wavy_wonder1

No, he does not 'wave it away'; he explains it as part of a traditiohistorical development that rationalized the failure of Jesus to bring about the end of the world. He demonstrates this tendency evolve linearly from the earliest sources to the latest sources.

And I'm sure Ehrman knows there are other passages where the kingdom of God/heaven is mentioned 'without any hint of an end of the world'. (if I recall correctly he discusses several of them) But I would say these can be easily accounted for along the same lines above or are best explained as presupposing the end of the world without explicit mention of it. I think the evidence is overwhelming for an apocalyptic Jesus.


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wavy_wonder1

Well, considering the fact that I didn't say anything about it, this becomes an irrelevant question, no?


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ercatli

So you think Richard Carrier is "the only historian who has actually evaluated the evidence", and that all the others, from impeccable universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, etc, are making it all up??? Is that really the intellectual basis of your position?

No, they concluded that from the evidence.

Yes, and they as a group didn't question the historical existence of Jesus. Two of their leading lights were Marcus Borg (who I quoted originally) and JD Crossan (who I have read and listed, and could have quoted). True, they only concluded 15-20% of the gospels could be known as authentic, but (1) not able to be shown to be genuine is not the same as not genuine (and is a tougher standard than most historians use), (2) their views are not accepted by the majority of scholars, and (3) that amount is enough to establish quite a bit about Jesus.

I have shown that I have read and I can assure you I have evaluated. Your view seems to be based on a denial of the findings of the best historians and scholars around. Now that we seem to have established that, as in your statement above, I think we have probably gone as far as we need to go. Thanks for the discussion.

TimBowe

Well Ercatli, the majority of New Testament scholars think that the body of Jesus emerged physically from the tomb. The majority of critical scholars disagree with that conclusion, as they do not think that a historian can show that the body of Jesus rose from the dead. So yes of course they let it affect their conclusions, the majority of New Testament scholars are believers in the New Testament, critical historians are not.

ercatli

Sorry. I only thought you hadn't because you made comments that seemed to indicate you didn't understand historical method - e.g. you said "in the quest for the historical Jesus, the experts often have a commitment to a version of history that supports some version of the Christian faith, or some other political stance.", when clearly that is not true of Grant, who was a non-believer and a well-credentialled historian of the Roman Empire.

I see. Also without any anti-religious preconceptions??? And your well-based view awaits a book that hasn't been published yet??

I guess we mean different things by scholarship.

ercatli

I wouldn't have thought so. If you are going to join a discussion on the historical Jesus, letting us know whether you accept the consensus of the best scholars, or not, seems to me to be a very relevant question.

Toto

No, not at all. I've read a lot of those scholars, and they avoid the subject of the historicity of Jesus. They usually assume that Jesus existed. It's not that radical an assumption - most religions start with someone, so call him Jesus.

Or they assume that there must be some historical component to the gospels. But this assumption is built on quicksand.

You would like to believe that there are a lot of historians who have done the difficult detailed oriented legwork, have traded ideas with each other, and have reached a consensus based on evidence that there was a historical Jesus. I'm telling you that I looked for this evidence and this consensus for years, and it's not there.

TimBowe

Do you seriously think a historian can argue on historical grounds that Jesus body resurrected? These are theological claims about Jesus, not historian's claims.

ercatli

There is a bunch of unsupported assertions there. Let me try to clarify so we can understand what each of us means.

I have found that we can loosely classify NT scholars into three groups (based on the judgment of their peers):

1. Christian scholars who make christian assumptions and use fairly uncritical methods. Craig Blomberg is an example. I don't quote from any of these.

2. Sceptical scholars who make sceptical assumptions and use hyper-critical methods. Robert Price and Bart Ehrman are examples. I don't generally quote from them either.

3. Mainstream scholars who try to make no assumptions and use established secular historical methods (if anything, secular historians say they are more critical than secular historians). All of the scholars I quote fall into this category, as far as I can tell. Some are more believing (Wright, Evans), others are more sceptical (Crossan, Borg) but all work in this way.

Thus Ed Sanders can say (demonstrating that your statement is inaccurate): "That Jesus' followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know." Notice the separation of what he regards as historical fact from what he sees as belief, a belief that he does not commit himself on. The Jesus Seminar and (if I recall) Michael Grant similarly believe that the disciples had some form of experience without believing in the resurrection.

So in my reading, your inference is correct about scholars in category 1, who I don't quote, but generally not correct about scholars in category 3, who I do quote. The only exception I can think of is Wright.

But isn't it interesting. Several of you here want to quote scholars (and even non-scholars) who clearly belong in the sceptical camp as if they are neutral, when they are not, but disallow my quoting from scholars who (in the main) clearly either have no belief (e.g. Grant, Fox) or separate their belief from their history (e.g. Sanders, Borg).

But the air is certainly clearing.

wavy_wonder1

I wouldn't place Ehrman & Price in the same category. There's no similarity that I can see between the two...


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