LegionOnomaMoi

And Reimarus didn't even publish his work for fear of reprisal. However, that was a long, long, time ago.

Yes, I read about this some time ago. It's certainly sad, but when one joins the faculty of an expressly christian theological department, and then publishes works which run counter to the mission statement of that department, what do you expet? From the department's website: The same thing has happened to biologists who believe in intelligent design, and I have even less sympathy for them. If you join the faculty of a department which expressly follows a certain path in a certain way, and then you publicly reject that approach as wrong, what do you expect to happen?


Yes, he is. And now he is dissed by mythicists. There is a lot of public mudslinging going around. However, suppression of scholarship is quite different from public reaction to it (or to popular works by scholars). Ehrman is one of the most well-known professor of NT studies in the world, and yet he has published so little actual scholarship. His popularity is due not to his intellectual prowess or monumental scholarship, but catering to the public.

Certainly if you join a theological department which is expressly christian. However, the bulk of Ehrman's work has been met with (as you said) a great deal of "friction" from the public. Yet he thrives on producing such works. While most grad students are lucky to be published at all before finishing their dissertations, and even after that it takes some time for them to be known, Carrier was invited to conferences, had his works published, and was well-known even before his doctorate. While most scholars require universities to fund their research, Carrier was able to publish his most recent book thanks to a wide online following. He doesn't even need an academic appointment to support him. The fact that there are still plenty of christians who post hostile responses to books which undermine their faith isn't evidence of some hegemony.

Grog

Can you cite a comparable example? A biologist with comparable status to Ludemann who lost their position due to advocacy of intelligent design.

outhouse

untestable hypothesis

Vorkosigan

That's really irrelevant. LOM responds to my post on....social and institutional factors that form the hegemony of a particular position within the HJ field... by indexing more institutional factors! Exactly what I am talking about.

Deliberately confusing the debate over intelligent design in biology with the MJ-HJ debate is a prime example of a category error, common to propagandists (and, incidentally, reaching for this apples/oranges comparison to legitimate the HJ position is an example of the kind of hegemonic discourse I am talking about).

ID is a senseless non-scholarly idea overwhelmingly refuted by evidence and methodology in a scientific field. The HJ-MJ debate is in a social science field, a field where hegemonic dominance by ideas for social reasons is rather (and depressingly) common. I listed some before --

In N American archaeology, the vociferous rejection of the idea of pre-Clovis cultures.

In anthropology, the neglect of females as areas of study until the field was revolutionized in the 1960s by female scientists

The ongoing controversy over the A-bombing of Japan

-- one could actually go on all day listing controversies, economics alone is a gold mine, von Mises' lunacy against mainstream econ, Marxism vs Neoclassical economics, the push for austerity despite its colossal historical failures, etc. But in few of these debates does one side have such overwhelming social sanction as the HJ does.

It's one of the enforcement mechanisms, as are the institutional mechanisms you identify. They are of course related.

Vorkosigan

gurugeorge

I think you're missing the point. The typical experience of the mythicist is to be told that "all this stuff was disproved long ago" (or something to that effect). When Doherty looked at these supposed knock-down refutations from long ago, he found them seriously (I'd say laughably) inadequate.

Which means those who were making the "all this stuff was disproved long ago" argument were on automatic pilot - they weren't being serious scholars in this regard, interested in truth, but merely dumbly "reproducing" an institution. They accepted what their teacher told them, and what that teacher's teacher told him, etc., in order to "fit in" with the crowd.

This is what hegemony looks like: automatic pilot. The peer-pressure-induced anxiety not to rock the boat.

If hegemony weren't involved, if this debate were simply scholarly, as per the ideal, you'd see a lot more circumspection and politeness on the historicist side. (As someone pointed out about the Socrates situation above: it's generally accepted that Socrates lived, but people who propose otherwise, even "amateur" scholars, would not be automatically laughed out of court. But then again, as the poster said, nobody's living, or pecking order in an institution, depends on the truth of the proposition "Socrates existed".)

LegionOnomaMoi

Then you don't have understand what hegemony is. There are many, many, many, departments in numerous universities where specialists with degrees in everything from NT studies to classics can study and publish freely about Jesus without being subject to the restrictions of evangelical/religious departments. The type of works which Ludemann got in hot water are nothing compared to works published by other scholars who continue to hold academic positions. I'm not denying that there are christian universities and colleges, but the study of the historical Jesus, early christianity, the NT, etc., is by no means limited to such places. It hasn't been for a very, very, long time. So if all you have to support a claim of academic hegemony (apart from the public response, which is as supportive as it is critical) is professors who join christian departments and then lose their christian faith, and with it their former position, then you don't have a hegemony. That's like claiming David Coppedge was fired due to "hegemony", or Caroline Crocker, or similar scholars/academics fired or allegedly fired for their views on evolution.

You mistake the analogy. It isn't that the two are equally valid reasons for being fired, but that if you work in a particular department, pay attention to that department's mission statement. One of the foremost climate scientist in the world, Roy Spencer, is (supposedly) a believer in ID (or something similar) still holds his position at UAH (although hist views on climate change allegedly were the reason behind his resignation from NASA) because the two don't conflict. Likewise, plenty of professors have held academic posts despite publishing what is (for christians) highly controversial books/articles/etc. Ehrman is one. The reason the two are comparable is because certain universities, colleges, and/or departments are quite explicit about what their focus and basic assumptions consist of, and for certain religious institutions this means if you join, you are a believer and are expected to study/publish/teach as one. The fact that Ludemann had his position changed reflects not academia but the fact that he joined a religious department, and that department doesn't even pretend to be objective. That's not hegemony.

