Magdlyn

IMO, Bede should not assume to wiggle out of the undignified title so easily. He must have known Holding always puts "clever" sarcastic titles to his essays. Ie:

http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_04_02_04.html

Ted Hoffman

I am away from the web so I will be brief.

www.thorsons.com doesn't indicate that they "specialise in astrology, tarot and new age mysticism". You will find what I have indicated in my OP to be true when you visit the site.

Bede has no monopoly over what scholarship entails. If he wants to delude himself that he is the final authority over that, by all means let him go ahead.

I do not expect Bede to parade his review anymore as any form of rebuttal or refutation of the thesis of F & G. I don't mind any bug-eyed cop-outs from him: it comes with the territory. I have made my point and don't intend to seek him under any rock.
My post has got nothing to do with "my performance in the past" and if Bede wants to keep me in a box, he should know people do change, grow and people do learn. He can however keep a memory of who he thought I was if it makes him sleep peacefully. Perhaps even carve it in stone. Whatever it takes to keep the venerable Bede's smugness intact.

A university does not become respectable based on the number of years one takes to complete an MA. Questions on whether one is taking the course full-time or part time matter. Questions of how many years one took to get the first degree also matter. Questions of whether the programme is course-based or research-based also have a part to play. At the end of the day, the final yardstick is the graduand and what their contribution to scholarship and to the world is. Bede is not in a position to lecture us on which universities are respectable and which ones are not. He is parading his arrogance where it is neither needed nor appreciated.

Bede is not a scholar. He can not purport to speak for all scholars by saying "no scholar apart from Robert Price even give F&G the time of day". Its arrogant, baseless and pretentious.

Attacking the personality of an author instead of the arguments he makes is fallacious. Bede's article is full of well-poisoning, including purporting to know the motives of the writers. Its a shoddy practice employed only by hacks, politicians and spin-doctors.

Since GakuseiDon has chosen to stand by what Bede has written, does he then stand by the statement "...neither Gandy nor Freke have ever before demonstrated much grasp of critical history or biblical interpretation"?
And if he does, has he read all the works of Peter Gandy? If not, how did he arrive at that conclusion?

Does GD stand by the argument that the fact that the church had no policy of destroying documents precludes that the church destroyed documents?

Has GD forgotten that agreeing with Bede 100% on TJM entails stating that F & G are enemies of Christians and TJM an anti-christian work?
Or has GD changed his position on that matter?

Can GD list for us the "shady practices" F & G employed in TJM?

Does GD agree with the argument that since I am a Jesus Myther, when I am arguing for literary borrowing, I should not cite JD Crossan* to support my arguments sisnce Crossan is a HJ proponent?

* For example when I am arguing that Mark borrowed some parts of the PN from Philo's Against Flaccus?

Does GD find Bede's thesis a sound rebuttal to TJM as Bede has been peddling it?
If so, can GD list which arguments are available in Bede's Review that considerably weaken TJM (and not F & G)?

One last question for GD: from First Apology CHAPTER XXI -- ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST, does GD agree or disagree that Justin stated that, with respect to death and crucifiction of Jesus, christianity was similar to the pagan religions.

Lets stick to this passage please before we move to the others.

Doesn't GD think it would be nice if Bede (at least) thanked me for pointing out the mistake in his review - after all, his smugness alone didn't help him notice that he was citing the wrong passage in Justin's work - or is that also just fine and dandy with GD? Is this how true(TM) scholars behave?

Thank you, Magdlyn.

Sven

Did you notice the other thread on the book in which GakuseiDon explains his position and gives supporting arguments?

Bede

Well, I've calmed down now.

It was indeed remiss of me not to thank Jacob for pointing out the reference error. It has now been corrected.

The point of the passage I quoted is that it goes against Justin's grain. The whole point of his apology is that Christianity is not any more absurd than paganism. Hence, it is his examples of similarities that we should treat with caution as these are what supports his argument. When he admits at chapter LV that in fact there is no case where a son of Jupiter being crucified, then we should sit up and take notice because he has said something that contradicts his central argument. That's really what the criteria of embarrassment is all about too. It is good historical method to read sources against themselves and pick up where they say something that is not helpful to their case.

However, in the review I was not even making that point. I was simply saying that F&G do not even mention this passage. Even if they could explain it away, it is dishonest not to draw the reader's attention to important counter evidence. This alone means that I am justified in accusing them of being unscholarly but there is a lot more besides.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Celsus

A number of us on the non-Christian side of the fence, Kirby, myself, and I think CX, also happen to agree that Freke and Gandy are trash. I personally think that Bede went about it the wrong way by appealing a little too enthusiastically to ad hominem (against the publishers, for example), but overall, I'm not at all convinced that TJM is a scholarly work, though it pretends to be (which is the real crime, IMO).

