Sarai

Hi Steve,

Maybe not so different. I too saw the Torah as primarily metaphorical and it didn't make much difference to me one way or the other whether my ancestors fled Egypt or were always in Canaan, whether there was a global flood or not, etc. It wasn't "big" existential questions on the nature of God that got me started either: what got me going was the esteem in which David was held (at least in the synagogue of my youth) and my personal opinion that the biblical character of David was a complete jerk. That was the very prosaic beginning of my questioning. My doubts began and ended with the exploration of my own purported history.

Regards,
Sarai

Toto

Off topic comments on Bill Mahar and agnosticism

hjalti

shalak, like other people here have pointed out, Metzger's books on the text and the canon are a good read. If you want more dry and fun introductory reading material, you might want to check out Helmut Koester's (a German, that's a good sign!) two volume set with the original title: Introduction to the New Testament.

One volume deals with the broader cultural context of the NT and the other one talks about the NT itself. Was the main textbook in the introductory class to the NT I took at my university.

mg01

Hi shalak, some other related items you may consider for your list, though most not addressing the NT specifically...

If you're interested in origins of the texts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible then "The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstien and Silberman and "Who Wrote the Bible" by Freidman are common recommendations.

You may also consider looking into religious traditions in general from the Near East from the Sumerians on. "Religion in Mesopotamia" by Bottero is a good overview (but rough and awkward to read due to translation from French) and "Old Testament Parallels" by Matthews and Benjamin gives interesting perspective to ancient Judea and it's neighbors.

It's curious to read translations of ancient religious texts done in the late 1800s or early 1900s whose translators mimicked the old English from the King James Bible and find they deliver the same tone and attempt to elicit the same response you might have in church but directed at some other deity. Or if you want to widen your net ever further, read the Upanishads and the Rig Veda. Both Hindu texts older or as old as most Hebrew texts.

I'd also recommend some Joseph Campbell who wrote from the perspective of comparative mythology. Read "Masks of God" or "Hero With a Thousand Faces" if you want to go all in, but maybe "Myths to Live By" for something lighter to start with. Or easier still, watch the "Power of Myth" interviews with Bill Moyer from the late 80s which is on Netflix if I'm not mistaken.

For NT works, if your reading Ehrman, dont miss "Lost Christianities". It covers other streams of Christianity in the first couple of centries CE. Also you may look books from Elaine Pagels' "Gnostic Gospels" and "Beyond Belief".

Good luck to you.

ApostateAbe

Yes, of course that is correct. The common beliefs only go a heckuva long way in helping us know what actually happened. Writings that source the common beliefs (myths) contribute very much to our historical knowledge. When Plutarch wrote his biographies, he never met the people he was writing all about, but he was sourcing largely from what was commonly believed (a mixture of truth and falsehood), and we can make a bunch of historical inferences based on that knowledge. If the gospels are especially different, well, they still likewise reflect what Christians commonly believed about the recent past of their own religion.
That's fine.
Yes, everything is within the realm of possibility, even the supernatural explanations, but some ideas are more possible than others. For example, on pages 102-104 of Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, Robert Price puts on the table the theory of Arthur Drews (discredited mythicist of the 1900s) concerning John the Baptist, that John "was a historicized version of the ancient fish god Dagon or Oannes..." It is a preposterous consideration for any modern debate to begin with, but Price defends it by further proposing that the passage in Josephus, where Josephus treats John the Baptist like any other historical person, is actually an interpolation by either the Christians or Baptists (Price doesn't decide between the two), because of theological hair-splitting within the passage that Price doesn't think would be there if Josephus wrote it. Claims of interpolations are an age-old method of defending on the fly improbable ideas of religious scripture, but the arguments are very bad and useless as an introduction to the subject of the New Testament. Price does not so much draw on ideas that are commonly argued in the modern New Testament debates, but his book is much more about justifying an extreme skeptical position (for his niche audience of skeptics--yes, they do exist: I have shown what I mean in this thread), and to that end Price draws inspiration from just about anywhere, including very bad ideas that should have been left in the gutters of many decades past.
Yeah, I am guessing that Carrier's results will support Carrier's favorite theories, if he ever produces results. His application of Bayes' Theorem is long overdue, and I would not hold my breath waiting for it.
Some things that Christian apologists claim are actually true, believe it or not. Most of them and I both believe that the Earth, Moon and Sun are not billiard balls on an alien pool table. If you blame the Christian apologists for elevating the position that Jesus existed as a human being, well, OK, but I think the truth bears no relation to the source of the idea, and the probability of the position that Jesus was a human being is actually very high. See these threads, for examples:

• James, the Lord's brother, and ad hoc explanations
• The awkward fact of the baptism of Jesus
• The failed prophecies of the historical Jesus

They are non-Christian non-apologist arguments for the existence of Jesus, much stronger than the arguments that Christian apologists are allowed to use, in my opinion.

Toto

Not necessarily. The study of the development of myths shows that events and people can be invented, and often are.


Who exactly discredited him? Are you aware that Joseph Campbell endorsed much of the mythical explanation given by Drews?

No, it is your lack of imagination and experience.

On the contrary, we know that interpolations happened. It's just a question of figuring out how far they went.

Spamming your old threads again? I don't see the point of going over old arguments that you can't support.

ApostateAbe

Toto, Arthur Drews was discredited mostly by his own writings, but also the literature of Shirley Jackson Case and Albert Schweitzer. Modern scholars seemingly do not give any regard to the ideas that characterize Arthur Drews. Which ideas of Arthur Drews do you think have credibility, and why?

aa5874

Well, Ehrman is also discredited by the Schweitzer.

Schweitzer brought the first quest to an historical Jesus to an END.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer

Schweitzer COMPREHENSIVELY destroys EHRMAN and the HJ assumption.

ApostateAbe

Schweitzer, of course, proposed his own alternative model of the historical human Jesus ("apocalyptic prophet" of an imminent doomsday), a model of which Ehrman claims to have inherited a variation. Schweitzer was speaking specifically against the historical Jesus models of wishful-thinking modern liberals. God only knows how you manage to interpret Schweitzer the way you do! Do you think that Schweitzer was a Jesus-minimalist like you, or what?

Horatio Parker

In "Deconstructing Jesus" Price discusses another take on JtB(I checked it out of the library, so I'm relying on memory). I don't recall if he took a position on JtB as historical or not, but the thrust was that the early Xtian church wanted to co-opt JtB and absorb his followers. This explains why Jesus was baptized; they had to meet and since JtB was a baptizer and all...anyway JtB was retained as a signpost pointing to Jesus.

I know you don't think highly of Price, and I see your point. He does not adopt a single line of reasoning vis a vis the Gospels based purely on scholarship. He engages in a good deal of speculation; some of which I have a problem with as well(is it really so improbable that the soldiers needed Judas to finger Jesus?).

But he paints a vivid picture of a diffuse faith trying simultaneously to organize itself and further different internal political agendas. Trying to include as many traditions of Jesus as possible, targeting some(Peter and the disciples in Mark), wooing others(JtB). Though the reality was probably different than any particular combination of theories, the overall picture seems plausible.