stephan huller

I have ordered Ehrman's book. I haven't yet read it. Will start doing that this weekend. But I have read Ehrman's other works and have noticed a pattern here with things said by people for and against his position.

I have noticed that Ehrman can deliberately misrepresent material and positions of people to make a point. The obvious example is his representation of Morton Smith and the Mar Saba document in Lost Christianities but there are others.

I see the same pattern with other atheist and agnostic scholars. I won't name names but some have been very favorable to me and my research so I don't what to kick a gift horse in the mouth.

I just have a problem with Ehrman's basic premise. Christianity from the earliest period held Jesus to be God. One can argue that it is Ehrman's Protestant background which started the demystification process rolling. But I can't help but think that the idea of a purely human Jesus is so out of step with all our known sources. I don't know how he gets to this presumption without abandoning one of the core principles of his approach to textual criticism - you have to find ancient witnesses to support your position.

In other words, Ehrman will deny that a given passage is an interpolation because essentially we don't have any ancient witnesses who explicitly say that it is an interpolation. But he is more than willing to bring forward a Jesus who is all man and not God even though we don't have any ancient witnesses who hold this position.

This is problematic to me and I wonder if the double standard comes down to his own loss of faith. In other words, he once had a 'relationship' with Jesus, he still has a relationship with Jesus - he just denies the existence of God.

Yet this narcissistic approach to history is silly. History should be more than about Bart Ehrman's relationship with Jesus. If no one in antiquity held to this radically demystified Jesus how can it explain anything? It's more theoretical than the various reconstructions of Marcion.

Of course there is the other extreme among atheists and agnostics - "it's all myth." I have struggled with finding a mid-position between these two extremes but I think we get there through indifference. We can't 'want' God to be non-existent nor can we want to believe that Jesus is God or Christ or whatever else is the taste of the month.

Ehrman does have the capacity to ignore what has to be true - i.e. that without Jesus being God Christianity can't work as a religion. We have to invent a wholly theoretical 'teaching' which in many ways is just as implausible as Acharya S and the mythers he condemns.

Maybe in the modern age we are living in a world beyond truth. With the death of God as a cultural unifying force, the truth is 'what you make of it.' This situation then leads to various extreme positions which disregard what science is supposed to be seeking after - the truth.

Just a thought.

GakuseiDon

The argument is that Paul and gMark, the earliest 'witnesses', show Jesus who is a man. Would you agree that the virgin birth being a later development within Christianity is a fairly reasonable conclusion?

There are a few passages in Paul which appears to support pre-existence which need to be explained, and Ehrman and Dunn have examined these (whether convincingly or not is debated). But Paul's description of Jesus is consistent with a Jew who died in Paul's recent past, with the exaltation taking place at the crucifixion and indicated by the Resurrection.

I'm a firm believer in "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything" and its equivalent: "When people stop believing in academia, they don't believe in one theory, they believe in any theory."

tanya

We can "want" cold fusion to become a reality.

The question is not what we "want". The question is what IS.

The verb "to be".

What is, is reality, versus fiction.

Within fiction, then, legend, versus myth.

It is not a question of finding a "middle path". There is no middle path. There is only reality, versus imaginary.

Neither "Paul", nor gMark represent "reality". They both represent myth. There is no way to straddle an invisible middle ground, stretching between untrue and true. There is no path to follow into the darkness of myth.

:constern01:

stephan huller

I just suspect that Ehrman is crossing the line by inventing a purely 'historical Jesus.' Once Jesus is no longer a god during his ministry Christianity as we know it no longer exists and then we are left in an imaginary universe which is less in keeping with historical reality than much of the speculation of the mythers. I hope I am proved wrong when I read the book. But from what I have read in Ehrman's other books he has remarkably little restraint for self-serving (or self-selling) arguments.

Bottom line a pure historical Jesus sounds like a great idea - just 'prune' the God-man. Doesn't work like that unfortunately because Christianity is based on Jesus the God not Jesus the man.

It's like falling in love with a prostitute. You reason to yourself - all I have to is to stop her from being a whore, then I get stay in bed all day and have happy times. Good luck. You can take the pretense of being a lady away. Having sex for money is essential not only to her but your attraction to her. The lady is literally just window dressing (at least in Holland).

The question in Christianity - as with any meaningful inquiry into truth - is what is essential not what might be what is essential. Ehrman - and indeed most knowledgeable, informed scholars - mistake the one for the other because, like the whoremonger - the historical Jesus 'fits' into their weltanschauung better.

So it all comes down to utility rather than truth (which is the essence of whore-love incidentally too).

stephan huller

GDon: The argument is that Paul and gMark, the earliest 'witnesses', show Jesus who is a man

I don't think that Paul can be read like that. I have no idea what denomination you belong to but if it is related to the Catholic tradition you probably had candidates for baptism come up with their sponsors last week as it was Lazarus Sunday. When you look at that ritual, you see the last remnant of adelphopoiesis in the West. In the East the ritual is preserved more fully.

You have a chain of brothers going back to St Peter being baptized by Jesus (Clement, Hypotyposeis) who in turn baptized Andrew, James and John and they the rest.

Now go back to the basic understanding of what baptism is and you see that Jesus has to be a God. The image that you take on at baptism is that of the divine not something man made. If baptism is based on this ritual there must have been a gospel narrative that Clement knew that reflected this reality. He couldn't have 'made it up.' To this end, the most likely scenario is that Secret Mark is that gospel, Peter the youth being baptized.

Toto

I don't think that Ehrman's scholarship is based on his relationship to Jesus. The historical Jesus that he believes in (unlike the historical Jesus of the Jesus Seminar liberal Christians) is not a very nice person.

I suspect that he just got inducted into the academic, historical Jesus guild, and that's how he makes his living - teaching the conventional, consensus wisdom about Jesus to undergraduates. He knows that his guild of academics includes some very smart people, so he feels confident that if there were anything else that made sense, someone would have written a peer reviewed paper.

Toto

Paul doesn't know anything much about the man Jesus, and Mark doesn't describe an entity that is just a man.


This is the stupidest reason for supporting Christianity or theism. And it's not true - visit your local skeptics society to find atheists who don't believe in everything.

GakuseiDon

I'm not referring to their views of Jesus after resurrection, of course. And I'm not discounting their views that Jesus was somehow a special man.

But before resurrection: Paul describes Jesus in terms usually used to describe men (except for a handful of passages as I briefly alluded to above), and Mark's Jesus has a mother, brother and sisters.

I agree. :huh: Do you still think, despite everything that I've posted here over the years, that I'm trying to convince people to become Christians??? Remarkable.

mountainman

The central field for any BC&H question, even ultimate questions is ancient history. To this end the fields of science can only guide the field of ancient history toward discovery of historical truths (or their absence) that surround the "mystery of christian origins".

The indifference between modern theists, atheists, agnostics or hobbits (and their respective agendas) is tangential to the core issues, criteria and methodology of ancient history. Ancient history is an evidence driven discipline in which science and technology have commenced to play new and leading support roles.

Toto

Paul doesn't seem to care about Jesus before the Resurrection. Mark's Jesus before the Resurrection talks to Satan, fasts for 40 days, walks on water, multiplies loaves and fishes, etc. Not your average wandering holy man.

I don't know what you are trying to convince people of. I just find that statement about if you reject Christianity you will swallow anything to be supremely annoying.