FathomFFI

This will be an ongoing critique of Earl Doherty's position on Jesus. It is our hope that this discussion will remain civil and scholarly, as the objective is to approximate the truth of the matter in regards to whether or not Doherty has accurately represented factual history.

We begin with a selection gleaned from his web site for the Jesus Puzzle, and our first stop is with his "Conspiracy of Silence" paper.

Let us begin ...

Perhaps the silence is not quite so deafening as Doherty has lead himself to believe. We have noticed quite a few errors in his "Conspiracy of Silence" paper, and bring the following to attention.

The following are several verses which disagree with Doherty's idea that Paul was unaware that Jesus was actually a human being. These are just a few, and there's quite a few more.

Below are just a couple of verses where Paul described Jesus as a man who was also the son of God.

Therefore, the textual evidence does not appear to agree with Doherty's assertions. In short, they appear to flatly contradict those assertions.

Since he preached the resurrection of Jesus himself, what more of a convincing argument could he have? Is it also not understandable that since Paul had been kept separated from the other apostles that he did not have the knowledge of the other apostles?

We don't see this point at all. The only way Paul described himself as "seeing" Jesus- that is similar to the 12 apostles- is after the supposed resurrection of Jesus. This in no way negates that the apostles themselves had seen Jesus in the flesh.

Many of your other points here are obviously arguments from silence, and they could be validated if we discount the fact that Paul was an outsider to the 12 apostles. The 12 were all Jews, while Paul was born a Roman. His knowledge on Jesus was not first hand, and it was obvious the 12 did not seem to welcome him into their private little fold. In fact, they kept sending him away. His lack of much knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus according to the 12 would be rather obvious. We see very little interaction between Paul's movement and the movement of the 12 in Jerusalem. It's obvious there were two different Christian sects here; the circumcised and the uncircumcised- the Jews and the Gentiles.

Toto

Paul was born a Roman? Paul claims to have been born a Jew. He also claims to have been a Roman citizen (unless that was inserted) and Acts claims that he was a Roman citizen from birth. But he still claimed to be Jewish and trained in Jewish law.

Aside from that, you are rehashing old ground here, and Doherty has said he will not be participating. Doherty discusses all of the apparent references in Paul to a human Jesus, and tries to reconcile them with the overall tenor of Paul's letters. You may or may not agree with him.

Most other mythicists see these references to a human Jesus to be later interpolations.

If you want this to be a productive thread, you could examine Doherty's discussion of these apparent references to a human Jesus in Paul's letters, without assuming that he might have overlooked them.

FathomFFI

I have examined Doherty's explanations, and do not find any credibility with them whatsoever. All of the texts I used above are texts which Doherty himself claims to be authentic letters of Paul. There is no evidence whatsoever to support interpolation. Doherty's theories are ill supported, and do not constitute evidence of his assertions.

If Doherty does not interact here, that is fine. Surely you will not mind if we critique his work anyways?

Toto

Fathom - this board has been discussing Doherty's work for years before you got here. I wouldn't say that people are bored with the subject, but most people have said what they want to, and there is no point in rehashing old ground.

My suggestion is that you start with exactly why you reject Doherty's explanations.

FathomFFI

The vast majority of Doherty's explanations do not directly deal with the verses which described Jesus as a man. Instead, he presents a theory and attempts to justify that theory with the verses.

But let's deal with one:

Firstly, he has admitted to creating his own translation, and yet the word he translated to "arose" is not the best definition that can be derived from the Greek word of "ginomai." The literal Greek actually denotes the word "created" in this instance, shorted by "caused to be."

The word "seed" comes from the Greek word of "sperma," and denotes "offspring." The verse is telling us that Jesus came into physical existence (ginomai) as the offspring (sperma) of King David.

The Greek words of "kata sarka" literally mean "in regards to the body," and is crystal clear. There is nothing cryptic about those words at all. He has not provided any examples of these words being used throughout early Christian literature in a variety of subtle ways, often with unclear meaning.

We would be interested in his said examples.

He is guessing here. The words literally translate to "in regards to the spirit" (according to the spirit.) Again, he attempts to change the definition from what is universally accepted to an obscure and unlikely definition for the sole purpose of illustrating his point. This is completely unnecessary.

The above is not much of an explanation at all, in fact. Doherty assumes far too much here, including that no other feature of Jesus' human incarnation appears in his letters. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the numerous other quotes of Paul referring to Jesus as a human being.

Doherty then attempts to "beg the question" with his statement of "Why would he suddenly step outside that focus and stick in a biographical datum about Jesus of Nazareth derived from historical knowledge—then return to scripture (as we shall see) for his second element?" He then answers his own question with another assumption which screams for support.

Yet, the Greek completely confutes Doherty's theory here, and his interpretation and translation finds no real support neither in the Greek, and because of that, nor in the scholarly world.

