Diogenes the Cynic

For the record, the tone of Ehrman's book is not, overall, as snide as that HuffPo piece, and most of that is front loaded into the introductory chapter.

He's fairly respectful to Doherty, Carrier, Wells and Price, not so Freke and Gandy or Acharya who he straight up accuses of "making things up."

hjalti

And that's also what I would consider the serious/crap divide in mythicism

aa5874

So why did you make this earlier statement??

Have you honestly read the book because your statements are making you look like somekind of "B" word.

Diogenes the Cynic

I'm afraid I don't see a contradiction here. When I say he is "respectful," I am only talking about his language and tone towards them. He is civil. He doesn't ridicule them, he just just rebuts their arguments.

Freke/Gandy/Achyria he plainly does not respect. Although he is not patently abusive in his language, he is decidedly condescending to them, and those chapters have the tone of someone talking to JFK theorists or sasquatch hunters.

aa5874

Well, I am afraid that you make YOURSELF look like some kind of 'B' word.

Does EHRMAN know that sasquatch hunters are HUNTING for an Historical Jesus who has NO INDENTIFICATION marks???

MJers are NOT looking for any Jesus.

Please tell me who are LOOKING for Jesus??

You know the answer.

Fundamentalists and HJers.

Fundamentalists are hoping to find their Jesus in OUTER SPACE.

HJers are LOOKING in an EMPTY TOMB.

Mark 16:6 KJV I wish HJers the best of Luck--those saquatch hunters of EMPTY Tombs!!!

A dead body is EVIDENCE of one that was ONCE ALIVE.

ALL evidence for an Historical Jesus is MISSING.

Steven Carr

'ad hoc'?

Doherty is hardly alone in thinking that 1 Thessalonians 2 contains interpolations.

Ehrman might disagree and claim Paul really did think God was bringing down the wrath of God upon Jews, but he can't get away with claiming Doherty is simply crying ad hoc interpolation for this text.

In fact, it is Ehrman who comes up with ad hoc claims on page 124 that Romans 1:18 is at all relevant to 1 Thessalonians 2 '18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.....'

There is nothing whatever in Romans 1 which says this pasage is about God's wrath on Jews.

This is just ad hoc proof-texting by Ehrman, taking one occurence of the word 'wrath' and claiming it explains another occurence of the word 'wrath' in another passage, when they have nothing to do with one another.

So to sum up, Ehrman accuses Doherty of crying interpolation ad hoc, when it is perfectly legitimate scholarship to maintain that 1 Thess. 2 contains interpolations.

And then Ehrman produces an ad hoc proof text to try to shoehorn the passage in Thessalonians into Paul's theology.

Not good....

mountainman

Do tell. Nicaea looks like a reasonably fixed historical context. But then most Biblical Scholars dont view Nicaea as within the historical context, because as far as they are concerned, christian origins was centuries beforehand, because the propaganda published in the 4th century specifically says so, and they dont question it. I will repeat that. They dont question it.




So anyone who questions the existence of the historical jesus is to be viewed as indulging in shared hatred. My what a narrow little world we live in. The real problem is the where to put the idea of the search for the historical Jesus in the conceptual framework of modern society.

At the end of the day we are all students of life itself. If Jesus did not exist I am sure we would carry on without too much fuss. Such a simple question" Did Jesus exist".

The answer is a YES/NO gate.

The logic is to beware of hatred at YES/NO gates.

mountainman

The article was just a (reasonably successful it seems) marketing ploy.

Ehrman knows how to make a buck off this stuff.

stephan huller

Heaven forbid that anyone's books are well received. Ehrman's paid his dues. The fact that he would taken on many of these authors should be a blessing in disguise for them. Doherty was complaining the other day that people were stealing his books without paying for them. Ehrman taking on his writings can only increase his book sales. It is a win win for everyone.

stephan huller

I will when I publish it next year. I have a two book deal with a small publisher. It certainly won't be the hit that Ehrman's book will certainly be. But I don't begrudge him his success.

We're only here for a while. Like the Beatles song say 'there's nothing you can do that can't be done.'

We're also all after the truth presumably (or at least most of us). The best argument wins. I will read Ehrman's book but I don't get emotional about the whole thing like some of the people here. Jesus wasn't a man because Christianity can't work with a man at its center. Just go to a traditional mass and imagine even for a second that all these rituals are based on a real human being. It's just so stupid - only an American could come up with something like this (or a German, or an Englishman or a Scotsman - any of the dunderheaded northern races that had nothing to do with real Christianity from the very beginning).

Taste and see the Lord is sweet. How could that possibly be related to a historical person? Everything is so Protestant in scholarship. The rest of the Christian world just believes. There's no contribution to anything mainstream. The Copts write about the Coptic tradition and no one reads it. Same with the other Orthodox faiths. You start with the premise that all the divine aspects of Jesus were 'exaggerations' of the other 'pagan churches' and then lo and behold - you uncover that Jesus was a 'real man.'

But the reality was that it was the other way around. It is impossible for the Jews to have imagined God to be in the flesh. A hypostasis visiting earth yes. But not of the flesh. These Protestants truly have ruined everything. I can walk into a Syriac Orthodox Church, a Greek Orthodox Church, a Coptic Orthodox, Roman Catholic Church and I see Christianity. Even the Anglican Church. But the rest of these silly American churches ... what does any of this have to do with Christianity?