rlogan

First this:

Good on you, Don. Thanks. Talk about demonstrating the qualities we want in a forum!


If I understand the point you are trying to make here, it is that Doherty should go ahead and submit an article to a journal run by people who believe Jesus not only existed, but that he came back from the dead and is coming again soon to take the editor to heaven with him.

Earl should waste his time doing this because some small portion of his work touches upon pagan topics. Or Earl should restrict himself to only pagan topics that are not going to put him up against vested religious beliefs.

I think you've already said to Earl you are going to stop beating this horse, if I understand correctly so I won't belabor this.

Thanks again though for being reasonable. Earl Doherty is not only doing critical scholarship, but he is in fact the example I would point to for that very thing.

The fact that sets him against people hopelessly deluded by religious beliefs is not evidence of his lacking critical scholarship. It's quite the opposite.

GakuseiDon

My point is that it doesn't matter if a thousand GakuseiDons are against him, or a thousand rlogans are for him. Earl needs **knowledgeable** people to look over his ideas, and that is what the peer-review process provides. But I agree that it is a waste of time for Earl to go ahead and submit an article to a journal run by people who believe Jesus not only existed, but that he came back from the dead and is coming again soon to take the editor to heaven with him.

My suggestion was that Earl start off on the pagan side. Earl's ideas about pagan beliefs don't appear to be on the radar of modern scholarship. But I agree that there is no point doing this for peer-reviewed journals on Greco-Roman history and mythology run by people who believe Jesus not only existed, but that he came back from the dead and is coming again soon to take the editor to heaven with him.

Yes. If peer-reviewed journals in history and religion are run by people who believe Jesus not only existed, but that he came back from the dead and is coming again soon to take the editor to heaven with him, then I agree there is little point in him following down that track. I can understand Earl's point there.

Yes, certainly if peer-reviewed journals on the topics touched upon by Earl are run by people who believe Jesus not only existed, but that he came back from the dead and is coming again soon to take the editor to heaven with him, then probably the next best option is to write popular books, so at least critical scholars have a chance to read his books, once they have finished with Acharya S, etc.

I agree that Earl being set against people hopelessly deluded by religious beliefs is not evidence of his lacking critical scholarship. At the end of the day, it is about the evidence.

TedM

I, for one, am ready for a discussion of the evidence.

EarlDoherty

Herein my remarks on the first half of Part Two of GakuseiDon’s review of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man which can be found here. (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations within the Quote boxes are from Don’s review.)

In Part Two of his review, Don goes into considerable detail on two main subjects: the second century apologists (with effects, as he sees it, on the first century epistles), as well as non-apologist writings like the Ignatian epistles and Hermas; and the question of the evolution of a founder figure within the Q tradition. In this round, I will deal only with the apologists, leaving Q and the other writers for next time.

Don focuses on the second century apologists chiefly for one reason: he considers that if he can satisfactorily explain the apparent silence in them on an historical Jesus while still managing to maintain that they have such a figure in their background, he can carry over that argument and conclusion into the first century epistles which also contain an obvious silence on an HJ.

Don first appeals to a couple of points which only obscure the actual issue of the apologists’ silence on an HJ. He notes that the literature of the first and second centuries “contains little historical details about anything,” making many of the epistles and other non-canonical works difficult to date. And he suggests that this “certainly isn’t what we would expect.” The first observation carries virtually no weight. Historical data about the founder figure supposedly at the root of their faith, the faith they are giving a description of in what is often claimed to be minute detail, is altogether different from providing historical details on incidental matters of present and past. Besides, since writers like Athenagoras and Theophilus are describing heavenly divine figures (God and his Logos), incidental historical detail would hardly have much opportunity to come up.

His second declaration I don’t agree with. In the context of a non-historical figure and their faith’s evolution, there would be no historical detail to expect. Even in regard to the progress of their faith movement, my presentation of what the second century apologists were all about—based on the texts themselves—does not fall into any notable historical sequence of events. At best we can say that the movement arose as a religious philosophy based on an interpretation of the Jewish God and scriptures along lines we can see in Philo, who represents an early phase of that evolution. It reflects the development of the intermediary Son concept and an imagining of the latter’s role in salvation as the revealer and redemptive agent of God. In other words, it was essentially a Logos religion, evolving over the previous two centuries. It had no anchors in any particularly noteworthy historical events, and thus none could be expected to be forthcoming in the writings of those apologists.

