Solo

There is definitely the "attraction" element, in the antipodal world view the MJ'ers and fundies have, one which overtly or covertly wishes to impose ONE GOSPEL READING on everyone. There are of course exceptions. G.A.Wells I think genuinely disliked the disgruntled nature and poor mentality of the people who followed him or made outrageous claims in his name. His mythicist views reflected more his classicist disdain for the intellectual and moral poverty that he believes Christianity brought about. In that he appears to follow Gibbon. I have much sympathy for that view.

I was brought up and educated in Eastern Europe where the MJ theory was firmly linked to the historical (or dialectical) materialism of Marx, i.e. communist theory. There were very few intellectuals holding onto that view who had any religious fundamentalist background. But what struck me - and there I agree with you - was the general dyed-in-the-wool nature of those who held that opinion. There was just no way to reason with them. It was black and white. Jesus was invented to keep the masses docile. He is the combined superstitions of the Greco-Roman times. Religion is the opium of the people.

While studying the Institute of Economics of Prague in 1967 (just before the Dubcek reforms) I had to do a "pohovor" (an oral exam before academic commission to judge the fitness of a student to continue studies), because I had the temerity to question the MJ dogma in my philosophy exam. I passed without any trouble -but only because it was '67 and two out of the three profs were "Dubcekists" reformers who hated the orthodox commie mantras. The discussion ranged from Il vangelo secondo Mateo (The Gospel According to Matthew), an Italian movie by P.P. Passolini (who was a communist - which greatly confused the third member of the panel) just then premiering in Prague, as proof that no supernatural explanation of Jesus existence was necessary, to the historical figure of a Slovak "Robin Hood", Juro Janosik of whom many unbelievable stories were circulating, but who despite that was publicly executed in 1710. No biblical exegesis entered into the debate. I was judged "politically mature" enough to continue at the Institute.

So, if I seem to have an attitude toward MJ theory, it's because I have a personal history with MJ practice.

I kind of shudder at the magnitude of such a conspiracy. I don't get the feeling there is a conscious alliance of any kind between the three. I think there would be touchpoints on which two of the above would be allied insitinctively against the third one, e.g. on literalism of the miracles, MJ'ers and HJ liberals would have a common front, on Judaic credentials (vs. pagan pollution) the evangelicals and liberals would be allies, and finally MJ'ers and fundies would sound similar in berating the liberals on lack of principled stance. I tend to think of the three as engaged in sort of a mad dance.

As for "naturalistic Christianity devoid of miracles and supernatural", I believe that was Bultmann's project, but the problem is once you strip the "myth" there is not much to go by. You run out of mythical fuel, you run out of religion. Our bigger problem is what we do post-religion. The fundies have clout only because we don't have an intelligent answer to that.

Jiri

Ben C Smith

Hi, Jacob. I wonder what detectable pattern you are referring to.

I cannot speak for anybody else who may have applauded Chris, but he had previously asked me personally for comments on the first and second drafts of his paper. Because he asked so nicely, I consented. Had he not asked me for comments his paper would probably be still sitting on my hard drive, waiting in a long list of things to be read in more depth.

Was I supposed to ignore the very thread that announced an essay that I had been asked to comment on (and therefore had indeed read)?

As for the response from Doherty, I have only skimmed it. It is still waiting in that same long list of things to be read. Shall I either praise it or condemn it based on my purely superficial reading of it to date? Had Doherty asked me (nicely) for comments on his first draft, of course I would have obliged him. Then, having actually read the essay in depth, I might have more to say about it.

Tell me, Jacob, is this what you meant by a detectable pattern? Were you referring to comments made to and about those who had asked for advance read-throughs?

Ben.

No Robots

Yes, indeed. I certainly didn't mean that there is an active conspiracy to freeze out a naturalistic Christianity. I just mean that there is a refusal on all sides to consider this option.

That's were Constantin Brunner comes in. He does provide a robust naturalistic Christianity. One Brunnerian wrote a critique of Bultmann. My German is too weak to really assess it, though.

neilgodfrey

Spot on! What point elitism! Price's publicly available review of Christ Conspiracy, for example, has far more corrective impact potential where it counts than a score of academic level reviews read mostly by scholarly types only. Surely it is better (I won't use the aristocratic term "noble") to show equal or more respect for target audiences of popular books, not less.


Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com

Solo

You are being disingenuous. You can take anyone's historical Jesus, and read it as a personal political or philosophical credo of the author. Why should Ehrman's Jesus not be read as the author's apology for his walk to agnosticism ?

Say what you will, Toto, the messianic agenda comes through loud and clear for me. You want to see how the fundy and the scientoid attract and obssess about each other ? Watch this and then tell me I am hallucinating when I say that Dawkins does not want to do science as much as he wants to save the world.

Jiri

Malachi151

I think the Freudian analysis of people's view of Jesus goes over the top, and is not helpful, not the least of which because most of the ideas of Freud have been debunked by science.

Ted Hoffman

I thought Solo was joking. But now I see that I was wrong and his ideas are so out there that I dont think there would be any point in discussing with him since he has no qualms with making outrageous, illogical blanket statements without any evidence.
In any case, his contrived psychological diagnosis of those who have differing opinions on the historical existence of Jesus is not relevant to this thread.

Of course you werent alone in applauding him. I did too. But as someone who characterized Zeichman's article as being the right approach toward "unravelling the puzzling statements made about Q" and as one who went as far as claiming that there were certain "infelicities" that may have emerged as a result of "confusion of tradition history and literary history", I expected an "Hmmm, interesting. I will certainly look at it later when my busy schedule lightens up" from you as a response to Doherty's article.

Or did Chris also ask you, really nicely, to comment on how "really sharp" his article looked? If we have to comment on aesthetics, you could at least acknowledge Dohertys article as "really colourful" or some such thing.

Stony silence was just different and I wonder why. Thats all I was saying.

Ben C Smith

That might have been a nice thing to do or say, but why would you expect it? Doherty never even addressed the thread about his response; it was Chris who made the announcement. Doherty never even answered my last question to him on that same thread; the difference between you and me is that I did not necessarily expect him to. It would have been nice, but it is perfectly okay that he did not do so.

Oh, good grief.

I said it looked sharp in PDF. He had made a comment in one of his email messages to me about how it was in HTML when he sent it to Chris but he was switching it to Word format for me. I happened to like the PDF format.

Ben.

Ted Hoffman

Thanks for clarifying that Ben. Now, have you also queued my review for reading later? I would appreciate your comments on the historicity of the triumphal entry to Jerusalem - particularly whether you think a judgement can be made regarding whether that incident was historical compared to the entry of Simon Maccabaeus into Jerusalem.

gurugeorge

Why do you attribute those attidudes to something rotten about the MJ idea in particular, rather than just to the rigid dogmatism of the kind of "Communism" foisted on academe due to the political situation?

Lots of people were both forced and "forced" to think like communists at that time (and not just in Communist countries); clearly many were similarly led to think of the MJ idea as true, it being part and parcel of that dogmatic package.

When people are forced to believe certain things like that, it seems to me that they just shut their brains down anyway, pretty much (unless they're not benefiting from the system in some way).

For my part, it seems to me that supporters of the MJ hypothesis come from all sorts of backgrounds - from rationalist humanists like Earl Doherty at one end, to non-dual mystics like Freke and Gandy at the other, via all sorts of intellectual, political and spiritual backgrounds and positions. Some MJ-ers are pleased that the "historicist" Jesus is unmasked because they actually believe in what one might call a truly "spiritual" conception under that rubbish heap. Other MJ-ers are brutally gleeful at the prospect of stupid fundamentalists being discomfited. Others are genuinely regretful at lost illusions. Others aren't particularly fussed one way or the other, but just find the MJ position intellectually convincing.

All sorts of positions.

Which, in view of the fact that there is a convergence of ideas on ahistoricity from so many people with different backgrounds, makes the MJ idea not exactly more plausible (for the facts have to be judged on their own merits of course), but at least less dismissable on the grounds some are trying to impute here (i.e. on the grounds of a similar psychological dysfunctional syndrome at the root of the sorts of mind that prefers MJ, or something like that).