Ted Hoffman

I have emailed him petitioning him to reconsider having those reviews at his site. Lets hope he removes them.

Vorkosigan

Be serious.

You're thinking of Cornwell, Hitler's Pope. It's sufficient to point out that you are criticizing a book and a thesis you cannot name and cannot portray correctly.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

I trust you have a more substantiative rebuttal to my examples in store.

No I'm not. Hitler's Pope is relatively recent. It's sort of inspired by an earlier author, whose name escapes me, who wrote in the mid eighties.

It's also the book I linked to above as an example of a best-seller, largely because it's the most recent best-seller on the topic I remembered off the top of my head. If it was what I was thinking of, I'd have said so. Given that it's not about the topic I outlined (Pius failure to speak out against the Nazis), and is instead about an entirely different make-believe position (that Pius was the key element in Hitler's rise to power), it would stand to reason that it's probably not the book I had in mind.

First and foremost, no it isn't, it's empty rhetoric. How many people can tell you that Weems' wrote the story of Washington and the cherry tree? Not very many, yet that doesn't have any bearing on the tale's ubiquity.

Secondly, see above. I know who Cornwell is, I even linked to his book. if I'd meant to mention him, I would have.

I'm cautiously optimistic that further discussion might be more substantiative.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

No problem.

Why? Together they haven't sold a tithe of what McDowell sells every year, with the exception of Brown, who is writing fiction.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

They all topped best-seller lists. And I'd be hard-pressed to believe that any one of McDowell's books (keeping in mind how many he's written) has outsold Holy Blood and Holy Grail, or the Messianic Legacy. If he has, it isn't by much. Baigent and Leigh's HB&HG is over two decades old, and still selling well.

The general point, that people can write sensationalist crap to make money, holds quite well. These are people who, by all appearances, are writing sensationalistic crap and making gobs of money from it.

Everybody loves a conspiracy.

Does his book sell because it's good fiction? Or because of the elements that he claims aren't fiction? If it's the former, then why have Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh's books enjoyed such a tremendous boost in sales as a result of Brown? If it's the latter, then the example works just fine, and is still in need of an explanation that accords with your general theory--that there is more money to be made in conservative evangelical books.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Ted Hoffman

As I indicated, I made a petition to Doherty on behalf of myself and others here regarding his review of Archaya et al.
This is his response.

"Jacob,

I can sympathize with your (and your co-signers') attitude toward those book reviews, however I can't agree with all the sentiments that have been expressed on the IIDB on the subject.

There's a little more to this than meets the eye. Yes, there's a huge problem with Acharya. Her website and some of the ideas in the later part of her book make her come across like a New Age flake (or worse), and I've gently hinted at this in some past correspondence with her. At the time I wrote the review of The Christ Conspiracy (a good 5 years ago), I was in favor of any book putting forward the mythicist case, and willing to overlook some flaws. I felt we all needed to be mutually supportive (perhaps my naivete at the time). In the intervening years it's been a little too easy for everyone to recognize the problems in her scholarship and gang up on her. Apologists in general have smelled blood and hope that they can taint the whole mythicist field by association. Although I could see Bob Price's point of view, I was not in favor of the vehemence of his article against her. His 'outing' of her identity really alarmed and disturbed her, and I was unwilling to join the chorus and make her feel like she hadn't a friend in the world (as she put it to me). When she was writing her second book, Suns of God, she sent me parts of it for comment, and then asked me if I would put an endorsing comment on the cover. I couldn't go that far, and we lost contact after that.

My basic attitude toward her book, leaving aside its more extreme elements, is that she was one of the first in our time, along with Freke and Gandy, to synthesize that old scholarship which presented the case for seeing the Christ Savior as based on an "ideal type" that was rampant in the ancient world. (After all, mythicism does see Christianity as growing out of precedents, as being a product of its age.) For all the flaws in the Massey type and period of research, it was still in principle valid, since that ideal type can be clearly identified, even if some of the details which people like Massey (and History of Religions people such as Cumont and Bousset) put forward were shaky or exaggerated. Again, it's easy for us today to scoff at 19th century efforts, but I would remind you of your comment to Celsus about his "leaving Frazer in the 19th century." We've gone beyond them in knowledge and technique, but we still sit on their shoulders. (And we're still guilty of our own set of flaws and slants.) Unfortunately, by tossing them on the scrap heap, we only give the apologist reason to condemn and reject the principles which they established. We need to improve on them, not discredit them.

The problem is, since the early part of the 20th century, no one has really followed in people like Massey's footsteps. It's easy to criticize Acharya and Freke/Gandy for not going back to basics themselves and researching the primary sources anew, but that would be a monumental task. (I'd love to do it myself, but I'd need another lifetime.) But that doesn't make their books worthless. What they should have done was make the situation clear about that old scholarship, and for that I do fault them. I addressed the whole situation in my book review of "The Pagan Christ" by Tom Harpur, who was another who simply accepted the Massey type of research as though it was fully dependable and without problems. I suppose I need to do the same for Acharya and Freke & Gandy.

To be quite honest, I don't know if The Christ Conspiracy is salvageable. I have been thinking of supplanting it with a proper review of her Suns of God (which doesn't mean finding nothing of value or legitimacy in it). I only have about a third of the text, so I'd need to get the book, and it hasn't been near the top of my list of priorities. I would regard The Jesus Mysteries rather higher, and perhaps only a kind of proviso need be worked into it. F&G may not be the scholars we would like them to be, and they are writing from a certain philosophical viewpoint and interest, but again, I don't see the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They've done us a service, despite their flaws. As Price has said, New Testament scholarship has done it's best over the last 60 years or so to completely skewer the mainstream 'take' on the origins of Christianity *away from* its non-Jewish roots and precedents. And few in the field are protesting (Price has done his share). Tossing out the whole of this work, from Higgins to F&G, as though none of it has any merit, that we can learn nothing from it, is simply to play into their hands, as well as into the hands of apologists who would like nothing better than to claim that the whole thing is discredited. I don't intend to do that.

So I will revise the reviews, though it won't be immediately. I should manage to do it before the end of the summer. I've been thinking of it since I did the Harpur. It would be advisable in any case, simply to try to salvage some legitimacy for the principle behind a lot of the material they present.

Anyway, these are my immediate thoughts on the matter. I'll be thinking it over further, and will benefit from additional comments by such as yourself. Thanks for your concern and support."

Earl

freigeister

And there you have it, folks: the inner anti-semitism of the whole mythicist enterprise.

GakuseiDon

... not to mention the paranoia... the Evil Apologist Conspiracy strikes! I can't believe that Doherty is saying that he didn't press hard enough on Acharya and F&G in order to be supportive of the mythicist position.

Ted Hoffman

Amaleq13

It seems ridiculous to me to suggest that it is somehow anti-semitic to argue Christianity has non-Jewish roots and precedents.