Don expects those things because he is bringing a Gospel-based mindset to them. He regards my whole presentation of the second century apologists not being believers in an historical Jesus as something “quite fantastic.” Despite my careful examination of the texts which at every turn suggests that very thing, he regards as unwarranted my opinion that their silence on an HJ would be “bizarre” in an orthodox context. As much as anything, this seems due to an inability to conceive of an early Christian movement which entailed this sort of diversity and complex evolution of ideas (I’m sure poor Occam is turning over in his grave). Not that I haven’t laid out such an overall picture. At the conclusion of my chapter on the apologists in JNGNM, building on many of the observations throughout the book concerning the great variety of thought in the early documentary record (including in the NT), I presented an almost five page (p.498-502) scenario which took all these factors and diverse witnesses into account, creating a comprehensive and coherent picture. Apparently it had no effect on alleviating Don’s sense of the fantastic and bizarre. He certainly never addressed that picture, and if he is dissenting from a case which he declares is not only fantastic but inconceivable on any sensible level, he ought to address and rebut a presentation which belies such a claim.

Don is being woolly here. What is Wells claiming—that the second century apologists as a whole (not just Justin) are acquainted with an historical figure who is a part of their faith? Wells would be reading such a thing into them, just as Don is. Yes, Minucius Felix seems to be acquainted with a crucified criminal, but rejects him as the basis of his faith; and Tatian suggests he knows of “stories” like the Greek myths which may include a Gospel-Jesus character, but he hardly gives them any perceivable credence. And Don knows full well that my discussion of such apologists envisions that at least some of them (not just Justin) knew of certain writings which may in part have corresponded to our Gospels, but that such a familiarity did not extend to regarding the character within them as an historical figure who was the founder of their faith. As for Carrier, Don is being ambiguous: are the NT books the apologists are familiar with epistles or Gospels? In any case, I am again willing to acknowledge that some of them know of some form of Gospel writing. Tatian, as I said, puts them on the level of certain Greek “stories.”

All this, as I painstakingly lay out, fits a scenario in which the Gospels, throughout the second century, are gradually intruding into a diverse faith movement, until by the end of the century their misinterpretation (carrying along with them the misinterpretation of so much else in the early documentary record) had taken over the self-image of that diverse movement and imposed an historical founding figure upon it (whether human, docetic or Christian Gnostic).

Don now embarks on his case for demonstrating that the silent apologists don’t have to be seen as apologists rejecting or ignorant of an HJ. That case is dependent on one Christian writer and one of his documents, and here I am in danger of tearing my hair out once again, for all of this is old hat. I have dealt with it more than once in past debates, and all my protestations are repeatedly ignored. Don declares, “I won’t cover the same material here,” but he proceeds to do just that.

His case is based on Tertullian, and specifically on his Ad Nationes. I touched on this in my response to the first part of his review. The basics in my objection to Don’s approach are three:

(1) Tertullian writes in the 3rd century (a couple of his works fall a couple of years back in the 2nd century, but not Ad Nationes). He is writing at a time when there is no question that everyone accepts the existence of an historical Gospel Jesus, quotes from the Gospels and regards them as history.

(2) Tertullian elsewhere makes it clear that he believes in an historical Jesus based on the Gospels, and shows no compunction about referring to him and championing him.

(3) Tertullian in Ad Nationes is not presenting a comprehensive picture of his faith and its development—not even close—which is what all the 2nd century apologists are doing.

But I’ll post here an excerpt from the first instalment of the website debate between Don and myself back in 2005 (I think it was).

Now, Don seizes on this:

Don fails to take into account the differences here. Regardless of the term “occasional,” the only question that matters is: should we expect to find such references? In Ad Nationes the subject matter does not require it. In the apologies of Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix, which claim to be comprehensive descriptions of the Christian faith itself, we have every right to expect it and to require it. We can make similar arguments in Paul, not from the point of view that he is laying out his faith in its entirety (though he does deal with various aspects of it at many individual points), but that he deals with subject matter, disputes, recommendations, etc., to which we have every right to expect he would introduce the historical figure and historical data, at least some of the time. This is simply not the case with Tertullian’s Ad Nationes.