The word of "kata" is used very very often in scripture, in many ways. Yet, we do not find the words "in the sphere of" as a translation for any usage of this word. In the numerous bible translations available, we do not find this translation even once.

This denotes an extreme position by Doherty; one which finds no support anywhere in the Greek.


Again, we note it was necessary for Doherty to produce an extreme and unlikely, as well as inaccurate translation of those words to illustrate his point. This is completely unnecessary.

Since Doherty has most likely intentionally neglected to include the Greek word of "sperma" as a polemic, it is obvious to us that he is intentionally refusing to relay the information that- in the context of the Greek- it means Jesus was born in the flesh as an offspring of King David.

The Greek word "sperma" completely confutes his entire argument, as it denotes direct physical ancestry within the context. We do not see the word "Sperma" being used in the description regarding Jesus as the spiritual son of God, which denotes a distinguishing between the physical and the spiritual aspects. It is only used in reference to the physical aspect. This is a consistency throughout the entire NT, for not once do we ever see "seed of God," for in every usage of the term, it always refers to a physical ancestry.

It is clearly a distinguishing between what is spiritual, and what is physical, and in the context it can only refer to a physical Jesus.

Regards.

FathomFFI

Once again we see Doherty setting up a theoretical alternate interpretation which goes against the grain of world scholarship. But let's again examine in detail what he actually says.

The above must discard the dual nature purported to be with Jesus Christ. By excluding the words of "born of a woman," Doherty attempts again to illustrate his theory of Jesus Christ being only a spiritual being. However, when the words are inserted right back into the context, and we consider the distinguishing Paul made between the physical and spiritual aspects of Jesus Christ in Romans 1:3-4, we can see that the two verses collaborate with each other perfectly.

This argument speaks after the fact of the crucifixion and supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ, who then purportly ascended to heaven according to Paul's beliefs. The verses here are consistent with the many other Pauline verses which speak of the risen Jesus Christ as one who redeems the sinners. It should also be noted that Doherty is using the New English Bible; a translation that forgoes the word for word translation of other bibles in favor of the interpretation of the scholars who translated it. This translation comes from R. V. G. Tasker's reconstructed Greek New Testament, which he produced in 1964.

Uon examining R. V. G. Tasker's translation, we see that even in his own Greek translation, the words of "through Christ" are present. The New English Bible omitted the "through Christ" translation in favor of the personal interpretation of the 3 scholars working on the project. Below is the Greek from the R. V. G. Tasker's reconstructed Greek New Testament, as well as the corresponding words in English.

Therefore, Doherty is using an interpretation, and not the actual text. Tasker presents the text which underlies the New English Bible (New Testament, 1961), a British version which, because of its unusual renderings, had given rise to many questions about the text. Tasker also included an appendix of Notes on Variant Readings for the marginal readings of the NEB. This text, since it does not adhere to any textual theory or display much coherence, has not met with widespread approval.

This is disputed by the actual Greek Text itself, since the subject of the verb is undoubtedly Jesus.

Again we see a theory presented by Doherty that something which does not have to be seen" meaning, does not have to be interpreted in the standard way. Since we already know Doherty is using a questionable interpretation from the New English Bible, his assertion of "Paul has simply enumerated two of the characteristics of the spiritual Christ, only reflects his acceptance of a very questionable interpretation which actually omits critical Greek words from the translation.

Again, this has been disputed in my previous post regarding Doherty's refusal to acknowledge the presence of the Greek word "sperma," which in the context cannot refer to anything other than physical ancestry.

In our opinion, no case has been made here in any reasonable sense.

Regards.

Ben C Smith

Earl Doherty has more recently argued, based partly on Marcion, that the phrase born of a woman is a later interpolation, not original to the Pauline text of Galatians 4.4.

Ben.

Toto

I will just pick this one point out at random:

This source seems to disagree with your statement on sperma:

What is the basis of your statement? When I look at the usage of this term, it often refers to "seed" - the seed that is planted in Mt 13:24.

FathomFFI

Doherty certainly has the right to change his mind, as learning more of a subject does that to us all.

However, his argument for interpolation is speculative at best, and his use of the New English Bible makes suspect the materials he's using for scholarship, since he's depending solely on the interpretation of the Greek from 3 scholars.

Now, I'm not saying that the NEB is all wrong, for even I enjoy the fact that many of their interpretations absolutely nail it. But, we cannot allow the omission of critical text from the translations, otherwise you have people such as Doherty using an interpretation instead of the actual words.

Interpretations can be okay, but not when they omit actual critical text.

FathomFFI

Yet, in every usage in the NT of the sort in question, sperma refers only to physical ancestry. This needs to be considered, for we have no precedent to justify Doherty's position.

Precedent is critical to establishing a credible position, and unfortunately Doherty doesn't state even one.