Toto

If you think that is the position of either of these men, you have seriously misread them.

Toto

You added this after I replied, but please explain.

jgoodguy

IMHO the HJ 'movement' has about run its course. We got a lot of potential Historical Jesuses from the Jesus Siminar because of a flawed methodology. (in that a valid methodology should not yield a lot of highly variable possibilities). The Jesus Project died for lack of resources which implies lack of substantial interest and the Jesus Prospect seems to have taken a year to become visible. It appears to me that the best a HJer can provide is that a HJ existed and myths sprung up around him and the myths, not the man, is the framework on what Christianity was created. The difference between the existence of a man totally or near totally obscured by myths is not significantly different than a totally mythical man. Using the present evidence, the sifting of that evidence just reveals a name which could be an alias. Applying methodologies to that name without some measure of control which does not exist, just allows the bias of the researcher to overwhelm the evidence.

jgoodguy

IMHO I have not seriously misread in the case of Hoffmann. He seems to be very zealous in his HJ and anti MJ comments. example Thirty Theses approach "damningly obvious" to me.

As to Carrier, anyone attempting mathematical proof must have concluded that something is "damningly obvious". Unless he is attempting to prove the evidence is bogus to begin with. Then again I could be wrong on what exactly he is trying to prove the probability of.

YMMV

Toto

Hoffman says that the existence of Jesus is plausible, not obvious. His reaction to mythicism seems to have gotten sharper, possibly due to the Carrier review, possibly from associating with Stephanie Fisher, Maurice Casey's graduate student.

Carrier is working with Baysian statistics as a way of quantifying and describing the uncertainty, not as a proof of any historical claim.

No Robots

So, he is saying that there is uncertainty on the question, but that he has disregarded this uncertainty himself in taking a mythicist position?

jgoodguy

Hoffman had sharp comments last year(prior to the Carrier review) about JMers.

As to Carrier, I stand corrected.

maryhelena

And we await Maurice Casey's new book that is going to refute all those irritating Jesus mythers.....and his doctoral student, Steph, is now the managing director of The Jesus Prospect....:huh:

Toto

He has said that a mythicist hypothesis is the best fit for the evidence at present, but that he is not dogmatically wedded to that hypothesis.

ApostateAbe

The slander that I put in quotes was from Hoffman himself, and it was he who apparently thought that the Jesus-mythers killed the Jesus Project. What you say about my general opinion of Jesus-mythers is true. Though some of them really are interested in the truth for its own sake (I used to be one of them) and not committed to a pre-determined position for the sake of seeing maximum falsehood in the Christian religion, I fear that too often they really are more like typical ideologues. You noticed that just this morning that I took egg on my face and admitted wrong, immediately. It is actually something I have done on a regular basis. It is unfortunate, but I almost never see Jesus-minimalists do that. They almost never admit wrong, even when they are wrong time and again. They prefer to either change the subject or remain steadfast--you know how ideologues are. It is not all the time, though. I give Toto credit for admitting wrong after being pressed.