Originally Posted by Hypatia of Academia

Greetings:

This thread appears to have taken a turn, but as a NT scholar (working on my PhD), I thought I would throw in my proverbial two cents.

I was not raised in a Christian home, I am not currently a Christian and I shall never be a Christian. Perhaps my worldview is skewed (I'm a student at Claremont), but I know several non-Christian students in my program (atheists, pagans, agnostics, etc.). While I am not an atheist, I do appreciate and respect the work of Doherty, Carrier, Kirby and others.

Yes, there are a lot of Christians in this field. Yes, SBL is overrun with anti-academic Evangelical hacks. Yes, most people in my field won't even entertain the idea that there was no HJ. All of these factors are crippling NT scholarship and I sincerely hope that a non-religious approach can help to change that.

~Hypatia~

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

Sigh.

First, I was asking a question. If you understood the context, which apparently you cannot do, I asked aa5874 a very specific question - if the author did not intend for it to be taken literally, is it fraud. It doesn't matter what the "it" is. My example with Tacitus exemplified that perfectly. Tacitus placed speeches into the mouths of foreign leaders, etc. These speeches never happened. Did Tacitus commit fraud? No where does Tacitus explicitly say that he is placing these speeches. We recognize a literary device.

With the gospels, we have a number of impossible events. There are a few explanations for them that don't, like Tacitus, involve fraud:

a) they were devices to portray something else;
b) they actually happened but without the miraculous, and later became embellished;
c) there was some early confusion and it entered the tradition.

Which is more likely? If you were to read The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (or via: amazon.co.uk), you would begin to understand how an author like Matthew constructed much of his gospel to purposely imitate the Moses story. Why would he do this? Why would Vergil imitate Homer? Precedence. Imitation like this allows the readers - ancient readers, mind you, not some snobby nosed punk who couldn't pick up the gospel in a literal translation, much less the original Greek! - to associate the two stories. Using Mosaic typology allows Matthew to present Jesus theologically as a new Moses.

Perhaps responding specifically to Lazarus wasn't wise - I'm not a Johannine scholar, nor do I pretend to be. But aa5874 was making a statement about all the gospel writers using that one passage in particular. I myself was not remarking specifically on the Lazarus incident as the one and only thing that should not be taken literal. I would have thought from context, again, that would have been obvious. Did Mark mean for his gospel to be taken literally? Did Matthew mean for his gospel to be taken literally? Did Luke mean for his gospel to be taken literally? Did John, with his Lazarus story, mean for his gospel to be taken literally? Out of the four, I can only say with some assurance that Luke in fact meant it to be that way. I don't see anything in Mark or Matthew to point in that direction, and if as some claim that the little snippet about being a witness is John isn't authentic, or isn't to be taken literally, then John too becomes closer to the philosophers which preceded him.

There, now can you stop being so self-righteous and indignant?

Originally Posted by Hypatia of Academia

I'm a student at Claremont

Originally Posted by aa5874

Well, do you admit that Jesus was not literal in the Gospels, he was just used as a device to portray some imagined concept of a Saviour?

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

We're moving away from HJ/MJ discussion here so I'll veer towards my point, You've explained that you think at a Minimum Jesus was a miracle-worker. You've objected to the word "trick" but seem to accept that it meant people thought Jesus did some things that he really didn't do. [Understatement] This is not an attractive quality for HJ evidence [/Understatement]:

Originally Posted by waltms

I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue in this post. Do you think it impossible that Jesus was considered a miracle-worker? Do you think this reputation can only have resulted from some self-conscious fraud?

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

No, because the idea itself is implausible. Who would need an imagined concept of a savior that a) departs from traditional figures in Jewish writings (which would make Jesus unprecedented), b) departs heavily from prophecies surrounding him, especially if he was a failed prophet, as if the mythicists were correct all would do, c) fails to be placed it in the distant past like the rest of the mythical figures. The mythicist position is one big special pleading, while across genres every literary critic and historian recognizes certain literary and rhetorical devices.

Now, with that said, I find the idea possible, but not plausible, nor probable, the latter being most important.

Originally Posted by aa5874

Well, in Against Heresies, you have many of these same unprecedented concepts of Jesus and Christ, and they are all refered to as heresies. The Christ of the Valentinians is very complex and is not at all related to the God of Moses.

Originally Posted by Hypatia of Academia

Greetings:

This thread appears to have taken a turn, but as a NT scholar (working on my PhD), I thought I would throw in my proverbial two cents.

I was not raised in a Christian home, I am not currently a Christian and I shall never be a Christian. Perhaps my worldview is skewed (I'm a student at Claremont), but I know several non-Christian students in my program (atheists, pagans, agnostics, etc.). While I am not an atheist, I do appreciate and respect the work of Doherty, Carrier, Kirby and others.

Yes, there are a lot of Christians in this field. Yes, SBL is overrun with anti-academic Evangelical hacks. Yes, most people in my field won't even entertain the idea that there was no HJ. All of these factors are crippling NT scholarship and I sincerely hope that a non-religious approach can help to change that.




~Hypatia~

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

1) What are the best sources for the Assertian that Jesus was a "miracle-worker"?

2) Are they Biased?

3) Do they Agree?