Ted Hoffman

Sorry folks, I am sorry we have to revisit this. I have my piece to say too. After all, I am the open mythicist here who is now accused of being a member of a cult .
Rick : Name one mainstream scholar who Doherty works closesly with. Let's use a standard measuring stick: Name one scholar who has published in the JBL in the last ten years who Doherty "works closely with."
Toto : I provided you with a link to a course syllabus from a mainstream academic institution that references Doherty. Does this not show that he does not fit your definition of fringe theorist? (by the way Toto, I missed this - could you PM me the link?)
Rick : Barbara Thiering has published in more peer-reviewed journals than any advocate of the Jesus-Myth. Does that mean she isn't a fringe theorist?
Ted: I note the shifted goalposts. Doherty works closely with Robert Price. Is JBL the only respectable journal that exists? How is that a criteria for measuring scholarship?
Rick: I am convinced that it's [the question of the existence of a HJ] ultimately a subjective conclusion.
Ted: I know you have made this claim severally. But it is not consistent with your overall behaviour in the past. Your raw contempt for Jesus mythicism is evident in many threads. For example, in the temple ruckus thread, you kept retorting out of the blue, "I will not debate mythicism". Vork had to assure you repeatedly and explain to you slowly, as one would assure a kicking yelling child who is afraid of the dark, that the thread was not about Jesus mythicism. At Ebla, you became hysterical whenever I made arguments challenging the historicity of characters in the NT. You reported to the mods and acted aggravated, like my very presence violated some unwritten contract you had with them. Of course, on cue, Bede deleted my posts as Vinnie cheered him on.
You have also repeated many times that you dont want to debate Jesus Mythicism. Meaning conversely, that you can only engage in discussions that are underpinned with a HJ. As I asked when I was leaving Ebla - you should ask yourself how that is helping you.
Personally, I accept you as you are and I don't care whether you have weaseled out of the ambiguous statements you have made in this thread about Jesus myth being a fringe theory. I wouldn't like you any better if you took an agnostic position on the matter. I think you are very knowledgeable and make very useful contributions to discussions here. Whether you choose to see mythers as crackpots is your choice.
If spin and Kirby take your mealymouthed convoluted explanations of your statements here as true, that is also their business. But I know many here know exactly where you stand and the attitude you have displayed in the past. As they say, a scholar demonstrates but a politician explicates.
Kirby : That requires that one believes that Rick has contempt for all fringe theories. But one should not assume this.
Ted: His past behaviour challenges the sober, neutral position he is trying to claim for himself now. Take you for example, I have never seen you state you are no longer interested in debating Jesus Myth because its a waste of your time (meaning you have written your conclusions in stone). Or spin here. Or Vork etc etc. I am here for sport and can discuss anything anytime so long as its in English. But to become upset at the mere mention of an idea leaves a lot to be desired for one claiming to have an open mind.
I don't think Toto should have wasted time with the bogus connotations proffered.

For the record, I never sympathized with F & G at any one time. I only ripped apart Bede's review because it was too mouth-watering to resist and was riddled with several gaping weaknesses. Plus, Bede was peddling it as a refutation. Just like Metacrock here. A very sad case indeed.

Toto

the substantive discussion of 2 Peter has been split and moved to here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=98283

If anyone would like any other part of this split, PM me.

maddog

Sorry to be a buttinski, as I am just a bystander, but I must say that I have been anguished at reading these exchanges. It seems that there is some kind of history between some of the parties that is coloring some people's perception of the responses, and therefore leading to a greater level of misunderstanding than I am used to seeing here.

In all fairness, I have read Rick's posts the same way that Peter did. Rick was cautioning against using words that might have a pejorative connotation. "Apologist" at times, in colloquial usage, can be perceived as dismissive and insulting. "Fringe theory" the same. That's exactly what Rick said. Rick did say that some ideas might IN FACT be in such a minority view that they may in reality be regarded as "fringe" and might be so called in such a way as NOT to be an insult (i.e., using a carefully delineated definition), but that such was NOT COMMON and that therefore he WOULD NOT substitute a term like "fringe theorist" for "Jesus myther." Past history seems to have clouded the view of what was actually stated here, in this thread. It would be helpful to lurkers like me if those past things could be left out of this thread, and simply go ahead with the discussion about Doherty and the strengths or weaknesses of what he said in the debate. Please.

