Vorkosigan

Actually, there's a whole school of people who think Muhammed didn't exist. Try Patricia Crone, for starters. And Buddha is often seen as a myth. Columbus, of course, is historical beyond doubt.

But don't worry. Mythicism isn't going to go away. As long as the evidence for Jesus remains so bad, and the scholars simply treating it like an axiom, each generation will produce a mythicist or two.

Vorkosigan

Bede

That would be interesting although I feel he might not like it. While they would treat him with a lot of respect, he'd get fed up with all the uncritical and loose thinking there very quickly.

What I find odd is that OT biblical minimalism which treats most characters of the OT as myths, including those like David who are pretty fundamental, is part of the academic mainstream even if it is on one edge. It is the subject of academic rebuttals (such as Dever's) and its proponents are scattered around in US and European schools. I am not prepared to believe that OT scholarship is any less religiously inclined that NT scholarship so we do have a question as to why Jesus mythology is ruled out of court while minimalism isn't (much as some scholars would like to). On a more personal level, why is Celsus a minimalist but won't touch Jesus mythology with a barge pole?

The most likely answer is that it really is as disconnected from the evidence as we have always claimed. The academic community is huge and yet no one is picking it up. That is really, really odd if the idea had merit as scholars are all desperately searching for something new to make a splash. The other possibility is that the Jesus Myth is irrepairibly damaged by its associations with the nutball fringe like Freke, Ankyra etc etc. Trouble is, most scholars haven't even heard of these people.

In the end, it is very hard to believe that no one in academia would be pushing the JM thesis if it was worth even giving the time of day. Hell, if I was an NT PhD student it would be my thesis and I don't even believe it!

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Vorkosigan

In conservative quarters minimalism IS ruled out of court. There is a strong polemic against it (anti-semitism, post-modernism piffle, etc). In the NT world, the polemic is different, accusing mythicists of being in it for the money, or of being "radicals." Same idea, though. Plus, for most Christians the OT is less important -- they hardly know anything about NT scholarship, and OT is even more esoteric.

That is certainly one possible answer. The more likely answer lies in the generally esoteric nature of OT research vs. Jesus research, and the creedal commitments of scholars.

HMmm...maybe there are as-yet unmentioned sociological reasons....

This idea also has merit. But it is a clue, too, to the fundamentally slanted nature of NT research. A conservative can write what is essentially a nutball commentary like Gundry's Mark -- every bit as slanted as Archarya S, just more erudite -- and have it gain wide acceptance. The NT world is slanted by the fact that so many of its scholars have sworn an oath to accept an HJ (but none on the OT, note. That goes a long way to explain why OT minimalism is a tempest in a teapot).

The kiss of death for a career. I would advise any mythicist who asked that he or she should convert to historicism in order to get a PHD and tenure in the field. This is especially true given the political attacks on US science and scholarship that are likely to come in the next few years of the Bush Administration, and in the following Republican administrations, and the likely reductions in grant funding and other support.

Vorkosigan

Celsus

Perhaps it's because of some other reason? Perhaps if the minimalists migrated to NT scholarship, they'd be horrified by what they saw?
Most of the NT scholars I read a long time ago (Crossan, Borg, Ludemann, Vermes, Mack, Ellegard, Eisenman, Wright, etc.) are all reading the NT with what strikes me as tenuous methodological principles on either side of the debate. They need to read more of the anti-representationalists where they'll find that their attempts to uncover historical "facts" or even authentic sayings in the NT is futile. Robert Price is, in fact, one of those who comes very close to this, but he seems to back off at the wrong moments (perhaps because he is, after all, a child of modernity?)

The "truth" of 1st century Palestine is forever lost to us, and the best we can do is reconstruct it in ways that make ourselves intrude upon the text. Thus I don't touch NT scholarship with a bargepole anymore, because I think the question uninteresting (sorry), and its project hopeless (insert bigger apology here). Let me explain this hopelessness I see:

While we may be able to critique the sources to such an extent that nothing much seems to remain, the gulf between that and stating that Jesus did not exist is unbridgeable. It's very similar to talking about David. Did the Biblical David exist? Without a doubt, no. Did a David as tribal-chieftain/homicidal maniac (well, Halpern's David) exist? Possibly, but it must recognise its interpretation as speculative, based entirely on texts whose primary nature we still haven't sorted out. Did a historical figure named Dwd who once ruled some portion of the land we call Israel exist? Probably, but we can't rule out personification of something else entirely.