This comment by Don is a transparent attempt to slant the situation: “Tertullian appears to be hiding an earthly existence of Jesus.” Hiding? Why would he hide such a thing here and yet not do so anywhere else in his writing, even in his contemporary Apology? Why impose ‘concealment’ in one document, when it is not to be found in any other?

Let’s look at the key passage (though it’s given short shrift by Don in his review). Book I, ch. 4 opens: [Here I must insert an objection, that Don, when quoting several passages from Ad Nationes, never gives us a book and chapter number. There are 37 chapters all told in the work, and not even I know the text by heart. Fortunately I have a CD of the ANF texts and can Search. Context is needed, to know whether Don is misquoting or misusing a passage.]

Tertullian here is speaking in principle about a category, about attitudes toward a “founder,” with no need to specify that founder’s name. To suggest that this is some kind of avoidance of that name is simply ludicrous. Nor do we have to find a parallel with Paul in this being an “occasional” writing (which it hardly is in the same sense), to explain why the founder’s name isn’t given. Don accuses me of not taking the context into account, but that is exactly what I have done. The context is a discussion of founders in general and what ought to be attitudes and approaches toward them. While Tertullian is applying his ‘moral’ to a particular founder, the actual name of that founder isn’t needed. Tertullian is certainly not “hiding an earthly existence of Jesus,” as Don suggests. After all, Tertullian has declared what the pagans ought to do:

This is hiding an earthly existence of that founder? And Don really reaches here:

First of all, Don’s comparison of terms is hardly exact. Paul’s “foundation” of our faith is a much looser and more abstract term than a “founder,” which must refer to a figure. Hebrews’ terminology fits the spiritual “originator” and “perfecter” that is conveyed by the rest of the document, whereas in Tertullian, there is no doubt that what he means by “founder” is a human historical one. What stops us from thinking he believed his founder was a mythical being is (a) having other writings by Tertullian which present that founder as a human being on earth, as well as (b) a reading of the very passage itself, which would never suggest that the Christian founder was something categorically different from the other founders he refers to: Pythagoras, Plato, Aristarchus. He speaks of the founder’s “character,” the idea of a founder’s “school,” at which he mentions Socrates.

Don suggests other examples of Tertullian ‘concealing’ something about Jesus. In I, 3, in the context of lamenting that pagans judicially condemn Christians not for their actions but simply for bearing their name, Tertullian says:

This is hardly a case of Tertullian ‘concealing’ the name of the founder Christ. Rather, he is playing up the word’s root as a demonstration of how the name itself is harmless, an idea he supports by pointing to a similar harmless meaning—in fact, a pleasant one—entailed in the pagans’ faulty pronunciation of it. Giving the name of the founder would not have served Tertullian’s purpose here; he is not “hiding” it.

Elsewhere, Don thinks to make a comparison with Theophilus' similar remarks in To Autolycus [I, 12]. In response to some disparagement by Autolycus (not quoted), Theophilus says, "Wherefore we are called Christians on this account, because we are anointed with the oil of God." But here Theophilus is defining the meaning of the term in regard to his faith, and it does not include any reference to "Christ"; nor is there anywhere else in that writer a counter-balancing reference to such a figure or to an alternate or additional meaning for the name. The situation in Tertullian has been shown to be quite different, in that he is not defining it, but rather taking advantage, for his argument’s sake, of a more basic meaning in its semantic root. There is no question of misrepresentation or concealment here as there would have to be in Theophilus, who presents a definition of his faith’s use of the name "Christian" solely in terms of anointing. Don’s comparison here fails miserably.

He calls attention to other passages in which Tertullian refers to the “name,” claiming further examples of concealment. In Bk. I, ch. 7:

Remember that Tertullian has been speaking of the Christians being persecuted solely on the basis of their name, not their alleged activities. The last sentence in the above quote shows that he using the term—“this name of ours”—to refer to the Christian movement, the “life” of that faith. This is not an avoidance of the name of the man who supposedly gave rise to it, which is irrelevant to Tertullian’s discussion. Continuing that language is in keeping with the first introduction of the term “name” in ch. 4.

