Oolon Colluphid

Hi chaps.

So, I finally started watching a programme I taped a while ago with Tony Robinson (Baldrick from Blackadder / Time Team presenter and archaeology enthusiast) called The Real Da Vinci Code. Well you can guess what it's about; a good dismantling of the Grail guff). And it reminded me of reading the (at the time; I was 17) convincing Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Which in turn reminded me of my part-read copy of Freke and Gandy's Jesus Mysteries.

You see, I'm closing in on a point here... There's a reason for this background...

Now, TJM was quite good. I have a Classics degree and did my dissertation on Greek mystery cults, so I recognised much of the material as genuine. OTOH, I was bothered by the references, ranging from the fairly current like Walter Burkett... to J G Frazer (iirc)! Seemed too much like cherry-picking, which is why the book dropped by the reading wayside.

Holy Blood was pushing a theory; so were Freke and Gandy.

So what I'd like to find is something scholarly but readable that isn't particularly pushing a theory. Can you folks recommend a good book on the historicity of Jesus that doesn't have some sort of axe to grind? I realise from browsing here that there's a lot of HJ-ers and MJ-ers ... but someone somewhere must have evaluated this stuff dispassionately? Something that -- in effect, scientifically -- does not assume there was -- or was not -- a real Jesus and work towards that conclusion.

I'm a fence-sitter. I think it's perfectly possible that an historical Jesus existed. But there's too much accretion around him to get at the truth... and there's enough circumstantial evidence to make it just as possible the whole thing is nothing but accretion. A hollow pearl, if you will.

I like the idea that Jesus was a local conjuror, a Yuri Geller of his day. Got that from Nick Humphrey's Soul Searching chapter 'Behold the Man', referencing a book called Jesus the Magician. How about that one? But again it assumes that the guy was real.

It's getting boring, every time I think of something about early Christianity, having to mentally stick in the caveat, 'always assuming the guy existed at all'. So, where to find a balanced discussion (a non-theist one -- they're pushing an idea too, yeah? ) ? Help!

Cheers, Oolon

Peter Kirby

A non-axe-grinding book on the historicity of Jesus? It doesn't exist. The best work here is by Earl Doherty, but he has cut through the morass only with a finely honed axe. There's generally got to be a reason to sit down and connect the dots, a picture that would be pleasing to you.

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

Ludemann's Jesus After 2000 Years is pretty balanced and reasonable, all things considered.

Vorkosigan

Oolon Colluphid

I can understand that; but it's a shame if nobody seems to have simply wondered, as I am, "Okay, did the guy really exist? Let's take a good look at the evidence..."

I think, being innately lazy, that what I'm asking for is for you experts to tell me which is right

Thanks chaps, will look into those two books (what, no amazon-infidels links? :Cheeky: ). Anyone else?

Oolon Colluphid

<returns from amazon>
I saw that you think so

Okay, thirty quid, and 700 pages. Any lower bids?

S.C.Carlson

That book is probably is this one: Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978).

The book certainly assumes that Jesus was real and argues that he met the definition of an ancient magician, especially as perceived by outsiders. Although Smith is also known for the Secret Gospel of Mark, that text plays at most only a minor role in his Jesus the Magician.

Stephen

Toto

Feel free to browse our Recommended Reading

I think you want a book like Robert Price's The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, but sometimes you need a guide to Price's references to German theologians (or popular culture).

Earl Doherty's book is The Jesus Puzzle. You can sample it at www.jesuspuzzle.com

SaintCog

This may raise some eyebrows on this forum, but I think John Meier's "A Marginal Jew" is a great series of books on the historical Jesus. Although there are places where I feel that he brings too much of his own theological baggage to bear on his conclusions, he at least represents most sides of whatever argument he is pursuing fairly and exhaustively - at least that's been the case in the parts that I've read. If nothing else, it gives the reader a really good picture of the current state of historical Jesus studies.

Cheers,
SC

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks folks . Doherty and Price seem the way to go for now. (Sorry Toto, I somehow missed the reading list, or rather, found it and managed to miss the relevant bit of its contents. :banghead: )

Cheers!

neilgodfrey

Even what we generally understand by the term "scientific knowledge" is by the very nature of knowledge created in order to falsify or test a theory or hypothesis. It gets even messier in the arts and social sciences, including history. The idea that there is a set of commonly perceived set of data and a value-free possibility of making sense of this set and studying it in some universally agreed objective way is simply fantasy.

Hence zillions of books from every conceivable angle have been written about the nature of history and knowledge and historical evidence etc. Even the basic evidence with which historians work is not an absolute universally agreed collection of information. We have, say, a manuscript of a gospel, but how do we know if it was meant to be read as literal history, myth, metaphor, propaganda, etc etc etc? We have to begin by asking questions about the data we work with, and the very questions we bring to bear on any set of data will reflect certain values we bring to the exercise -- and that's true even of the physical sciences.

The only ray of hope is to set our antennae to register as sharply as possible the values and assumptions and hypotheses inherent within each book -- and in our own minds -- as we read and learn.

(for a great arms-length example of how one person's 'value-free no-nonsense obvious facts and respectable enquiries' are another person's pernicious socially dangerous and subversive 'attitude issues', check out India's history wars where today a country is very divided over the question of the historicity of Rama -- the same issues, attitudes, values, conflicts over what is 'axe-grinding' vs what is 'objective enquiry' are seen in dramatic relief here where no one side is so insignificant to be relegated to the looney fringe. ..... for details scroll down to "Wednesday 14th September 2005" on http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/ )

N