Toto

reference? link?

EarlDoherty

What's sad is that dissenters still cling to the same old tired counter measures. (Perhaps Roger got this assurance from J.P. Holding, my "advance editor" of The Jesus Puzzle.) The so-called "philological grounds" are anything but secure or universally accepted. It also ignores all the other considerations which can be placed on the other side of the scale to dispute the idea that Felix was drawing on Tertullian rather than the other way around, thus placing him well within the confines of the 2nd century. (Perhaps Roger would like to quote those new sources of certainty for the philological argument.)


By the way, "uncertainty" does not mean that an argument automatically collapses, especially when the "uncertainty" is the product of scholarship which in this field is virtually "uncertain" on everything. Certainty (or the closest we can get to such a thing) arises--for them--when someone or some group arrives at accepting a balance of probability based on particular arguments. Anything else is a disguised appeal to preferred authority, which Roger is an expert at. And my "clincher" still stands, even were Felix writing post-Tertullian.

Anyway, I don't anticipate Roger will actually buy and read my new book, but I will have leave it to someone else who will to perhaps point out those other considerations. Unfortunately, while I'm still operating on time-limited access to Internet at libraries and such (oh, how the mighty have fallen!), with no books or notes at hand, I'll have to pass up responding in detail myself for now.

Earl Doherty

Doug Shaver

No kidding? Can you quote someone claiming that the TF is evidence against Jesus' historicity? I have never seen anyone do that.

Toto

The only way it is used as evidence against Jesus' historicity is to show that it is a forgery, therefore Josephus probably did not mention Jesus at all, and the lack of evidence of Jesus' existence is evidence against his historicity.

This is not a very good argument in itself, but could be part of a wider case.

Rick Sumner

I think you misunderstand Schweitzer. What you're saying sounds closer to Bultmann.

Schweitzer's ultimate conclusion was that Jesus is either the apocalyptic prophet seen in the gospels, or he is lost completely to history. Thoroughgoing eschatology or thoroughgoing skepticism, to quote the man himself.

Schweitzer throws his cards in solidly with the "thoroughgoing eschatology," championing Weiss like no other scholar he catalogues, with the possible exception of Strauss, and concluding that Jesus was ultimately a "failed Messiah."

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

Perhaps if Earl is still reading he can address this. I recall some time ago that Earl had written an article online addressing some historicist arguments. He lambasted several posters here, including myself, for failing to read and address his opus.

When time permitted, I found my way over to his site to read the piece. I was greeted with a response to scholars I had never endorsed, two of whom I had never even bothered to read, much less cite. If my failure to defend them is a shortcoming of mine, well, I suppose I bear it proudly. I didn't read his response to J P Holding either, and have no intention of addressing anything contained in it any time soon.

So my first question is whether this new book is more of that. If you want to engage those arguments, then by all means, there's nothing wrong with that, but I can't really justify 40 bucks and 800 pages on it.

My second question presumes the answer to the first question is in the negative. That the new revision expands upon and addresses criticisms raised by people who have engaged Earl's theories directly.

The question should seem self-evident. Since most of those engagements have occurred online (actually, most of them have occurred here) am I going to be greeted with anything genuinely new? Or just rephrasings of discussions that have already been had? I mean new as in new, not new as in "not in the last book."

In the past I've been greeted with "I won't convince you anyway don't bother" type of comments when the topic of the new revision has come up. So I'll ignore the implications of closed-mindedness and be open from the front. You're right, I'm not terribly sympathetic to your case.

Any endeavour in the social sciences brings the predilections of the exegete to the table, at least I'm open about mine. So you're right, you're probably not going to convince me, unless you have something that is both new and truly remarkable.

But that does not mean I shouldn't bother. Crossan probably isn't going to convince me of much either, I find him increasingly comical as the years go by. But he's still worth reading. I can think you're wrong, but I haven't wasted my time or engaged in any undue bother if I think you're wrong productively.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

DCHindley

Rick,

Sounds like he was thinking of the common belief that Schweitzer had once said that researchers were looking down the well of scholarship to catch a glimpse of Jesus but were actually seeing their own reflection (Yes, I know the quotes attributed to Schweitzer to this effect are actually paraphrases of a sentence written by George Tyrrell, but I don't think Wordy was thinking of the latter).*

DCH

*"The Christ that Harnack sees, looking back through nineteen centuries of Catholic darkness, is only the reflection of a Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a dark well" George Tyrrell, (Christianity at the Crossroads, 1909, repr. 1963, p. 49, thank you Ken Olson, Crosstalk2 post dated 7/19/05)

Rick Sumner

In either event the answers the same. Schweitzer does not think it's impossible to find the man beneath the myth.

DCHindley

Even so, it is true that Schweitzer continually pointed out cases where scholars, sometimes even brilliant ones, managed to interject their own agendas or biases into the interpretations.

I sometimes wonder if he did not do so himself in his Mystery of the Kingdom of God, although I might agree that Jesus had a strong eschatological aura about him. While I do not feel that Jesus must be interpreted this way, I do think that Schweitzer did.

DCH

Rick Sumner

I'm not sure what this has to do with either wordy's post or my response. He was discussing whether we could "see the man" for all the myths about him. More specifically, he was attributing an answer to Schweitzer, when it was an answer Schweitzer had explicitly rejected.

Schweitzer did. He explains that that's the case and why. :huh:

Regards
Rick Sumner