Vorkosigan

Mark Goodacre points to this email exchange between Hurtado, Kloppenborg, and Alan Segal, all top scholars, at Slate.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2132974/?nav=navoa

Lots to digest there. Hope I have time to comment soon.

Vorkosigan

RPS

How can they be "top scholars" when all affirm an historical Jesus? Indeed, Segal (who isn't a Christian by the way) says this?

"For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion demonstrates that Jesus existed. Here are some facts in the Gospels that embarrassed the early church: Jesus was baptized by John (a great theological problem). He preached the end of the world (which did not come). He opposed the Temple in some way (and this opposition led directly to his death). He was crucified (a disreputable way to die). The inscription on the cross was "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (the church never preached this title for Jesus and shortly lost interest in converting Jews). No one actually saw him arise (though evidently his disciples almost immediately felt that he had). Ironically, it's the embarrassing nature of these facts that assures us of their authenticity. The exalted figure of Jesus as a heavenly redeemer and the Lord of the Hebrew Bible, on the other hand, was the response of Jesus' closest disciples to the events of Easter morning. These are tenets of faith, not claims that can be demonstrated historically."

I thought the MJ position was so blatently obvious that everyone who takes the HJ position has to have come to it by assumption and not via consideration and deliberation....

Vorkosigan

Are you being ironic?

Steven Carr

Segal writes ' Conversely, for a fact about Jesus to be deemed historical, it must not be in the interest of the church to report it.'

In some stories about Jesus, the infant Jesus kills people.

Isn't this rather embarrasing and so very likely to be true?

gregor

Vork

Would a baptism by JtB be an "embarassment" to the author, if the original Mark was an adoptionist piece and the baptism was merely meant to be a continuation from and superiority over a Jewish sect following JtB. I can see embarassment to the later church (and a reason for an interpolation to make JtB subjugate himself), but it doesn't seem embarrassing from an adoptionist perspective (and hence not historical from this basis).

RPS

I was simply responding to your post in light of previous assertions you have made, for example:

• * "...the existence of Jesus is an axiom of scholarship rather than a deduction of it."
  
• * "It's the historicist side that are the Creationists here, making broad historical claims without evidence, argument, or method to support them."
  
• * "In the historical Jesus field the Creationists are in charge. It doesn't get any simpler than that."
• * "There are no strong arguments for historicity...."
  
• * "...the individuals in the field have a definite agenda."
  
• * "...in order to carry out historical study of Jesus, you have to treat his existence as an axiom."

Vorkosigan

I guess I don't see any contradiction between recognizing that people are top scholars, and recognizing that they are shaped by the methodologies and thought processes of their fields.

Vorkosigan

ROFL. It's almost too easy.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

No. Right on, dude. It's also not embarrassing if the whole thing is fiction. And of course, the embarrassment criterion is usually used of individual writers, not institutional entities.

May as well argue that Boromir was real because that tale about how he wigged out and tried to take the Ring is so embarrassing. The criterion of embarrassment inherently assumes that there is history down there.

Vorkosigan

RPS

I guess I don't see how top scholars could accept and hold views in their field for which there is no evidence, no strong arguments and due to underlying assumptions and agendas. Maybe it's just me....