premjan

Shakespeare, Beowulf etc. have retained some cachet for a long time.

spin

Reductio ad absurdem is a reasonable attack. Wrong here, but reasonable. Historiography isn't about opinions though there may be opinions in such work; it's rather about historical philosophy and methodology. The point is to see what the approaches and pitfalls are to the act of reclaiming the past. Understanding how historians have proceeded will supply an insight on methodology.

I don't give recommended readings in the field of religious studies, because I'm a strong believer in working with the sources not the elaborators of those sources. You might like someone's use of source materials, but the someone is ultimately irrelevant to the argument. You have to know how the sources can be used to establish a historical claim about the past.

As to historiography, a basic classic introduction in E.H. Carr's "What is History?" and it would be a reasonable place to start. There have been scholarly wars over what history is, but issues about raw materials (rather than the telling of history) can be dealt with without entering into the wars. Here is a good place to start. (Note: I don't recommend you deal with the intersection between history and post-modernism, until you've absorbed some of the older ideas for stability. You need to have some idea of what the pursuit of history is before you start to get involved with more complex issues.) You could also look through the bibliography in the Historiography entry.


spin

aa5874

Now, if a Roman Emperor told you that Harry Potter was a compelling story and must be the only story and have to be accepted as the truth or else your property will be confiscated, your life and livelyhood would be in danger, I think it is likely that, all of a sudden, Harry Potter would become very captivating.

mountainman

Dear Ben,

Both argue from misguided authority.

Best wishes,


Pete

wordy

I voted 0% chance he existed but I think it is some 80% chance that very many at least three to five such iterating preachers and that these was too insignificant to make any historical impact so the authors made up one "story" instead of three or five such stories.

They put words into this "Jesus" which explains why he is not consistent maybe.
They borrowed many ideas from those existing preachers.

No Robots

I've had a look at Edward_Hallett_Carr. He is a "fierce opponent of empiricism within historiography," and "rejected the empirical view of the historian's work being shaped by the 'facts' that he or she has at their disposal as nonsense." Your constant harping on "evidence" seems contrary to Carr's approach.

Carr argued that historians must concern themselves with the 'winners' of history.

And who, I then ask, is the greatest winner in history if not Christ?

Carr claimed that when examining causation in history, historians should seek to find 'rational' causes of historical occurrences, that is causes that can be generalized across time to explain other occurrences in other times and places. For Carr, historical 'accidents' can be not be generalized, and thus not worth the historian's time.

Mythicists construe the rise of Christianity as an accident; and thus, if we follow Carr, not worth the historian's time. I construe the rise of Christianity as the result of genius, which is generalizable to explain other occurences in other times and places.

Carr made a division between those like Vladimir Lenin and Oliver Cromwell, whom helped to shape the social forces which carried them to historical greatness vs like Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon whom were just carried along by social forces over which they had little or no control to positions of historical importance.

And I would place Christ in the first group.

Carr ended his book by writing that recent developments in the Soviet Union meant that Marx had "...a claim to be regarded as the most far-seeing genius of the nineteenth century and one of the most successful prophets in history".

And I would put Christ at the top of the list of prophetic geniuses.

bacht

I can accept that the existence of Christianity proves something, maybe genius maybe not. I don't see how the creation and survival of the church should automatically be attributed to Jesus, or any single founding "prophet".

It's just as possible that the material you label "genius" was written by people unknown to us rather than JC or his contemporaries.

aa5874

But you must put Christ at the top of your list since if you don't you are not going to get your gift of eternal life with Christ when you die.

Huon

This is your view of the Mythicist theory. Usually, the mythicists (except mountainman ) insist on the role of Paul, who could have replaced the real Jesus (if he existed) with another completely imaginary Jesus. The church developed in the name of this imaginary Jesus was completely successful in 325.

If you follow Carr, you should describe "the social forces which carried Jesus to historical greatness", three centuries after his death. We have another example with Muhammad. And a third example with Jan Hus burned at the stake in 1415, and followed one century later by Luther and Calvin.

aa5874

And there was Joseph Smith who unilaterally started Mormonism in the 19th century, now today, there are millions of Mormons, the state of Utah is almost all Mormons.

All religions need State Power and Control, not genius. It is the Political Power that propels Religions.