LegionOnomaMoi

Amusing, coming from someone whose conception of historical jesus study comes not from real historians or scholarly publications but the blogosphere.


Still can't admit that your response to my argument from construction grammar/llinguistics is nothing other than your ignorance? Oh well. I'm sure you are quite convincing to those who also lack familiarity with linguistics and historical Jesus scholarship (other than sensationalist crap, be it Ehrman's or Price).

Unlike you hegemony claim, which can't be falsified, there are plenty of methods utilized to test historical reconstruction of early Christianity and its alleged founder. And they have been applied. The fact that you continue to depend on "hegemony" to explain why so many experts disregard mythicists, and refuse to demonstrate evidence for this construct other than the dismissal itself, is hardly evidence of the inability to falsify a historical Jesus.

Another one of your empty headed space fillers.


Yes, it is pathetic. Subjectivity is what you need to circumvent.



I actually referred you to plenty of scholarship on construction grammar. You, on the other hand, asserted some "hegemony", threw out a name, and then (when that name failed to support your claim) relied on a bluff.



How apt. Maybe you'd like to follow rlogan's application of completely useless statistical models just to complement your inadequate application of "hegemony".

spin

Just another pundit jockeying his own ontology must be right without any need of an epistemology. No real difference from the mythicists... except that he feels the comfort of all those amateur historians who assert the same view.

Adam

spin gives me Hell, too, but he does know important scholars. He pointed out to me that my knowledge about the Twelve-Source in gMark goes back to Wilfred Knox c. 1950 and that Maurice Casey had independently of me come out for early dates for Aramaic sources of the Synoptics.

spin takes a middle (agnostic) position on the MJ vs. HJ debate.

Vorkosigan

LOM, the reality of hegemony is not based on mythicists being dissed or ignored. It is based on hard reality, 150 years of this debate and the experiences of people who move outside established lines. What happened to Bruno Bauer? What about Loisy? This kind of thing goes on today -- hegemony and order in the field are enforced by exiling or walling out dissident opinions, by not teaching them (remember Ehrman's astonishment on learning about mythicism, which is as old as serious scholarly research), by formal mechanisms such as censorship in the Catholic Church, and by the violent, noisy, and ugly wave of popular sewage aimed at anyone doing biblical research (not merely mythicists). See recent case of Gerd Ludemann, or the issue of SBL a couple of years ago on the problems of atheists in the field of religion, or Hector Avalos' recent complaints, and I think also Larry Hurtado also wrote about issues he's encountered, or the experience of Ehrman as he moved off his old evangelical beliefs and into a richer and more robust view.

Regrettably the formal identification of the existence of these enforcement mechanisms was somehow left out of Ehrman's recent work although he himself is a victim of them and briefly discussed how he is dissed by fundie nutjobs in that book. These enforcement mechanisms work against anyone, not merely mythicists, performing serious scholarly work in this field. Every academic knows that the further she strays from the old picture of Jesus, the more friction she is likely to encounter.

Vorkosigan

Will Wiley

You're comparing yourself to Bruno Bauer?
Are you for real?

Vorkosigan

I can see you've really polished your technique! I think this might be your best one yet.

Vorkosigan

spin

I don't think you're reflecting Vork's post at all. It deals with the poor treatment of good scholars by the rs academy. Note the first sentence: it's not abóut what's happening on internet. It's signs of hegemony. The intitution asserts its control over the subject it has territorial rights for. It sets the the status quo and putting up ideas that disturb it bring reprisals if the disturbance is loud enough. Internet is the realm of nutjobs regarding religion so it can be easily dismissed, except when there's a potential market, such as recently plumbed by Bart Ehrman. We find now west bank settlements planted by Ehrman on the web, along with Hoffers, Casey and Drusilla the Nun.

The post was about Bauer and Ludemann and similar scholars not netizens with nothing better to do. And I've advocated to non-believers interested in a career in rs to think again. It's nasty out there if you don't toe the line. Ehrman and Price can make do because they've been all the way through the system mainly as believers. Ehrman made a name for himself in a rather safe field of text analysis before slowly becoming more provocative. He's still within the pail. Price isn't. He's now too far out there and takes a lot of flak, having been in the club. The issue is control of the territory. You set the values and make sure that everyone consents. Consent keeps everyone happy. You accept the values: they're yours and those who don't accept them are an affront to you.

EarlDoherty

What the hell is this? I'm basing my argument on what happens online by citing an article I've written??? The article I'm pointing you to is simply the laying out of an argument which, if you were to read it, would support what I'm saying.

