|
Veteran Member
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Singapore
Posts: 3,956
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Toto
I think that most of the books on the recommended reading lists are too technical for what you want.
I would recommend starting with Who Wrote the New Testament? by [Mack]. It is long and scholarly, but it is written by a liberal Christian for the intelligent layperson with questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible. |
You sure? But look at some of the book reviews in Amazon
And to quote some of the most critical views:
Quote:
As a professional historian, I am profoundly embarrassed by the impression that this book must leave in the minds of most readers. This is, quite simply, not the way historians work. A good historian is meticulous. He doesn't invent stories. He backs up every point he makes with evidence. If his argument is controversial, then he admits as much and confronts the opposing view. Unfortunately, Mack's book is far from professional.
Mack's book rests entirely on imagined reconstructions of the past. He invents various "Jesus movements," but, although there is no direct evidence for any of them, he never confesses that he has indulged in conjecture. Quite the contrary, he goes on to tell us about what each of these imagined movements believed. He gives us scenes of how they met, what they talked about. He tells us what Paul was thinking on numerous occasions as well. Mack nowhere admits that he has no sources for these imaginary scenes, and it is only professional scholars who can be expected to know that he has simply made them up. Likewise, Mack assigns dates to various sections of the Bible without at any time justifying those dates or giving the underlying argumentation behind them. Never once does he admit that the dates and arguments he gives reside on the extreme fringe of Biblical scholarship. He pretends to be dishing out "fact," although his "facts" are hotly contested by scholars. It is a supreme act of dishonesty to lead non-specialists astray in the manner that Mack does in this book. Indeed, the central irony of Mack's work is that he accuses early Christians of mythmaking while he himself is guilty of the same charge--acting as if his knowledge comes directly from God! There are no footnotes in the text and only a tiny unsatisfactory bibliography that ignores the vast scholarship on the subject which contradicts Mack's fringe opinions.
Given more space, I would happily give examples of Mack's deplorable historical method. However, I will have to settle for pointing out the sheer absurdity of his central thesis: Mack posits, anachronistically, that Jesus was a vague teacher of multiculturalism (Multiculturalism, which Mack constantly describes as "bold, heady, and wondrous" was a political buzzword in the early 1990's, when Mack wrote the book). Mack's Jesus did nothing and taught little that was memorable, as evidenced by the "fact" that various groups immediately began to associate him with completely contradictory teachings. Nevertheless, this vague teacher spawned scores of "Jesus movements," ultimately leading to Christianity. Never, ever, does Mack explain how such a singularly unremarkable figure, who never went to Jerusalem or did anything generally ascribed to him and who never taught most of the teachings attributed to him, should have become such a legendary individual that everyone in the Hellenistic world soon wanted to attach his name to their beliefs, schools, and/or cults. Absurd. But Mack has a political agenda: he takes any NT quotations that sound "multicultural" and declares that they are earliest. Thus, he simultaneously validates his mid 90's political views while retaining the latitude to thrash the rest of Christianity for not being multicultural enough. Indeed, in one of the most anachronistic reconstructions imaginable, Mack sees virtually the entirety of the Christian mythogenesis as a struggle between the late 20th century political ideal of multiculturalism and its opponents--all this happening 19 centuries ago!
This book is amateurish, politically-inspired dreck. I have no religious agenda (I'm not Christian), so it is simply as a historian that I counsel you to avoid it.
|
Quote:
Man, this book is so awesome! Mack shows us that New Testament scholarship is really an imaginative and creative art form. Mack, like some other NT scholars, hypothesizes that an underlying, pre-existing document may have existed that was used as a source for some passages common to both Matthew and Luke. We've no independent evidence of this hypothetical "Q" document, its content or source (assuming that it existed at all) except what is pulled from Matthew and Luke. This makes serious and judicious scholars (like John P. Meyer) reluctant to assert lots of crazy conclusions about hypothetical Q and the community that propagated it. Mack's genius is to show us how this total lack of any shred of historical data about Q is really liberating, allowing us to make up any conclusions we want about its content and source! Once you get as good as Mack at reading the hypothetical text of the hypothetical Q, you will even be able to identify hypothetical rough drafts (the "strata") of the hypothetical Q. Then you can really get creative!
