bacht

Possibly true, but it's difficult to prove peoples' motivations

If the majority of NT scholars are theists then an argument could be made that academic neutrality has been compromised by confirmation bias: scholars see what they expect to see in the texts, rather than approaching the material with objectivity (a tricky word I know).

Theoretically the academy should be a counter-balance to unscientific religious claims. There was a similar problem with Galileo: his research was challenged by the Church because they were defending scripture, which presents a geo-centric universe.

Universities in the 17th C were still sponsored by religious authorities, so these scholars would not want to accept the new cosmology either. The Aristotelian world-view was not completely discarded until long after Copernicus, Galileo and Newton were dead.

Toto

I liked that book for what it was - an attempt to revive gnosticism. Needless to say, it could have used a better fact checker, and you should not accept all of its assertions uncritically. The authors are neo-pagans and more concerned with religious ideas than carefully nuanced and qualified academic statements. But there are some provocative ideas, and I know of one person who found himself spiritually through reading the book.

apy

Hector Avalos' book The End Of Biblical Studies (or via: amazon.co.uk) has a chapter titled The Unhistoric Jesus which deals with some of the claims to the historicity of Jesus. The book is a fairly good read in total if you want something from a Biblical Scholar who does not believe any of it is valid.

aa5874

That is by far one of thethe easiest thing to show.

If a person is a Christian they will be motivated to claim Jesus exist.

In John 3.15-18, believers are promised eternal life, and escape from damnation, and in the Epistles it is claimed Jesus will be coming back for dead Christians.

bacht

I agree that there is a lot at stake for believers. As you say, the promises of resurrection and eternal life may overpower rational discipline for some scholars.

I think you're suggesting that the potential for bias is higher in Biblical studies than in other academic fields?

lycanthrope

thats the thing i hate about history and philosophy, its so hard to pin things down. all they seem to have is opinions...

for me i'm in science, dealing with empirical evidence things are much easier..

bacht

Too true. Historians can make use of scientific material like archeological artifacts or coin dating, but the essence of it seems more like making up stories

Roger Pearse

We seem to be drifting a little too close to "history is mostly bunk". We don't want to go there, I think.

Bad scholarship is indeed a little too close to "making things up." Good scholarship stays very close to the data, whatever it is, and refrains from wild hypothesising from it. Where the raw data disagrees, it refrains from instantly dismissing one or the other and instead sees if the disagreement itself tells us something.

Archaeology is all very well, but a belt-buckle won't tell us much. A letter from one Roman to another gossiping about the latest scandal gives far more real information than tons of archaeological material. The archaeology can and should control what we learn from literary sources, however.

Just my humble opinion, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Tiberius

Did a historical Jesus exist?
Jesus did not exist

Two of the websites on this issue that I have come across.

neilgodfrey

Archaeological evidence is about more than a dated coin or pot shard here and there. Foundation and drainage remains, clusters of certain coins in specific areas, particular masonry or pottery in telling layouts, etc, can often tell us much about the socio-economic, sometimes even political, structure of a society that once lived at a certain place and time. But this has relevance more for the debate over whether or not there was such an entity as a Davidic-Solomonic Jerusalem-focussed Kingdom of Israel in the 10th century b.c.e. than anything about the existence of a single individual.

N