mountainman

That's a correct assumption. But I have read his Ancient Historians
where he is discussing ancient history and ancient historians
-- and not (ahem) "the gospels" -- and in which the chronological mention
of the "Jesus character" occurs in the mention of Josephus, and in the
interpolation of the TF from a future century.


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

youngalexander

The pope might be a bit of a wowser, but what he is trying to say is that he thinks that your ideas are crook and that you may be a ratbag. Fair dinkum, I cannot see his reasoning as I for one consider you to be a bonza bloke.

Antipope Innocent II

You need to check the meaning of "wowser". And somehow I don't think she'll appreciate being called a "bloke".

youngalexander

OK, anti-wowser, and I do apologise - "sheila".

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Thanks for the interesting information about R.G. Price.

Incidentally, I wanted to clarify that I do regard 19th century writings as important and explain why I am not including them.

The original idea behind the list was to investigate the claims that people who have upheld the concept of a mythical Jesus were few in number and lacked academic credentials. A list makes it easier to investigate these claims. As I was compiling it, I encountered the claim that it was an outdated idea embraced largely in the 19th century. For this reason, I decided to limit the list to people from the 20th and 21th centuries. Compiling a separate list of 19th century writers who upheld the idea would be interesting for comparison purposes, for example, it could help answer the question "is the idea becoming more or less popular?"


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

gurugeorge

I thought I did explain how: any sort of human-being Jesus, no matter how whacky, is more acceptable than a non-human-being-Jesus because a living person at the root of the myth still gives Christian churches at least some vague right to claim validity to the tradition that they represent some entity, and gives the NT Canon at least some validity as being historical proof of somebody.

IOW, a mushroom-eating-revolutionary Jesus, while offensive to theology, still allows the Catholic Church (in particular) and most other forms of Christianity a raison d'etre - they can laugh off the whacky aspect, while being comfortably confirmed in the belief that they have a traditional link back to some guy. (If the whacky idea is true, they can claim understandable mythopeoia, if it's false, they can take comfort in the fact that people are still talking about some historical entity genetically linked to their tradition.)

For the rubes, it can be palmed off as a kind of sorites - "look, these non-Christian academics are insulting our Jesus with these whacky ideas about him, but they are still saying there was some guy called Jesus, they might be wrong in some of the details, but their investigations still show there was some Jesus, which could still be the Jesus of our tradition, which probably was the Jesus of our tradition, so you can keep donating the money." It's not good enough for rationalist thinkers, but they're a lost cause anyway; so long as this kind of sorites can keep at least poor, stupid people donating money, no problem.

But of course all this is sheer nonsense: if the NT Canon isn't the proof of a God-man that it purports to be (and I trust most people here don't believe that it is), how does that automatically mean it must be proof of some man, or any sort of proof at all, come to that? If a thing is no longer "evidence for x", how does that make it still evidence?

Looking for some historical person at the root of a myth that's exploded is a move that has no rational justification whatsoever, it's just a silly reflex based on the tradition that was in place when these kinds of studies were started, back when people believed there was a God-man, and that the NT Canon was historical proof of him. But if the NT Canon isn't proof of a God-man, what reason is there to believe it's proof of any man at all?

It might be, but that has to be established - the texts have to be looked at from scratch, with a view to seeing how they could have come to exist as texts purporting to be historical proof of a God-man; and indeed, one possible reason for that might be that there was some obscure guy who for one reason or another got this whole mythological construct built around him. But there's no reason why, for historians, that should be an automatic assumption. It has to be argued for.

But that's not what NT scholars do: they've just rejigged the investigation to look for a man at the root of the myth while pretending that there's still some sense in which the NT Canon is, automatically and without question, historical proof of somebody.

I don't know if I'm getting across just how comical this is, how big of a scholarly "blind spot" this is.

Jeffrey Gibson

Wow. So you didn't know before this who Price was? And you didn't know that he didn't have "good academic credentials", let alone was not a professional academic?

And yet you made bold to assert that he was someone with "good academic credentials"? So I ask again, how are you generating your list of people with "with good academic credentials ... who take the Jesus Myth position seriously"!!?

What does this say about the nature and extent of your research, Jay?

No. The claim was that there were less than five "actual professional academics who give the "Jesus Myth" idea any credence".

As far as I can see, you haven't yet provided anything to show that this claim is false. In fact, all you've done -- both in continuously misrepresenting what the point at issue is, and in your listing of (a) non academics as professional academics and uncredentialed people as credentialed, and (b) people who are NOT MJers as MJers -- is to show (1) that you have no direct knowledge of the works and views and academic backgrounds or the professions of the people you list as MJers who have "good academic credentials", (2) that the nature and extent of your "research" into the matter of who people with "with good academic credentials ... who take the Jesus Myth position seriously" are is woefully inadequate and demonstrably substandard, especially for a Ph.D, and (3) that nothing you say on the matter at hand should be taken seriously.