Why he says it took its rise at the time of Augustus we don’t know, but perhaps Tertullian perceived that certain roots lay prior to his supposed founder, in messianic agitation which he may have seen embodied in someone like Judas the Galilean. And the “name” itself could precede Christ because he saw the movement as rooted in that Messiah/“Anointed” expectation, which is the aspect of meaning he has been focusing on. Why not mention Jesus himself in the reference to the time of Tiberius, when the movement was taught publicly? Yes, he could have done so, but again, his focus is on the content of that “name”/movement, the latter illustrated by his subsequent terms of “institution,” with “this (institution) of ours” remaining in existence. The absence of a specific reference to Jesus here is hardly a slam-dunk case of concealing the man, or hiding the incarnation, much less a denial of them.

Don also sees it as an avoidance of Jesus in Bk. II, ch. 2:

Why not, Don asks, quote the “founder” himself? “Wouldn't this be the perfect opportunity to promote, or at least rehabilitate, Jesus in the eyes of the pagans by demonstrating the wisdom of Christianity's founder?” But this is to ignore the context. Tertullian has been criticizing the pagans for traditionally failing to discover God and his nature, for their inconsistent philosophy and incompatible portrayals of him. His counter is to quote Solomon, not because Solomon was preferable to Jesus or in order to conceal the latter, but because Solomon was attributed with the oracle that Tertullian wishes to put forward. The pagans unsuccessfully sought wisdom about God, but Solomon had cut to the real truth: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Solomon had the sound bite Tertullian wanted; avoiding Jesus had nothing to do with it. There are no parallels here to the second century apologists.

Don simply does not pay enough attention to context. Like the atomist I have labelled him, he seizes on some piece of the text and makes of it what he would like it to be, investing it with the significance he is looking for, usually with little or no justification.

Don searches for parallels between criticisms made by Tertullian concerning pagan mythology and those made by earlier apologists such as Minucius Felix, in both cases with no allowance made for allegedly similar situations in the Christian faith. But closer examination reveals that things are not so clear-cut. Take this line from II, 7:

The context is that pagans themselves state that the gods of the poets were originally men and only made into gods after their deaths. Tertullian rightly takes this as an admission that before their deaths they were simply humans. No Christian would have presented Jesus in this way, and thus there was no need for a qualification in regard to Christian faith; the parallel was not there. Tertullian’s jibe is hardly equivalent to the stark ridicule of Minucius Felix’s “Men who have died cannot become gods, because a god cannot die.” Or Theophilus’ ridiculing of pagans for believing that Hercules and Asclepius were raised from the dead.

Or this (II, 12):

This is in the context of a discussion of what amounts to euhemerism. In other words, a given admission that these divine figures are acknowledged to have been mortal before they were turned into gods. Again, no such assumption was made of Jesus as far as Christians were concerned.

Tertullian may indeed have been flirting with statements which to some might seem uncomfortably reminiscent of Christian parallels, but again, his context is not that of a declaration and defense of the faith and a need to protect every aspect of it from potential attack. In Ad Nationes his primary concern is to defend the integrity of Christians themselves and the superiority of their way of life, and condemn their persecution. And it remains the case that we cannot doubt that Tertullian believed in an historical Jesus.

But the following is quite unconscionable:

And just who are these writers (in the plural, even)? Don doesn’t even give us a “such as…”! I don’t know who would fall into such a category—second century writers I do not address who are acknowledged (by whom, incidentally?) as historicists who give no details about an HJ. And Ad Nationes is not, as I repeatedly state, a second century writing.

If I pulled something like that, I’d never hear the end of it!

