aikido: History DOES inform faith. Was that--uh, Witherington? Wright? Craig?

SWL: All three hold that view actually. And I think even L. T. Johnson would agree to an extent there.

aikido: No, probably Crossan. If I am to be accused of plagarism, I at least want to be sure my copies come from a reputable brand of photocopier. I guess according to you, that brand is just a "loose Canon."

SWL: That's a decent pun, but I think sometimes even a good brand can put low-quality product out, so, no matter how popular they may be, we've really got to shop around. That's why I don't limit my reading to moderates and conservatives.

Have you ever actually read any books by Wright or Witherington though?

aikido: Seriously though, I am doubly amazed I have picked up so much from Crossan. Maybe HE is the one you should be writing to.

SWL: I often do write to Crossan. He's a great guy - very kind, bright, and always quick to reply in full. I especially enjoyed our discussion of the resurrection and the "body of Christ" during Easter.

aikido: Or perhaps you might just mentally place the words "Crossan said" before all the posts I may put on this board.

SWL: Hmmm....ok man.

aikido: I think you and I have a difference of opinion about basic matters of theology and faith.

SWL: I'm sure we do. But you're just here to discuss history, right?

aikido: I find fantasy and ignorance as powers and principalities worthy of a lifelong struggle.

SWL: I feel the same. And, since I can't really tell, if you are implying that my views are rooted in fantasy and ignorance, all I can say is - pick a thread here at the boards, and refute whatever points of mine you disagree with. I'm sure it'll be a learning experience for both of us. I'll try to refrain from value-judgments and just stick to arguments/evidence if you will...

aikido: I am in the minority on this and always have been. But I have convinced myself it is a worthy cause, and I am stubborn. It's not easy to get anyone to look at the obvious and "see it for the first time" revealed in its primeval glory. Some of us want to take the long way around. And that's okay. Stances like yours used to frustrate me to no end, but it's all small stuff--I'm just getting to the age where "it's all small stuff" reveals itself like an opening flower.

SWL: Well, your stance frustrates me only to the extent that its not really "your" stance and I don't get the impression that you think critically about the place you got it from - and also, you don't care to defend it. Rather, you seem content with just putting it up on a pedestal for all to see and relegating all who aren't in awe of it to intellectual cowardice or dishonesty. I can't say that's all that frustrating, as its typical of many liberal scholars I read and I'm used to it. And I can't say I even expect you to defend views that aren't your own as an adequate defense would probably require a greater degree of familiarity with the views themselves. I can't expect to really interact with a self-proclaimed photocopier. :-(

aikido: Thanks for the links. I have to leave you with a post-modern cautionary: the idea that the subject studying the objective data can actually alter that data by the subject's studying.[/b]

SWL: I'd have to disagree. I wouldn't say the subject alters the raw data, but of course, background beliefs and presuppositions can and often do skew the subject's perception or interpretation of it.

Oh, BTW - You never answered my question -

Do you consider yourself a Christian according to the definition you gave?

SecWebLurker





[This message has been edited by SecWebLurker (edited May 29, 2001).]

aikido: I think it was Josh McDowell who said that historical Jesus scholarship was like doing open heart surgery on Christianity. Then he amended that comment to add that it was like doing open heart surgery on Western civilization.

He's not far wrong, whoever he is.

SWL: You don't know who McDowell is? I thought you were just telling me you read McDowell in another post?

aikido: The desperation I see in earlier dating is an attempt to resuscitate a dying patient. We may have to regrettably leave the patient on the table and tend to the rest of the family.

SWL: Right, redating GTh and inventing a pre-canonical "Cross Gospel" are indeed desperate attempts to keep the patient alive - the dying patient though, is John Crossan's wandering radical egalitarian/Cynic Jesus.

SecWebLurker

"Everything has been thought of before--the trick is to think of it again when it may be needed"
--paraphrase of Goethe's (write to him to see if I got it right!)

Let's all shop around and find the best features of all the extant copiers and try to combine them for a post-modern model (there's that word again!). The "heroic" myth of the best biblical scholar is a bit outdated, I'm afraid, so trying to find "the best model" of those already in use just won't work anymore. Biblical scholarship is like politics, where you need to read an east coast and west coast paper, a news magazine or two--both progressive and traditional--and, in short, all the underground and establishment print and web rubbish you can get your eyes on. THEN and ONLY then you MIGHT have a basic idea of which direction the truth is pointing.

I have and I do and I will save you lots of cyber trouble by admitting I do not understand any biblical scholarship near as well as I would like to! Even if I get straight A's on your tests--does that still mean I have learned things well enough? Or that I am a "real" Christian?


If you get along with him so well, then drop his name immediately and pick up and pass along my apologies for being so literally influenced by his sacred texts!