Toto

I think that everyone here has said everything they have to say on the matter (if not more) and that we all need to be aware of how perceptions can differ, and how imprecise language can be even when we think we are being clear. And I think this matter has reached a natural end.

lpetrich

What Earl Doherty Said in Los Angeles to Atheists United

After some joking comments about the Bush administration and some of its supporters, he made some comments about visiting L.A., and how back home in Canada, there wasn't an election with lots of religion vs. rationality questions.

Being told that he was going to an "Equinox" banquet, his thoughts turned to the precession of the equinoxes. He noted that the discovery of it by Hipparchus of Rhodes around 128 BCE had helped inspire the new religion of Mithraism, featuring a god that made the equinoxes precess. Continuing from there, he noted that many religions at the time featured savior gods.

Why do we have such a history of “getting it wrong�?, he asked. He turned to Vardis Fisher's "Testament of Man" series of historical novels, which he has much appreciation for; they trace the emergence of humanity's religious and philosophical ideas from the early emergence of humanity to the European Middle Ages. Although religions have often supplied "answers", he noticed that different religions contradict each other. Which is God's final revelation -- the New Testament or the Koran? Is the Universe 6000 years old or billions of years old and cyclic? Etc. And that's not even considering murky doctrines like the Christian Trinity and the dubious (at best) nature of the supposed prophecies of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.

When he asked some Catholic-priest friends about the Trinity, one of them said "We are confronted by mysteries." Which is not exactly the most "rational" answer. Like the creationist who was honest enough to say that his beliefs are because the Bible says so, or someone who said that demons are real because his theological beliefs say so.

The idea of JC's redeeming sacrifice was a carryover of Old Testament notions of blood sacrifice as atonement -- directions for which are mentioned alongside such profound teachings as forbidding the weaving of cloth from more than one kind of material.

He moves on to celebrate rationality as opposed to superstition, and expresses the conviction that this world is all we have, as opposed to "fantasy" realms of reward and punishment after death. But there are lots of interesting possibilities in this world of ours, he notes.

He then goes on to defend his Jesus-myth thesis, noting that awareness of it has been spreading in recent years, mainly over the Internet, and provoking some defensiveness. As he stated it that night, that thesis has four main pillars:

* The epistles of Paul and others are silent about many of the biographical details of JC in the Gospels; it's only in the second century that awareness of these details starts becoming widespread. Paul and others. do not attribute ethical teachings to him, and to them, he's a sort-of god.

About arguments from silence, they can sometimes be valid. Frank Zindler considers a refutation of the claim that the US once exploded a nuclear bomb on a Caribbean island. If there is no evidence of such an explosion to be found, then that would generally be considered convinncing counterevidence.

* Paul and others have a full and integrated picture of their JC, one who is apparent through revelation and scripture.

* The reconstructed "Q" document reveals no messiah or savior figure, and no crucifixion or resurrection -- no biography of JC. It's a sayings collection with an originator later invented for it.

Progressives tend to think of Q, especially its earliest layer, as from the "real" JC -- an enlightened sage who taught a new ethic and who had nothing to do with end-of-the-world nonsense or miracle-working. But that ethic was much like that of the Greek Cynics -- a bunch of pagans!

* The Passion narrative in Mark, expanded on by the writers of the other Gospels, is mostly midrash, an allegory created from pieces of earlier scriptures.

Earl Doherty closed with rebuttals to some of the main counterarguments: Josephus (he thinks that Josephus's two comments about JC are later insertions), references to James, "brother of the Lord" (he thinks that it's an honorific title), and references to "flesh" and "blood" in the epistles (he thinks that they are heavenly flesh and blood).

LP: all in all, no big revelations, mostly restatement of much of his previous work. But I liked his presentation of the precession-Mithraism connection -- those were the days.