lpetrich

What Albert Schweitzer had concluded is what Xenophanes had noted about 2500 years ago, that people make gods in their likeness, whatever that likeness happens to be.

I agree. If it could be established that there had been a historical Jesus Christ, it would be interesting to find out what he had been like.

That seems like a rather strong statement. Any short-short summary of his arguments?

Very good point. The most I've ever seen is from bloggers like Metacrock.

Jeffrey Gibson

I wonder why you think, as you apparently do, that what Earl says here settles the matter -- especially in the light of the facts that it was shown on IIDB not only that what he says above about the majority of commentators is wrong but that he misrepresented the positions of the particular commentators he cites (in what he asks us to look at in "see below") as agreeing with the positions he adopts vis a vis the "rulers of this age".

ApostateAbe

maryhelena, you could very well be right. My judgment of MJ advocates is based purely on my own unorganized collections of observations of interactions on the subject, that MJ advocates tend to act like ideologues, with all the various psychological trappings that go along with it. And I include my own past self in that set of MJ advocates. My collection of observations are of course biased, and the tendencies are not vast majorities. Solo said that MJ was the established Communist Party doctrine of Czechoslovakia. This all tells me that MJ must either have strong evidence, or else the conclusions must be very appealing to anti-religious people. The former hypothesis I know is not true from years of debate, but the latter theory seems to fit like a glove.

1. If you disprove the existence of Jesus, then you pulled the rug from underneath Christianity.
2. It allows for hyper-skepticism and minimalism of the Bible, that just about everything in the Bible is wrong.
3. And atheists think of God as originating and existing only as myth, so, if Jesus is popularly thought to be God, then it only makes sense that Jesus originated and exists only as myth.

My theory is that Jesus originated as a failed apocalyptic cult leader (and today exists as myth). That fulfills item #1, but not items #2 and #3. But it has what MJ does not seem to have: strong evidence.

The trouble seems to be that it takes a lot of time, critical thinking, debate and investigative thought before it appears that HJ has a significantly stronger case than MJ. And, like we keep hearing, you won't find many (if any) relevant books or websites supporting the secular HJ position against MJ, especially updated modern literature, though fully qualified secular HJ scholars outnumber MJ scholars (of any qualification) by a multiple of a hundred, and the evidence in favor of HJ is plainly there.

Rick Sumner

Isn't everyone Galileo? Isn't every marginal theory the next Kuhnian paradigm shift, if only the evil hegemony would let them out of their tower?

These type of analogies are just poor form.

I could, without even looking hard, find a dozen references a week on this forum, every week, to someone proclaiming a scholar's work void, or at least to be viewed with a jaundiced eye, because of their Christianity. When the ad hominem nature of this is pointed out, the critic is met with charges of naivete.

So you suggest that it is just that those motivations be levied against any Christian scholar (or scholar with any remotely Christian affiliation) with impunity, so that we may see the bias of the hegemony. But if someone were to levy a similar charge against an atheist--that they were the crusading secular--we aren't being careful enough about contaminating all mythicists?

I generally try and be careful about ascriptions of motive, because it takes away from the arguments, which can come--good or bad--from either side. I don't much care if a source or an ally or an adversary in a debate is Christian, atheist, or some sort of trendy new neo-pagan-gnostic. It doesn't affect the strength of the arguments they make one way or the other. Either they're right or they aren't. They're just as right, or just as wrong, regardless of creed.

But the implication that these types of implications are characteristic only of respondents to mythicism is misguided. I have--twice!--been called an apologist by none other than Earl Doherty himself, despite the fact that my own theological convictions preclude that. There was no reason for it, except that he assumed that the primary motivation for denying his argument was theological. I imagine he has learned otherwise since, given the panapoly of opponents he's had here.

The charge that people are grinding axes is levied with frequency, and on this particular board is levied against the Christian far more than it is the other way around (we can do a statistical analysis of that if you like).

The problem, of course, is that it's the nature of the humanities at large that we are--to some extent--always excercising our prejudices. When we focus too much on what the motivations of others are we often lose sight of what might be our own, or even fool ourselves into believing we don't have any.

If we look too hard for the axes people have, we miss the opportunity to sharpen our own insight.

spin

Shouldn't you consider it a bit more before launching into your contrarian position? No? you were just being polite?

