Chili

Except that he was 0% humsn or he would have been a sinner like the rest of them.

spin

That's pretty deviously said. It would be like me saying, "I don't think they all christians are lying, but can anyone really suppose that they are all sincere either?"

What Roger Pearse said was a generic statement whose effect is one of insult. You, Petergdi, seem merely to be hedging here, with your feet in two camps, not really wanting to back away from the original insulting Pearse remark but trying to be diplomatic and as reasonable as possible in the hindquarter covering up.


spin

Johnny Skeptic

Guessing who is an isn't honest is not productive. A much better approach is to evaluate the evidence for and against the mythical Jesus theory.

Petergdi

Not devious. I was replying to the idea that one might think they were all insincere

And you would be right. I've been misled by some myself. That's why we have to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

This forum has a rule which essentially prevents my stating directly who I think falls in each category. I am not without ideas. The world isn't as simple as "person x is absolutely straightforward in all circumstances" and "person y will say alsolutely anything which helps his side." The world contains few if any instances of person x or person y. People do give clues about themselves. I know that you, Spin, care passionately about linguistics and you will be particularly straightforward about matters of linguistics. Your passion is manifest and to that extent I know something about you, although I know very little else.

I don't know for certain what Roger meant, but I imagine that the contrast between "shed light on the origins of Christianity" and the requirement to support "the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist" had much to do with it. If you want an inquiry into something, you should have a free inquiry. Having a predetermined conclusion isn't going to get you anywhere good even in the unlikely event that it should turn out that Jesus really didn't exist.

If there is a "Jesus never existed" account of Christian origins which you think can stand serious critique then do your best to see that it gets serious critique. If there isn't one, then why look specifically for an account of Christian origins which involves the nonexistance of Jesus?

Peter.

Johnny Skeptic

What do you mean by "withstand serious critique"? Whatever you mean, Earl Doherty has spent a lot of time researching the mythical Jesus theory. Do you believe that any of his writings, including his latest book, can withstand serious critique?

EarlDoherty

I’m glad to hear that you “finally” got the book. Others have reached Australia in a shorter time, so I don’t know what produced the delay on yours.

But I am once again dismayed by how you intimate you are going to approach your review of it. “Once you check my sources”? Is that all there is to it? What about arguments? What about interpretation of evidence? What about proposals of a different reading of the texts from those sources (whether ancient or modern)? Are you going to be open to considering the overall presentation of the case, how one aspect supports another or the effect of cumulative options which all point in a single direction? And so on.

For example, I spend the good part of an entire chapter analyzing 1 Corinthians 15:35-49 to demonstrate that Paul does not, and cannot, have in mind that there ever was a “physical body” on earth for his Jesus. Is that dependent on “sources”? Of course not. The mythicist case, by definition, thinks outside the box. In an Appendix on Minucius Felix I demonstrate how the passage containing Felix’s response to the ‘crucified man’ accusation is structured in such a way as to guarantee that he ranks worship of the crucified man in the same negative and dismissive vein as he does the other atrocities Christians are accused of. There are no “sources” involved there other than the text itself. Or my clear demonstration (I spend several pages on it) that Hebrews 8:4 tells us that Jesus had never been on earth. Are you going to be responding to (and countering) things like that, Don?

Just trying to keep you honest, preferably ahead of time, so that we don’t all have our time wasted by a review that fails to truly grapple with the meat of the mythicist position.

As for the ridiculous accusation that all or most mythicists do not believe what they write, that is beneath contempt, as are those putting it forward. I didn’t spend almost the last three decades of my life fashioning a deliberate lie just to sell a few books. If that’s what I wanted to do, I’d have become a TV evangelist or a Tim LaHaye or a Creation Scientist. There are plenty of dupes around to fall for the Rapture, but it’s much more satisfying to convince a critical thinker that the case for a mythical Jesus is cogent and demonstrable.

And if that’s all people like Roger have to fall back on, it’s pretty pathetic.

Earl Doherty

Petergdi

If I am proposing a novel interpretation of a passage from Paul, I would be anxious to receive criticism from people well versed in Greek grammar and Paul's use of language. If I were making claims about ancient philosophy, I would make sure my work was seen and commented on by specialists in that area.

