Toto

Shooting from the hip again, are we?

The only scholar who has explicitly staked out a position for Jesus agnosticism is Robert M. Price, who has stated that if there was a historical Jesus, there is no more, because all of the evidence has been lost. Price has also stated that he thinks Jesus was originally based on Osiris, but that the evidence of this has not survived. If Price is a pariah, it is because he has thoroughly lambasted the evangelical elements in so-called secular scholarship.

The term "minimalist" is not used in NT studies. It refers to those who think there is a minimal amount of history in the Tanakh. This is an entirely differenc dispute, with implications for Near East politics and nationalism.

There are quite a number of NT scholars who seem to believe in only a minimal Jesus, who probably existed but about whom not much is known. This is a very diplomatic, defensible position. These people are not pariahs. Some of them might be mythicists, but don't want to step on any land mines.

Would you happen to know of a secular scholar who has presented the case for a historical Jesus without assuming that he existed? Ehrman has not done this, and he declined to be part of the Jesus Project.

ApostateAbe

Thanks, as always, you know more about the subject than I do. No, I don't know of a secular scholar who has presented a case for a historical Jesus without assuming that he existed.

spamandham

How important is consensus to you in the field of art appreciation?

If history were a science, then consensus would be much more important. But few historians are trained to approach the topic from a rigorous scientific perspective. Instead, it's considered an art and treated as such by most of its practitioners.

That isn't to say that it's completely subjective, but to a good degree, it is. Fortunately, the scientific method has been creeping into the field for the better part of that last 60 years, and so the future looks bright. We're maybe at the half-way point right now. Perhaps within 50 years, history undergrads will receive a BS rather than a BA.

ApostateAbe

More scientific methods are certainly better, but, when almost all of your input data is written language and art, that means it is an inherently subjective field, unlike, say, the observations of a population of E. coli in a Petri dish. I think the introduction of statistics is a great idea, but it will go only so far, because a statistical calculation of the patterns of usage may indicate that a phrase in a certain passage means A when a study of the context of the passage leaves no reasonable choice but to believe that the phrase actually means B, and statistics cannot seem to effectively model the strength of the context, except by a somewhat arbitrary decision, which takes you back again to the subjectivity of the whole field. Because of the complexity of the field, I take the consensus of the intellectual authorities very seriously. If my own judgment differs from theirs, then they are more likely to be correct than I am. I have seen many people complain of bias of the scholarly establishment, usually from people who are victims of their dismissals, but I haven't really seen evidence enough to take their authority any less seriously than the intellectual professional consensus of any other field, because they seem to argue their cases much more effectively, and they are a competitive and open community of thinkers like in any other field.

spamandham

Well, ok. I don't find much value in consensus in this case for a couple of reasons:

1. There really is no consensus beyond 'Jesus existed'. How many hundred/thousand of diametrically opposed HJ theories have well qualified scholars come up with? If all we can say is about him is 'he existed', then we can't honestly say even that much. This is obviously a starting assumption rather than a conclusion.

2. There is a strong theological bias toward HJ in Jesus scholarship. Historically, Jesus scholars have almost all been theologians, and most scholars in the field still are today.

3. There are well qualified scholars who make well thought out arguments as to why Jesus was a theological construction. That they are not 'mainstream', is not sufficient to dismiss them in a field that is so subjective and based almost entirely on religious texts.

ApostateAbe

The consensus is more than you seem to think. The secular scholarly consensus is that Jesus was a Galilean preacher of Judaism of the first century, who was a student of John the Baptist, who had a small group of disciples, who preached against the Pharisees and Sadducees, who made apocalyptic predictions, and who was crucified by Pontius Pilate and the Jewish authorities of Jerusalem. His leadership was succeeded by the apostles Peter, James, John and Paul.

When I speak about the consensus like that, I may expect someone like Toto to come along and point out to me certain scholars who do NOT agree with those things. However, that is not relevant to the claim that there is a consensus--general agreement among the vast majority of scholars. You will always find a few qualified people out of the vast majority who disagree with almost anything.

If, historically, scholars of the New Testament have been theologians, then it is not so relevant to the situation of today. Historically, astronomers have been astrologers. Historically, biologists have been young-Earth creationists. I am not going to make the claim that you are wrong about the bias of the scholars, because I don't have strong evidence, but I think you need to recognize the very relevant modern divisions. There seem to be a great number of critical scholars who are independent of Christian dogmas and are proud of it. Review the list of fellows of the Jesus Seminar, for example. They advance theories that directly oppose Christian interests. So, if you want to make the claim, I think you are going to need a better argument, just so you don't look like a typical "fringe" theorist who thinks the establishment is crooked.

bacht

I haven't seen anything like this, but I wonder if someone has compared the gospel story with the book of Joshua. If Mark was writing some kind of allegory about Israel maybe he was following the Hebrew story about the "savior".

ApostateAbe

Possibly, but not that I know about. It is the first time I have heard that theory.

Toto

You have to look at the evidence that went into this consensus, and the only possible evidence for all of these details (except possibly the crucifixion) is the New Testament. Any "secular" scholar who maintains this must be relying on the gospels and must be assuming that there is some historical core there.

But this is just an assumption, popular in the days of Protestant Rationalism. It has been continually undermined as literary scholars have shown the basis for the inconsistent gospel stories in prior literary works.

And I should point out that most of these scholars are not trained as historians.

Thanks for acknowledging your abysmal ignorance. :Cheeky:

In fact, most of the Jesus Seminar have a theological bent. They want to fight fundamentalism and establish an alternate view of Christianity. The JS travels around the country holding seminars in liberal Christian and Unitarian Churches (just get on their mailing list.) The are not interested in examining the historicity of Jesus - they would all be out of jobs if they decided there was no HJ.

ApostateAbe

Thank you, I really do suspect that the Jesus Seminar does have a bias, a social-political one, if not a religious one. I need a list that is more representative of critical scholars in general, or maybe just a list of non-religious scholars.

Nor do I disagree with you that the evidence for the conclusions about Jesus, religious or not, are the documents of the New Testament. You write like that undercuts the significance of their authority, but I think they have good reasons for using the early Christian writings as evidence for their theories. It is not about the question, "Are these early Christian documents trustworthy or not?" That is a relevant question in apologetic debates, where you have conservative Christians in one camp and skeptics in the other camp. This isn't about apologetics. Instead, the relevant question is, "What are the most probable conclusions to draw from the contents of these writings?" A lot of historical truth can be inferred from the New Testament canon, even if it is basically a set of myths and lies, and I take the consensus of the secular scholarship as representing the best judgments in the matter.