Grog

This is Hoffmann's anouncement:

On May 15, 2012, New Oxonian will play host to a short consortium on the historical Jesus. The discussion centers on recent attempts by internet bloggers to enter the scholarly arena on the subject.

I find it interesting that the focus is not "on the historical Jesus" but on "recent attempts by internet bloggers" to contribute to the understanding of the origins of Christianity. There are multitudes of internet bloggers who maintain Jesus existed, performed miracles, and rose from the dead. But I doubt those are the internet bloggers that Hoffmann is referring to in his announcement.

This looks like throwing down the gauntlet. Perhaps finishing the job that Ehrman failed to do. The May 15th material should provide a lot of fodder to chew on. I believe the participants will be Maurice Casey, Stephanie Fisher, and Hoffmann (whose position has been inching away from ahistoricity in recent months).

My feeling is that this is all good thing. If advocates for a Historical Jesus hypothesis can add new understanding to this topic in such a way that we can accept that Jesus existed then great! The whole point (for me) is to excavate the origins of Christianity. If the fail, then I think the development of a new paradigm would be very fruitful for future scholars. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit to explore from a mythicist perspective that so far has not been touched in the peer-reviewed journals.

I am looking forward to this exchange and hope it proves to be fruitful. I must say, it will greatly help if some of the invective could be dropped (reading stephanie fisher's comments does not make me hopeful, but it looks like she's dropped the strange accusation that Carrier self-published Proving History).

Any thoughts on this brewing storm?

Toto

The link: http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com...jesus-process/

I attended a lecture in Los Angeles by Hoffmann where the Jesus Project was announced. Hoffmann was witty, slightly irreverant, had an entertaining powerpoint full of amusing graphics. I followed his take over the years on the issue, and he seemed to have trouble taking the issue of historicity seriously. At one point he wrote that he always assumed that Jesus existed, the same way his great-great grandfather must have existed, even if he knew nothing about him.

But now,

stephan huller

His reconstruction of Celsus is an embarrassment. http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/celsus/celsus.htm

Solo

It's interesting to observe that Hoffmann has a tendency to veer to what is generally perceived as 'extreme' positions. First, he invented a new take on religion calling his body of knowledge "scientific examination" of the thingy. Never was quite sure what the word "scientific" meant in the context. Maybe it was something akin to Muhammad Ali use of the term when he found his opponent was hard to hit.

When Hoffmann moved off, I thought it was to somewhere in the middle and actually found some of his takes on the 'mythicist' monomania were clever and dead-on. But now I see he found another dubious niche among 'independent historians'. It looks like they are neither. By all appearances, if this consortium is going to credit Mark's gospel at 40 CE made out of Aramaic tablets collected with the smoke from Jesus ascension jets still in the air, we are dealing with a form of academic dementia. Of course, it makes sense that number one on the the collective list of priorities of this group would be controlling the perceptions of themselves on the Internet.

Best,
Jiri

Grog

He's becoming increasingly difficult to pin down.

Toto

Any sign of this?

Roger Pearse

In fairness it is a piece of work that he did almost 30 years ago, mainly as a popularisation, I suspect.

James The Least

I don't recall Hoffmann being fair toward anyone on his blog...

Toto

Still waiting for this . . .

hjalti

A new blog entry: