avi

Thanks for the note, spin, umm, back in the middle 60's when I was a graduate student, I was engaged in some electron microscopy (negative staining) of mitochondria, and had occasion to read the elegant studies of Hans Ris who was then working at University of Wisconsin. In that context, I encountered the research of Mereschkowski, (the original proponent of endo-symbiosis, in the first decade of the twentieth century) and, more to the point of your comment, the research interests of Ivan Wallin . If memory serves me right, still, after so many decades, it was Wallin, not Margulis, who first proposed the idea, in the 1930's, (about the time when Margulis was born!) that mitochondria arise from engulfed bacteria.

One reason why submissions to journals are rejected, is failure to acknowledge the work of predecessors. I am not writing this to explain the delay in publication of Dr. Margulis' contribution (published in 1967), but, so far as I know, her work covered very little new ground. Maybe that is simply an awkward acknowledgement that I am out of date!!!

I believe that her subsequent publication, from 1981 or thereabouts, has received less than enthusiastic reception, but I believe that this relative disinterest in her theory, (that cilia and flagellae evolved from ingestion of spirochaetes) is due more to the illogical (for neither cilia nor flagellae possess DNA) nature of her conjecture, rather than any disinterest in understanding the mechanism of evolution of functional motility, per se. In other words, more tersely, sorry, I doubt that mainstream scholars "simply ignored {her work} for decades."

avi

No Robots

Interested parties may want to look at this brand new book: The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation / Zev Garber, ed. Table of contents.

mod note: on Amazon (or via: amazon.co.uk)

avi

Sorry, No Robots, I am not buying it.

This makes zero sense:
1. "general understanding" --- nonsense

2. within religious and academic circles ???? What? Nonsense. Ok, if he means that the seminary is an academic institution. A true academician is one who demands empirical data, and we have none, for the existence of JC.

3. incarnate ??? huh? Real flesh and real blood???
And not just a character in a Greek novel?

How about Paul of Oscoda? Was he a real person, No Robots?

4. lived and died ??? and he knows this how?

5. faithful jew? What? This is the most absurd statement. How can anyone claim to have Yahweh as a parent, and ALSO remain faithful to Jewish doctrines? When does the second commandment attain relevance, if not in this circumstance?

The implication of JC's trip to Heathen ville, up north a piece, (Tyre and Sidon), is that this self-appointed "messiah" visited folks who DID NOT FOLLOW THE LAW. On whose authority did JC break the rules by sharing bread and wine with those who disregarded all Jewish laws? Was he sent as emissary to convert the heathen to Judaism?

avi

No Robots

From an atheist scholar:

In fact, no one in mainstream New Testament scholarship denies that Jesus was a Jew.--The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction of Contemporary Identity / William Arnal, p. 5.

From the same source (p. 15-16):

In the case of critical scholarship on the New Testament, earliest Christianity, and especially the historical Jesus, things have been improving for the last thirty years or so. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, numerous studies have appeared which not only acknowledge his identity as a Jew, but which emphasize it, and make it central to their reconstructions…. Thus is it a normal feature of the recent works emphasizing Jesus' Judaism that they tend to normalize him, make him an understandable and more ordinary figure among his contemporaries, comparable to other Jewish figures from the same time and place.

See also the very recent doctoral dissertation (free access) Imagining Jesus, imagining Jews, by Melissa Sarah Weininger, who asserts that, "there has been a tremendous surge of scholarly interest in the representation of and engagement with the figure of Jesus in Jewish culture" (p. 4).

It is my impression that late nineteenth century/early twentieth century mythicism arose primarily as a negative response to the Jewish reclamation of Jesus. This reclamation was largely halted by the rise of anti-semitism, culminating in the Holocaust. However, now that anti-semitism has receded, the Jewish reclamation of Jesus has restarted. The only possible obstacle that it faces is from mythicism. People thus have a stark choice: a thoroughly Jewish Jesus, or a thoroughly imaginary Jesus. Take your pick. I've taken mine, as have the scholars, it would seem.

No Robots

I would just add that mythicism has revived lately as a negative response to Christian religionism. What mythicists do not realize is that the Jewish reclamation of Jesus is the best weapon against Christian religionism:

Jewish writers have always disassociated the Jewish man, Jesus, from the Christian god, Christ, as they consistently tried to demonstrate the Jewish qualities of his life and teachings. This move effectively transferred ownership of the figure of Jesus, and all of the cultural patrimony that flowed from him, to the Jews. Furthermore, this re-Judaization of Jesus also equipped these modern Jews with a potent weapon for critiquing a still predominantly intolerant Christian world as they asserted that the Christians had misunderstood Jesus' intrinsically Jewish teachings and "kidnapped" their ancient Jewish brother, who now had to be returned home.--From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture / Matthew Hoffman, p. 2-3.

From the same source (p. 5):

[T]his sort of positive appropriation of Jesus was more challenging to Christians' cultural claims on him than all of the premodern Jewish polemics disparaging Jesus. Thus, the Jewish reclamation of Jesus reflects a more aggressive approach by Jews to participating in Western thought and culture than is usually acknowledged.

Mythicists are unequipped to deal with either Christian religionism or with the Jewish reclamation of Jesus.

spin

If the thoroughly imaginary Jesus is the intellectual seed of a diaspora Jew, then that Jesus should still have Jewish attributes, despite the fact that notwithstanding the messianic nomenclature that Jesus is certainly not portrayed as a Jewish messiah. He is of course a peripatetic preacher, which could fit anywhere in the hellenistic world. Yet the literature that Jesus is grounded in is definitely Jewish though sometimes of directly Hebrew origin while at others the LXX. The fact that the first gospel shows itself not to have been of Palestinian origin, neither linguistically nor geographically, but suggesting Rome, does not support a thoroughly Jewish Jesus, be he real or not.

Toto

This doesn't make any sense. Anti-semitism has been a part of European Christianity for a couple of millenia. And everyone has tried to claim a part of Jesus - from Aryanist Christians to humanists to socialists to Jews to the American military.

I think this mixes up cause and effect. Part of the reaction to the Holocaust was to emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus, especially by multi-cultural types interested in interfaith dialogue.

And mythicism is hardly the only "obstacle." There's the militarist Jesus favored by American conservatives and Mel Gibson, the hippie-cynic Jesus favored by hippies. Ehrman thinks of Jesus as a deluded, failed prophet.

You might want to read James Crossley's Jesus in an Age of Terror (or via: amazon.co.uk).

From the RBL review:

PhilosopherJay

Hi hjalti,

I thought it possible that an image on a pot or some writings on a tombstone or graffiti on a wall or a cache of letters from the First century could be dug up. We really haven't found anything that can definitely be said to be even from the Second century and tied to Jesus. I still check archaeological news every week, but my expectations are gone.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Yellum Notnef

Bart Ehrman should name his new book "The Jesus Boner" because these historical Jesus fanatics have a raging hard on over this. Such a peculiar fixation to waste ones time with.

andrewcriddle

Could you give evidence that blasphemy (as a formal legal charge) was interpreted at that time as widely as that ?

Andrew Criddle