LegionOnomaMoi

No, Doherty did. My point was about academic hegemony. If Doherty is right, and the counter-arguments against mythicism are weak, this doesn't support the notion of a hegemony. Kuhnian paradigm? Perhaps. But not hegemony..

That's Doherty's opinion. I found his book almost laughable at a number of points, and his is among the best examples of the mythicist argument. But again, the validity of scholarship on the historical Jesus (mythicist or evangelical) has little to do with my point. Bad scholarship isn't evidence of a hegemony.

No, it doesn't. What it means is that Doherty (and others) find their arguments unconvincing/poor/whatever. The online article Doherty refers to begins with Michael Grants dismissal of the mythicist case, and he is neither a religious scholar, nor a specialist in NT studies or a related field. He is not alone among such scholars to have written about the historical Jesus, yet still there are so few academics who agree with Doherty's assessment of historical Jesus studies.

They accepted what their teacher told them, and what that teacher's teacher told him, etc., in order to "fit in" with the crowd.

This is what hegemony looks like: automatic pilot. The peer-pressure-induced anxiety not to rock the boat.

Your basis for this is what? The discussion is far more polite offline. And this is hardly the only field in which academics engage in vile, baseless, ad hominem attacks.

No, they'd be ignored.
And thus the poster demonstrated a remarkable ignorance. Scholars in any field tend to build a reputation based on a particular focus, be it Socrates, european witchcraft, a reconstruction of proto-indo-european, whatever. Even for a tenured scholar, the dismissal of years of their work by the field in general is devastating. Just look at Marija Gimbutas. Or the battle between Martin Bernal and Mary Lefkowitz.

Grog

It might be irrelevant to this particular argument, but he raised it and it is a canard promoted by anti-evolution propagandists.

LegionOnomaMoi

How so? Are you arguing that no scientist has ever been fired because of anti-evolution/creationist beliefs? That nothing like what supposedly happened to Nathanial Abraham ever actually happens? I'd be very suprised if that were true. There are scientists who believe in creationism or other things which are incompatible with particular scientific fields. That none would have ever taken a position in one of these fields, and then been fired after expressing their beliefs (for which they should be fired, as you can hardly work in a field which deals with evolution if you reject this basic, fundamental scientific theory), seems highly unlikely.

Or were you objecting to the comparison? I'm not claiming that anti-evolution arguments and mythicist arguments are somehow equally flawed, illogical, foolish, unfouned, or whatever. The point is simply that asserting hegemony requires more than the ridicule of minority views. There are any number of views which would be met with disdain in any given field. That isn't an indication of hegemony. The other point I made concerned citing hegemony as the reason scholars who belong to colleges or departments and who are fired for holding beliefs which are in fundamental conflict with the stated goals, beliefs, and purpose of the department/college/university. There are plenty of scholars who have published works which many christians have objected to, and yet they retain their positions. Likewise, there are scientists who believe in intelligent design and who keep their posts, because they work in a field in which this belief is not in direct conflict to their work or the focus of their department.

In order to support the claim that hegemony is the reason for the lack of specialists who publicly state/write that they find mythicist arguments plausible, or who offer mythicist arguments of their own, you need more than "Doherty et al. have been maligned online" or "so-and-so was fired from a theology department which is expressly christian". Hegemony requires a continual, insidious, unified, global (global meaning encapsulating the entire realm of discourse which the hegemony is said to control), and concerted effort to ensure one and only one view, construct, conception, outlook, etc., has any credibility. Spin cites Gramsci (and I'm sure would point to those who followed him) in support, but fails to mention the incompatibility between historical Jesus scholarship and neo-Gramscian (or similar views) of hegemony. The maintenance Gramsci and others contend is necessary to support hegemony is utterly lacking here, as are most other features within such theories. Such theorists would laugh at the attempt to paint 200+ plus years of research carried out over multiple countries with no consistent paradigm and instead continual (not to mention bitter, vehement, and fundamental) disagreements as some sort of hegemony. It flies in the face of the entire concept, both as detailed in Gramsci's work and by modern social theorists. Quite the contrary, such theories predict that new generations would have long since overthrown any such hegemony.

Vorkosigan

D'oh. That's why I listed a bunch of informal and formal mechanisms for enforcing it. No one except you has said hegemony = ridicule of minority views -- that is merely your strawman. Hegemony is Gerd Ludemann and Bart Ehrman and Larry Hurtado and others meeting friction for their views. Hegemony is the constant pressure from the Christian Right skolers to move the dates of the Gospels as early as possible. Hegemony is Jim West, proclaiming to nodding heads (http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/sack357908.shtml), that atheist interpretation of the Bible is empty, void, vapid, meaningless. Hegemony is when you .....

...encounter institutional mechanisms like that above. The existence of a stated goal, belief, and purpose is hegemonic dominance of discourses and ideas. It's amazing that you could write a sentence that so clearly describes how power shapes the discourse and yet not realize what you have written. It is not apparent to me how you can throw Gramsci's name around yet not realize that hegemony is not less hegemony because it is easily visible.

You're welcome to this overblown opinion. But since many scholars, including Ehrman, have described the kind of friction they meet when doing their work, I'm afraid your objection is merely a namedropping emotional response to a long term problem situation.

I'll leave you with Avalos' description:

"Biblical studies, as we know it, is still largely a religionist and apologetic enterprise meant to serve the needs of faith communities. It is still part of an ecclesial-academic complex."

No better thumbnail of hegemony in bible studies than that.

Vorkosigan