aa5874

The Quest for the Historical Jesus has NOT one thing to do with Doherty or Wells.

The Quest for Historical Jesus is a 250 year old Search that still continues.

Let us NOT get diverted by what appears to be some form of trickery or magic by HJ apologists

There is NO credible historical source to support the Quest so they will be forced to BELIEVE in the same Bible Jesus that they had initially rejected.

The very same data for MYTH Jesus of Nazareth is now employed HJ.

Toto

On a recent podcast, Price indicated that he has a more nuanced view of Acharya S's published work than this indicates, and that Acharya S is revising her earlier works.

I think astrotheology is a little too far outside Ehrman's area. I don't think he could have read everything he would need to if he were going to write something valuable on the subject.

ApostateAbe

Yeah, I expect that Ehrman would give the Jesus-minimalist authors advance copies. I expect the publisher would use the debates hot on the Internet to drive the sales.

The debate about the existence of Jesus was hot among scholars one hundred years ago, when a few German scholars such as Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews put it on the table. They represented an anti-religious camp, as the modern Jesus-minimalists do today, they are believed to have lost the debate, and scholars have since ignored it except for retrospection of modern scholarly history. More modern authors such as GA Wells and Earl Doherty cater to the audience that wants to hear it, but their best arguments are merely repeats, and their new arguments tend to be their worst.

They follow in the patterns of many other authors who have improbable theories about history. When the textual evidence contradicts the theories, they tend to have three ways of dealing with it:

1) They claim the passage in question was edited.
2) They claim not-so-obvious interpretations of the passage in question.

These two methods would make any theory you can possibly imagine consistent with the evidence. There is nothing wrong with those two methods as long as one supplies a strong argument. If they are mere possibilities proposed to make the theory fit, then they are mere ad hoc. Earl Doherty does this all throughout his literature. For example, he explains the passage in Josephus about "James, the brother of Jesus, called Christ," as interpolation, where "called Christ" did not originally exist. The evidence seems to stand against this, as it would leave "Jesus" unidentified until a few lines later (at best), breaking a consistent pattern of Josephus, but it is still a possibility, and Earl Doherty writes as though the mere possibility is enough to save his case. In history, though, anything is possible. Making a case should be about probability, and, typically, the theory with the least number of improbable ad hoc explanations is the winner.

Scholars see these kinds of explanations all the time, and a brief glance at Doherty's literature I think would be enough to justify dismissing it as that same old style of bad argumentation, intended for a lay audience, not knowledgeable scholars. Ehrman's theory has the advantage of relying on interpretations that are evident on the face of the ancient texts with minimal need for interpolations or "layers" of editing.

Toto

Why do you keep repeating this false accusation? Robert Price is not anti-religion, nor is Tom Harpur. A lot of the interest in the Christ Myth theory comes from New Age believers, such as Freke and Gandy.

They lost the political debate, and scholars have since ignored it for their own convenience.

Funny, these are the same methods most scholars use. There are widespread interpolations in early Christian literature, and the most obvious interpretation is often not the best when you are dealing with literature full of allusions and hidden meanings.

There is no evidence against the idea that "called Christ" is an interpolation.

In general, Doherty does not favor interpolations.

This is crazy. Doherty's writing is full of careful research. Ehrman is a major proponent of the claim that the Christian documents have been forged and altered.

Let's just wait for March 20.

EarlDoherty

Not among 'pro' mythicists, including myself. If Ehrman, knowing this, nevertheless makes that his focus, then he will be indulging in fraud; or if he does not know it, then he knows nothing about the mythicist case and is indulging in ignorance.

You really never change, do you, Abe?

Earl Doherty

Vorkosigan

Ad hoc explanations are both ways. If you want to accept the "..called Christ" as original to the text, you're stuck producing ad hoc explanations of the silence about it in the Xtian sources, explaining why Josephus would refer to someone called "Christ" when he has no truck with messianic pretenders, why the death of a random James should result in the rise of the Damneus family to the High Priest position -- which makes sense if the passage had originally referred to a James in that family, why Photius reports a different phrase in that location, indicating tampering, etc. You can't escape the problem of ad hoc explanations by falling back on the mainstream interpretive framework, you simply trade one set with few or none (mythicism) to one set with zillions (historicism).

Vorkosigan

EarlDoherty

By the way, is Ehrman's book still due to be available only in electronic form? If so, any response I make (by myself or in concert with others) will be in trouble. I have just spent three frustrating months trying to convert my Jesus: Neither God Nor Man to Amazon Kindle, and have failed. Numerous communications with the "Kindle Team" (all located in India, apparently, unless all the tech people in the U.S. happen to have Indian names!) have failed to solve the problems I have run into. They seem incapable of anything but stock responses and offering links to explanatory material which doesn't explain or requires a degree in Rocket Science to interpret. (Nobody thinks linearly these days, I guess, and the instructions are all over the map.) Among other things, I have run into unsolvable indentation problems, and most important, Kindle's apparent inability to support even the simplest special characters (the "o" and "e" letter with a bar over them in transliterated Greek words)--despite the fact that they declare such characters *are* supported, but can't explain why my conversion doesn't do so. So much for outsourcing. I can't seem to get around this India team and reach anyone in the U.S. who might know a little more about the system.

I may make enquiries with other booksellers to see if their Reader systems are a little more friendly (and their Contact people more knowledgeable). Perhaps B&N's "Nook." Is it really beyond modern technology to create a Reader which can handle a simple conversion, let's say from pdf files? What a fiasco!

Despite Ehrman's ridiculous claim about me and my money-making ambitions, it's quite possible I won't have enough financial resources to make a second print run of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. (It's an expensive book, including getting it to Amazon.) I was hoping to be able to supplant the printed version with an electronic one, saving cost and nightmare shipping logistics. If that's not possible, the book may just go into limbo. (On top of which is that JNGNM has already been pirated and put in its entirety on a website, and even though I managed to get the site owner (dreamhost) to get this one removed, there may be others I haven't learned of yet, with this sort of trampling of copyright probably the wave of the future. One can understand, when you occupy my position, why something like SOPA is needed, if we can just solve the negative effects on the Internet.)

Earl Doherty

Toto

I have a Kindle book on the history of yoga, with transliterated Sanskrit words containing vowels with bars over them. Those letters look like someone hand wrote them and pasted in a graphic, not always very evenly.

Vorkosigan

Earl, Calibre e-book management software converts PDFs to any of a number of formats. It is free.

http://calibre-ebook.com/

Why don't you download that, run your book in PDF through the converter, and see what it looks like in Kindle? You can download Kindle for PC free from Amazon. Just note that after you CONVERT in Calibre you have to again SAVE separately.

Ehrman's book is going to be available in both print and e-book.

Alas, pirated books are now common, the internet is awash in free books, illegal scans. It really sucks for people who create things. The scarcity model of economics is running up against the problem of the essentially zero cost of making a digital copy. Especially given the thoroughly ridiculous cost of e-books from the major publishers.... so many times on Amazon I find a book I'd like to buy but the low-end print edition is cheaper than the e-book. And academic books are ridiculously overpriced in e-book format.

Vorkosigan

stephan huller

If you can wait until March I live in Seattle and go visit the office on your behalf. I know how frustrating it is to deal with Amazon