(continued below)

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

(following on the first half of this instalment)

Don also notes my contention that Christians of the time would have been horrified at allegedly orthodox Christian apologies which made no mention of an HJ in describing the nature and genesis of their faith. He answers:

What literature? Whose record? Certainly not from the second century itself, or anywhere close to it. As I say in JNGNM (p.481-2):

So who exactly that we can perceive was granting respect to Athenagoras? Not even Eusebius mentions him, much less accorded canonicity on the basis of him. Carrier’s statement is in fact rather indistinct, bringing in “others like it” in addition to Athenagoras. Anyway, it is no surprise that later commentators like Eusebius, a good distance from the situation of the second century, could reinterpret Tatian and Theophilus in ways that simply assumed what they believed according to their own picture of the past (just as the entire Church did with Paul). One would hardly expect them to see that Theophilus’ or Athenagoras’ silence on an historical Jesus should be regarded as puzzling or suspicious. As for Tertullian using Minucius Felix, there is no way of telling whether, as I suggested, he felt a need or desire to rework the latter because of Felix’s silence on so much about the faith. Considering that in Apology 21 he declares that “none may give a false account of his religion,” there is no necessity to think he felt any “respect” for Felix.

Don, here and elsewhere, has claimed that I have not surveyed all the literature of the time. I think my ongoing debates with him, even before JNGNM, put the lie to that claim. He concludes this section with:

We certainly don’t know for sure. And many of those “hints and allusions” have been so forced, they hardly serve to counter-balance the silence—often an exclusionary silence—let alone eliminate it. If all these apologists were so thoroughly conversant with the Gospels, why are they so loath to present them? Why are they so meticulously, and misleadingly, avoided and excluded, even when writing to the emperor to present a ‘full account’ of their faith? Common scholarly ‘explanations’ simply don’t hold water.

I have pointed out to Don that the heresiologists were fully preoccupied with the great and widespread threat posed by the Gnostics, with their docetist claims of an HJ. It is not surprising that what were possibly a relatively small group of Logos religionists (explaining why a writer such as Athenagoras remained in the dark for so long) fell underneath their radar or did not compel refutation. After all, would Irenaeus have regarded Philo as a heretic and attacked him for not seeming to regard his Logos emanation as a human being? (Actually, later Christians of Eusebius’ time solved the problem Philo presented by rendering him a Christian and a chum of St. Mark!) Bringing these Logos devotees within the radar of us moderns, bucking two millennia of forcing them into an orthodox mold, would indeed be a remarkable discovery and would revolutionize our understanding of how Christianity developed. No apologies here.

As I said at the opening, Don’s ‘case’ involving Tertullian and the second century apologists is now turned to supporting a legitimacy for the silence on an HJ in the first century epistles and other, non-canonical, works.

First, however, he has a related point to make about the Gospels:

As I hope some readers can recognize (Don apparently cannot), there are problems here, including a case of begging the question. The Gospels do in fact contain key historical markers, mostly relating to figures in the history of the time. The markers they tend not to contain are the ground-level ones relating to the picture of Jesus’ ministry, no doubt because the authors simply didn’t know any; they had inherited no picture or sequence of events in regard to a ministry. In fact, aside from individual sayings and types of activities derived from Q-type traditions in the Synoptic background, they were essentially making everything up.

And the Gospels include “little about Jesus” because such information could hardly be produced by someone who didn’t exist, someone who was created or imagined as an originating figure. Don is right that such biographical/personal information should have been important to the authors’ audience, not to mention to any author purporting to be writing a biography of the man who was God on earth; yet it was not included. This more reasonably spells the conclusion that it wasn’t available to them because traditions cannot preserve such information about a non-existent figure. But Don seems to prefer the much more unreasonable suggestion (one of question-begging) that they did have such information available but chose not to include it, providing him with an alleged example (which he will then seek to apply to other documents) of historical detail being known to a writer but left unspoken.

Don approaches the silence in Paul this way:

His emphasis on the “we” is supposed to imply that, whereas we would have such expectations, this is not necessarily the case with people of the time. But Don makes no effort to explain why this would not necessarily be the case. Human nature is pretty universal and has been around for longer than two millennia. He fails to perceive that this is not the same as his earlier complaint about my suggestion that we should not impose our thinking on the ancients. In that argument, it was related to topics about which modern thinking had changed because of our advances in knowledge and science and social enlightenment. These things are not in play when an apostle comes into town, preaches a savior god who had been a recent man back in Judea, executed as a common criminal and risen from the dead to be God’s sacrifice for sin, and yet has no interest or need in saying anything about that man to his audience. They are not in play when debates over doctrine and practice are tearing apart the movement, yet not a word is said about what that man may have taught on earth in regard to such issues. We have every reason to assume that what we would expect in these regards would also have been expected by a first century audience.

