Freethought & Rationalism Archive

dog-on · 06-11-2006, 08:51 AM

Jesus was born in Nazareth during the reign of Herod the Great, his mother was Mary, and he had a human father who was probably not Joseph. He was baptized by John the Baptist, who was later beheaded by Herod Antipas.

This is based on what? The Gospels? I would term this as weak scholarship. The rest of the quotation suffers from the same problem.

Doherty deals with the issues as they lie. He does not start his argument with a definitive statement that JC must or must not be a historical person. The Seminar, on the other hand, must have kept the actual historicity of Jesus of Nazareth "off limits" in order to come to a conclusion like the one posted above.

Once again, this is not good history, just another apologetic. Of course, the resurrection etc. can be left to faith, as that is pretty much what the church says anyway, (just maybe not highly advertised).

robto · 06-11-2006, 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

I am just a rank amateur but, I would very much like to see an attempted rebuttal of Doherty's arguments by the "pros". Somehow, I think they will come up short and will be forced to nit-pick items which, in the end, will not seriously damage Doherty's overall case.

We'll just have to wait and see...

I agree with you on that. The closest I've seen to a rebuttal of MJ position is in Theissen & Merz, The Historical Jesus. Anyone else have any references for HJ from the pros?

EarlDoherty · 06-12-2006, 04:14 PM

You may be interested in this concluding section from my website rebuttal to Mike Licona’s review of “The God Who Wasn’t There”, which included an extended critique of myself and Jesus Mythicism. It addresses the question of mainstream scholarly claims that the latter has been decisively disproven. I’ve called that a “fantasy” (and a few other things). I will be enlarging on the below in an extended article which I hope will form an Appendix in my projected second edition of The Jesus Puzzle.

Earl Doherty

Quote:

Denying the Jesus Myth Theory

If there is one "argument" that apologists, especially amateur ones, use the most, it is the "appeal to authority." The vast majority of New Testament scholars of every sort accept that Jesus existed, and thus it's a slam dunk. I don't need to detail why that majority exists; it is simply a given in the field, a field populated by believing Christians and those who have invested their careers in the existence of such a man. (I am not saying that such people are incapable of logical thought, simply that they have an inbuilt bias which can make them unwilling to exercise it.) But the argument goes further than that, and Licona appeals to this too:

While professional scholars have paid no attention to Doherty's work, they have certainly responded to the hypothesis he proposes, namely, the idea that Jesus never existed.

And he gives us examples of that "response" (I'll deal with Michael Grant separately):

- Gunther Bornkamm: "to doubt the historical existence of Jesus at all...was reserved for an unrestrained, tendentious criticism of modern times into which it is not worth while to enter here."
- Rudolf Bultmann: "Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement."
- Paul Maier: "The total evidence [for the existence of Jesus] is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by "the village atheist," bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation."
- Michael Martin: "Wells' thesis is controversial and not widely accepted."
- Robert van Voorst: "Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their [i.e., Jesus mythers] arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely."

The problem is, such responses are not critiques. They are little more than declarations of faith, offended at the very idea being proposed. Maier is practically foaming at the mouth. (Ironically—but revealingly— the one atheist in the bunch, Michael Martin, is the only one to make an unemotional, non-judgmental comment.) They in no way address the arguments of the mythicist case. This is not scholarship, or an appeal to scholarship, since none is presented. It is certainly not neutrality or the scientific approach to a thesis, and any spirit of inquiry is lamentably lacking. With one or two exceptions, the few scholars over the years who have actually produced a critique (it is usually a chapter in a book, if that), do not deal with the subject in any depth; they show little understanding of the extent and multi-faceted nature of the mythicist case, and they all regularly recycle the same old weak and timeworn objections that mythicists have long answered. As well, a good number of these critiques are quite dated, written before the recent advances in New Testament scholarship at the mainstream level: insights into the nature and content of Q, the pervasive extent of midrash found in the Gospels, revelations provided by the Nag Hammadi documents and new studies of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha. The mythicist case over the last ten years (including from myself and Robert Price, both "amateur" and "professional" if you like) has kept pace with these developments and discoveries, but there has been no fresh attempt by historicists to defend against it. The allegation that scholarship has dealt adequately with the Jesus Myth theory, much less that it has demolished it, is poppycock. The claim revolves like an echo around a circular chamber. No one knows who started it or whether it has any substance. Consider Michael Grant, whom Licona quotes:

"To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels

This quote is from Grant's Appendix (p.200), wherein he devotes two paragraphs to the question. He wrote in 1977, which is not only before those advances in New Testament scholarship I spoke of, but before a few of those rebuttals modern defenders of Jesus like to point to for their claim of demolition. On the latter, I quote from my Postscript article:

