Toto

Abe - we have been through this before. In this thread it was demonstrated that Shirley Case was hopelessly out of date and has been refuted by more recent scholarship.

ApostateAbe

OK, yeah, I think pretty much all scholarly literature of that time period is hopelessly out of date, including the bulk of the literature by Case and Schweitzer, but their work certainly contributed to the relegation of Drews' arguments to the scholarly graveyard, and no credible modern scholar seems willing to revive them. So, I'll ask you again, what ideas of Drews do you think are credible, and why?

ApostateAbe

I think that Robert Price does well--much better than his competition, anyway--to serve the interests of his intended audience, which is an audience made of skeptics of religion who are looking for the most appealing reasons to think that the Christian scriptures are nothing but a bunch of phony bologna. Robert Price is better for that purpose than, say, Earl Doherty, Acharya S, Freke and Gandy, or Frank Zindler. For someone looking for a reasonable and useful introduction to New Testament scholarship, where the selection of titles is much greater, Price is little better than any other hack author. Price's books are oriented with a particular social agenda, and the quality of the arguments reflect it. Price's book titles themselves reflect it--Deconstructing Jesus, Incredible Shrinking Son of Man--that is vocabulary chosen only by those marketing toward an interest group.

Then again, to be fair, Bart Ehrman's titles have the same appearances of an agenda, in my opinion--Misquoting Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk), God's Problem (or via: amazon.co.uk), Forged (or via: amazon.co.uk), etc. On the plus side, Ehrman argues using ideas that are far more reasonable, far more probable, that represent what critical scholars very much tend to actually think, making very good unified sense of the beginnings of Christianity. Robert Price's arguments tend to merely serve the extreme skeptical anti-religious bents. There is really no other good motivation to propose an interpolation of Josephus to justify the mythicist proposition that the character of John the Baptist descended from a fish god.

I think it is shame that Bart Ehrman is among only a very few who make reasonable critical scholarship accessible to a lay audience, and the skeptical book market is otherwise dominated by hacks like Robert Price who go to the unreasonable extremes. I recommend, as the best intro to the New Testament that I know about, Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Toto

Schweitzer has stood the test of time in many respects. Case has not. Case's dismissal of Drews was based on apologetic arguments that have not held up. Drews is out of fashion now, but you know how fashion changes.

You are dismissing everyone who disagrees with you as not "credible?" That's not an argument. I think you meant no mainstream scholar whose livelihood depends on the judgment of his peers is willing to go out on a limb? What else is new?

I haven't gone through his work in detail. There is a review here from Michael Hoffman, from a particular religious point of view, and notes here from a recent lecture on Drews

The basic idea that Christianity originated a Jewish-gnostic cult that borrowed aspects of dying and rising gods from the mystery religions has some credibility. I don't know that it will ever be proven (or disproven.)

The idea that the picture of John the Baptist in the gospels was based on the ancient god Oannes has a lot of credibility. There may also have been a historical John the Baptist behind this mythic picture, but that has yet to be demonstrated with full certainty. It depends on the credibility of Josephus' description, but we know that Josephus was not a completely accurate source, and that Christians did interpolate passages in Josephus when it was convenient.

Toto

This opinion is so bizarrely at variance with the facts that it destroys any credibility that you might have had left.

ApostateAbe

I think a lot of us suffer under the self-serving delusion that skeptics of religion are purely reasonable people who are nothing but fair in their opinions of religion. One needs only to investigate the literature and fan base of Acharya S, Freke and Gandy to be corrected on that point. Again, I refer to the evidence that the market for Robert Price's literature overlaps heavily with the market for Acharya S's literature:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....34#post6834334

aa5874

Schweitzer ENDED the quest for the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus has a history of FAILURE and is NOTHING but the PERSONAL ideals of EACH Scholar.

Once it is admitted that Jesus of Nazareth NEVER existed then the historical Jesus is DOOMED.

You can't do history from UTTER silence. All PERSONAL ideals of Jesus of Nazareth are in effect unsubstantiated.

Who "the historical Jesus"? God knows. But, Gods are ALSO myths.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_f...storical_Jesus

Schweitzer completely destroys Ehrman.

ApostateAbe

I think we are in sufficient agreement.
You asked, "Who exactly discredited him [Arthur Drews]?" and I gave my answer--Arthur Drews, Shirley Jackson Case, and Albert Schweitzer. Largely because of the writings of those authors, credible modern scholars do not advocate ideas that characterize Arthur Drews. The "credible" scholars are those who have high reputations in the field, and there are plenty of such scholars whom I would disagree with.
Thanks. If you don't know much about the arguments of Arthur Drews, then we can put that aside. Maybe it would make for an interesting discussion, but I was curious about only the ideas of Drews that you would be willing to defend.

ApostateAbe

Also, there are a bunch of modern scholars who have tenure, meaning that they can not lose their jobs by advocating bizarre positions like those of Arthur Drews, so I don't buy the argument that no credible modern scholars advocate the claims of Drews because of the risk to their livelihoods.

aa5874

The HJ arguments are all regurgitated and flawed. As soon as it was ADMITTED that the Gospels and the sources for the Gospels were UNRELIABLE then Scholars like Bart Ehrman resorted to LOGICAL fallacies.

Please see http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...r/index-2.html

"The quest for the historical Jesus"

Schweitzer will demonstrate that HJ is a DOOMED FAILURE.