Dispensing with the annoyances of evidence and history, we can totally make up what we want about the hypothetical Q and the imaginary Q-ites--we can decide that the Jesus of our own hypothetical Q is the "real" Jesus, and our Hypothetical "real" Jesus can be a social worker, or a magician, or a socialist, or Dead head . . . you name it! Is that awesome or what!? Make Jesus in your own image! What's more, we can say that Q Jesus really only had a problem with authority figures and institutions and stuff-this is great!-we get to make up a Q Jesus who says that its really only religious guys in robes and stuff (like the Pope!) that are evil, but "real" Q Jesus didn't care so much if you or I sinned a lot-he just hated rules, man!
Even more cool-we can say that all of the other NT stuff that we don't like was just "myths" made up and added later by guys that were not as clued in as our Hypothetical Q-ites. In fact, we can dispense with EVERYTHING that ANYONE has ever said about Jesus before Mack came along. Check it out: It's only us moderns like Mack that have been so clever as to imagine the hypothetical beliefs of the hypothetical Q-ites, so we can say that throughout all of Christian history, everyone else got it wrong! From old guys like Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante, to Therese of Lisieux, Thomas Merton and even Mother Theresa-the whole rest of Christian history is rubbish cuz EVERYONE took a wrong turn right after Q-ites, and only WE have been clever enough to conger up what the Q-ites might have thought! Only Mack and us Q-ites know anything about Jesus, cuz we made him up from the hypothetical Q! And we can blame all that is wrong with human-kind on the wrong turn that Mack was not around to save us from until now!
Mack's method further breaks down the ugly dividing line between scholarship and imagination, and he strikes a great blow for academic freedom-freedom from rigor, judicious analysis, facts, and stuff.
Just one thorny problem. Maybe one of you rave reviewers can explain this to me: We do have evidence both within and outside of the NT that in the years immediately following Jesus' execution a bunch of dudes really did go around proclaiming the "myths" of Jesus' resurrection and divinity-and they suffered ridicule, hardship, torture and death for it. How to explain the behavior of James and Peter and Steven and Paul and others? Why would they make up a Christ "myth" that would just make them greater enemies of the ruling Jewish and Roman elite and gain them even more lively humiliation, torture and execution than if they just said Jesus was a reforming Essene with strong public speaking skills? People make up stories for gain, not for ridicule, torture, and execution. (Ouch!) So, these cats must have actually believed their own rap. So . . . let's add it up. On the one hand we have a historical record of first-generation martyrs loudly proclaiming their beliefs regarding the divine nature of Jesus, and on the other hand we have no historical record of the Q-ites whose beliefs in the hip anti-establishment kind of Jesus just happen to match perfectly those of the ever creative Burton Mack. I wonder . . . who's generating the myths here-an early lunatic conspiracy of guys with an inexplicable death wish, or Mack?
Help me out! How can I invent my own Jesus when Paul and Peter and those guys that were around at the time got martyred for proclaiming their Jesus? Can we make up Q-ites that were prior even to Jesus, or maybe a Jesus who was prior to Jesus? The "real Jesus" unknown even to Jesus and his followers? Well, I am sure we can think of something. After all, there are so many who have devoted their lives to the task of coming up with a cool Jesus-like, a Jesus who says it's okay to do whatever seems cool, like sleep around even. (After all, isn't that about the main source of everyone's beef today with the Jesus we've had for the last twenty centuries?) Well, with so much at stake, I am sure some of Mack's buddies out at Claremont will come up with something.
|
|
10-09-2004, 02:39 AM