I will certainly try....But remember that the meaning of my message is in the response I get. And if I don't like the response I get, I try to change what I am doing rather than blame you for my communicative shortcomings. It may be helpful to note that nearly 90 per cent of human communication comes from voice tone, breathing and body language. This might be difficult in message posting, unless one of us can interpret ancient texts that are divinely inspired and innerant AND at the same time demonstrate that our understanding of those texts is equally divinely inspired and inerrant.


I hold that arguments and evidence are necessarily embedded in one's core values and judgements. For me that does not mean if you respond with "value-judgements" I will conciously have to respond back in kind with the same.


You raise a great point! As to feeling labeled a coward or dishonest by liberal scholars, that may be due to the result of their scholarship rather than its intentions. And there is definitely a "truth" you have enountered in my posting. I definitely did not put it there--but it IS there, I think. I am also just owning up to the basic human wiring that undergirds our entire sensory experience of learning. Maybe we should just drop the photocopying metaphor and pick up the sponge metaphor! The incredible soaking-up sponge! That applied sponge just might clean out any pre-Enlightenment cobwebs still fogging our minds! Nevertheless, I DO seem to be getting a fruitful responses from you so far--even if you do characterize my posts as having nothing of value or originality to ponder upon. That is interesting in itself, don't you think? But if you really feel I do not post anything resembling a message on these message boards or if I am not argumentative enough for you, or don't provide enough arguments and counter-arguments from published writers, then maybe a good place for you to stop worrying about it all would be the period at the end of this sentence.

The idea that the subject changes the object being studied is a view from particle physics--a strange pill to swallow to those of us still at home in a our "modern" Newtonian uiverse. Neils Bohr, the Danish nuclear physicist whose spirit along with Crossan's I also sometimes channel once said there are two kinds of truths--profound ones in which the opposite is also a profound truth. He made it plain there was a clear difference between profound truths and "trivialities" where the opposites are obviously absurd. More post-modern food for our pre-Englightenment thoughts!

I was born in the USA and was raised a Christian. I cannot shed a Christian worldview but at the same time I cannot help but see other religions crowding around my elbows at the same big cocktail party. They are strange: they look different; they act different. And, yes, they may smell different. But there would be an immoral and unethical aftertaste in my mouth if I ever said or thought "MY religion is FACT but THEIRS is MERE FABLE."

After immersing myself on these boards, I have decided to call myself (for the moment) a Christain in exile.

It works for me. "...You may say that I'm a heretic, but I'm not the only one...."




[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 29, 2001).]

It WAS Dom (DOM?) Crossan. I always get the two mixed up. They're both probably great guys--very kind and bright. If I answer a message from SWL and also one from SWL which was origianlly between Nomad and myself, I get a little off track. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this kind of work anymore...

And where does that leave the family...? And what does Nomad--the orginal recipient of my reply-- have to say about all this? Maybe it is too late for that, or perhaps he is channeling SWL!



[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 29, 2001).]

aikido7: And where does that leave the family...?

SWL: That particular patient has no living relatives.

aikido7: After immersing myself on these boards, I have decided to call myself (for the moment) a Christain in exile.

It works for me. "...You may say that I'm a heretic, but I'm not the only one...."

SWL: Hey aikido...Whatever floats your boat man. I was just curious.

You take care...

SecWebLurker

How soon we forget and need to remember: The loving family is no longer of the nuclear kind. We are going beyond that now and one man announced its limits 2000 years ago: "Whoever does divine will is my family." We are all family now.

"Whatever floats your boat man?" "Whatever floats your boat man?"

THANKS FOR TREATING ME WITH THE RESPECT AND DIGNITY WE ALL DESERVE--NOT!!!

You are becoming prosaically transparent to me. Behind most of your questions lie statements you fail to recognize or are afraid to claim. You seem to call for more and more "belief" in a Jesus enshrined in ritual and dogma rather than demonstrating any Christian/religious transformation process in your posts.

...Then again, I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.



[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 29, 2001).]

I'm not a "literalist" but even Crossan and Helmut Koseter (who is also a big liberal) date the Passion narrative at AD 50, that's just pretty early and they are the big liberals, not a bit lik fundies at all.

Meat =>The Vast majority of scholars, liberal especially, but also Evangelicals, place John abot 90 AD, with a growing Minority supporting an early date about 60. this is so confussed to say that a copy of a copy from 125 gives it a shaky date. When they find a fragment that matches what we know for the form of the book, they don't assume that the rest of it could be totally different. It's like a random sample, it proves that the probability is that the rest of it matches. So finding a copy of a copy means the original is older, not latter. They had to have time to copy it, it had to have time to spread. The oldest surviving complete copy is from the 3d century, but that doesn't mean the rest of it is wirtten latter or that it woul be different than what we know. And the books itself can be reconstructed form the Apostolic fathers in the second century.

Meta =>That's another misconception. There are different types of manuscripts. Just because we don't have a complete manuscript until the fourth doesn't mean that the earlier fragments are not evidence. some of those fragment are almost the whole book. And that doens't include unicils, which are earlier.. we have almost complete unicials and other kinds of ms that were used for reading in chruch and so forth. Not to mention quotations form the book by apostolic fathers.


[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">
There was no "early Church" until Pard'ner Constantine's big 325 AD jamboree and "round-up." Based on textual studies and the existence of different genres, there were many "Jesus movements." Most died out, a few survived and were assimilated into the canon. Some can only be glimpsed by the polemics written against them which have still survived.[QUOTE]

Meta =&gt;That's just Elane Pagles type BS. Look, its ture the "orthodox chruch" was late in forming, but that in no way means that there wasnt an early chruch. Most of those "Jesus movements" were on speaking terms, had networks, and became the Orthodox chruch. That process is really well documented and that can be proven easily. What rad lib feminists like Pageales mean when they say that is that little off shoots and "marginarilzed" heratics like the Gnostics vanished, and good enough for them.



Meta =&gt;So?


quote:
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Apart from this the only evidence for the datings is the writings of the early Church, which I for one accept.
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"(T)he writings of the early Church" is not ALL the evidence there is in determining manuscript dating. The study and comparison of ancient texts is a complex science which can use everyhing from DNA studies to social anthropology. This is much different than just relying on traditional pronouncements from ecclesiastical authority.

Meta =&gt;Yes, but, and this is a crucial point, so pleas note, using the chruch fathers as evidence doesn't just mean "Clement says this so it must be true." Shcolars also do textual criticism with their work and can use it to help in dating. For example the use of Disatesseron studies has been indipensible in proving the passasion narrative goes back to AD 50. also when they quote the gospels they can't make that up and anticipate what the work would say so we know it had to have existed at at least at the time they quote it.


quote:
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...you are back in a situation with virtually no controls on it...
One guess is just as possible as another.
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Controls are a part of scholarly methodology and any scholar with integrity explains his/her method at the outset and is faithful to it. Scholarly judgements are more along the line of "this is more probable than that" rather than "this is absolutely certain."

quote:
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I'm not sure that I've got quite as much respect as you for biblical scholarship since the late 18th century. The 'modern' scholarship in general had a tendancy to assign extremely late and now unplausible dates to most of the cannon.
But what specifically are you referring to here?
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I am specifically saying that there was NO biblical scholarship before the late 18th century. Hermann Reimarus could have only written his famous seminal essay during the Enlightenment--although he was careful to have it published it after he was dead. The Enlightenment fundamentally changed our world and that is why there is still a vocal and sometimes hysterical fear and resistance against seeing things in this new, post-modern way. This fear is manifested worldwide in the phenomena of fundamentalism. If the American literalistic version can be convinced of an earlier and earlier textual dating, then there are no vageries of an oral tradition to contend with and "eye-witness" New Testament accounts discourage any real study of the communities who wrote the gospels. Biblical literacy is already pretty dismal in mainline churches now. Early dating is often an agenda-driven activity which will only discourage further critical reading and study of Scripture.


Meta =&gt;I agree with you for the most part. But that last bit about early dating just marks what you say as self serving and ideological. It's also BS, there are liberal scholars, as i point out, who give early dates to the Gosples, and most scholars overall, liberal or other wise, the vast majority date all four gospels in the first century , mostly form 70 t 90.

Think about it, the only difference an early date makes is that moves it closer to the events. that's only important if you buy the argument that closer means more accurate. Not everyone does buy that argument, but either way it marks the argument as ideological. I mean it marks the fear of an early date as being just as idological as assigning an early date.

You must be a student at a liberal seminary. I went thorugh that phase, spouting the dogma and using all the buzz words and terminalology. I got my Masters from Perkins School of theology, I wen thorugh all the rad lib crap too. It's silly, that's not really scholarship, being slavishily tied to its ideolgoical strictures I mean. But I guess that the time to do that is when you are young. I hope you remember this 10 years form now.

Thanks for your post and understanding, Metacrock, although I never went to a seminary! Much less a "liberal" one! Maybe the next lifetime I'll have a spare few years or so!

I think the reason most of the posters on this board spout the buzz words and wander far from the domain of good scholarship is that most are like ants crawling across the canvas of Picasso's "Guernica." They can sense a succession of changes of color, but cannot see the whole painting. That whole vision is provided by our prophets, artists and poets--people we are conditioned not to take too seriously in our culture. And prophets and artists always use the language of myth and parable and metaphor to communicate that vision.

Most evangelicals and fundamentalists--like most of Americans-- are technically literate, but they read with inattention and to merely confirm their own prejudices (the only way I recognize this is because I have to struggle against the same tendency in myself!). One reason there is such a disconnect between myself and others on this board could be because in ten years I will be seventy! And I hope I will remember your post 10 years from now! Yikes!

You may attribute this to my senility, but I really don't think these posters are "silly" or immersed in immature "rad lib" stuff. Most have their hearts in the right place--they're doing the best they can with the information and beliefs they have been raised with...

Anyway, thanks again! It's a lovely spring rain reading a post like yours!

aikido7 (James W.)




[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 29, 2001).]