When someone speaks of the mythical David in minimalist terms, it is not to say that no such person existed, but that nearly everything we (think we) know about this person is mythical, and sorting out that which is not is pointless (It helps of course, that the multiple meanings of "mythical" get their opponents' knickers in twists so that they completely miss the mark in their attempted rebuttals).

Does the same occur with Jesus? I think the answer is "probably, though not to the same extent as David", and the sorting out of that which is not I still see as pointless. The broader we set the question on what we mean by "Jesus", the less falsifiable (in Popper's terms) the proposition becomes, such that ruling out a historical Jesus is an equally difficult matter. Basing "proof" on hard empirical standards, as Bede has pointed out before (though I believe I mean it in quite a different way), is to defeat the historical enterprise, inasmuch as history requires narratives through emplotment in order to have any meaning.

Empirical hardliners, then, are fooling themselves if they think that their histories are special and free of a necessary narrative (and theoretical) structure. For instance, Paul's failure to mention Jesus in physical terms (granting the argument that he does in fact fail to mention him for now) is, on its own, meaningless. Doherty thus has to attribute a meaning (theory) to that lack of mention--that is, that Paul knew no physical Jesus. But where are the rigorous empirical proofs that this is in fact the reason Paul did fail to mention that? Thus there is a double standard in insisting on hard "evidence" for extra-biblical mention, when in fact they are all theory-laden, as disputes over the Testimonium Flavianum demonstrates well.

Simply put, discerning the "truth" of a historical proposition is, for a minimalist, the wrong question to be asking. We understand that we are constructing histories in order to organise the information we have at hand, and perhaps to give us an insight into how the writers might have thought. Getting at the realia of the past is impossible. However, a number of minimalists can't resist the temptation to produce alternate realities to combat mainstream ideas of the past, seeing as part of the rhetorical process is to provide an alternative in order to lessen the need to hang on to the older theory (though in fact, total abandonment of the patriarchs, for instance, seems to have occured without the need for a substitute).
I hope the above gives an alternate reason why I think some minimalists won't find it terribly interesting. It's not the disconnect with evidence, but it's because the whole question being asked is wrong.

Joel

Bede

This would not be the case in much of Europe though. There are a very few colleges with strong enough religious affiliations to cause a worry, but not many at all. Can't comment on the US situtation, of course.

Also, thanks to Celsus for a fascinating post. It was well worth my invoking his name in the hope of receiving some wise words. Again, I'm not really qualifed to comment but I find Celsus's thoughts convincing. I find Vork's ideas about an oath to believe in the historical Jesus utterly without foundation and very unconvincing as a reason Jesus mythology never caught on. It almost looks like an effort to avoid an uncomfortable truth.

B

Alf

The point to realize here is of course that X does not have to exist in order to become an important force in politics. It is enough that enough voters believe that X exist.

So the argument "Jesus play an important part of modern politics" is therefore no argument to verify that there really was a Jesus. It _is_ an argument which if true (and it is) conclusively proves that many voters in the US believes that Jesus existed (they do).

But that wasn't quite what the argument was trying to show so it isn't quite to the mark, is it?

Alf

Vorkosigan

An excellent post, Celsus. That is pretty much my position as well. But I must disagree with it in at least part; your presentation here strikes me as one that is more oriented to history-as-text. But the OT scholars have a vector that the NT does not: archaeology. So the narrative that scholars construct has constraints that do, in fact, permit them to somehow approach the realia of history, at least in the kind of time frames that the OT presents. The Jesus story is, barring some spectacular discovery, too short for archaeology to draw a bead on.

