hjalti

The entry now has the titles of the upcoming essays: I think I look most forward to Fisher's essay, since it seems like she's going after our beloved dr. Carrier (he's "Dick", right?), and it seems like she's going to go after the use of Bayes' theorem.

dog-on

Re: Bayes

Perhaps Fisher does not like to show her work.

Or is she simply going to tell us that if you put garbage in, that you will get garbage out?

To which we can collectively reply...ummm no shit.

dog-on

BTW, just read Fisher's "article".

http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com...louise-fisher/

LOL... a bloviating hit piece. Bravo, Ms. Fisher...

I sure hope that she is not indicative of what academia is currently producing.

Steven Carr

Casey claims that Doherty totally overlooked that Paul does not talk about the life and teaching of Jesus, because everybody knew it all already....

spin

Casey's and Fisher's diatribes.

Steven Carr

Apparently I accused Casey of incompetence.

Not at all! I praised his superhuman powers of reading Aramaic wax tablets he has never seen better than bilingual people who had (allegedly ) seen them

Steven Carr

I get a mention. I'm made up.

It is just a pity that Casey's essay contributes nothing worth learning.

Casey accuses me of lying, when I suggested he had hidden from his readers the idea floated by some scholars that Latinisms in Mark might mean Mark is not using purely Aramaic sources.


Maurice does indeed talk about Latin loanwords, claiming they were already in Mark’s Aramaic source (!) (Jesus of Nazareth , page 341)

So Maurice never lets his readers know that Mark might have used Latin loanwords himself, rather than copying them from these mythical Aramaic sources.

Instead, he claims that Latin loan words mean….. wait for it, an Aramaic source!

Who would have guessed that?

Casey sees Aramaic everywhere - even in Latin words.

hjalti

I'm reading Fisher's article, and what I'm immediately struck with is the hostility. E.g. Carrier is always called an "atheist blogger", but never "a historian" or something similar. She complains that he includes Burton Mack as an example of a NT scholar, because Mack is "a methodologically incompetend radical". :huh:

Still waiting for some meat... and now back to reading the article.

James The Least

Casey:
"One of the most remarkable features of public discussion of Jesus of Nazareth in the twenty-first century has been a massive upsurge in the view that this important historical figure did not even exist. This view, unknown in the ancient world, became respectable during the formative period of critical scholarship in the nineteenth century, when it was no longer possible for recent Christian opinions to be taken for granted among educated European scholars. Because of its scholarly presentation, with as much evidence and argument as could reasonably be expected at that time, this view was much discussed by other learned people. In the later twentieth century, competent New Testament scholars believed that it had been decisively refuted in a small number of readily available books, supported in scholarly research by commentaries and many occasional comments in scholarly books."

"Competent New Testament scholars" were wrong. It had not been decisively refuted.

hjalti

Well, Hoffmann's article stands out for me: it lacks the personal attacks of the other two and tries to make a general point for the historicity of Jesus (and talks about Marcion, that's always fun!).

Casey and Fisher seemed to me to be going all over the place and not making any general point. E.g. Casey spent a page on my Kindle just pointing out that in an illustrative dialogue between Paul and Christian converts, Doherty makes the diastrous blunder of talking about Calvary! But that's latin, and means skull, so if we translate that back to greek, it would be just "skull". Why this matters I don't know. Like "Blogger Carr" points out, he spends some time discussing this blog-post by "Blogger Godfrey", but does not address the major point, that Mark 2:23 is probably latinism and not an aramaic translation.

And the personal attacks on "Blogger Godfrey" were astonishing. They both mention a specific quote:
I don't even have to look the quote up, but I'm certain "Blogger Godfrey" is just saying that in his work he doesn't deal with books.

And they both discuss "Blogger Godfrey"'s background:
This is just sad. :facepalm: