Peter Kirby

I don't even get the courtesy of being taken seriously, or (even less of a courtesy) as someone who puts forth an argument with seriousness? Yet Doherty has been taken in all seriousness, even though he has been said to have misunderstood some points. And I suppose that debate is supposed to proceed without noting where you think someone else has gotten things not exactly to the right? See, when Doherty comes in, the harshest thing people say is that he missed some nuance of Kloppenborg's argument; when I presented an argument, it is called "bogus" and attacked with all the ferocity of a pack of wild animals descending on prey. Blood in the water, as they say. Doherty hasn't seen that kind of knee-jerk response here (possibly excepting Dr. Gibson, who has always had such a posting style of little patience for what he sees as error in a popular forum).

Ted Hoffman

Come on Peter, that was years ago. Is the effect of that collective attack so fresh in your memory? You really want to dig up old threads so that you can adopt a the-shoe-is-on-the-other-foot tu quoque position?
We never questioned your integrity or mental abilities. You just typed an OP and we attacked it. Whats the big deal? You did not invest as much as Doherty.
Remember that I am not sympathizing with Doherty at this point. I was just pointing out that it may not be easy to make quick work of arguments being presented by four individuals stuck in a different interpretive framework and ready to fight tooth and nail before conceding any point. And as they debate, they remind him that he never really "published" the Jesus Puzzle and that his approach is dishonest because he misrepresents what other scholars are stating and that his faculties of comprehension are deficient and so on. So, at the same time, he has to fight to restore his integrity, he has to demonstrate that he is capable of reading and understanding a text and at the same time, he has to tackle arguments framed from an interpretive framework different from his own. Its an enormous task that requires a lot of patience and one without the required mettle and time can find themselves quite taxed if at the receiving end of the foursome.

Peter Kirby

I've lost track. What's your point here?

My point was, "welcome to the Internets."

youngalexander

and apparently his greek is not up to scratch, and... so forth.

As a life long (& card carrying) skeptic, I have spent half a century considering the outpourings of charlatans, crackpots, plausible speculators, agenda driven academics, true believers and highly credentialed experts who just happen to have got it wrong.

Earl Doherty does not strike me as falling into any of those categories. In such an inherently difficult subject as HJ/MJ no one will correctly present the whole picture. At the end of the day they will be lucky to be described as having made a significant contribution. Yet Earl does have a coherent big picture that he argues forcefully and in considerable detail. This, of course, is where the devil lies, and the four horsemen are riding them down for all they are worth.

So they should. Earl has entered the kitchen and dispensed with the unleavened dough. Yet, perhaps he has cooked up a batch to suit the tastes of tomorrow.

S.C.Carlson

Kloppenborg recognizes that Q has a "biographical-narrative preface." That is enough narrative to be relevant to Zeichman's point. Claiming now that the real issue a "large-scale narrative framework" is a strawman.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

No, I am referring to Q3 on your own terms...:

...and looking for actual arguments on your part that identify the dialogue unit with your own Q3 category.

Indeed, and if your argument both concludes and presumes that Q3 is the right spot for historical Jesus material, your argument is circular.

So far I have found only one such distinction, to wit, whether or not the unit requires a human Jesus. If you offer other such distinctions, I shall track them down. Your book is, as I said, hopefully on its way.

Just point me to an argument of yours, other than the historical Jesus criterion that you actually desire as an outcome, for assigning the dialogue unit to the latest stage of Q.

Is this kind of like my different conceptual universe line?

Ben.

Zeichman

Stephen has again addressed this, and the Wendy Cotter article I named is about the exact same topic that I discussed. Regardless, I wouldn't have to find Kloppenborg convincing at every point, though I generally do. This seems to be some sort of package-deal fallacy. I might reiterate that I DON'T worship him.

And Jacob, I'm not the one telling people that their essays are "awful." I asked some very direct questions and he never answered them, solely for the purpose of not misrepresenting him in my rejoinder. Doherty has some advantage in that he has already written these things up and I'm trying to respond to them as quickly as he's posting them. Hell, I myself posted the link to his response in the original thread, and no one, including Doherty, posted in it after that point. This is the IIDB, there are a lot of people who support Doherty's thesis here, so it's hardly like I'm playing in my home ball park.

Are any of these things that you quote that I said untrue? I backed up most, if not all, of those claims that I made. As Doherty and others can agree: it IS frustrating when you've been misunderstood, misrepresented, or when your opponent uses red-herrings or inconsistent methods (I confess that I have done so unintentionally a few times in my original essay). It's incredibly easy to read anger into your opponents' writings and view yourself as the calm and collected one; I think most of the people in this thread are doing such. I must admit that I chuckled when Doherty claimed that I said something with "too much enthusiasm" in his rebuttal. Such was surely not my intent, though I can see why he would read it that way. It is difficult for this not to be an "us vs. them" type debate: WE pay attention to context, THEY use special pleading; WE are calm, THEY are rabid fanatics; WE read carefully, THEY prooftext, etc. This is unavoidable.

Ben C Smith

Perhaps you can help me out. What marker(s) do you find in what Doherty has written about Q that would help us place the dialogue unit into his latest layer of Q... I mean, besides the HJ criterion itself (namely that units requiring an HJ belong in the latest stratum)? I ran through most of his online essay on the topic piece by piece, finding no such argument, and he immediately bowed out of the conversation.

It would seem to be a fairly simple matter to say something like on page X I pointed out that the language in the dialogue unit resembles that of the temptation narrative from Q3, or in this (or that) paragraph I noted that the picture of wisdom in the dialogue unit has nothing in common with how wisdom is viewed elsewhere in Q1 or Q2. Even Chris pointed to a couple of possible markers, including the use of gegraptai. Does Earl point to any? If so, where?

I am not concerned (yet) with how good an argument it is; I am simply looking for the bare presence of such an argument. Earl is apparently refusing to even help me look. Can you help me locate one?

Thanks.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

What the H is a "biographical-narrative preface"? Not only do you not identify it, you do not try justifying why whatever it is "is enough narrative to be relevant to Zeichman's point".

Your word "preface" suggests the Temptation Story. I've been through that. That has a 'narrative' quality which is restricted within the one (and it is ONE) pericope itself, and is NOT sufficient or relevant to Zeichman's point, because he claims something about the opening Baptist pericope based on an alleged 'narrative' relationship to further pericopes throughout Q, thus requiring a "large-scale narrative framework" which Q does NOT possess. This does NOT make my appeal to it a strawman. Are you people incapable of grasping anything that I say, let alone what Zeichman himself has said?

Earl Doherty

S.C.Carlson

I'm sorry. When you cited Kloppenborg's Formation of Q, I jumped to the conclusion that you had read it, understood it, and was familiar with its contents. My bad. I'll try not to make that mistake again.

Stephen