gnosis92

Is there any peer-reviewed work on Jesus-mythicism in scholarly historical journals? Would Doherty's/Robert Price's/G A Wells thesis and evidence and interpretation survive peer review?

Have they submitted to peer review? If so, was it accepted or rejected?
If not, why don't they?

Ted Hoffman

What in your opinion would qualify as a "scholarly historical journal"?
This question has been asked and answered countless times. Doherty and Prive have published in Journal of Higher Criticism of Drew university where scholars like Eisenmann published.
Ultimately, this is still worthless. What matters are the arguments. People like NT Wright publish junk in "respectable" NT journals.

Toto

Do you know of any historicist articles in peer reviewed scholarly historical journals?

einniv

I think people are mistaken if they consider Robert Price a mythicist. He certainly has leanings that way but he doesn't really consider it established. His position is that the evidence we have for a historical Jesus is not strong enough to realistically figure out what he was "really" like. So much so that those that would claim a historical Jesus have the burden of proof and can't just assume it.

Part of the reasoning is that many scholars study the same material and come to very different conclusions (I would include the secular and mythicist scholars as well) yet many are reasonably well supported. This undermines the reliability of the sources (maybe the scholar is just seeing what he wants to see) leaving us with nothing much to go by.

As far as publishing in journals other than 'higher criticism' I really don't know. Here is a list of articles and some of them might be what you are asking about (most are surely not), but it is hard to know from just names of journals.

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/theolist.htm

I have to admit when reading here I often chuckle at these kinds of questions. I mean certainly peer-review is important, don't get me wrong. However, biblical studies isn't exactly physics. I mean someone like Crossan for example has surely published more, by volume, in his books than in journals. Same goes for other scholars present and past as far as I can tell. Does that make everything in their books invalid somehow? Is having a book reviewed by others in the field enough? Or is the claim that someone like Price isn't qualified? What is the claim here? Did the Jesus Seminar have Price as a member just for kicks? Or is every member of that seminar just a hack or what?

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to attack the ideas of biblical scholars you don't like.. don't want to be correct. I'm also sure this goes for all scholars of all opinions. This is certainly not an exact science. I remember reading on this board someone who showed pretty clearly the sorry state that is biblical scholarship. So I would stick to attacking the ideas. This line of argument isn't very convincing.

Johnny Skeptic

That was a really good post. Biblical scholarship is most certainly a science. If a God exists, that is his fault, and no one should have anything to do with him. I mean really, folks, no rational God would ever depend upon copies of copies of ancient records written by human proxies to let people know about him. He would always be around himself, tangibly, in person, and available. Bible believers have been in disarrary for thousands of years regarding what the Bible means. How could it be any different? Absentee fathers make poor fathers.

Ted Hoffman

This was funny as hell. Thanks for making me laugh. I agree with you and einniv.

rickP

I believe Richard Carrier was working on a plan to publish some scholar level work on the subject for peer review. Maybe he can chime in with more detail.

spamandham

This seems to me to be a reasonable position not based on hype or speculation. It's actually true that there is no historical concensus regarding the life of Jesus other than 'he existed'. But if the only thing we can conclude about his life is the very assumption which was necessary as a starting point for all theories about his life, then it's unreasonable NOT to question that assumption. The burden of proof is most definitely upon those who claim Jesus was a historical figure.

If Christianity were a dead religion, there would be no debate about the historicity of Jesus as all. He would be assumed to be fictional, just like Hercules.

reddish

We shall deal with the Mythical Hercules heretics later.

andrewcriddle

Could you justify this ?

It seems far from obvious. If FTSOA Christianity had died out in the disorders of the fall of the Roman Empire, then IMO the few modern scholars who bothered about the problem would probably believe in a some form of minimal historical Jesus (an early 1st century CE Jewish religious reformer killed by the authorities) about whom legends had gathered from very early on.

Andrew Criddle