Antipope Innocent II

Like most analogies, this one is not exact in every particular. On several key points, however, the two groups are analogous.

Which means apart from Harpur the people you mention are either atheists or New Agers. Which is what I said. Note my use of the words "most" and "usually". There are a few IDers who aren't theists as well. If you did a survey of JMers overall, what proportion of them would be atheists would you say?

I'm not sure I see how this would be "better" than saying that Jesus never existed at all. Saying Jesus was a loon or a nobody at least conceeds part of Christianity (a tiny part). The JMer position fundamentally cuts the ground out from the Christian's feet.

This is probably why I keep coming across JMers who have previously had some kind of deeply religious background or upbringing (often a fundie one) - they are often people who have flipped from one extreme ("Jesus is LORD!!") to the other (Jesus NEVER EXISTED!!"). Look at Brian "The God Who Wasn't There" Flemming or the slightly fanatical kids over at the "Rational Response Squad". The word "evangelical" springs to mind with those guys.

Fine, and peer review is far from a perfect system as anyone who has been involved in it will know. But generally speaking it works - eventually a good idea will make it through if it is genuinely valid and well supported. The fact that the JMer position has been off on the fringe for over a century takes some explaining if the reason isn't that Occam's Razor tends to be unkind to JM theories about who invented this "Jesus", when they did so and why.

There are plenty of HJ positions that are deeply upsetting to Christians, yet their scholarly proponents seem to have no trouble getting tenure, getting published in peer reviewed journals and academic presses and giving papers at conferences. In fact, if you believe some of the shrill tomes coming out by conservative apologists, cynical sage Jesus, apocalyptic loon Jesus and revolutionary firebrand Jesus are swamping the "real Jesus of the gospels" in the academy.

If upsetting Christians was all it took to be banished to the fringe then Bart Ehrman would be forced to publish through Prometheus with Earl Doherty, Paula Fredriksen would be reduced to having a website like "Acharya S" and John Dominic Crossan would be self-publishing through Ex Libris.

As I said, the JMer idea has been off on the fringe for a hell of a long time now - more than long enough for mere "personal differences" to come out in the wash. And no-one is "arbitrarily" dismissing the JM hypothesis - what we're talking about here is an analogy which indicates why the JMer position rings some loud warning bells for those who pay attention to the way academia works.

Toto

Any position that says that Jesus was a mere human being cuts the ground out from under the Christian's feet.

Brian Flemming stated that he first got interested in the JM theories because he was interested in loony fringe beliefs. He was surprised to find out that there was some substance there.

Except that, in the course of investigating mythicism, some of us kept trying to find those peer reviewed papers that supported historicism or rejected mythicism. They aren't there.

Yes, the evangelicals hate the Jesus Seminar and love to make fun of it. But the idea that Jesus didn't exist is disturbing to them on another level. It might be that Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ starts off its recruitment process by saying that everyone agrees that Jesus existed, and slowly moves the mark into full discipledom. If they couldn't say that everyone agrees that Jesus existed, they might have to find a new sales tactic.

As I said, I was not able to find a real peer review of the JM hypothesis. It appears to have been rejected arbitrarily by Bultman, after which the entire world of Biblical studies dropped it like a lead balloon. Doherty tried to get the Jesus Seminar to take him seriously enough to discuss the idea, but he ran up against a blank wall.

I am familliar with the way that academia works, and those warning bells go off when I hear that everyone agrees that Jesus existed, but I can't find anyone who actually knows why.

GakuseiDon

Where would you place the scholarship of Acharya S and others of like ilk? Would you object to analogies to creationism for such mythicists?

I agree, it certainly isn't meant to be a compliment. OTOH, I personally believe that there is some truth with the creationism/mythicism analogy, even if it isn't true at every point.

