hjalti

Hack scholars? I hope you're not refering to all the scholars involved in the Jesus project. Wasn't Joseph Hoffmann the main guy behind that? Do you consider him a hack? :constern02:

ApostateAbe

Yes.

hjalti

And why do you consider him a hack? Have you read any of his works, for example his book on Marcion?

ApostateAbe

No, I confess I have not. It may very well be the case that Hoffman is not a hack scholar, and I have been misled by my glancing anecdotal knowledge of him. The Jesus Project ended because Hoffman was apparently too moderate with respect to the other members, who tended to go to unreasonable extremes, but I have found Hoffman's positions to be also likely motivated by ideological prejudice, given his own activist background. If you have read Hoffman's work, then you would know better than me. I certainly don't know what Ehrman would think of him.

EarlDoherty

Very petty, Abe. And I didn't claim that Ehrman was giving me respect, or even mythicism as a whole respect. I doubt that his book will do so. I was talking of the reaction of the public, or the Internet if you will, as a whole, which might realize that if Ehrman is giving it that kind of attention, it must be something more than an underground crackpot theory and perhaps something which is starting to appear dangerously influential (which it is). If it were as bad or as silly as the rabidly prejudiced (and ignorant, in the technical sense) like you tout it, I doubt a scholar like Ehrman would give it the time of day.

Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

Isn't Hoffman the guy who produced a 'translation' of Celsus' "True Discourse"? Which contained many paraphrases not reflecting the actual content in Origen's "Contra Celsus"?

ApostateAbe

I have little disagreement. The reason why I take Ehrman's decision as good news is precisely because I take mythicism as dangerously influential. The critical scholarship's tendency to ignore it only allows its influence to spread. You would be highly mistaken to propose that the influence of Jesus-mythicism is evidence of its reasonableness. Again--creationism.

Toto

Where are you getting this?

The Jesus Project ended because it ran out of money. Most of the scholars who ended up on the Project were well qualified academics, not at all extreme.

I don't know why you think that Hoffman was an activist, or a hack.

Toto

Hoffman translated On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians (or via: amazon.co.uk). Since the original is lost, and only survives in fragments from Origen's refutation, the translation must include some speculation.

avi

May I then inquire, where does one learn of the location of the
oldest extant Greek manuscript of Origen, from which, all these translations have been prepared?

It is one thing to acknowledge spurious speculation deliberately introduced into a manuscript, during the process of translation, quite another to accept as valid, a text which has been mutilated, altered, and changed in compliance with political realities, long, long before, centuries before, the translation commenced. If Hoffman's starting material, ostensibly by Origen in Greek, was produced, let us say, for example, in the twelfth century, nine or ten centuries after Origen initially put quill to papyrus, could there have been some significant additions or deletions to Origen's original manuscript, given the quantity of hostile interpreters of this "heretic"?

Where is the manuscript located, that Hoffman translated? What is its condition? I am not concerned about Hoffman's speculative insertions--> one imagines that as a contemporary scholar, he would have made clear the distinction between his own vocabulary, and "Origen's". No, what concerns me, is the history of the document that he used. Who created that Greek version? Is it by Origen himself? Does that Greek manuscript, employed by Hoffman, have a traceable history?

avi