EarlDoherty

Don't waste your time. In your hands, it would come across as simply another apologetic exercise, and we've already got lots of those.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

I doubt that. From my observation, the difference between "mythicist" and "myther" is not much less than the difference between "negro" and the "N" word. No mythicist refers to him or herself as a "myther" and you won't catch me adopting it.

Earl Doherty

hjalti

Ok, but I don't know why you would say that thinking that these passages I mentioned (beginning of Romans, beginning of Romans 13 and the first trip to Jerusalem in Galatians) are interpolations is ad hoc.

ApostateAbe

When I saw the most recent debate between Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman, Craig Evans centralized his arguments on the relatively-strong textual reliability of the New Testament canon. Bart Ehrman fully granted him that conclusion (believe it or not), and he made the counterpoint that there are tens of thousands of copies of his Bart Ehrman's own books in existence, and his own book is very textually reliable, but it does not follow that anyone should believe the claims that the book itself expresses. There are very good ways of deciding the textual reliability of any given passage. It is not arbitrary.

Myther: This passage was interpolated for sure, therefore nobody has any idea whether or not these other ten passages were also all interpolated.

Critical scholars: We can judge the probabilities of interpolations based on such criteria as dissimilarity, plausibility, and multiple attestation.

hjalti

ApostateAbe

I didn't say those passages in particular were ad hoc, though I suppose it looks that way on the face, at the moment. Hundreds of passages have been claimed by mythers to be interpolations. An argument for interpolation, especially when accompanied by a conclusion that requires the interpolation be true, is sort of the symbol of "ad hoc" within this subject. Any time anyone needs to make a case for his or her own unlikely theory of history, you can be sure that proposals of textual corruptions of some sort will be part of it.

EarlDoherty

And in the context of an entire documentary record of early christianity in which forgery, amendment, and assorted textual corruption was rife and rampant (we can also look at the wholesale changes later evangelists were willing to make on their "source" in Mark), such an approach is entirely valid.

These are my votes for interpolation:

CERTAIN and necessary: 1 Thess. 2:15-16 (in which I have the agreement of most critical scholars).

PROBABLE but not necessary: 1 Timothy 6:13, supported by the evident presence of an interpolation in 6:3 (see Appendix 1 in The Jesus Puzzle and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man)

PROBABLE but not necessary: Galatians 4:4 "born of woman, born under the Law" (See Chapter 15 in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, in which I graduated this one from "possible" to "probable".)

POSSIBLE but not necessary: Galatians 1:19 "brother of the Lord" (by a later scribe to clarify any confusion with the Gospel disciple James of the Twelve).

That's it. I have no doubt that there are probably more interpolations, especially in the Pauline epistles, but they are more difficult to identify and argue, and not necessary to the mythicist case, at least mine.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

I think that you would be refreshing exception to the pattern of proposing ad hoc interpolations, Earl Doherty, except your alternative strategy--interpreting the texts as merely spiritual or metaphorical--is an equal symbol of those with unlikely theories of history. It is a shame that you resolve one problem by magnifying another.

Toto

Since we know that no one ever wrote spiritual or metaphorical literature in early Christianity??? </sarcasm>

ApostateAbe

Well, the thing is that my background in arguing against Christians--conservatives, liberals, anyone with an ideology--has made me very well acquainted with unusual new spiritual/metaphorical interpretations of Biblical texts. Anytime there is scriptural evidence they just don't like when you take it literally, then there is always the option to interpret it metaphorically. We know it happened elsewhere in scriptures, so we can interpret it the same way again here. The Bible says that there was a global flood, but, hey, that was really just a metaphor.