Don raises one question which, while admittedly intriguing, is pretty much beside the point. He asks, if Paul could receive instruction from the spiritual Christ on those two matters in 1 Corinthians, both relatively minor (prohibition on divorce and paying apostles for their work), why did he not claim other revelatory instructions from Christ in heaven on other matters, especially those that were considerably more important, such as the cleanness of foods, or his pet theory that the Law was no longer applicable? It may be a good question (to which I have no answer), but I don’t know what he thinks it proves. The paucity of Paul’s appeal to Jesus’ instructions hardly indicates that he gave those instructions on earth; the quandary still exists whatever the source location. The only thing we might ask is: which is more likely? That Jesus taught many things on earth but Paul knew of or chose only to present these two minor ones? Or that Paul was selective and cautious about claiming personal contact with his heavenly Jesus and making pronouncements on that basis?

Don points to a couple of passages in Paul which speak of God appointing prophets, apostles and bestowing various gifts of the Spirit. I have claimed that this would be unusual and perplexing if Jesus had had followers in a ministry on earth, since inevitably these sorts of appointments and gifts would have been accorded to him as part of his historical role. Don tries to suggest that such a silence would have an equal in mythicism, in that this role should then have been accorded to the spiritual Christ, yet Paul never specifies such a thing. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if in fact the impulse to do the latter would be as strong as in the case of the former. The epistles are full of the idea of actions taken by God (it is even God’s gospel that Paul preaches rather than that of Jesus, God who has taught us to love one another, God who has revealed Christ). The absence of an historical Jesus in these scenes is a far greater problem for historicism than is the absence of a heavenly Christ for mythicism.

Don asks why such things as the appearances listed in 1 Cor. 15:5-8 were not detailed in regard to time and place, or why references to miracles performed by apostles like Paul, such as in 2 Cor. 12:12, were not itemized or described. I’m not sure what he thinks to be demonstrating here. What time and place would he expect? Dates, hours? Moreover, Paul doesn’t relate them in time to his Christ’s death and rising (15:3-4), and that’s because, in the mythicist view, they bore no temporal relation at all. The salvation events were mythical, revealed in scripture (kata tas graphas), whereas the experiencing of Christ, his ‘showing himself’ to them (nothing specifies it was in flesh or immediately after the death and rising), was a series of events in the recent history of the sect. As to why Paul never describes those “signs and wonders” on his part which he occasionally reminds his readers of, could it be that they were not very dramatic (certainly not on the scale of Jesus’ Gospel miracles), little more than indicators in the experiences of the group that God was working among them?

In conclusion to this part of his review, Don says:

I fully agree with Don’s first sentence here. There is no coincidence involved. The similarities are due to the absence of an HJ in the thinking of both groups, something Don acknowledges could be a possibility. His problem—his “if” is a big one—is that there is no evidence pointing to the second century (i.e., to 180) apologists being historicists (other than Justin and probably Tatian in his later career, judging by the Diatessaron), certainly not on the basis of one document by a third century apologist. The void on an HJ in the former is traditionally filled by reading him into them, even in the face of what the texts themselves clearly present. Don adamantly rejects my reading of Tatian’s Address to the Greeks as representing a faith that has no HJ; he calls it incredible, but he has failed in any way to address the arguments I put forward in that direction based on the texts. To conclude this instalment, I will quote some paragraphs from JNGNM (p.484-9) on the topic of Tatian…

I think these features of Tatian’s document help to illustrate the progress of the Gospels through the course of the 2nd century: intruding upon earlier forms of belief within a very broad and diverse Logos-Christ philosophical and salvation movement, imposing an historical Jesus on them until he dominated and unified the entire religious phenomenon. It certainly is a much more complex picture than nearly two millennia of Christian tradition has envisioned, but it is demonstrable nonetheless from the record. The difficulty is getting that tradition to open its mind to seeing it. The view from inside the box can be very confining and deceptive.