Something like The Evidence for Jesus (1986) by R. T. France, Vice-Principal of the London Bible College, hardly fills that role, and is devoted to illuminating the figure of an historical Jesus—a largely orthodox one—not just to defending his existence. As a defense it is quite ineffectual, taking no account (since it largely predates them) of recent insights into Q, the pervasive midrashic content of Mark, the modeling of Mark's passion story on the traditional tale of the Suffering Righteous One, and much else that has given ongoing support to the no-Jesus theory. Graham Stanton, in his The Gospels and Jesus (1989), devotes a chapter to addressing the views of mythicist G. A. Wells. Stanton's 'case' against Wells' position is little more than a citation of Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny, and an appeal to the authority that comes with the majority's acceptance "that Jesus existed." Ian Wilson, in Jesus: The Evidence (1984), does much the same, first acknowledging the uncertainty and contradiction in the early evidence, and then having recourse to the same trio of ancient 'witnesses.' All of them raise points that show little or no understanding for the depth and sophistication of the mythicist position....

Getting back to Michael Grant, on what basis then does he make his 1977 comment, "it has again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rate scholars"? Who are these scholars? He doesn't say. In fact, he is merely quoting the opinions of others here who predate himself by one or two decades. But we have to go back into the early 20th century to find anyone who could possibly fill the bill, the most extensive being Maurice Goguel who defended the existence of Jesus in Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History (1926). In some cases Goguel's arguments are reasonably competent, but always answerable; in other cases, they can be naive in the extreme, arguing from assumptions that are locked into the historicist paradigm, making his methodology circular; I doubt that the mythicist case even in that period could not have pointed such weaknesses out. To think that Goguel in any way serves to derail modern Jesus mythicism is laughable. Others before Grant's time include authors who wrote in 1912, 1914 and 1938, hardly giants in their field or playing with a modern deck. Thus, Grant is simply blowing smoke in repeating the claim of "time and time again" and "annihilation." Where is the "abundant evidence to the contrary"? Doctored passages in Josephus (whom, by the way, Goguel regards as unreliable, like most scholars of his era)? Second century Tacitus? Or perhaps the great wealth of unmistakeable reference to an historical Jesus in the non-Gospel documents. And yet these are precisely the sort of comments that are passed around like holy scripture, that form a kind of "appeal to authority" in themselves. They are based on a chimera. The only way modern mainstream scholarship is going to prove its case against the Jesus Myth theory is to present it. It has to stop claiming victory based on nothing, stop burying its head in the sand, stop choking on its own ad hominem insults against a proposition that has been frequently, competently, and honestly presented for well over a century. If it is so deficient, so bizarre, so insane, it ought to be an easy task.

On the other hand, if Mike Licona's critique is any indicator of the proof that can be mounted, it is going to be anything but an easy task.

ChandraRama · 06-12-2006, 05:11 PM

I think, similarly, the Christ cult need to be shown and proven that it existed independent of the Jesus cult. I still think that the Myth side is still lacking in that one.

Doug Shaver · 06-12-2006, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnosis92

I contacted Bart Ehrman, a professioanl historian, and he pointed out that Doherty's Jesus myth theory is not accepted by any professional historian

The following is copied from my Web site, where you will also find an explanation of the context in which the dialogue originally occurred.

Quote:

This Earl Doherty you are quoting is a self-admitted amateur.

How is this relevant to his argument?

Quote:

It is relevant to whether anyone should trust his methodology.

His methodology, as far as I can tell, is the same as that followed by people entitled to put PhD and other letters after their names.

Quote:

The people he is disagreeing with are mostly experts.

If the experts have a better argument than he does, they can present it. Until they do, their credentials don't mean squat.

Quote:

You seem to believe everything he says.

I don’t. I'm suspending judgment on lots of the details because I lack the background knowledge I would need to make a good judgment. But I think I know enough to have an informed opinion on his core argument, and it looks pretty cogent to me.

Quote:

What about the theories of the scholarly majority who disagree with him?

The theories of those who disagree with him have been around for two millennia. If there is a logical argument for historicity that I have not heard yet, I shall be more than happy to look it over.

Quote:

Has Doherty’s work been peer-reviewed?

There has been plenty of time, and more, for credentialed experts to have taken their shots at it. If Doherty were just blowing smoke, we would have heard some convincing rebuttals by now.

There are people with adequate credentials in New Testament studies who believe that anyone who takes Doherty seriously is going to burn in hell. Those people are not going to stay publicly silent if they can prove, or think they can prove, that his work is faulty. Maybe Christians with relevant academic credentials don't have any Web sites of their own. But evangelical Christians who do have Web sites would know about their evidence, and they would put the rebuttal arguments on their sites. If they have, though, I haven't found those sites, and I have looked hard for them.

