Solitary Man

You'll still have to be more specific.

Amaleq13

:huh:

Solitary Man

Does this mean that his major in an accredited undergraduate program had to be history? Does he have to possess a Masters to count? What about graduate level work in history (from an accredited history program) while only having an undergraduate, either in history, a related field, or a different field altogether? Does he need a PhD, too?

Amaleq13

Gotcha.

IMO, a B.A. isn't enough to be called an "actual historian". That's just a "history major" as far as I'm concerned. I don't consider the history teachers in my high school to be "actual historians" even if they have an M.A. and I doubt they consider themselves as such.

I would be tend to give an M.A. credit if they were able to work professionally in that capacity with that degree but I would be surprised that anyone needing an "actual historian" would settle for anything less than a PhD.

I think of "actual historians" as working for a university or museum or the CIA.

I don't think I would call that an "actual historian", either, until they obtained a degree.

Solitary Man

What do you call Tacitus if not an historian? What about someone trained but no degree (ABD)? What about someone who has some training, but enough field work to make up for the actual degree? What about Master's level professors without a PhD but a PhD equivalent? What all fields cover "history"? Archaeology? New Testament? Classics? Classical studies? Jewish studies? What if those were history intensive, but since specialized called another name? Can there be an amateur historian but historian nonetheless? And for our intents and purposes, are Civil War historians qualified to discuss historical problems with Iron Age Palestine?

Amaleq13

I call him irrelevant to a discussion about which participants in BC&H would qualify as "actual historians". If he were, though, I would be happy to grandfather him in.

All But an Actual Historian.

Very knowledgeable amateur but not a professional historian.

MA professors of history? I think I already indicated I would tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Archaeologist not historian

Would they describe themselves as historians? I would think they would call themselves NT scholar, Classical scholar or scholar of Jewish studies.

Sure, but then they are "amateur" rather than "actual" since I've been using "actual" to more or less mean "professional".

I doubt it but I would still include them in a list of "actual historians" who participate in BC&H.

Solitary Man

So you'd grandfather him in, even though he doesn't have a degree from an accredited institution?

Many professionals disagree with your assessment on this. In particular, I've known a few really competent and insightful ABD's who are professionals, one of whom is know a PhD but really inspired me before he was.

Ah, but your original post didn't say "professional" historian - it merely said ""actual" historian". Professionals are those with a job researching history, no? ABD's and MA's can have that distinction then.

What about lecturers who are working on their MA?

Care to define the distinctions? Also, since this is only tangential to the original thread, feel free to split it and give it its own thread. I'd love to keep discussing this matter with you.

Are we using self-categorization to determine who qualifies as an historian?

Now you make this distinction, so the above comment is moot. I'm not entirely sure I totally agree with this distinction.

When someone asks, "Is anyone here a doctor!", does the Doctor of Philosophy who researched Pliny's topographical anomalies come up to the wounded and say, "Yes, I'm a doctor."?

Ben C Smith

Crossan discusses this somewhere and actually concludes that Mark got it right, while Josephus was shading things a bit.

I really do not have a very good answer, either, except to say that it looks like Josephus is answering something here, as if he is arguing against a prevalent view (not for the forgiveness of sins... only if the soul was already pure).

Maybe. But none of this would change the fact that, in Mark, it looks like Jesus is coming to be baptized for sins (whereas in, say, Matthew, it certainly does not). Even after all the caveats that Meier (A Marginal Jew) offers are taken into account, this is what it looks like (to me, at any rate).

Ben.

Ben C Smith

As tempting as it might be to see this as letting something slip, I think more legwork needs to be done before reaching that conclusion. Rather, I was mentioning this as a counter to the point that Jesus appears in the gospel record as a full-fledged divine entity. He may in Matthew, but not (necessarily) in Mark.

Yes, Mark could be an adoptionist. I think, however, that this episode should be added to the list of reasons to think that Matthew knew the gospel of Mark and not vice versa. The way Matthew handles the baptism, it seems strange to me for Mark not to make things clearer than he does either way. If he agrees with Matthew, why omit the part about fulfilling all justice, which is what ensures that we do not think of Jesus as a sinner? If he disagrees, why not say outright that Jesus went to be baptized for his sins? To the contrary, it looks to me as if the Marcan version is more primitive, and the Matthean version is an attempt to clear things up.

Ben.

gurugeorge

Out of interest, how would you square the fact that (AFAIK from reading Ehrman) Matthew and Luke are the first-mentioned and most popular gospels in the early Church (the former amongst the orthodox, the latter amongst the Gnostics) with Mark being barely recognised as a "digest" version and having no evident veneration as the earliest) with the modern scholarly digging that has found Mark to be the earliest?