Vorkosigan

Yes, it was rather strange of people to take Ehrman's book as he evidently intended it.

LoM on this site, nobody ever refers to media reports as sources of anything but the most basic information (look, new thingy dug up in Israel!). Maybe you should drop the blinkers and realize that people here actually and eagerly read academic studies, both in journal and book form.

...and yet you are so very wrong. I suggest that rather than leap mightily to conclusions, you take a few years to understand what you are criticizing. In other words, pay the same compliment to mythicists that they pay to HJ studies.

Vorkosigan

LegionOnomaMoi

How often do you visit the science discussion section? Because it happens all the time.

I'm sure there are those who do. I'm equally sure there are those who not only don't, but who aren't aware that journal vs. book is almost a distinction not worth making. There are journals which are peer-reviewed and are dedicated to things like extra-sensory perception. And as someone who frequently buys a book which costs ~$200 dollars, I know that most people who don't have access to university libraries don't have access to most of the important books. And finally, with historical Jesus studies, most of the scholarship isn't written in English.


Perhaps. But then, you started your response with something which can be checked and found inaccurate right now.

What compliments?

Toto

LegionOnomaMoi: these are all generalities, but they are not new and you don't apply this to historical Jesus studies. You don't seem to have followed the proceedings of the Jesus Project, or the discussions on historicity from several years ago here, or Richard Carrier's professional opinion of much of historical Jesus research.

As I waded through your essay, I think this is your intended point:So you think that no one else here knows how academia works, or is acquainted with the sources of ancient history?

Would you like to produce the academic research that shows that the consensus belief that Jesus existed is based on something more substantial than hot air? Notice that Ehrman did not even try to write a book for specialists on the historicity of Jesus comparable to his book for the lay audience, and my years of looking for this research turned up nothing later than Shirley Case, who assumed that the gospels had a historical basis.

Conservative Christians reject a merely historical Jesus, and they reject the Jesus Seminar and those who try to study the historical Jesus outside the faith, but we've known that for a long time. They also reject mythicism. (I've often referred to a book by conservative public intellectual Charlotte Allen called The Human Christ.) So I really don't understand the point of your last sentence in the quote. I think it indicates that you do not understand the debate here.

You said "The idea that Jesus as a myth is somehow more offensive or off limits than what is actually out there is bizarre." Yes it is bizarre on a logical basis, and I have made that point, but I have also observed that Christian apologists on these boards react more strongly at the idea that Jesus was a myth than at any other wacky theory that you would think would undermine their religion.

So if you think that there is some real basis for the academic consensus on the existence of a historical Jesus, let us know where it has been hiding.

Vorkosigan

Your pardon, I meant only BCH.

Yes, yes, yes, and shit wish I could read German.

The one of studying what the other side actually says, and not what you think it says. The mythicists you discuss exist only in your own mind.

Vorkosigan

LegionOnomaMoi

That's part of the problem: there isn't something which makes historical Jesus studies some special realm so different from other fields. Every field has unique problems and biases and ones which are shared with others.

I did, and recently was pointed to comments made about the inclusion of those who were unfamiliar with the field.

Nope. Haven't read those.

I've been following Carrier for years, and waiting for his book since he announced it. It was such a piece of garbage I was horrified. He was someone I respected, even though I disagreed with points he made (after all, any disagreements could usually be my lack of experties). But Bayesian analysis, Bayes' theorem, or BT (his use isn't consistent) is far, far, more my area of expertise than his. I owned most of the books he referenced on the subject before reading his book, and read most of the rest after hoping that I was missing something because he couldn't really be that wrong: take the version of BT from some basic textbook and cite a bunch of sources which use it in an entirely different way and combine it all into one useless heap disguised by the trappings of formalism.

I am still holding out hope that his next book is different. But this one was a real blow.


Those are two very different questions, and the answer to both is no, I don't think that no one else knows. I said so.

What exactly do you mean by produce? Give you a list of references?

Keep in mind that this question started over 200 years ago. Also, I've seen how divorced your treatment of christian texts is from their greco-roman context.

They don't. Wright, Meier, Dunn, Bauckham, Witherington III, and so many others who could be counted amont conservative christian scholars are active in historical Jesus research.

There have been multiple posts, threads, and discussions about hegemony or whatever which is supposed to explain why, after a couple of centuries, the mythicist position has repeatedly been raised and completely rejected but for reasons having nothing to do with the validity of the arguments. Often, such arguments have relied, at least in part, on the influence of christianity. If christianity were influencing scholarship in this way, it would look very, very different.

My grandfather was an agnostic Jew. Although I wasn't there (or alive) apparently he reacted to a claim that we really can't know if Jesus existed with enormous disdain. He was a specialist in the area of Greco-roman literature and IE languages, and had zero patience for views he regarded as intellectually sterile or unsound, and the idea that we have no sources which enable us to say "Jesus existed" was apparently one of these.

Perhaps the reactions have less to do with the undermining their religion, and more to do with the fact that 1) they find it ridiculous and/or 2) here is one place where they have the backing of scholarship.

The reactions to everything from Harry Potter to The Da Vinci Code beat anything mythicist writings could imagine in terms of Christian protest. And I haven't seen any debate surpass that between christians who argue over the prologue to John and the trinity (nor have I been as attacked as when I entered that debate).

The same place where the evidence for the academic consensus on everyone else from ancient history has been hiding.

LegionOnomaMoi

If you read my opening posts, you'll find that for the most part it deals with people in general. It in no way is limited to mythicists except in a few, specific places. There the issue is more that there are many people who have read a lot, but only on this topic.

I'm not interested in arguing how much your average mythicist knows. If everyone here has read far more than I, fantastic. I wasted a small amount of time. But as I started this thread in response to what was a "final straw" of sorts, and was indeed a misuse and misunderstanding of "scholarship", and have encountered this over and over again, I don't think mythicists are exempt from the norm. And as I know how hard it is for people outside of academia to obtain much of the literature in any given field, I find it hard to believe that historical Jesus studies are somehow a huge exception. Especially when (again) most is written in other languages (esp. German and French, but also Italian), and requires the knowledge of various ancient languages.

Vorkosigan

Hilarity ensues....

Vorkosigan

Yes, well many of us are in academia.

Vorkosigan

For you it's important to keep bringing up the idea of intellectual sterility and unsoundness. Such invocations are useful substitutes for actual meaningful engagement, socially approved and requiring not a lot of work.

LegionOnomaMoi

I know this from my discussions in the science discussion section. You can continue to take this as a personal insult, despite the fact that there are those here whose take on christian origins borders on paranoid schizophrenia, or realize that it was neither specific to mythicism nor intended for all those here.

I refer to soundness frequently because logic is a focus of mine, But what I wrote which you quoted had nothing to do with anything other than my grandfather and his personality. He once said, completely seriously, of some particular topic that he "liked to keep an open mind about that kind of crap." The fact that I was told his reaction to the idea of a mythic Jesus was so dismissive had to do with his views, as I said, and the way he dealt with those who he thought were intellectually sterile.