Ben C Smith

For comparison, John Dominic Crossan himself as quoted by Jeffrey Gibson:

Hi Jeffrey:
I was voted in as a a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion a few years ago and have received an award for scholarly research from them. But I am not particularly interested in “The Jesus Project”–in either theory or practice–and will ask them to withdraw my name from any association with it. Thanks & best wishes,

Dom

And Hoffman:

Very recently I have had a message from John Crossan who has been a fellow of CSER for several years, asking to be removed from the list. This request is in response to "doubts" engendered on the blog-space of "Dr Jim West," to which he has posted a comment. I obviously respect Dom's wishes, irrespective of their genesis, because he is a scholar whose work I admire and trust. Despite the comments I have seen quoted in the blogosphere in the last week, no one else associated with the Project has written to me other than out of concern.

Ben.

Toto

I think the current academic, agnostic consensus is well represented by April DeConick on her blog, who said (paraphrasing from memory) that the solid evidence for Jesus' existence could be discussed in about 30 minutes, and then what? That's why the problem is "not interesting" to some academics.

I also think that Hoffmann meant to exclude amateur approaches like that of, oh, maybe Acharya S, or Freke and Gandy, Tom Harpur, not Earl Doherty.

EarlDoherty

And then what? After that 30 minutes, they can spend the next six months discussing all the evidence against Jesus' existence, most of it right in the Christian record itself. And that is what they would not be anxious to do. "Not interesting" has nothing to do with it.

Earl Doherty

squiz

I have been reading a bit of Robert Eisenman lately. He often mentions ideas from the DSS that have parallels in (especially Shia) Islam. In Robert Price's "Deconstructing Jesus" there is a long section of Sufi sayings of Jesus. I think the idea is that the "Ebionite" Christianity might have been more influential in the areas where Mohammed and early Muslims lived. There are some interesting ideas to be explored, not always within the confines of the "MJ/HJ" debate.

Zeichman

The latter was my objection, as I think has been made clear. I'm doubtful that certain individuals (e.g., Freke & Gandy) are able to say anything productive on the matter. The notion of a gnostic hermeneutic for NT texts in interesting in that it's a challenge to androcentric, Christo-centric, Eurocentric readings, but the charge of ethnocentrism is too obvious to require elaboration in relating to the plausibility of their readings of specific texts by original authors.

I would, contra Doherty above, similarly contend that the existence of the historical Jesus is not a particularly interesting question. Indeed, the historical Jesus himself is far from the most interesting thing in the study of early Christianity. As some scholars have mentioned, the fact that there is no consensus database of what constitutes independent and dependent traditions within early Christianity more or less renders a formalized "quest" moot, as does a comprehensive investigation of the existence of Jesus. Thankfully, the recent trends to emphasize literary-critical methods instead of historicity bring the discussion to an important starting point. Only once there is agreement on, say, the theologies and redactional tendencies of Matthew and Luke can one start talking about previous traditions (Q, M, L). The same must be done for these previous traditions, being traced back to the earliest stratum of the Jesus tradition. Frankly, this is a tedious and not an especially interesting process.

The quest for the historical Jesus and existence of Jesus are only interesting insofar as they illuminate trajectories within early Christianity. Cultural milieu, literary-criticism, social-theory, etc. are far more interesting than, in the words of Burton Mack, "listening to poets talk about a poet" (or not, as Earl Doherty and others would have it). IF there was no historical Jesus, then the image of early Christianity would greatly change. However, the fact that a historical Jesus seems to be assumed at so many levels of the tradition leads me to leave the question around there. IF one should show that there was no historical Jesus, then the results would be interesting. The quest itself is left to those with a greater stomach for such things than myself, though.

youngalexander

Then you concede Philosopher Jay's Literary Jesus?
Would it really? Or is it that our perception of those images would change?

The first real images of Christianity are the Logos post 200 CE, not the HJ.

gstafleu

That is a situation we may get to at some time, but I'm not sure if we're there yet. As a specific example, the existence of a Historical Jesus does become important if the assumption of such an existence precludes certain theories to be considered.

Doherty has presented a developmental model of Christianity that, as it happens, requires there was no Historical Jesus. That theory should be judged on its merits, it should not be discarded simply because its Jesus turns out to be mythical rather than historical. If this however does happen, than the existence of an HJ does become an issue, where, I agree, it shouldn't.

Agreed, mostly. I would suggest that the existence, or not, of an HJ should follow from the trajectories one finds, rather than vice versa. The impression I--an outsider--get, though, is that for many the existence of an HJ is indeed a prerequisite. To some extent you indicate that yourself, I think:
If I may be permitted a personal question: why the problems with stomach size? My background is in science where, at least in principle, one lets the chips of one's research fall as they may, and then constructs one's theories around the pattern formed by these chips. Stomach size usually doesn't figure in the matter?

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

That's an interesting point. Most religions are structured such that they are unfalsifiable, in which case "evidence against" can, by definition, not exist. Just think about all these existence-of-god debates. This unfalsifiability can be of a very practical nature, for example: it is very difficult to climb Mount Olympus. In such a world it is the unfalsifiability that counts, the evidence-for can indeed be scant, discussable in 30 minutes, without much consequence, and hence not be very interesting.

In the old days, the historicity of someone like Jesus was as good as unfalsifiable: place him in the past, and there is not a lot anybody can say about it. But that has changed with modern historical methods. Combine this with the fact that for (modern) Christianity the historicity of Jesus is a crucial fact: it is his coming to earth and his sacrifice there that is what matters. In contrast, in Islam we could theoretically have a situation where there was no Mohamed to receive the Koran, but the contents of the revelation, of the Koran, would still be valid. But Christianity, in many of its current conceptions, is, I think, sunk without a historical Jesus.

So no doubt many are "not anxious" to study the evidence against an HJ. But I wonder how well the idea that it is these days possible to falsify a fundamental part of a religion has taken hold. Perhaps the old idea that religion is by definition unfalsifiable still prevails, in which case the scant positive evidence is indeed the only thing left to discuss, which is indeed not all that interesting.

Gerard Stafleu

Clivedurdle

On Gnosticism, when was Pagels ex communicated?

Zeichman

Um.... no. Jesus as a poet. Not as a figure in poetry. Mack was talking about the Jesus Seminar and how inconsequential their work was.

Agreed, as I hope my responses to Doherty's work indicate. I simply do not find it compelling; my strongest objections to his work are related to his trajectories within early Christianity (esp. a "Cynic" Q) and methodological issues that Doherty would not let less radical individuals get away with (e.g., an undefined, unreconstructed pre-Q1 source whose content is not delineated). I'm no expert in patristics and things like that, so I won't put up the pretense of being able to refute him at that point. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Doherty would benefit greatly by doing extended treatments of each of his early Christian communities in a systematic way. Perhaps his new edition of the Jesus Puzzle will rectify this.

Indeed, if solely for the fact that I don't find a compelling reason to think otherwise, and, as stated before, historicity is assumed at many points. Multiple attestation of sayings and deeds would similarly seem to indicate an antecedent tradition in a single individual, or at least in a single small group. I concede the latter because the ideas of Jesus are more or less indistinguishable from those of his immediate followers to us now for various reasons.

I just find the process to be tedious and not especially rewarding, that's all I meant. I'll let Allison, Herzog, Crossan and others argue about it. I have some opinions on the matter, but I certainly don't intend to write anything like the aforementioned have. I hope it's clear that my interest in the historical Jesus is largely oriented around meta-scholarship, subtexts, veiled language, etc. and not reconstructing this individual's message.