Joel

GakuseiDon

No, my comments only refer to TJM. I'll grant that their other books may be excellently researched, so, at least from my perspective, I can't back it up. Bede definitely has the advantage by reading more of their material than me. If I read a few more of their books, then I could say that they've never demonstrated much grasp of critical history or biblical interpretation.

There is no doubt that the church did destroy documents. If someone says that the church didn't destroy documents, he would be wrong. Could you show me where Bede argues that the church didn't destroy documents?

My comment was referring to Bede's review of TJM. I see their book as pro-mammon rather than anti-Christian.

Done elsewhere. For example, F&G say that Osiris-Dionysus was hung in a tree or crucified, as in their statement "Jesus is hung on a tree or crucified, as is Osiris-Dionysus" (Conclusion section of Chapter 3). Could you give me their evidence for that statement? There doesn't seem to be any, at least that is related to Osiris-Dionysus being on a tree or crucified.

JA, F&G say that the amulet that graces the cover of TJM was held in the Museum of Berlin, but lost in WWII. Where did they get the picture from? An "old exercise book" that they came across. Could you check your copy of TJM for the title, author or location of that book? Mine doesn't have it.

No, I don't agree.

It was a book review. But as Bede gives links to where TJM is soundly rebutted, I'd say yes.

From Bede's review: "as J. P. Holding has demonstrated, modern Mithras studies have moved on a good deal. In the few cases where I could check their sources something rather surprising came up. Freke and Gandy are so selective and vague with their references that I could find a statement that totally contradicts their central thesis on the very page that they pointed to."

I understood what Bede meant straightaway. I'm interested in Origen and his ideas. F&G source quotes from Origen, but for some of them I've found that when I check the reference in the footnotes, it doesn't refer to the writings of Origen, but to some modern book. For example, p. 188, F&G say, "Origen is dismissive of Literalist Christianity which does not progress beyond viewing the Jesus story as historically fact". There is no doubt that Origen was a firm HJer, so this made me sit up. Needless to say, I couldn't find this in Origen's writings. The paraphrase and lack of reference to his actual writings makes it extremely difficult to check up. Is there any reason to NOT refer to the primary source? Even if the book was a translation, there is no reason to identify the source of a quote.

Yes, I agree that Justin stated that. This is what Justin says:
Justin definitely sees similarities between, say, Jesus being crucified and resurrecting, and Perseus and Bellerophon rising to heaven on the horse Pegasus.

Yes, I think it would be nice of Bede to thank you. In fact, I see he did just that.

JA, at the end of the day, it is the contents of TJM that matter. If you wanted to seriously question their scholarship, I can give you some more examples that we can look into together.

Here's another example, p. 142 (paperback edition). F&G write:
Do you think the gospel writers deliberately constructed the name for that reason, JA? I can assure you that that F&G have many footnotes for that section as well, so it is as well researched as the other sections.

Steven Carr

That page seems to be missing from his journal.

I mean the page where he gave just one instance of somebody (a Protestant, of course) destroying documents.

So one Christian in history did burn books.

Steven Carr

Talking about not mentioning counter evidence....


Bede writes in
http://www.bede.org.uk/Evolution.htm

'Dawkins makes various snide and unnecessary asides about what he thinks of religion like mentioning how he saw it coupled with UFOs on a bookshop's shelf, or using a waving statue of Mary to say we should never look for a supernatural explanation.'

Despite repeated requests, Bede has refused point-blank to quote the actual words of Dawkins, who wrote ''A miracle is something which happens, but which is exceedingly surprising. If a marble statue of the Virgin Mary suddenly waved its hand at us we should treat it as a miracle , because all our experience and knowledge tells us that marble doesn't behave like
that.'

Dawkins goes on to write (p162) about hypothetical long-lived aliens
'But even they will blench if a marble statue waves at them, for you
would have to live dealions of years longer than even they do to see a
miracle of this magnitude.'

Dawkins explains that a natural explanation of 'a miracle of this magnitude' is as likely as a cow jumping over the moon.

Yet Bede, while chastising others for not mentioning counter evidence, refuses to quote the words of the person he is misrepresenting so blatantly.

Now why would an intellectually honest person like Bede refuse a request to quote Dawkins actual words?

What reason could there be for Bede to refuse such a reasonable request?

Bede

Dawkin's point is that even something as unusual as the waving statute has a natural explanation which he goes on to explain. While he conceeds this would be extremely unlikely, Dawkins does not say a waving virgin is a supernatural event. If he had I would not have said what I said.

If you feel he is unclear, write and ask him. And stop derailing this thread.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

PS: The blog entry is 10 June (given it is about the definitive case of Christians burning books, I don't think it helps Steve much though).

gregor

I thought the topic of this thread was whether the book review was a fair and scholarly review, rather than a series of personal attacks, strawmen, and other fallacies (as are the stock-in-trade of Mr. Turkel). Thus, other examples of misquotations by the reviewer in question (including misstatements regarding quotes from Mr. Dawkins) would be quite relevant.