I've noticed in your exchange with spin that you really don't have a grip on rational discussion and your responses are full of non-sequiturs, evasion, and simple silliness--like the above. Nothing you've said in any of the postings since my last one amount to anything resembling counter-argument. Trying to deal with you is an utter waste of time. I'm not sure why spin bothers.

Earl Doherty

LegionOnomaMoi

I have no doubt that he has read extensively on this (and other topics), although I don't know what his background is. I also have no doubt that he possesses at the very least an adequate ability to read ancient greek and other langauges. However, as Spin himself has argued over and over again, such capacities only increase the capacity of someone to make a valid argument. They don't provide one.

From what I can tell, his position is simply to attack the views of others, which is a much safer position. However, it isn't completely safe, as Spin has demonstrated in this and at least one other thread I know of. In the other thread, he dismissed a linguistic argument without the necessary background in linguistic theory (a familiarity with, at the very least, construction grammar approaches to syntax). Here, he has resorted to defending his "hegemony" view by arguing that I lack the background knowledge to understand it, rather than to demonstrate its existence. I don't care if he has read extensively on this topic. So have people like Richard Bauckham, N. T. Wright, William Lane Craig, Ben Witherington, and similar conservativ christian scholars who argue that the gospels are fairly reliable biographies. Their lack of an appropriate skepticism is unfortunately not that uncommon within ancient historical studies (especially when it comes to pre-history), but it doesn't make them right.

LegionOnomaMoi

I did read it (some time ago). I've been a frequent visitor to the jesuspuzzle site for a while.

1) My debate with Spin, at least in this thread, is merely about a "hegemony" and the fact that he hasn't shown his construct exists (but instead throws out a name I'm quite familiar with, and then fails to back up his arguments with more than "it's complex" and "you need to study hegemony"). Whether Jesus is a historical or purely legendary/mythical figure is only secondary to my point here.

2) I tried debated with Spin before in a (mostly) rational discussion, and his response was post after post of referring to me in the third person with dismissals rather than either admitting he lacked the necessary background to evaluate my arguments, or addressing them. You spoke about the hostility, ad hominem, etc., which occurs online, and I imagine you've become more than a little upset more than once. And I have little patience with Spin's tactics. There are those on this forum whose ideas are so out there and whose knowledge of the issues are so lacking that it doesn't matter to me what they say. Spin, on the other hand, should know better.

That's because you didn't answer my question:So where is the "ejection"? All you have argued is that you find the counter-arguments or responses to mythicists arguments lacking. That has nothing to do with what I asked. If you want to back Spin's assertion that the reason virtually no experts believe Jesus is purely mythical is due to hegemony, then pointing to responses to arguments made (whether or not they are adequate responses) diminishes the validity of your claim. Discourse under a hegemony (political, social, whatever), is not a back and forth debate within published works. Either the works don't get published, or they are ignored completely (or, rather than simply ignored, dissmissed with little comment and certainly without any counter-argument). It doesn't matter if you are actually correct and all the responses to mythicist arguments (including those you missed) are inadequate. The fact that so many exist means that something other than some academic hegemony is at play.

Certainly if you refuse to address what I've said and go off on tangents. Whether there is a good case to be made for a historical Jesus is only tangentially related to what I have been talking about: the existence of some hegemony. I'm more than happy to talk about the historical Jesus question elsewhere and in detail, but that has little to do with my concern here or this thread (which isn't about the historical Jesus, but about why the debate continues). As for addressing your points, you made claims about why scholars refuse to give up on the idea and I responded to these claims. Your response?

Neither are those who deal with the historical Jesus. There are, however (as with historical Jesus studies) those who have made a career out of studying the figure. Joël was one: he spent years studying Socrates, writing (among other things) several volumes. However, in 1921, he finally came to the conclusion (expressed in his Geschichte der Antiken Philosophie that we can't know anything about Socrates. Almost all of his work was dedicated to finding a solution to the Socratic problem, and he ended by saying that "mann kann...doch am Ende von Sokrates sagen, was er von sich selber bekannte: wir wissen, daß wir nichts wissen." He wasn't alone, and there are close parallels with scholars who have worked on the historical Jesus question. So you are in fact quite wrong.


I can't. But neither can I do that about the historical Jesus. I have heard of scholars who work in universities which require their professors to take confessional oaths because they are religious universities who have lost their jobs for making "controversial" statements. But there are plenty of universities in which one can say of Jesus just about anything. So if you know of examples of professors who have lost their jobs from universities which do not require their professors to follow a particular faith or something smilar, let me know.