No Robots

Thanks, Abe. It's hard to keep up with this guy. It's like the dance of seven veils with him sometimes.

Please don't think I'm accusing Hoffmann of anything like anti-semitism or Holocaust denial. What I mean is that to embrace Christ as thoroughly Jewish means to reject the whole of the last 2,000 years of Gentile distortion about him, something that liberals, even atheist liberals like William Arnal, seem reluctant to consider, judging from their refusal to consider seriously the work of Jewish scholars on the subject of Christ and Christianity.

GakuseiDon

Yes, that's my position also. The Jesus story in Paul and also in the Gospels is a myth, and we simply can't say with confidence anything about what Jesus said or did. But I think that in these debates the issues of (1) whether Jesus was historical and (2) what we can know about him if indeed he was, get confused.

As I've always said, there is very little evidence for a historical Jesus, so that any well-crafted mythicist argument will probably be enough to topple that idea. But the prima-facie evidence in Paul seems to indicate that Paul believed in a historical Jesus who was crucified in Paul's recent past. Even so, there is still very little that we can say about that Jesus, so in a sense he might as well not have existed. All we have left is the myth.

aa5874

But, you left out the most significant event of the Pauline writers, the RESURRECTION of Jesus.

The prima-facie evidence in the Pauline writings seems to indicate that a Pauline writer SAW the RESURRECTED JESUS.

And it was THE RESURRECTED JESUS from whom a Pauline writer received his apostleship and gospel.

It is not really true that "all we have left is the myth", it is ALL we ever had was MYTH.

If you think I am wrong present the history of Jesus if some was ever there.

GakuseiDon

I can't say I know much about Arnal except his work on the Q document, but can you expand on how Arnal appears reluctant to consider Christ as thoroughly Jewish? Or have I misunderstood what you are claiming here?

aa5874

The sayings of Jesus did not need an actual human except one who could lift passages from Hebrew Scripture. For example the Sermon on the Mount have similar words found in Hebrew Scripture.


1. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Isaiah 61.2: To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.....to comfort all that mourn.

2. Blessed are the meek. for they shall inherit the earth.

Psalms 37.11 For the meek shall inherit the earth.

3. Blessed are the merciful. For they shall obtain mercy.

2 Sam. 22.26 With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful...

The entire Jesus character could have been fabricated from Hebrew Scripture, Josephus and current Greek/Roman mythology.

No Robots

What Arnal says is that we cannot know anything for certain about Christ other than that he was Jewish. What Arnal does not do is make clear in what sense Christ was Jewish. This is, in my view, a refusal to come to terms with the full implications of a wholly Jewish Christ, which would involve a wholesale critique of the last 2,000 years of Christology, which few scholars seem willing to engage in.

I completely reject this view, and hold that Jewish scholars like Joseph Klausner (Jesus of Nazareth), Constantin Brunner (Our Christ) and Hyam Gershon Enelow (A Jewish View of Jesus) present thoroughly compelling appraisals of Christ. I regard Brunner's book in particular to be ne plus ultra of scholarship on this subject. In my view, it is either Brunner or mythicism/agnosticism.

ApostateAbe

I think you left out a step. After we disagree on the results, then we review each other's models and exchange criticisms. Only then do we refine our models, and after that we call each other nasty names, which is standard historical procedure.

Though he wouldn't justify his own position using ABE exclusively, Carrier did claim that Doherty's case wins with ABE (Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity). But, he didn't go into the specifics. I am not even sure about what his conception of the SHT (standard historicist theory) may be. Without the specifics, then it is a little difficult to find where Carrier may have went wrong with the comparison. I haven't much researched Doherty's theory, so it is not like I have done my part, either.

I don't think that Carrier accepts ABE as much as I do, however, so there is some difference in methodology. If there is a difference between Richard Carrier's methodology and my own, it is that I am willing to adhere to ABE and nothing else. ABE, as the name suggested, is concerned exclusively with what is the best explanation, and it leaves no consideration for the uncertainty of the best explanation. Richard Carrier, right or wrong, has plenty of consideration for the uncertainty of the best explanation, whatever he thinks the best explanation may be. He does not get there from ABE--he developed his own 12 axioms and 12 rules (PDF - Twelve Axioms of Historical Method). For someone like me who thinks it is useless to ambiguously quantify certainty in any way but in relative terms, it will lead to a different general position.

aa5874

Based on ABE, the argument that people simply BELIEVED the Jesus story is by FAR the best, and less ad hoc explanation.

The HJ theory requires MORE ADD HOC explanations from MASS AMNESIA TO MASS HALLUCINATIONS about Jesus.

The HJ requires the implausibilty that Jews worshiped a blaspheming man as a God but still refused to worship King David as a God.

And HJ requires that the disciples of Jesus, including Paul, knowingly LIED about the divinity, miracles, and resurrection of Jesus.

HJ requires that his parents LIE about his conception.

ABE destroys the HJ theory.

Now, BILLIONS of people simply believe Jesus was DIVINE, without any proof, even today and there is no reason to think that such was not the case when someone wrote the first Jesus story.

ABE supports the theory that Jesus was just a story invented and simply believed to be true.

Belief in the Jesus story does not require MASS AMNESIA or MASS HALLUCINATIONS or that ALL the disciples, including Paul, the parents of Jesus and thousands of followers of Jesus invent fictional stories about him.

All that is required is just a single Plausible story of a character that was raised from the dead.

The Jesus story was written. It was plausible. It was believed.

ABE supports MJ.

spamandham

Maybe, if you presume that what we have in Paul is entirely genuine, then you could come to this conclusion. But if you accept, as most scholars do, that what we see in Paul is really the work of many authors over time, then it's much more difficult to figure out what Paul actually believed. If we find at most a dozen brief statements that indicate a recent historical Jesus, and we find hundreds of statements that present Christ as some kind of spiritual/mystical concept, then is it still so cut and dry?

aa5874

But, even if it is assumed that an "undisputed letter" had many authors it cannot be known what any of the unknown authors wrote or if the original author amended his own work and inserted amendments.

It must be taken into account that original authors may have amended their own work. Some writer under the name Tertullian claimed he re-wrote "Against Marcion" because his original was hurriedly written and that a second was published by fraud but full of mistakes.

Some original authors may have noticed mistakes in their own writings or had additional information and themselves had inserted the corrections or additions.