As far as Earl Dohery is concerned, you can read the message from him below yours. He seems to me to be insisting that GDon should comment on parts outside the areas in which GDon is competent to do so. I think this is ridiculous.

Peter.

GakuseiDon

Hi Earl. Probably a mail strike here in Oz just before Christmas didn't help.

I was thinking that looking at the arguments AFTER verifying your sources is the better way to go. Validating your primary sources (as mandatory) and secondary sources (where possible) will be an important part of this. (I'm thinking back to your use of Barrett, etc, here).

1. I plan to review your book with an open-mind. There will be some areas that I personally am not competent to review (e.g. on questions relating to language), but I will make that clear, and others may be able to help.
2. If I still come out against your theory, no-one will really care.
3. Assuming (2), few people will investigate whether my points are accurate or not, except probably for you.
4. Few people will really look into what you write, either. (If anyone does ask about your book, Toto will just give a link to Carrier's old review.)

But it doesn't matter, I'm doing this for me. I love the topic of early mythology, and your theory does provide a fresh perspective on what people believed back then. I'm just really excited to be going through your book!

This will be my last post on this board for a few months.

Johnny Skeptic

Earl Doherty is happy to receive criticism from anyone, including from you if you wish?

Would you say that Dr. Richard Carrier is qualified to critique Earl's writings? How about Dr. Robert Price?

It was once novel to believe that the earth was round.

Are you aware that under many other circumstances, many of your beliefs would probably be much different than they are now? What I am suggesting is that chance and circumstance have a lot to do with what people believe, not an honest search for the truth. Surely some early American Indians honestly wanted to know the truth, but obviously they did not have any way of knowing about the specific identity of the God of the Bible, and his about specific agenda.

spin

It didn't need to be said at all. In being said it was drawing attention to itself.

The truth value is not important. I see no value in making these sorts of statements at all. They don't help anyone. Why we are talking about people and not biblical literature and history I am at a loss to understand. Someone mentions a prize being offered for an essay in the field of Jesus study related to Jesus not having existed should not have stimulated the offensive response that Roger gave.

I was questioning the morality of you having made your hedging statement in the first place.

History often considers the what-if factor or the minority analysis. People have been analysing a proposition that seems outlandish to me, that our chronology of Egypt is totally screwed up. I think it has no basis, but it should be allowed to be pursued. Who knows what will come out of it? There could be useful side issues that couldn't have been generated without it. It may even turn out to be correct, despite the fact that I put it in the ball park of a jumbo crashing on my front lawn.

Firstly having looked at all the known sources of the matter from the first few hundred years, I see no evidence for either position. I think given the lack of evidence both position are looney, but the sad thing is, given the vast commitment for the historicity belief, there is too much emotional support to maintain the vacuous view, so usually by the extreme weight of the stupidity, I do in fact provide a position which I don't hold but which explains all the evidence more simply than the historicity view.

It requires the realization that christianity has had hegemony over the christian world's artefacts including classical artefacts for about 1700 years. The texts that we have show the marks of that hegemony. Tacitus has been touched by christian scholars where there is now a passage about Jesus. The earliest manuscript shows that a letter has been changed in the spelling of christian. If a letter has been changed, what else? We know Josephus has been changed by christians. We know that Julian's works have been tampered with by christians. We know that the gospels have been tampered with by christians. We now currently accept seven letters by Paul and the rest are not, but we don't know for sure how much of those seven letters are by Paul.

However, Paul clearly states that he received his knowledge about his gospel through a revelation from god about Jesus. His gospel was not the work of humans nor was it taught to him. It is through Paul, who never met Jesus that christianity reached the pagan world. No other tradition has survived, if they ever existed. I see no reason not to trust Paul in his statement about his gospel, ie that he didn't get it from other people.

It is sufficient that Paul believed his newly cooked-up brand of messianism for christianity to have come into the world. Obviously Paul got all his ideas in one form or another by osmosis, but that is irrelevant to his claiming that his gospel came directly from his vision. Of course, Jesus had to be real to Paul, though he'd never met a Jesus of this type, for if he hadn't been real, how could he have sacrificed himself for the benefit of those who believe in him?

One doesn't need a real Jesus for there to be a Pauline christianity. In fact, Occam's Razor would exclude the option.

This to me is not mythicism. It is simply faulty logic, if it did happen that way, as is the case of Ebion.


spin