spin

Who's this "we" you're talking about? Would that be a sample of your run of the mill christian academics? The magic word of course is "christian" which helps confuse scholarship and (a better variety of) apologetics.

Sounds like you're again citing the views of your run of the mill christian academics. When you say "true" above you basically rule yourself out of the race to reclaim convenient untainted bits of the tainted passage. The academic who engages in the ad hoc reclamation of bits of the TF obviously has an ontology, but no coherent epistemology to support it.

While I would never call much of the gospel material myth, the gospel material certainly doesn't inspire any hope of extracting history from it. Your comment once again seems like more optimism based on christian academic apologetics.

Unlike many of those writers you refer to the genre of the gospels evinces a religious core, rather than religious trimming. They are a different stuff from a lot of the early hellenistic and Roman writers. The gospels are also anonymous works whose dates of writing are unknown as are their provenances, unlike a lot of those hellenistic and Roman writers. Then look at just who are trying to extract history from the christian texts and why.

The gospels are rather irrelevant to history when you consider that the earliest christian writer known, Paul, never met the central figure of christianity, relying on the revelation by god of Jesus on which to base his religious message. (Gal 1:11-16) All other writings we have are after his time, so there is no evidence of a chain back to a real Jesus. It dies with Paul.

Forget the mythology stuff despite its popularity), if you're interested in trying to do history with early christianity. The major hurdles are purely historiographical.

tanya

First: thank you mary helena for sharing your opinion. It prompted me to go and investigate. I am in complete agreement with your conclusion.

Second: I quote below, a bit more text from the publisher of his new book.

To begin with, he does make one excellent point: the fact that many of us proclaim from the rooftops our conviction that Jesus is a myth, without properly defining what we mean by "myth". I know I have been guilty of that inaction.

By coincidence, one supposes, I have been engaged, tooth and nail (do grasshoppers have nails? oh, perhaps carapace and claw) with spin over at the RS forum, on precisely this issue--proper definition of myth. It is quite interesting to read spin's point of view, in my opinion. His idea, (certainly not mine!!) fits rather nicely with what Bart Ehrman has written, not that spin had that intention.

Here's a bit longer extract copied from the publisher's link, posted above, with letters inserted for reference/argument below:

A. Throughout Did Jesus Exist? Ehrman establishes the criterion for any genuine historical investigation and provides a robust defense of the methods required to discover the Jesus of history.
...
B. Rarely do mythicists define what they mean by the term myth, a failure that strikes real scholars of religion as both unfortunate and highly problematic, since in technical scholarship the term has come to mean many things over the years.
....
C. The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist. That is what this book will set out to demonstrate.
...
Jesus existed, and those vocal persons who deny it do so not because they have considered the evidence with the dispassionate eye of the historian, but because they have some other agenda that this denial serves.
...
D. We will begin our considerations with later sources and then move to the testimony of our earliest surviving Christian author, Paul....
...
E. The same is clear from the fragments of writings that still survive from the opponents of the Christians, such as the Jew Trypho, discussed by Justin, or the pagan philosopher Celsus, cited extensively by Origen. The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus.

Lots to write about, but first, here is my definition of "myth":
text containing explicit reference to supernatural events, places, people, or actions. Supernatural is defined, not in terms of religion, or "gods", but in terms of anything deliberately contradicting science.

For example, the speed of light, "c", corresponds to the fastest known speed, we have measured, or calculated, to date.

An author who introduces travel by matter at a speed faster than c, has introduced supernatural elements into his/her text. The motive for this deliberate introduction is irrelevant. The text becomes classified as myth, the moment the author writes something deliberately known to represent supernatural attributes. A mere typographic mistake, would not result in classifying the text as myth. The supernatural attribute must be inserted by the author intentionally, as with Mark 1:1 (Byzantine version only)

Then with that definition of "myth", what are my objections to Ehrman's text, above?

A. I was unable to locate the "criterion" in any of the text provided by the publisher....

B. did it;

C. repetition is useless; I have no other agenda, neither do most of the forum members, in my opinion.

D. Where's his evidence that Paul's epistles preceded Mark?? I am not sure even which of Paul's epistles are "genuine", and worse, which of them has not been distorted by interpolation. I am astonished to encounter NOT EVEN ONE WORD, in any of the four gospels, taken from, or attributed to, Paul. One certainly can not, in my opinion, employ the epistles of Paul, to claim historicity of Jesus, a mythical character, defined in Mark 1:1, our oldest extant document on Jesus, as "son of God", anymore than one can rely upon the Oscoda times article on Paul Bunyan to glean important information about the report of injury to Babe the Blue Ox.

E. I will defer to aa5874, the expert on these matters, but I am rather certain, not 100%, perhaps, but about 99.4%, that he has documented the contrary, in the writings of Justin Martyr and Origen, respectively. In other words, Ehrman is simply wrong here. There are ancient objections.

But, look carefully at his last sentence:

This sentence, here, says it all, for me.

Obviously, notwithstanding his doctorate from Princeton, and his appointment to a famous university in North Carolina, Dr. Ehrman has not a clue about the proper definition of myth.

It is impossible to have a "myth about the mythical Jesus". Why?

A myth MUST invoke supernatural attributes, failing that, it is not a myth.

What is a legend? A legend is something which is potentially historical, or, at least falling within the range of human ability, respecting the laws of physics, NOT supernatural, but also, not (yet) verified, and quite possibly inflated, beyond the actual accomplishment. If I tell you that Barbara mastered 20 different Japanese Kanji in a single day, both reading and writing of same, after a single, 1000 millisecond exposure, on a flash card, you may well feel that I am describing something which is beyond human capacity. That is an illustration of legend. A bit of hyperbole (she actually required 1800 milliseconds, and erred, on recall, 24 hours later, on two of them), but, essentially an extraordinary ability, but not one demanding supernatural competence. So, we can say that her performance was legendary, but not mythical. By way of comparison, after five minutes studying each of the same 20 characters, I could not recall the meaning of even one single character, 24 hours later.

Same scenario, now changed to 1 millisecond, and the claim becomes problematical, because a simple eye blink requires nearly 400 milliseconds. This claim would be supernatural, without propping the eyelids open, and lubricating the cornea.

Ehrman needed to write: the legend of the mythical Jesus, for no one, so far as I am aware, at least no one I have read, is arguing that Jesus is a myth, because new god xyz told him/her so. In other words, there has been, at least up to the present day, no attempt to argue for a mythical Jesus by invoking supernatural skills. On the contrary, we argue for a mythical Jesus, based upon very ordinary scrutiny of the ancient texts, one of which is Mark:
That's all she wrote, folks. Game over. End of story. Jesus is a mythical character, not based on some contemporary blog or web site, but based on Mark 1:1.

la70119

Page 143 from his book, here's what he says about the HJ:

No shit, sherlock. Children of Ghosts tend not to be historical.

Page 144: he digs up the old chestnut about Paul knowing "James, the brother of the Lord." (Gal. 1:18-20)

Of course, Paul emphatically states that "What I am writing to you, I tell you before God: I am not lying!" In other words, he's lying.

ApostateAbe

Paul's lying because he wanted to fool people into believing that James exists?

Diogenes the Cynic

It wouldn't make sense for Paul to invent James out of whole cloth. There evidently was somebody by that name who headed the Jerusalem church. The only question is what Paul meant by calling him the "brother of the Lord."

ApostateAbe

Yeah, I think the issue is a much more uncomfortable problem than usual. If there is any question, the typical and reasonable way for historians to decide what Paul meant by calling James "the Lord's brother" would be to examine how other authors in the time period understood it. In this case, the question would be very clearly resolved in favor of the position that Paul meant a literal brother of Jesus, per Matthew, Mark and Josephus. Not that it is impossible that Christians read the letter of Paul and misunderstood him and that is the meaning that was passed on to those later sources, but I think one explanation is expected from the evidence and the other seemingly isn't. It is a matter of finding the best explanations to fit the evidence, rather than finding the best explanation to keep a favored conclusion true, in my opinion.

Steven Carr

We are all ears.

Explain to us how Matthew, Mark and Josephus used the phrase 'the Lord's brother.'

How did people calling themselves James, or the brother of James use the phrase?

aa5874

When did Paul tell people about the apostle James???

The 1st century, the 2nd century, the 3rd century, the 4th century......???

Did Paul see a character called James who was an apostle and in which century???

Paul must have seen all the persons that he claimed he saw???

Paul saw the resurrected Jesus just like the apostles.

Paul claimed his Jesus was NOT human.

It is completely illogical to put forward the absurdity that No-one must challenge the historical veracity of the Pauline writings because Paul did not lie.

It is wholly bizarre to invoke the logical fallacy that No credible historian thinks Paul lied therefore Paul is truthful.

There is NO credible and corroborative source for the Pauline writings and non-apologetic sources do NOT SUPPORT any character called Jesus Christ who was SACRIFICED for the UNIVERSAL Salvation of Mankind as SUPPOSEDLY claimed by Paul before c 70 CE.

aa5874

Your statement CANNOT be supported by any credible evidence from antiquity. You very well know that even apologetic sources do NOT know when the Pauline writer existed.

The very sources that claimed Paul was executed under NERO also claimed Paul was AWARE of gLuke.

Apologetic sources claimed Paul wrote all the Epistles and now it has been deduced that there were more than one author using the name of Paul.

Your Presumptions about Paul are REJECTED because you provide NO evidence at all.

I cannot accept the words of Paul because it is in the Bible when it is NO secret that the Pauline writings are considered to have been mamipulated.

la70119

Whether James existed or not is immaterial.

The first point I am making is that Bart went right to Galatians 1, the well so to speak, as some of us who were keened in on his upcoming tome predicted he would.

The second point I am making is that people who are habitual liars tend to emphasize and swear by one or more immortal gods that they are not lying. But we DO know he's lying about SOMETHING.

And I defer to aa5874 that the Pauline Epistles were written AFTER 70 CE.