Vorkosigan

Nope, I'm wrong. They re-inserted the Karl Marx remark. Wow! Sure am glad that I don't live with their consciences.

The first scholarly proponent of the Jesus Myth idea was probably nineteenth nentury historian Bruno Bauer, who argued that the true founder of Christianity was the Alexandrian Jew Philo. His arguments made little impact on the wider scholarly community of his time, though Karl Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels was impressed with his theory. In the early twentieth century, however, a few other scholars published arguments in favor of the Jesus Myth idea. These treatments were more influential and merited several book-length responses by historians and New Testament scholars. In recent years, the Jesus Myth has had few academic proponents but has been advanced by William B. Smith and George Albert Wells, as well as by Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, and Earl Doherty.

Asha'man

Vork, you probably need to flag the page as 'controversial' or something similar, so it'll get locked down against bogus editing. Take extra care to present the case fairly to the editors, and your version will probably be allowed to stand.

Vorkosigan

The last three are also worthless. At the moment, the strongest argument in favor of historicity is the academic concensus in favor of it.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

How do I do that, Ash? I just put in a complaint about it to the editors.

Asha'man

I'm not sure exactly, but I know it can be done. It happens alot with E/C type pages, as well as political ones.

Talking to the editors is probably the first step.


Edit - some links:
Accuracy Dispute
Requests for Page Protection

andrewcriddle

I'm not sure why this is so objectionable.

IIUC it is mostly agreed that Bauer's ideas had less impact among New Testament scholars than they deserved, and that his influence upon Engels and to a lesser extent Marx is his most important direct legacy.

Most later mythicists, although they share Bauer's scepticism about a Historical Jesus, have little else in common with him.
William B Smith is an early 20th century mythicist and should be clearly identified as such. George A Wells and his successors are much later than Smith.

John M Robertson, Peter Jensen and Arthur Drews should probably be mentioned along with William B Smith as early 20th century mythicists.

Andrew Criddle

Vorkosigan

So Andrew, in a page on the historical Jesus, you would consider the paragraph:

The historicist position is that Jesus was a historical person who was crucified by the Romans sometime around 30 AD and founded the religion that bears his name. This position is held by Juan Peron, General Franco of Spain, and the Ku Klux Klan.

...acceptable and not at all objectionable? The inclusion of that remark is there simply as a smear and for no other purpose. It matters not a whit who believes in the HJ.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Thanks Ash.

andrewcriddle

a/ Marx and Engels whether one agrees with them or not were great thinkers, IF Bauer was a significant influence on their thought this is worth mentioning. I don't think that Peron Franco or the Ku Klux Klan are important thinkers in that sense.

b/ Vast numbers of people hold the historicist position listing Peron Franco etc rather than say Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa etc seems tendentious. The difficulty with Bauer is IIUC the extreme (and in many ways unjustified) neglect of his work in the 19th century. (Compared say to the much greater impact of contemporaries like Strauss.)

c/ If one is doing a historiography of 19th century mythicism at all then one either says that Bauer was totally ignored by NT scholars and leaves it at at that, which is problematic, or mentions Engels or finally find some other, less controversial examples, of important 19th century thinkers influenced by Bauer. I'm not sure who would be good examples here.

(PS A historiography of mythicism should probably include Dupuis and Volney who were earlier than Bauer and probably in some ways closer to 20th century mythicism.)

Andrew Criddle

show_no_mercy

Question:

Is that true?