Steven Carr

I predicted that Bart Ehrman would address zero of Earl Doherty's Top 20 silences.

Did my prophecy come true?


I also prophesied that people would pay a lot of money to read Bart point out that in Galatians , Paul talks about 'the brother of the Lord', and this would be called the ultimate proof that Jesus existed.

Did that also come to pass?

From an admittedly very quick skim through some of it, the book seems very high on rhetoric and very short on argument.

My first impressions could be wrong though, but it is interesting that Bart wrote peer-reviewed articles questioning the identification of Simon Peter and Cephas, and can now write that they are 'of course' the same person, even though he himself wrote scholarly articles arguing that they may very well not have been the same person.

Should he hide his own views from the readers of this book?

Diogenes the Cynic

Has it come out yet? I thought it didn't hit shelves until tuesday (3/20/12).

It apparently isn't available on Kindle yet either.

I doubt Ehrman would be that simplistic, though.

Steven Carr

You can guess what many sentence begin with.

'Nearly all critical scholars believe that....'
'Nearly all critical scholars agree that...'

'...the view of the vast majority....'

'Few critical scholars take that view....'

'... in the judgement of most critical scholars....'

There is an awful lot of argument from authority.

I suppose Bart had to pad out the book with a lot of other stuff once he had pointed out Galatians 1

Diogenes the Cynic

I doubt that will be his centerpiece. From what I've read of Ehrman (and I've read quite a bit), he tends to focus more, for good or ill, on the criterion of dissimilarity. He points at things like Jesus' failed "this generation" prophecy, for instance.

I'm not making a case for Ehrman one way or the other on this, I want to actually read the book first, but I do know what his tendencies have been in the past. Look for John the Baptist as well.

For the record, I am personally agnostic, leaning towards some kind of minimal historicity on the HJ issue.

Steven Carr

So you claim that Galatians 1 will not be the main proof Bart will use in his book? No talk of this being 'especially key'?
No talk of this throwing 'a monkey wrench' into mythicism?

Well, there will also be Galatians 4, that chapter of allegory and typology, where Paul claims Jesus was 'born of a woman' - something that hardly needed to be recorded about people who really do live on the Earth. At least, Bart leaves that fact off his own CV.

I wonder if my prophesy that Bart will also use Galatians 4 will also come to pass.

Steven Carr

Also, like a true historian, Bart claims the lack of provenance of the Gospels, we don't know who wrote them or when or where, is simply 'irrelevant' to wondering whether they are sources of historical information.

Provenance - irrelevant.

Good news! History just got an awful lot easier!

Diogenes the Cynic

I'm sure he'll mention it, but I would be surprised if he said it was key. Like I said, I would expect him to focus more on the criterion of similarity an probably Tacitus and Josephus (though to his credit, Ehrman has not, in the past, tried to throw Suetonius' "Chrestus" onto the pile, like so many often do).

Steven Carr

'Key' and 'monkey wrench' are what he uses.

Again, we have to wait and see if any of Doherty's Top 20 Silences are addressed.

As befits a non-scholarly work, Bart's new book appears to lack an index. I guess it isn't really aimed at the sort of people who expect an index in the work of a scholar.

mountainman

PREVIEW



However here is a contentious statement .....




I think this is false (because I think there may be exceptions).


(1) I think that in the writings by Nestorius - The Bazaar of Heracleides -
translated from the Syriac by G. R. DRIVER, M.A. & LEONARD HODGSON,
M.A. Fellows of Magdalen College., Oxford, 1925
there is an ample reference that there were those people who treated seriously
the idea of a fiction. They are heretics of course, but this opinion of fiction
is referenced quite clearly.

Two examples ...

"So they accused the Manichaeans of saying
that the body of our Lord Christ was not truly
a nature but a fiction and an illusion;

...[...]...

I see many who strongly insist
on these [theories]
as something [based] on
the truth and ancient opinion."

(2 and 3) Additionally I think that a case may be made from the extant evidence that both Arius of Alexandria and the Emperor Julian may NOT have written with the assumption that Jesus existed. Scholarship has read that assumption into the fragments that we have from these two, but it is not necessarily the case.

aa5874

It is probably the worst thing that has been done for the Historical Jesus because now we have on record a book which will show how devastatingly weak the HJ argument really is.

It was most amusing to read that Bart claimed he ALWAYS thought Jesus did exist.

And, there is something very wrong with Bart Ehrman--does he NOT know of the QUEST for the historical Jesus??? Does he NOT know that Jesus of the NT is the Jesus of Faith, Myth Jesus???

Bart Ehrman WILL destroy his own JESUS.

The HJ argument is done forever

We will see that there will be NO more HJ argument AFTER Ehrman's book.