Metacrock

I guess there's one area of sympathy there. I can relate to that.

Metacrock

ah! thanks :wave: :thumbs:

Metacrock

Well, yea it's true that the further you get from the fragment itself, the higher the probablity that there could be other readings invovled. But the idea that the rest of the Gospel around the fragment would very wildly from what we have is not very likely, eventhough its likelihood increases the more material you consider. This is because the process of copying means that people are trying to presurve the actual wording, word for word. So the odds that the entire product would be totally different are not that great.

the idea that it could be a frament from a work that John used, and thus pre-existed John are actually smaller than the probability that its part of a copy of John. Think about it, if you were walking around in the desert and you saw a pot shard, you go over to dig it out of the dust and examine it. What are the odds that it would be the missing peice to the rosessta stone and is going to change the whole of our understanding of the ancient world? Or that its just a part of pot and is relatively recent? The odds are in favor of the less amaing find. So to find an original source that John used would be much more amazing than just finding a price of the Gospel of John.


Maybe a better example. You find a fragment of an ancient text, a Gospel.What are the odds that the fragment is a copy of a copy of a copy, or that it is part of the original autograph? The odds that it would be part of the autograph, the very first actual copy that John wrote, are much lower than the odds that its just part of a copy. The odds that any find is remarkable and earth shattering are always lower than the odds that its just a moderately interesting find. right?

Metacrock

I think you would be amazed at how scientific and reliable textual criticism is.It's not exact of course, and it's all about probability. So the odds of getting the date right are always within a span of leay way. But over all, the text is generally proven to be very reliable. We can be assured that what we have the modern NT is Pretty much what was written or began to circulate for each book, given the final phase of he redaction process. Of course that doesn't mean that the very first writting of any Gospel wouldn't be very different than what we see today.

The first Gospels were probably just lists of sayings, so that would be very different from the final products,Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Although the content of the saying have a high probablity of being fairly accurate.

The more MS we have the greater our ability to check the work. Since there are thousands of MS for the NT, the science has been refined to a great degree. The ability to trace readings is excellent. Of course it's all probablity so there is a margin of error for any particular reading.

it's a facinating study. I talk about this source a lot, and use it to document many of my arguments, but I can't overestimate how good it is. Ancient Christian Gospels by Helmutt Koester. (circa 1990 or so). It' superb not only for understanding the development of the Gospel genre and the interdepedence of the four canonicals, but especially for gaining an understanding of what textual criticis do.

lpetrich

I suggest that someone step forward and do for Earl Doherty what Thomas Huxley had done for Charles Darwin -- defend ED's Jesus-myth thesis in debates. I'm not sure that I'd do a very good job on that; is there anyone else here willing to try?

Intelligitimate

Ted Hoffman is Doherty's local bulldog.

Toto

Nomad / Brian started off by ignoring the basis of Doherty's thesis and giving some tired apologetic arguments based on the criteria of embarrassment that have been refuted here time and time again. It was a case of two people talking past each other, but I would not say that Nomad won.

There is no cult following for Doherty. Cults are based around charismatic personalities, and Doherty has kept his personality out of the picture.

People who admire Doherty appreciate his ideas and the way he has opened new ways of thinking about early Christianity. If you play the scholarship game, you appreciate new ideas and new ways of looking at things, even if you end up disagreeing with them.

Since you do not seem to understand what he writes, I don't know how you can say that his methods are not honest. He has no special methods - he reads the texts and tries to interpret them, which is what every literary critic does. He reads standard liberal scholarship. There are Biblical scholars who go off the deep end with idiosyncratic interpretations, but he is not one of them. Unlike the real radicals in the field, he does believe in a historical Paul.

And I question whether you understand the issue when you say that people who say there was some guy named Jesus whose story is lost don't actually buy his theory. There were many guys named Jesus a/k/a Joshua in that period. There was probably some guy behind the 'Q' sayings, whether there was a 'Q' or just sayings that Matthew picked up. But Doherty's thesis is that Christianity did not start around any of these Jesus's - it started with the cosmic Christ.

Rick Sumner

Whether the arguments from embarassment have been "refuted" or not is still largely a matter of debate, it's quite probably still the argument of choice for most of those opposed to Doherty. Perhaps you declare victory too soon.

Doherty was quite unprepared for that argument, and he shouldn't have been.

Whether it had been discussed on this board "time and time again" is quite irrelevant to the debate itself--Brian was, after all, debating Doherty, who does not participate here.

One must wonder if you understand what an apologetic/apologist is. You misuse the term almost every time you employ it, which is quite frequently.

That, again, is a matter of opinion.

This is false. Cults frequently form around charismatic people, it is in no way integral to one. Besides which, he was rather clearly using the term idiomatically, as was I above.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

He was not unprepared so much as he was contemptuous of the argument. As I said, there were two people talking past each other.

Perhaps I should have said that even on this board, the arguments have been ripped to shreds by amateurs such as ourselves. Someone who follows the scholarship such as Doherty would have been appalled at having to stoop to that level.

Please explain.

Meta is clearly using the term as an insult, to denigrate the conclusions of his opponents without having to produce any evidence against them.

Cult is not a well defined term, but most people who use the term emphasize the destructive power of one personality.

One definition

There is no basis for describing people who have read Doherty's work as a cult. There is no organization, no shared rituals, no common beliefs except that there may not have been a human savior at the beginning of Christianity.

Rick Sumner

This is, once again, a matter of opinion.

Again, whether or not the arguments have been "ripped to shreds" remains up for debate. And one must wonder if you've been "following scholarship" at all if you see addressing embarassment as "stooping." It's a pretty standard criteria, at this point, right or wrong.

Apologetic arguments are faith-based. Trafford's arguments in that debate weren't. You consistently use "apologist" or "apologetic" as a descriptive term for any argument that tends to be more conservative, usually with a false dichotomy between "apologists" and "non-apologists." You managed to skip the dichotomy this time. What it really boils down to is that you consistently use apologist as a thinly guised ad hominem, as though anyone holding position X does so based on apologetic, rather than reason.

This is no more appropriate for any effort at serious discussion than it would be if I replaced "mythicist" with "fringe theorist." The distinction between this latter example and yours is that mythicism, like it or not, is a fringe theory, while conservative conclusions are not apologetics. Thus your consistent employ of "apologist" is even less appropriate than the example I provided.

www.dictionary.com begs to differ. And, again, that's rather obviously not how he was using the term.

Cult like is, in this instance, idiomatic. There are certainly people who adhere to Doherty's argument with all the tenacity and reason of a Fundamentalist. Feel free to check out the Jesus-Mysteries list some time, to see that in action.

Regards,
Rick Sumner