Freethought & Rationalism Archive

wordy · 01-14-2009, 03:56 AM

Camio thanks for the link to Carriers pdf. I saved it in case I ever get that clever to actually understand it. Way too abstract to me.

Wordy

PS

I reacted to one claim he did. IIRC if something has survived up to now then it probably a historical thing? Maybe I failed to get what he wrote? So much to look through to find text again.

That is not good thinking. Pascal Boyer's research show that in religious tradition it is the other way around. To survive a story need to have counter intuitive claims which help the brain to get emotionally involved. So it could be that Jesus Christ survived while Barabbas got forgotten was that the story about Jesus was so "counter intuitive".

wordy · 01-14-2009, 04:33 AM

I find this part of Carrier report interesting.

Quote:

MacDonald

...

In a nutshell, he argues that Luke used as his sources the Gospels of Mark and Matthew (as Q-deniers have long maintained), as well as the Dominical Logia referred to by Papias, and that in fact this Dominical Logia was used as a source by all three Synoptic Gospels, Mark included, and in effect represents the original (and now lost) Gospel of Jesus (as I would put it).

The clincher for me is the fact that a surprising effect arises from the reconstruction that follows from his theory: the Dominical Logia appears to be a mythical emulation and transvaluation of the Septuagint book of Deuteronomy.

As this fit is highly improbable unless MacDonald's reconstruction is correct, I think MacDonald is going to win this argument in the long run.

Sadly I know nothing but are interested in the whole issue of what was on the writers mind. What was they trying to achieve? The behave very much as rhetoric spin doctors for political parties do now. Could they have been hired by rich persons who wanted to have political power?

Sorry if this is derail. Maybe there are many threads in the forum about Deuteronomy and Dominical Logia and MacDonald.

Quote:

Throughout the conference MacDonald emphasized that his work and others' essentially entail the Gospels should be entirely taken off the table when attempting to get at the historical Jesus, as they are not at all useful for any historical data (almost the same conclusion reached by Burton Mack, Randel Helms, and many other mainstream scholars of recent times).

In MacDonald's view, we can only extract from the Gospels what their contents meant to their authors (their underlying meaning, and purpose for being written), and he recommends this is all we can do, and thus all we should do.

MacDonald seems to be an interesting fellow. His forthcoming book maybe be a good new thread?

The comments on Carrier's blog show that others got interested in Dominical Logia and the Deutor... something.

Is not the Detu... a Jewish collection of sayings not attributed to Jesus at all? Or had that another name. Anyway a thread about that one maybe could be interesting.

Ted Hoffman · 01-14-2009, 04:41 AM

Quote:

MacDonald seems to be an interesting fellow.

Stephen Carlson does not agree. On his cue, I am presently reading Karl Olav Sanders IMITATIO HIMERI? AN APPRAISAL OF DENNIS R. MACDONALD'S "MIMESIS CRITICISM", JBL 124/4 (2005) 715-732.

Ted Hoffman · 01-14-2009, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wordy

I saved it in case I ever get that clever to actually understand it. Way too abstract to me.

Just curious, have you actually tried reading it and failed to understand it? What is your level of education? The main requirement seems to be an understanding of basic maths and ability to read English. Carrier explains and defines everything.

wordy · 01-14-2009, 05:50 AM

Thanks, it is too much of a derail to talk about me but I caused it.

My inability to read abstract text is due to failing to keep attention for long time and building short term and middleterm memory when more than one or two things should be remembered. In that text it is many more things that needs for at least the time it take to read it through.

To make copy of it also needs a patience I don't have. I've been like that my whole life but it get accentuated by old age. When I was 25 I could read a book a day without problem. Now I have bought several books and failed to read them. Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and so on.

But I like Carriers blog text. Very interesting. I got most of that one and none of his pdf on Bayes logic. Too much to read and keep in mind.

I don't do math, have never been able to.

Jeffrey Gibson · 01-18-2009, 01:59 PM

Here's the latest from Joseph Hoffman on the JP with special reference to Chilton's comments.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/hoffman.shtml

Jeffrey

Toto · 01-18-2009, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Here's the latest from Joseph Hoffman on the JP with special reference to Chilton's comments.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/hoffman.shtml

Jeffrey

Very interesting, but it seems to have little to do with Chilton's comments.

I like Hoffman in general, and I was cheering him on as he talked about the Platonic fallacy and summarized the last few centuries Jesus research as amusingly confused and misguided, unwilling to confront a few basic ideas, but then we get to the last paragraph:

Quote:

When we considered developing the Jesus Project, it was not out of any malignant attempt to “prove” that Jesus did not exist. (The press releases have done an immeasurable disservice by harping on this as the agenda).

Why should an attempt to prove that Jesus did not exist be viewed as malignant? Why the scare quotes around prove and not around malignant?

Quote:

As a Christian origins scholar by training, I am not even sure how one would go about such a task, or be taken seriously if it were undertaken.