Toto

Acharya S is a polemicist. I haven't read enough of her writing to know exactly how to characterize her, but I don't think that the creationism analogy holds even for her, even if the worst that is charged against her is true. She aims to do scholarship, not subvert it. If she is wrong, it is because she is wrong, not because she has an a priori commitment to a particular faith position and is willing to ignore evidence to argue it.

How is this something you can "personally believe?" It's like you can personally believe that people who don't agree with you are not just wrong, but insane and immoral. At that point you need to keep your beliefs out of your arguments.

Antipope Innocent II

To some extent. But as you yourself say later in your own post:

Exactly. Which is why the JM position is stronger if your objective (admitted, as in the case of Flemming and the "Rational Responders", or perhaps subconscious) is essentially anti-Christian.

Interesting. I had a debate with a <inflammatory comparison> a few weeks ago who said the same thing. And we've all come across fundie apologists who talk about how they set out to disprove Christianity and ended up giving their souls to Jesus. That's not to say Flemming is lying of course. But nor does the fact Flemming was first attracted to the JM position with a view to debunking it invalidate my point about how many of the more "evangelical" JMers seem to be reacting against an fundie Christian background.

Probably because the JM position has been off the scholarly radar for so long the academy has other fish to fry. You won't find much analysis of the "swoon theory" in serious academic literature these days either.

Come on - this is academia we're talking about. The way you get ahead is to adopt a new position or revive an old one and give it new legs. If the JM position really stood up to the rigors of scholarly analysis someone would have been able to make a fist of it at some point in the last 100 years and added it to the welter of other scholarly positions on Jesus. The closest any professional scholar has got to it is Price, and even he has to resort to getting published by Prometheus.

Did the Jesus Seminar guys tell Doherty why they were maintaining that blank wall? I'm pretty sure it wasn't because the ghost of Bultmann said they couldn't let JMers in the gate.

GakuseiDon

The "commitment to a particular faith position" vs "attitudes to modern scholarship" are two separate analogies. Many HJers have a faith commitment to their position, as do many creationists. Many mythicists believe that modern scholarship is held hostage to an antagonistic paradigm, as do many creationists. Both true, to a certain point. Both false, when you go beyond that point.

For me, whenever I see mythicists refer to how HJers have a confessional commitment to a HJ, or when Doherty writes how "desperately" a scholar is to ignore the mythicist implication of a passage, I think of creationism.

:huh: Um, I believe it based on the evidence, Toto. It wasn't something that Jesus told me.

Johnny Skeptic

May I ask what "IT" is, creationism, the existence of God, or perhaps something else that you believe? In addition, what
"EVIDENCE" are you talking about?

I agree with you that both MJers and creationists use presupposition, and are inflexible to some extent regarding being willing to evaluate evidence. That is why I am an agnostic.

Antipope Innocent II

What he's referring to by "it" is fairly clear as far as I can see: the idea that "some truth with the creationism/mythicism analogy".

Toto

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Flemming did not set out to debunk Jesus Mythicism. He thought it was just an oddball conspiracy theory group, and he enjoys conspiracy theorists.

No, they either said nothing, or just said that the question wasn't very interesting. What do you think? Why is it the hot topic here but the Jesus Seminar couldn't get anyone interested in it?

Toto

The problem here is that creationism goes in the face of all of the evidence. You can prove that creationism is wrong, as has been demonstrated in this forum.

There are not enough historical data points to prove either mythicism or historicism. You can only argue to the best explanation of the data.

So your thinking of creationism in this case is highly misplaced. If it were just a matter of paradigms and interpretation of the data, you might want to think of, say, the theory that Shakespeare's plays were written by someone other than Shakespeare, or that the history of the world can be explained by sun spots, or some other such theory that is out of favor in the academy, but not without some evidence (and I don't even know enough about these theories to know if there is a valid comparison.) But instead you find a highly inflammatory and insulting comparison, to creationism. This is wrong on two fronts: it implies that the only thing wrong with creationism is that it is out of favor in the academy as opposed to being dead wrong, and that mythicists are arguing in the face of all the evidence for irrational reasons.