated mythologist ever. James George Frazer is considered one of the founders of modern anthropology and had a huge influence on Freud and Jung. Mead had a degree in Classics. Robert M. Price is a theologian and a member of the Jesus Seminar. Even Bart Ehrman admitted at one point that the Professor Emiritus G.A. Wells is a good scholar and proficient in New Testament studies. Doherty was schooled in Classics. Richard Carrier has a Ph.D. in Ancient History. Ellegard is an expert in text analyzation and has made the notable discovery of an anonymous 18th century author using language statistics. Peter Gandy has an M.A. in Classical Civilization. Samuel Noah Kramer was one of the world's leading Assyriologists and an expert in Sumerian history and language. Mythicists may be in the minority, but the credentials in my list seem a little more impressive than the ones in yours.

I do think you should be proficient in the earliest relevant sources to be a good writer on Jesus and early Christianity, but I don't think you have to be a Biblical scholar. You appear to have missed some of my questions as well. Why should I consider you an expert on Biblical characters such as Adam or Noah if you are not even familiar with the earliest relevant sources from Sumerian and Kassite mythology? How can you say there is no connection between Christianity and the dying-and-rising gods or that all the material in the Toledot is late and historically worthless if you have not read the relevant texts? Is my description of the people who study the "philosophy of science" very far off? How much of Crossan's work have you read?

The Adoptionist interpretation of Mark can be understood as an allegorical fiction based on the idea of the earlier Jesus descending on the peasant Jesus in the form of the Holy Spirit. That interpretation is what the authors of 2 Peter and 1 & 2 John were fighting against when they warned against Gnostics or Marcionites who claimed the gospels were just "cleverly invented stories" and that Jesus "didn't come in the flesh." Mark 8:19-21 shows familiarity with the Talmudic tradition of 5 disciples in the symbolism of the five loaves becoming twelve then seven, representing the five disciples, the twelve apostles, and the seven evangelists of Acts 6:5. It is only with the genealogy that was added to Matthew (but not present in its earlier Ebionite form) and the "epic history" of Luke that Jesus is first portrayed as a real historical figure, and the earliest reference to Luke comes from around 180. In my opinion, the Theophilus in Luke is Theophilus of Antioch from 170, who lived only a few decades before the Torah and Tertullian's reference to the Toledot. Honi the Circle Drawer has many connections with Jesus including weather control and being unjustly executed on Passover by both sides of the Jewish political divide, which is then symbolically avenged by a subsequent Roman invasion (Josephus, Mara, etc.) It certainly makes more sense to me that Jesus' more Hellenized followers would reinvent him as a more modern figure to symbolize the present church than for the Jewish traditions of the Talmud, Mara, Epiphanius, etc. to place him a century earlier.

MCGRATH: If you think that the credentials you listed exceed those on the side of historicity, then you must literally know nothing about the mainstream historians who conclude that Jesus probably existed.

But some of what you wrote does not seem to be mythicist, since you suggest in places that there may have been an actual historical figure behind the myths and legends, however deeply buried.

BAHUMUTH: Bertrand Russell is another famous philosopher and historian who doubted a historical Jesus existed.

I'm glad you were able to catch that I do believe Jesus is based an earlier historical figure after the 3rd or 4th time I said it. That is also what Mead, Wells, Ellegard, etc. argue. Wells does not subscribe to the "mythicist" designation, but the basic idea of a disconnect between the early epistles and a fictional gospel makes him an important influence.

I will take your silence as an affirmation that you are too embarrassed to answer any of my questions.

MCGRATH: Actually, you did not state at all clearly that you are not a mythicist until now.

I am not sure what questions I supposedly did not answer, but we need to deal with more preliminary matters. What is your argument for embracing later sources which historians consistently evaluate as more legendary and less historically useful than thee earlier ones we have available?

BAHUMUTH: I spent a long time copying and pasting the six references I made to Jesus coming from the first century B.C., starting with my first post and ending with a full paragraph in the eighth post that you somehow ignored, then rewriting all my literary explanations, plus some new ones, but then my computer conked out.

Seeing how you aren't really reading or comprehending what I posted, rewriting it seems like a huge waste of time, so I'll just ask you to go back and read what I already wrote.

Here are the questions I asked:

I do think you should be proficient in the earliest relevant sources to be a good writer on Jesus and early Christianity, but I don't think you have to be a Biblical scholar. You appear to have missed some of my questions as well. Why should I consider you an expert on Biblical characters such as Adam or Noah if you are not even familiar with the earliest relevant sources from Sumerian and Kassite mythology? How can you say there is no connection between Christianity and the dying-and-rising gods or that all the material in the Toledot is late and historically worthless if you have not read the relevant texts? Is my description of the people who study the "philosophy of science" very far off? How much of Crossan's work have you read?

http://www.lost-history.com/list.php
http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/the-j...evious-century

MCGRATH: Simply referring to, or even copying and pasting, fringe ideas, outdated scholarship, and contemporary scholars' proposals which have not been found persuasive when examined by others, does not amount to a case. Neither is it a conversation.

The earliest Christians were not claiming that Jesus was a god, much less a dying and rising one. They were claiming that he was the first person to have entered the life of the age to come, which those who viewed the afterlife in that way expected everyone to experience at the end of history.