At least you are honest about falling all over your prejudices. But, using this logic of yours, do you ever use it on the contrary position? -- HJ advocates fill churches. This all tells me that HJ must either have strong evidence, or else the conclusions must be very appealing to religious people. The former hypothesis I know is not true from years of debate, but the latter theory seems to fit like a glove. In other words you are just overgeneralizing to the extent of saying nothing constructive here.

Having heard you crap on often about having "strong evidence," which consistently translates to you rewriting the past to fit your (non-religious) beliefs, I know that there is no weight in the strong evidence claim at all.

You have no evidence up your sleeve. All you do is retell christian apologetics with its embarrassment and naive literalism.

I await your starting the process of taking the time.

The democratic approach to history is supposed to convince I gather. Evidence is of no matter. We have a hundred scholars to your one, so we win. Don't be so silly. However, history always comes down to the one thing: evidence. And that evidence is not something you can substitute with apologetic.


spin

ApostateAbe

spin, yes, the Christian belief about Jesus is where I began my observations, but my theory is excluded to secularists, especially anti-religious secularists. The orthodox Christian model of Jesus is on the other extreme, that Jesus was a miraculous Son of God who rose from the dead, because everything in the New Testament canon is to be taken as trustworthy. It is easy to explain basically why those people believe as they do--religion. It is not as easy to explain the motivations and influencing factors for non-religious people in their theories of Jesus, especially the non-religious scholars, except the matter of evidence. MJ advocates tend to believe that the evidence is on their side, so they have other explanations for the beliefs of non-religious scholars, especially, as you said, religion. They think that the MJ position is so threatening to Christianity that non-religious scholars, who are part of the Christian establishment, dismiss it without even looking at it. It is probably the best explanation besides the week evidence for MJ. But very many non-religious scholars belong to secular state-funded institutions, they don't depend on Christian support in any form, and they advance theories and literature that are strongly threatening to Christianity (documentary hypothesis, two-source hypothesis, theory of Jesus as failed apocalyptic prophet, denial of Biblicism, deconversion stories, and so on). Some of them write books for the popular audience, and they are active against Christianity (Karen Armstrong, Richard Friedman, Bart Ehrman). So the accusation that secular scholars are tainted by Christianity seems just reactionary.

maryhelena

Not at all - and I'm making no such claim here re Gallileo and any ideas mythicists might hold - just a call for tolerance re the ideas of others - and that going down the path of imputing bad motivation to those who hold different ideas to our own, is, historically, a slippery path to tread....

No, I'm not suggesting anything of the kind - both sides need to drop the charge of imputing bad faith to the other side.

Agreed.

Toto

I don't claim that it settles the matter, but Abe was starting from the position of not even knowing that there is an issue over the interpretation of the term rulers.

The entire thread that you reference can be viewed here (your links only show a single post without the replies.)

maryhelena

I think that if there was strong evidence for your position - or mine for that matter - that we would all call it a day and move on to something else....
But we are all here - for the illusive evidence has bewitched us all

Toto

This is what I don't understand about the level of rancour: I had never heard of Jesus Mythicism before a group of Christian apologists (notably one known as Nomad) on this board introduced the idea by mocking it (as in, some people are so deluded they think Jesus never existed.

Then Earl joined the board, and I joined the JesusMysteries list, and there were some intelligent discussions among secularists over the issue. People like Peter Kirby changed their positions from time to time. Finally, Richard Carrier, who at the time assumed that there was a historical Jesus, agreed to do a thorough review of Doherty's thesis using his background as a historian in training, and endorsed Doherty's theories (with some reservations.)

Carrier's review indicated that more work was needed on the issue, and that he himself would change his mind based on later information. This is how things are supposed to work, right?

But that was the tipping point. Suddenly a few secularists or people who claimed no religious bias started the drumbeat of rancourous attacks on the idea of mythicism, based almost solely on the idea that there was a "consensus" of scholars that the issue was settled and not worth looking at. It was a step backwards. No one stepped up to Carrier's challenge to the historicist side to actually put together a well reasoned case in favor of historicity, as opposed to reciting the same list of experts who agreed that Jesus existed along with a few stale points that they thought supported their side.

I have no explanation, except people just like to argue.

I really wish we could put this dispute on hold until Carrier's book comes out and we can see how his ideas have evolved, and the proceeds of the first Jesus Seminar are published. But I'm really tired of seeing the same references to Michael Grant still popping up.