jgibson000

I assume that you think Sanders should be made aware of the weaknesses of his position.

If so, do you have the courage of your convictions to do so? My guess is no. But in case you do, here is his e-mail contact address:

JWGrundle@verizon.net

Will you send Sanders your review? If you won't, will you please explain why you won't?

JG

Ted Hoffman

I wouldnt mind it.
I will. But since you typically obsess over these kinds of things, I will copy it to jgibson000@attbi.com, jgibson000@hotmail.com so that you dont harass me with annoying questions driven by suspicions over whether I actually sent it.
But unlike you, I wouldnt impose on others to get into correspondence with scholars they criticize to prove the "courage of their convictions." It may come off as confrontational and unnecessary attention-seeking. I am doing it because I see no harm but I dont expect much from it.
That email address does look fishy but I will take a leap of faith and assume Sanders is into broadband.

Ted Hoffman

jgibson000@bi.com, jgibson000@hotmail.com have already been rejected. No problem though. If you have a valid email address, I can still forward you what I emailed Sanders.

Vorkosigan

No, I assume others will advocate them.

Michael

Peter Kirby

Part of me wants to revolt against the idea that the scholar is nothing but a political advocate dressed in critical garb, debating ideology...but then I think about the case of Michael Grant.

Whatever else may be said about Michael Grant, his entire book on Jesus can and has been and always will be reduced to one or two sound bites.

"if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned."

"If we apply the same criteria that we would apply to other ancient literary sources, the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was indeed found empty."

Here is the great classical historian telling us, in other words, that the "same criteria" used in classical study would authenticate foundational claims of Christian apologetics, namely the `existence of Jesus' and his `empty tomb'.

Now Grant had many claims which he actually presented arguments for, such as his view of Jesus's eschatology, but all that discussion might as well never happened. Grant on Jesus = Existence and Empty Tomb, is the highly politicised view of Grant that we can glean from the literally dozens (if not hundreds) of apologists who have quoted him.

Am I really to suppose that Grant was the unjaundiced eye, the unpolitical historian? There is of course little risk of opening yourself to censure by affirming the historicity of Jesus, and little more for stating that the tomb he was laid in was empty, at least among most circles, which are not those of skeptics and rationalists. Perhaps Grant tried to be apolitical by not opening the can of worms that would be overturning Christian scholarship on either point, but in doing so, he has turned himself into a distinctly Christian ideological weapon, the kind of secular witness to Christ that is paralleled in ancient hagiography in the person of Pilate.

Like I said, I'd like to believe that we can write ancient history without modern politics...but even if we could, would not all our "findings" be politicized, and indeed even more politically potent by their allegedly apolitical origin in unvarnished historical reasoning?

I would have liked to ask Grant about his Jesus book, if I had the opportunity and thought about it; whether he appreciated the turn it took, being reduced to a whipping post against inquiry by reproducing the baldfaced unsupported conclusions. (Note that nobody ever cites the arguments behind these two soundbites, simply because there is nothing more to it; apparently, the stature of Grant was so great in his mind that he could pull out "by the same criteria" whenever he wanted to declare something by fiat; or perhaps it is just the case, as Doherty mused once, that this popular book was written in one fine weekend.) And nobody seemed to give Grant the credit for a perfectly fine explanation of why the tomb was empty.

If you would write about history, be sure to let your political trousers down, and let people know that what you are stating is necessarily politic for you, your publisher, and/or your readership; unless you have the strange notion that you are discovering something against your politics, in which case that remarkable fact should not go unnoticed either. For, otherwise, presumed notions of your poltiical stance will be fabricated, and you may be turned in to a witness of something quite other than what you intended.

Beware the example of Michael Grant and Jesus. There but for the grace of God go I!

Ted Hoffman

My view is that mainstream scholars are blind to the deficiencies of their own methods because skepticism and critical thought have NEVER been an integral part of NT scholarship. Sure, they mention these concepts in their works but have never been truly committed to them. They are sincere in a very naive way, the way one massaging their own sprained ankle would subconsciously avoud the painful points. Their confessional interests render them incompetent and handicap them from ever being able to be truly objective.

Peter Kirby

"They" -- are they a monolith?

Ted Hoffman

Yes. "Mainstream" implies that there are streams and rivulets like Price and Ehrman.

Peter Kirby

So, "they," as a mainstream, are a monolith.

Fascinating. Who are they, in particular?

Ted Hoffman

They who are identified as the belonging to the mainstream - Crossan, Meier, Goodacre, Sanders, Vermes, Borg, Theissen, Reed etc. They can also be mainstream but have fringe theories as pets like Tim Thompson.