So again, Jay, (and echoing "Antipope's" call), would you please tell us how you have generated your list of purported 20th century MJers who have "good academic credentials"?

JG

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

I would like to add four more people to the list. Marshall J. Gauvin (Did Jesus Really Live?), John E. Remsburg (The Christ), J.G. Jackson ( Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth)and Arthur M. Rothstein (The Christ Idea). These bring the total number to 52 writers.

Rothstein is the only one still living. He is described on Amazon.com as a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Educational Foundations at City College of City University of New York and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at New College at Hofstra University."

First List: Living writers with good academic credentials (although possibly not from relevant fields) who take the Jesus Myth position seriously:


1) Wells, 2) Price, 3) Thompson, 4) Timothy Freke, 5) Peter Gandy, 6) Herman Detering, 7) Alvar Ellegard, 8) Darrell Doughty, 9) Frank Zindler, 10) Michael Turton, 11) Luigi Cascioli, 12) Michel Onfray, 13) Francesco Carotta, 14) Tom Harpur, 15) Hal Childs, 16), Herbert Cutner, 17) Michael O. Wise, 18) Burton Mack, 19) Jan Sammer, 20) Arthur M. Rothstein

Second List: These living writers with academic credentials that I am not sure about (but whose work may be just as important as the above) include:

1) Earl Doherty, 2) Richard Carrier, 3) Archaya S., 4) Joseph Atwill, 5) Ken Humphreys, 6) Harold Liedner, 7) Zane Winter, 8) Gary Courtney, 9) Michael Hoffman, 10) Max Rieser, 11) R.G. Price


Third List: These deceased 20th century mythicists with academic credentials (although possibly not relevant fields):

1) Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, 2) John (J.M.) Robertson 3) Bertrand Russell, 4) Joseph McCabe 5) Livio C. Stecchini, 6) Thomas Whittaker, 7) John E. Remsburg, 8) Arthur Drews, 9) P. L. Couchoud, 10) John Allegro, 11) van den Bergh van Eysinga, 12) Robert Taylor, 13) Joseph Wheless, 14) Peter Jensen, 15) Gordon Rylands, 16) Guy Fau, 17) Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian, 18) Alvin Boyd Kuhn, 19) John E. Remsburg, 20) Marshall J. Gauvin, 21) J.G. Jackson

Does anybody know what the position of Gerald A. Larue is regarding this issue? He is a professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology at the University of Southern California. I found this quote from him:

We can recreate dimensions of the world in which he lived, but outside of the Christian scriptures, we cannot locate him historically within that world.

This implies to me a mythological Jesus position, but I'm not sure if he falls into the category.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

The last time I heard LaRue speak, at a Humanist conference about 5 years ago, he was asked about the Jesus Myth hypothesis, and brushed it off, with words to the effect that everyone knew that Jesus existed.

Of course, Humanists have their own need to believe in a historical Jesus who changed the world through non-violence and unconditional love, and who demonstrates that selfless service to humanity is a reasonable thing to attempt.

Jeffrey Gibson

Marshall J. Gauvin was born near Moncton, New Brunswick, in 1881. As a youth he worked for eleven years for the Canadian National Railways as a carpenter and a cabinet maker. After years of self-education and preparation, he embarked on a career as a freelance public lecturer and educator. He lectured for fourteen years in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis. In 1926 he came to Winnipeg at the invitation of the One Big Union. He founded the local branch of the Winnipeg Rationalist Society and lectured weekly for fourteen years on rationalism and humanism in the Metropolitan, Garrick, and Dominion theatres. He became well known for his anti-religious sentiments and his weekly "anti-sermons" which were well given during the 1920s and 1930s. On retiring from the lecture platform in 1940, he worked for the duration of the war at MacDonald Aircraft Ltd. building and repairing planes for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Gauvin also wrote monthly articles for the Truth Seeker magazine until his health failed

Remsburg, John E., author and lecturer, was born in Fremont, Ohio, Jan. 7, 1848, a son of George J. and Sarah A. (Willey) Remsburg. He enlisted in the Union army at the age of sixteen; married Miss Nora M. Eiler of Atchison, Kan., Oct. 9, 1870; was a teacher for 15 years, then a writer and lecturer in support of free thought, his lectures being translated into German, French, Bohemian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian. Bengali and Singalese. He was superintendent of public instruction in Atchison county, Kan., for four years; is a life member of the American Secular Union, of which he was president for three years; a member of the Kansas State Horticultural Society; author of a "Life of Thomas Paine," 1880; "The Image Breaker," 1882; False Claims," 1883; "Bible Morals," 1884; "Sabbath Breakers," 1885; "The Fathers of Our Republic," 1886; "Was Lincoln a Christian," 1893; "Was Washington a Christian," 1899; "The Bible," 1903; "Six Historic Americans," 1906; "The Christ," 1909.

Yep, really good "good credentials"!

Jeffrey