Celsus, first of all Doherty does present a positive case for his position. Second, you cannot on hand argue that

• "Empirical hardliners, then, are fooling themselves if they think that their histories are special and free of a necessary narrative (and theoretical) structure."

and then turn around and demand a "rigorous empirical proof" of Doherty's position. Doherty is in fact closer to your position on the minimalists; he invites you to read the same texts in a different light, and then judge whether that light is more illuminating then reading them through the prism of later Orthodox interpretation. Doherty is very conscious that history-is-narrative, and that is in fact the lesson he teaches: that he who controls the narrative controls the history. What he does is ask you to give up the control that narrative has over the way you read the history. Lots of people miss that point, and instead focus on the argument from silence, which is sexy and exciting, but really takes effect only if you learn to read the narrative from another perspective.

Vorkosigan

Celsus

What round is this? Who's keeping score?
Yes, it is correct that history is a text, and not much more. You know I'm an antirealist, so what does that mean? Archaeology can provide confirmation for single truth-propositions (referential statements, e.g. Jerusalem fell in 587/6 BCE, etc.) which set up boundary conditions, but cannot give any sort of narrative structure to the history of the period. How does the realia get to presentation without a narrative? Even if we put all the relevant truth propositions together, we still would not have a history (Alun Munslow compared this to trying to write the history of pop music by amassing a collection of autographs). Of course, for the NT, the problems are greater, though it seems that our Ted Hoffman is pursuing an admirable path in examining the archaeology instead.

You and Bede can tag team me at Ebla over my antirealist ideas if you like (this December I'll be much more free), but we may stray too far afield here.
I agree that Doherty has a positive case, but your response is not quite the point. For me, it is that there is a theoretical structure to his work that cannot be solved through empirical appeal alone, and I used one particular example in his argument to show the problems. I am not demanding rigorous empirical proof, merely pointing out that his historical construction requires a theory (as does all historical work) that explains the silence, since silence on its own is meaningless (and his website does go into a lot of effort to try to show this silence as something we should worry about--filling the gap with his idea of Jesus' non-existence). If he were not such an empiricist, I believe he would make a lot less of a deal about the sound of silence. Thus the double standard: while making a great deal about the lack of evidence, he must also acknowledge that historians do not live by evidence alone.

After all his hard work, it comes down to a single-truth proposition that does not rely on evidence at all (since it is a negative statement), but on metonymy--what the silence means, and what caused it. As I said, the evidence might be there to refute his case or it might not, but it all rests in theoretical disputes such that the apparent lack of evidence comes down to standards of admissability (again, a non-empirical debate).
It's not merely about control (though that's certainly a factor). It's about whether any narrative can actually represent the past. The anti-representationalist/anti-realist position which draws on Rorty, Lyotard, Derrida, and other postmodern piffle is that language (narrative and ascribed meaning) and reality cannot correspond beyond the single referential statement, and hence correspondence theories of truth are dead before they even begin. Reading and rereading the texts does not help us to see the realia of the past. We have to impose our interpretations on it, finally.
And accept his narrative? It is merely replacing one with another.

Joel

Intelligitimate

Why not? Criticism of the OT came much earlier, and guys like Wellhausen were critical of the OT while they treated the NT with kid gloves (the contrast is staggering, especially when you also look at his work on Islam). This isn't the product of some historical accident.

It seems quite obvious to me that the NT is more off-limits than the OT, in the past and now, and that this is reflected in NT scholarship.

Edit: For that matter, just look at the scholarly work on Islam and the Koran! You don't even need to be part of the religion to be very uncritical of it.

Ted Hoffman

Doherty's Jesus puzzle was followed by some slack period as the NT scholars buried their heads deep into the sand and pretended his work does not exist. Plus he got distracted with personal issues (as we all are sometimes), and he works for a living - he doesn't live off the few books he has published - so he could not dedicate his time fully to fortifying his largely ignored theory.

The emerging medievalism appears to him to be a bigger demon to slay than HJ, so he has shifted his priorities.

His coming to JM list is just going to be an appearance to discuss general issues - wider in scope, not the nitty-gritty of the issues involved.

The discussion is very interesting. There is one thing Vork mentioned that I would like to underscore:
This is very important.

Of course, right now, the dominant theory is the HJ one - that doesn't mean its correct. Doherty has played his part, just like Couchoud played his: opened up minds - gave some people a glimpse of the possibility.

Its up to those that believe the theory has any merit to make a strong case for it.

And thats exactly what will be done.