But they did invite Carrier, and rumor has it that they want to invite Doherty. For entertainment purposes? Has he just said that he doesn't know how to conduct this as a serious enterprise?

Quote:

Yet the possibility that Christianity arose from causes that have little to do with a historical founder is one among many other questions the Project should take seriously.

Yes, that is the idea.

Quote:

... The demon crouching at the door, however, is not criticism of its intent nor skepticism about its outcome, but the sense that biblical scholarship in the twentieth century will not be greeted with the same excitement as it was in Albright’s day. Outside America, where the landscape is also changing, fewer people have any interest in the outcomes of biblical research, whether it involves Jericho or Jesus. The secularization of world culture, which will eventually reach even into the Muslim heartlands, encourages us to value what matters here and now. . . . Jesus-fatigue—the sort of despair that can only be compared to a police investigation gone cold—is the result of a certain resignation to the unimportance of historical conclusions.

This is stunning. In a perfectly rational world, no one would really obsess over whether we can prove or disprove the existence of the founding figure of a religion from the first century. But in reality, Jesus is huge, and the secularization of world culture is so far a pious hope. People who have bet their lives and their futures on the historical Jesus surround us, and they vote.

I think that sometimes Hoffman gets carried away with his own language.

andrewcriddle · 01-24-2009, 05:48 AM

This may be of interest
April DeConick on Jesus Project

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley · 01-24-2009, 06:44 AM

Interesting stuff.

The realization that "history" is composed of narratives that present evidence in the framework of familiar tropes/themes in order to make them comprehensible has been promoted by evil and certainly wrong poststructural literary critics for almost a century now.

Any time folks angrily denounce anything as evil and certainly wrong there is certainly something worth looking into. Maybe now is the time for biblical critics.

DCH

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

This may be of interest
April DeConick on Jesus Project

Andrew Criddle

wordy · 01-24-2009, 07:31 AM

Fun to read. I am not an academic so I most likely do get her wrong.

Is she saying that only the greatest real persons get the wildest attributes given to them in mythical stories. A kind of symbolic way of showing reverence? By embell.. the stories about them.

Jesus did not walk on the water but that story show how he could calm down the social storms and make them feel confident and calm. A kind of symbolic bragging.

He did die as any human and he never surrected either but by setting up the story as they did they "explain" why they behave as if his death was the prophesy fulfilled and as if Jesus was with god and was God. The most bragging stories confirm that person must be a historical cause they only made that effort about real persons to honor them?

Is that what she says?

One need to find how she determine when a story is not about a real person then.

01-18-2009, 01:59 PM	#96
Jeffrey Gibson Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 3,058	a notice from Joseph Hoffmann Here's the latest from Joseph Hoffman on the JP with special reference to Chilton's comments. http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/hoffman.shtml Jeffrey

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01-14-2009, 03:56 AM	#91
wordy Contributor Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Sweden, Europe Posts: 12,091	Camio thanks for the link to Carriers pdf. I saved it in case I ever get that clever to actually understand it. Way too abstract to me. Wordy PS I reacted to one claim he did. IIRC if something has survived up to now then it probably a historical thing? Maybe I failed to get what he wrote? So much to look through to find text again. That is not good thinking. Pascal Boyer's research show that in religious tradition it is the other way around. To survive a story need to have counter intuitive claims which help the brain to get emotionally involved. So it could be that Jesus Christ survived while Barabbas got forgotten was that the story about Jesus was so "counter intuitive".

01-14-2009, 05:50 AM	#95
wordy Contributor Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Sweden, Europe Posts: 12,091	Thanks, it is too much of a derail to talk about me but I caused it. My inability to read abstract text is due to failing to keep attention for long time and building short term and middleterm memory when more than one or two things should be remembered. In that text it is many more things that needs for at least the time it take to read it through. To make copy of it also needs a patience I don't have. I've been like that my whole life but it get accentuated by old age. When I was 25 I could read a book a day without problem. Now I have bought several books and failed to read them. Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and so on. But I like Carriers blog text. Very interesting. I got most of that one and none of his pdf on Bayes logic. Too much to read and keep in mind. I don't do math, have never been able to.

01-24-2009, 05:48 AM	#98
andrewcriddle Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Birmingham UK Posts: 4,876	This may be of interest April DeConick on Jesus Project Andrew Criddle

01-24-2009, 07:31 AM	#100
wordy Contributor Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Sweden, Europe Posts: 12,091	Fun to read. I am not an academic so I most likely do get her wrong. Is she saying that only the greatest real persons get the wildest attributes given to them in mythical stories. A kind of symbolic way of showing reverence? By embell.. the stories about them. Jesus did not walk on the water but that story show how he could calm down the social storms and make them feel confident and calm. A kind of symbolic bragging. He did die as any human and he never surrected either but by setting up the story as they did they "explain" why they behave as if his death was the prophesy fulfilled and as if Jesus was with god and was God. The most bragging stories confirm that person must be a historical cause they only made that effort about real persons to honor them? Is that what she says? One need to find how she determine when a story is not about a real person then.

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