Quote:

But he didn't publish his work academically. Why would the academic community pay any attention?

Why this fixation on academic commentary? The evidence he presents either proves his case or it doesn’t, and I think I'm smart enough to figure out which is the case without a bunch of professors holding my hand. If, by virtue of their training, they have some insights that would help me, then I'll welcome their comments if they wish to make them. If they cannot be bothered, then I'm on my own. And maybe I'll be wrong. I can live with that.

Quote:

Plenty of opposing viewpoints have been published in the mainstream press.

Yes, there are plenty of people saying Doherty is wrong. What they are not doing is presenting a cogent refutation of his case. They are not presenting contradictory evidence that he ignored. They are not showing where his arguments are fallacious.

Quote:

Are all those books contradicting him just irrelevant?

The number of those books is irrelevant, yes. A thousand books saying something do not make it so.

What would be relevant would be a single book, or a single Web site, or a single document of any other kind, presenting evidence ignored by Doherty that contradicts his theory, or demonstrating a logical error in the reasoning by which he infers his theory from the evidence that he does present.

gstafleu · 06-12-2006, 06:34 PM

Excellent post Doug. However:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

The theories of those who disagree with him have been around for two millennia.

That is true of the apologists, but not of everyone. E.g. the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar, as I quoted above, are younger than that. And the interesting thing is that, going by these conclusions, the Jesus Seminar largely agrees with Doherty: the "standard" Jesus is a myth. They just don't say so explicitly, but the conclusion is unavoidable. So we have the situation that they avoid the word "myth" even though it would be appropriate. They avoid it because they keep open the possibility of some historical person at the base of the myth, sparse though the evidence for this person is.

What I don't know, maybe you do, is how representative the Jesus Seminar is of modern NT studies or what is sometimes I think called "higher criticism." Are most NT studies still stuck with the idea that Jesus was the son of god and died for our sins, or is that just the apologists? The Jesus seminar seems to be past that, but are they still the exception?

jjramsey · 06-12-2006, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Why this fixation on academic commentary?

Because the peer review of the academic community is supposed to filter out at least the obvious junk and keep the signal-to-noise ratio at a decent level.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

The evidence he presents either proves his case or it doesn’t

The problem is that an expert could find flaws in presented evidence that a layman wouldn't even know to look for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

What would be relevant would be a single book, or a single Web site, or a single document of any other kind, presenting evidence ignored by Doherty that contradicts his theory, or demonstrating a logical error in the reasoning by which he infers his theory from the evidence that he does present.

Try lurking on the Crosstalk2 discussion list and search for "Doherty".

Toto · 06-12-2006, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

...
The problem is that an expert could find flaws in presented evidence that a layman wouldn't even know to look for.

Richard Carrier went through Doherty's work as a professional historian. That's much more peer review than most New Testament scholarship gets.

gnosis92 · 06-12-2006, 07:04 PM

Dear Mr. Doherty,

have you ever considered submitting your work to a peer-reviewed journal in history?

i am curious as to whether you think john the baptist is a historical figure and if so, why early christians would prefer a non-existent christ to a historical john the baptist.

jjramsey · 06-12-2006, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Richard Carrier went through Doherty's work as a professional historian. That's much more peer review than most New Testament scholarship gets.

That's all well and good, but Carrier is one person. The point of peer review is so that a work can be reviewed by several peers, ideally so that the biases of the individual peers are pitted against each other and effectively "cancel" out.

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06-11-2006, 08:51 AM	#11
dog-on Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 3,397	Jesus was born in Nazareth during the reign of Herod the Great, his mother was Mary, and he had a human father who was probably not Joseph. He was baptized by John the Baptist, who was later beheaded by Herod Antipas. This is based on what? The Gospels? I would term this as weak scholarship. The rest of the quotation suffers from the same problem. Doherty deals with the issues as they lie. He does not start his argument with a definitive statement that JC must or must not be a historical person. The Seminar, on the other hand, must have kept the actual historicity of Jesus of Nazareth "off limits" in order to come to a conclusion like the one posted above. Once again, this is not good history, just another apologetic. Of course, the resurrection etc. can be left to faith, as that is pretty much what the church says anyway, (just maybe not highly advertised).

06-12-2006, 05:11 PM	#14
ChandraRama Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: US Posts: 107	I think, similarly, the Christ cult need to be shown and proven that it existed independent of the Jesus cult. I still think that the Myth side is still lacking in that one.

06-12-2006, 07:04 PM	#19
gnosis92 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: usa Posts: 3,103	Dear Mr. Doherty, have you ever considered submitting your work to a peer-reviewed journal in history? i am curious as to whether you think john the baptist is a historical figure and if so, why early christians would prefer a non-existent christ to a historical john the baptist.

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