discordant

My horrible error has been caught. My reputation, ruined. The internet will never take me seriously again.

Atheos

That may be true, but at least you can be reborn as discordant1.

Any chance the reason Price's book reads the way it does is to give it popular appeal rather than scholarship status? Sometimes publishers just like to make money. Man does not live by peer review alone.

ApostateAbe

If you like. I had your example in mind, to be sure. He said that something was more probable than something else, and the conclusion was along the lines of, "Therefore, we don't know whether or not Jesus was baptized." His arguments for probability seem to be a means to an end, and the end is that we don't know anything. It is an approach to ancient history that is somewhat unique to Price. I suppose it would be justified if all explanations had approximately equal value. But, he would have to make a case for the equality of those competing explanations, and it would be at least just as much of a chore as showing that one explanation is superior (probably more of a chore). The paradigm among everyone else seems to be that there is only one explanation that prevails among any given set of competitors when relevant facts are available to be explained, following from the belief that objective reality is one thing and one thing only.

hjalti

Well, that doesn't seem to be the case when the "relevant facts" aren't that many.

And what books of his did you read 1/3?

IIRC the example was Jesus being called "Nazarene". And Price said that he thinks that it's more probable that it was a religious title rather than "from Nazareth".

bacht

I picked up The Pre-Nicene New Testament and I admit it took me (an amateur) a little while to adjust to his writing style. He combines vast knowledge of the field with a sly sense of humour that's easy to miss. He seems determined to provide as little offense as possible to readers while examining all theories without prejudice (quite a challenge in this emotionally-charged subject)

But his enthusiasm is infectious. He gleefully romps through all kinds of kooky apocryphal material and sees it all as helping to illuminate the early centuries of our era. His essays about the formation of the canon and the history of NT scholarship were very helpful to me. Also his own translations of the NT canon were refreshing and sometimes challenging.

The fact the Price cites Earl Doherty and Stephan Huller favourably strikes me as proof of his basic honesty and curiosity.

Toto

I don't think this is unique in the field of ancient history. Ancient historians are content to recognize that there are some questions that cannot be answered due to the loss of evidence or the uncertainty of data. You don't see ancient historians spending time trying to prove that Socrates existed.

It is only rare in Biblical studies, where people feel the need to come to a conclusion.

Toto

If you see Price in a debate or a lecture, you get more of a feel for his approach. Some of this comes thourgh in his Bible geek podcasts.

hjalti

I heard him answer a question on the Bible Geek recently about our pal Stephan Huller, IIRC he said something like: Stephan is brilliant, well read, and thinks outside the box, but he didn't agree with much of what he said.

ApostateAbe

That's correct. When you don't have a lot of facts, then you may not be able to make a conclusive case of any sort. In this topic, there really are a lot of facts--especially the manuscripts of the early Christian writings. Not that we trust the claims of those writings, mind you. The facts are the letters and words on the pages, independent of our judgments of their historical reliability, and they are a set of facts the same as any other ancient manuscripts of extraordinary religious myths are a set of facts. We have a lot of material to be able to explain with historical models of the early Christian religion, be it with a model of fictional beginnings, a model of mythical beginnings, a model of historical+mythical beginnings, a model of purely historical beginnings, and so on. Some models are more likely than others, and we have a large set of facts that help us to judge between the models. I am drilling that point in because I think a lot of us are oriented toward thinking that, if we have a historical claim that isn't true, then it isn't fact, and so if we don't have facts then we don't have explanations. But, any historical writing, be it a reflection of truth, lie, mistaken belief or myth--they are all facts, and we can explain those things historically. For example, the fact is not that there was an empty tomb. The fact is that the author of the gospel of Mark claimed there was an empty tomb. We have an exceptional amount of facts concerning the beginnings of Christianity--all of the claims are untrustworthy, but we can explain them and make sense of them all of the same.
It was The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.

Cool, thanks.

bacht

Yes, but to Price's credit he doesn't stoop to peronal attacks or outright dismissal. His review of Huller's "The Real Messiah" was interesting: he listed points he agreed with, points he hadn't thought of before, and points that he considered not well argued. The overall tone was positive, but he's not afraid to disagree (politely).

Price seems to have been moving away from making firm declarations about early Xtian activities and beliefs. He states his current preferences on various issues (eg the continuity of the Mandean cult from early times) but doesn't seem rigid or defensive. I appreciate his willingness to keep an open mind. He cites Trobisch favourably also.