Clivedurdle

The above link ends by commenting there are similar events in Germany and Copenhagen. Anyone know anything about this?

Toto

For scholars, a combustible question: Was Christ real? New effort aims to avoid circus of 'Jesus Seminar' while probing deeper than past attempts

The article is by Ron Csillag. He alludes to Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ, indicates that the whole idea of the existence of Jesus is either explosive, banal, or tired. Then he takes somr swipes at the Jesus Seminar and quotes a professor at an evangelical seminary who claims that "Christians have nothing to fear from "solid, careful historical work."

GakuseiDon

The article states:

Even so, the Jesus Project is proceeding from point zero, billing itself as "the first methodologically agnostic approach" to the question of Jesus's historical existence. It promises "the most rigorous methods, data, and open debate."

But did that actually happen at the recent convention? There didn't appear to be one paper discussing the question of Jesus's historical existence that I could see, and quite a few that assumed it. Admittedly, I only saw the titles of talks given in the agenda.

So, does anyone know whether Jesus's historical existence has been questioned by the Jesus Project? Or is that still yet to come?

Steven Carr

From Ron Csillag's article 'But over the past 150 years of efforts to find the historical Jesus, the vast majority of scholars have settled on the baseline belief that a Jewish teacher from Galilee named Yeshua did indeed live some 2,000 years ago, and spoke about the Kingdom of God.'

Considering how many Jews were called Joshua , and the fact that many Jews have used the phrase 'kingdom of God', this is a pretty safe bet.

I am willing to bet there was a teacher called John living in England in the 13th century who spoke about the Son of Man.

I don't even need research for that to be at least a 50:50 shot.

Ron Csillag's article is an indication of just how much quests for the historical Jesus have failed.

The failures are even counted. First quest, second quest, third quest.

You know, constant failure is often a sign that something is going wrong.

Toto

The Project is starting at a more basic level by discusssing sources and how we can know what we think we know. The papers from this conference will eventually be published by Prometheus.

Richard Carrier will be posting some notes on his blog at some point.

wordy

The link to Amhearst at the cfi.net seems to fail at the moment. Maybe they do an update of it?

Is it not unfortunate that they put Tabor and the Jesus Dynasty as a front person.

I don't mind such would exists, I know too little about the pro et cons for such but if there was big support for it would not that been heard of more than what is known?

Or maybe me slept while they mentioned it.

Camio

First part available : http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2...s-project.html

GakuseiDon

Thanks, very interesting.

I like this:

"The aim of the Jesus Project is not to vindicate mythicism (the belief that Jesus didn't exist at all), but to test all theories, including mythicism (of every degree, partial and complete), and arrive at a consensus based on objective methods. Hence it doesn't matter who participates in the Project or what their pet theories are: all are committed to pursuing a consensus of some kind, which they concede might not ultimately vindicate their own pet theories."

Just getting a consensus on what the objective methods are will be a mighty achievement. It'll be very interesting what comes out from this, though the Project is set to run over five years, so probably nothing in the short term.

"Someone also remarked to me that Earl Doherty was down on the Jesus Project because of something critical or flippant Hoffmann had said about him."

Does anyone know what Hoffman said?

Toto

See this thread - it was a footnote in a preface to a translation of Goguel.

Jeffrey Gibson

And I this:

Quote:

It won't rule out anything just because someone attending thinks it's fringe. They will hear all the Dohertys, Tabors, Eisenmans, MacDonalds, Q-deniers, the lot.

especially in the light of this.

Jeffrey