Earl Doherty

avi

amen;

But, how does anyone know the date of publication of Paul's epistles?
From what little I have read, the earliest extant copy of any of Paul's letters, whether genuine or forged, is P46, dated, (by paleaography) to late second or early third century, CE.

How can one ascribe a motive, in this case "silence about the HJ", to the author of a document bearing an unknown date of original composition?

It seems to me, that both Earl and Don agree about a first century origin of Paul's epistles, and I have no idea what evidence supports such an hypothesis. To me, the evidence points, rather, to a second century origin, at the earliest.

avi

EarlDoherty

You'll have to ask your question of Don, since I was merely recording Don's view of the dating (even though I largely agree with it).

But surely you do not think that the date of the earliest extant manuscript is the deciding factor in determining a likely date for composition, or for ruling out a considerably earlier date? That decision is based on evidence both internal and external to the document itself. On various occasions on this and another board I have offered reasons why I support a degree of authenticity in the Pauline corpus and dating it generally in the mid 1st century (though not relying solely or explicitly on Acts). And reasons why I reject an entire composition in the 2nd century, including an original authorship by Marcion.

But in neither The Jesus Puzzle nor Jesus: Neither God Nor Man do I attempt to present that case, though a few allusions to it are present. It almost merits a book of its own. Perhaps an extended article will one day be forthcoming.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

GakuseiDon, thank you for reading Doherty's book and writing your review. It was a heroic thing to do. I am about half-way through the review.

I have not read the book, but it seems that the criticisms and defenses are almost as informative. I looked into one of the issues. GakuseiDon claims, "From what I understood, the pagans had no concept of 'a mythical world' where savior gods were thought to have acted. I wondered where Doherty's information came from. Scholars generally note that there is very little information about mystery cults." And that is when he quotes Ehrman.

Earl Doherty responds:
The claim that Christianity borrowed from mystery cults is at the essence of Doherty's model. If there is doubt, such doubt should be dealt with thoroughly and strongly.

I looked into the evidence about this painting of the meal on the tomb. I found an analysis in the online book, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor by Paul Trebilco, who argues against the hypothesis of syncretism between Judaism and the cult of Sabazios on page 141.

Thirdly, the third-century CE tomb of Vincentius in the Praetextatus catacomb in Rome is an example of the syncretism of the Sabazios cult. One scene protrays an angelus bonus, and several paintings show a banquet, one of which carries the inscription: '...manduce, bibe, lude et veni ad me - ... Eat, drink, relax and come to me.' It was claimed by Cumont that the presence of the angel was due to Jewish influence and that the paintings and the inscription reflect Jewish belief in a messianic banquet. Since Vincentius was a priest of Sabazios, it was argued that the tomb shows a connection between Sabazios and Judaism. However, belief in angels was not restricted to Judasm; rather than referring to a messianic banquet, the inscription quoted above is purely hedonistic, and in any case such banquets were common in religions other than Judaism. The tomb provides no evidence for a connection between Judaism and Sabazios. Rather, the murals probably represent a late and sophisticated form of Sabazios worship.

"Eat, drink, relax and come to me" is not messianic Judaism? Yeah, I suppose that is a good point. Sounds nothing like Judaism. When anyone makes their judgment by looking at a painting, it would make a lot of sense to pay special attention to the inscription that accompanies it.

The main problem, and it is a big one, is that you should not make your evidence quotes from other scholars. Scholars make their judgments based on the ancient evidence, and so should Earl Doherty. If it is about evidence for a claim that is not essential to the theory, then it is forgivable. Doherty, if the whole theory stands or falls based on the evidence, then hunt down the evidence, don't just quote some scholar who agrees with your own point.

Do you do such a thing to save time and money? Yeah, I suppose it is a little difficult to hunt down a clear image of that tomb painting. It requires a lot of work. But, such evidence is essential to your theory of Christianity. You can at least hunt down other opinions for a single piece of evidence and give them it more attention than just a passing quote from one scholar, as though the explicitly uncertain opinion of one scholar is enough.
Damnit, you do the same thing again.

rlogan

So what should we say about someone who makes judgements about Doherty's work based on quotes from a self-described interested amateur instead of actually reading Doherty himself?

ApostateAbe

I would call such a person a lazy bastard.