Amateurs often note superficial similarities and make a case for borrowing based on them. That isn't just a problem in history - bogus linguistic claims based on occasional coincidental similarities are very similar. If you find the very earliest Christian thinking about Jesus to be profoundly related to alleged "dying and rising gods" then I suspect that you are not sufficiently acquainted with the former, and only superficially acquainted with older scholarship or fringe claims about the latter.

BAHUMUTH: Spare me the generic anecdotes you cut and pasted from your other comments. Basically, you want to pretend that no one has the right to write about Jesus except professional historians, and by "professional historians", you really mean Biblical scholars, and only Biblical scholars who agree with the party line. Ironically, you also want to be an authority on science even though you don't have a science degree, so you prance out your philosophy degree in its stead and say you're an expert in "the philosophy of science".

Well, you got it completely backwards. All you really need to be authority on history is to be well read in the sources. You are not well read in Middle Eastern mythology or the Toledot, so you have no right to pretend you know what you're talking about. But for science, you actually do have to be formally trained or take it on authority. I can't defend every single technical detail about evolution or climate change personally, but I know the process enough to know it can't be faked by bias. For history, you do have to know every detail because it can be faked by bias, and there is no authority because every individual and social group have their own history but not their own science. That doesn't mean everything is relative, just that it's very hard to "prove" history, even with archaeology, which only goes so far.

So your arguments based on authority are meaningless to me. You actually have to tell me in detail why I'm wrong about rather than just say "You're wrong because professionals say so." Well, mythicism is based on professional scholarship from the people I listed before.

You keep saying the gospels are an earlier source than the Jewish tradition, but Mara is earlier than the gospels, and the earliest ones like Mark and proto-Matthew are fiction. The first non-fiction gospel is Luke, and that was written only shortly before the Talmud and Tertullian's reference to the Toledot. There is nothing in the Talmud or the earliest form of the Toledot derived from the gospels but the gospels make references to traditions from them, proving the Talmud and Toledot traditions are earlier and more original.

You keep saying mythicism has been considered and found unpersuasive but you can't name any books or articles to review the evidence (other than maybe Ehrman's highly erroneous work). You just expect it to be accepted on authority. This evidence just isn't used by Biblical scholars because the historicity of Jesus isn't even a question for most of them. You refuse to answer any questions and you can't even bother to follow my comments page enough to comprehend something I said six times AND explained at length, and when you get called out on it, you just accuse me of forgetting what I wrote! Your reading and comprehension skills are atrocious and you appear to have a problem following any line of discussion.

Grog

It is interesting to me that HJ defenders do not understand, at all, what "quote-mining" is. McGrath uses this all the time. The origins of this term, I believe, are from the evolution-creation polemics. Creationists would pull statements of scientists to argue that the scientists, themselves, were questioning Evolution. However, these quotes were usually out of context. As far as I can tell, "mythicists" use 'bible scholar' in general in a careful and contextual fashion. It is not quote-mining to cite a scholar in support of a particular proposition even if that scholar does not agree fully with you. If that were the case, then the furtherance of human knowledge would be considerably hindered. Here is an example (hypothetical):

Doherty argues that Jesus never existed and that Paul in 1 Cor 2:8 refers to demonic powers and not Romans. In order to support the latter statement, he cites scholars who make that argument. These scholars do not support Doherty's overall contention, but they do support the proposition that 1 Cor 2:8 refers to demonic powers. This is NOT quote-mining, it is a legitimate use of scholarly work.

If Doherty used the quote in a way that implied that these scholars believed that Paul himself believed that Jesus had been crucified by demonic powers without human agency, then that would be quote-mining.

mountainman

Thanks for this Tenorikuma. Querner (BAHUMUTH) raises some good points ...

I have taken the liberty of trimming a lot of stuff to focus on a few issues related to the business of doing history. I have bolded certain sentences that I think summarise the points made by each protagonist.


Not only can history be faked by bias, it can also be faked by forgeries and fabrications, and if there is one industry on this planet for which there exists a large amount of forgeries and fabrications, it is the religion industry.

These are indeed interesting times. Before the advent of the internet it would be impossible for a single researcher to become familiar with every detail of the historical sources. It would have implied a very large budget to travel to all the libraries and museums and universities which preserve these sources, and far more than a lifetime's work to draw them all together, especially considering the necessity of obtaining (multiple) English translations of the literary sources.

Someone should let Querner (BAHUMUTH) know about this discussion thread.

Keep well.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

MrMacSon

That's merely a bare assertion.

That's nonsense: it includes significant misrepresentations (strawman fallacy) and a includes a non-sequitur.

• what 'conclusions' do "professional historians" 'draw'?
• how do 'internet denialists' set themselves up? [beyond arguing issues]
• the 'when' provides the non-sequitur

Philosophy of science seems to have become a "field" by virtue of a lot of theistic-minded people (such as James Hannam et al) having done PhDs on or in the philosophy of science. It's a confected field.

neilgodfrey

"Interesting discussion"? Certainly some of the monologue by Bahumuth is of interest, but I got a headache reading the same avoidance "responses" by McGrath all over again. No matter who he's responding to, if they are critical of the way he reacts to mythicism, his comments are always the same. I think he just presses an app to take over the "conversation".

I note McG still repeats his old "Classicist Michael Grant" independently assures us Jesus existed -- overlooking, of course, that Grant is writing up what all the theologians themselves have said, as I've shown in two posts quoting from his historical Jesus book.