spin

I suspect you oversimplify things, which leads to crap conclusions. You've gone from me--who introduced into the thread the notion of how post-modernist thought has been useful (remember?)--saying "I'm certainly not a post-modernist" to you now claiming I don't think I'm "promoting anything post-modern." That's like saying that the classical composer George Gershwin would have been mistaken thinking he wasn't a jazz composer having been influenced by jazz. One doesn't have to be a post-modernist to appreciate useful analyses from the movement. Doh!

Be a bit more nuanced.


spin

Rick Sumner

I posted a thread last week on the Covenant Code and Hammurabi. It got one reply. Time was it would have gotten 30. Even if people hadn't read the book in question, since it is fairly recent (no one had read it on the bib-studies list either, when I posted the same question there--and they get paid to read it), people would have had comments on the possibility, and questions about the case, whether they thought it plausible or absurd.

Few of the threads that really stand out in my memory here have much to do with HJ/MJ. With the exception of Vorkosigan, I can't think of many JM/HJ discussions that really did much to challenge my thinking.

spin

You're lucky. I haven't seen any HJ discussion where supporters did any history, so they obviously didn't challenge anyone's thinking. They are just so hard to pin down as to where exactly they think they are doing any history whatsoever. They project modern notions of embarrassment and dream up probabilities. They are content to think because they can argue forcefully against mythicist views that they don't need to actually do any history. They don't really need to present a meaningful case. Although they show no way of ever knowing they aren't talking utter crud, they are complacent. And I have even offered a simple non-historical reading of how a non-real figure such as Ebion could enter a tradition (and that our history begins and ends with Paul's vision) to show that this complacency reflects a false sense of security. It not something that I should need to do. They should be able to fess up to the fact that they can either do the job and produce the goods or not do it and show a little humility: "well, it's my belief and it seems the most plausible explanation to my biases, which I realize has no weight in scholarship."


spin

Rick Sumner

Why must every discussion with you denigrate into thinly veiled shots masquerading as insights? Do you think you fool anyone into believing you're offering something substantial when you do that?

Nothing to see here. Just a lot of unjustified pretense.

spin

"Shields up, Mr Scott."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If there are "thinly veiled shots", does it change the content of the statement, ie that the HJ believer has no tangible reason for his/her belief? You can deal with the truth value in the statement, rejecting it through rational response if you can, but simple dismissal is only endemic of the problem noted.


spin

Rick Sumner

It was a playful comment. As should have been clear from the light-hearted remarks following it.

As to the question of whether or not your employing post-modernist epistemology. . .

When people say they're post-modernist, they usually are. When people emphatically deny being post-modernist. . .they usually are too.

The reason for this is two-fold. First of all, most people don't really understand whatall post-modernism is, which is perfectly understandable--I certainly wouldn't profess to have a grasp of all of its nuances.

The bigger problem is the tendency to think post-modernist is a pejorative. The most common one being the notion that it uses big words to hide small ideas, but of course that's not the only negative connotation people take from it.

So it's not that I didn't read your affirmation that you were "certainly not post-modernist," it's that I didn't see much point in paying attention to it. Without getting into the semantics of whether or not your stance (not just here, but in general) qualifies as post-modern, to suggest that it is "certainly" not is a distinction that seems to exist more in your mind than in the content you provide.

The intended irony was that you suggest you are "certainly not a post-modernist," when I don't see any reason to make that assertion as "certainly" as you do. Maybe you're not post-modernist. What you provide is a lot closer to it than you seem to think.

mountainman

Objection. The infidel being described above is an infidel who appears to be "luke-warm". This just means the baggage has been balanced. It does not imply that the baggage has either been examined or set down.


In one sense the literary Jesus is just a hobby horse. The baggage is our traditional ways of looking at the "problems of christian origins". The ways we look at "early christian origins" are directly reflective of our acceptance of unevidenced tradition. Elsewhere you summarise this as "our cultural traditions are heavily imbued with many centuries of christian hegemony". I <<< totally agree >>> with this.

What I disagree with is the assertion that infidels are luke-warm ambivalent agnostics over the historical authenticity of someone who may be described as Bilbo Jesus Baggins. You are aware that my position for example explores the possibility that both Jesus and Christianity (the one described in the Tetrarchy of Gospels, Acts, Paul and the historical packaging of Eusebius) did not exit until very late.

Your baggage seems to react quite violently to this idea. I can understand this too. I cannot describe what it took for me to truly ask the question "What if JC was invented as a literary figure in an imperial scriptoria?" It meant that I had to throw away Eusebius in entirety and deal with a vacuum.

I am pretty sure that the average infidel has little understanding of the relationshipt between christianity and jesus without Eusebius -- and that moreover they are not aware of the relationship -- it is an unconscious perhaps and often unexamined postulate. I am pretty sure that the average infidel is not capable of processing christianity and jesus without Eusebius. I'd go so far as to say that in a very realistic historical sense Eusebius **is** the baggage.

When you can put Eusebius down [by this I mean in an objective theoretical HISTORICAL sense], you have a chance of putting down your baggage. But until one has addressed the HISTORICAL question of Eusebius and the HJ and the "historical truth" (if any) of "early christianity" then one IMO has not addressed one's own baggage in this HISTORICAL issue.

Rick Sumner

No, it just raises the level of rancor the thread began investigating. And there's no "if," as you know as well as I do. Let's not hide behind semantics.

It is, to steal your terming, endemic of the problem noted. You espouse this fraternal "knowledge for knowledge's sake" investigation, but your incessant rhetoric betrays a different motivation.

My interest in discerning a sounder epistemology is sincere. If yours isn't, perhaps you should bow out. There are lots of other threads where participants are more interested in what amounts to verbose name calling. Pick the right thread, I might even join in.

But I have no interest in it here.

We might come back to this one later. I'm still postponing response on your more substantiative remarks until a later date. I suppose I can add Celsus' remarks to that as well. I have responses too ready, which is probably more dangerous than not having one at all.

Celsus

I saw that thread. I wanted to comment on it but I think my comment amounted to 'duh' and so I didn't. The problem is that it's not a new idea, but if he's made a formal argument for literary relationship, then you need his book to actually have anything to say about it.
I've best been challenged by critiquing my own ideas while reading around the topics. Methodologically, I've moved very very far from where I was since I first started posting here regularly, and almost all of that has to do with reading history/philosophy of science and then historiography in the light of history of science, all which I first got interested in because of evolution/creation debates (and precious little to do with the ideas at BC&H).

Rick Sumner

Heh, that's essentially what Lemche told me on bib-studies. I'd like to be more helpful, but I'm so far out of my area I wouldn't even know where to begin--I couldn't tell what he says that's new, what enjoys broad support and doesn't need much defense, or what he says that's truly novel.

I'm sure my description doesn't do him justice. His enthusiasm at having developed something new seems sincere, so I have to assume that it probably is, I just don't know what is and what isn't.

Heh, I've come a long way from where I started methodologically too. Mostly because of this guy who used to run a forum who dropped terms like "historical anti-realist" a lot. From that I read other stuff on historiography and some fairly introductory philosophy, and lo, here I am.

So I suppose indirectly that guy's largely responsible for my current epistemology, even if it doesn't agree with his.