neilgodfrey

You've caught me out if you ask me the most current state of play since I've been away from this area for quite some time -- but certainly in recent years I have seen debate in particular over Earl's setting of Jesus (mythical) in the nonearthly realm. Wells I know did take issue with this.

That sounds like a good start, but you'll have to wait a while for me to offer the first response to these questions. I've only just this morning discovered this thread on iidb, including Earl's notice that he has posted a revised discussion of Hebrews. Give me a bit more reading time . . . coming, coming. . . .

Neil Godfrey

GakuseiDon

Sure, there are discussions by various proponents of the Jesus Myth pushing their own particular views, but what I mean is something along the lines of the article that Jeffrey Gibson gave on the history of the evaluation of the conceptual background to Hebrews, where it shows how the consensus changed as new analysis became accepted. Is there a "mythicist" consensus? If not, why not?

Sure. Sorry, I didn't mean to put it all onto you. :blush: I'm just surprised by the continuing lack of response from mythicists to Earl's posts. Is Earl right? Is he wrong? Has his Hebrews article added to the mythicist consensus about how Christianity started? Or has it done nothing?

Perhaps some mythicists would like to suggest what should be done with Earl's new article, vis-a-vis their own theories. Investigate it? Just accept it as-is? Or consider it irrelevant?

Please believe that I'm not trying to divide the mythicist community here, I'm asking them to get involved.

youngalexander

Geez GDon, the plurry document is
Not everyone is as familiar with the epistle, (let alone as enthusiastic) as you are? Also, some of us have a life apart from the :angel: s.

Give us a break. My understanding is that the mills of this scholarship business grind slowly, to fine sift the grain.

Clivedurdle

I thought we were attempting to help put an argument into a format so that it would actually be read by academics. Jeffrey as far as I see has provided a summary of all the main debates that should be commented on in any thesis that is proposing the above, and there should be clear arguments why Earl is taking the position he is in the light of this existing range of arguments.

That does require debate of why the platonic view - as stated above was knocked off course by the DSS and debate about the mystery religions. If Earl is arguing for a restatement of Plato - which I am in favour of, he does need to show why DSS based arguments etc are mistaken. It may be implied in his paper but it needs to be explicit. I do see a need for at least a chapter looking at the points Jeffrey has brought up.

Earl, again, is there a confusion about what standards of argument are required by different audiences?

One of the things I am seeing is this repetition of the argument that xianity predates the mystery religions. There are huge problems with that argument as far I understand it - Julius Caesar was kidnapped by Mithraic influenced Pirates, the term Most High is in the Hebrew Bible. Cyrus and Darius had huge influences on Judaism.

Ellegard is also interesting on this.

On arguments for mythicism and where people stand, we are as in a glass darkly, but we are agreed that any hj is not a credal one and is therefore a minimalist one, there are obvious huge legendary accretions, and there are very strong arguments that these are probably diasporic Jewish ideas and therefore a longed for saviour figure is very likely to be completely made up.

Earl is putting forward a heavenly Christ - and there are very strong arguments for that. That is why I asked is Hebrews very early. Do we have a timeline?

I actually seeing Christology as possibly evolving from a purely heavenly one, adding on various human attributes, - Mark being very important as a play to teach these ideas, and like a rolling stone gathering moss, picking up fish and emperor Christ and various other ones like a logos Christ and a helping the poor Christ and an apocalyptic one and a gnostic one and a sparrow from clay one.

gstafleu

Let's assume this is so. How, then does this affect Doherty's argument? Are you saying that there is an abundance of examples where this construction is used to indicate someone physically walking on earth, as opposed to, say, someone (or some entity) being alive? Mind you, I'm not saying these examples don't exist, I'm just wondering if that is what you are saying. If so, do you have some examples of these examples?

Gerard Stafleu

Jeffrey Gibson

Just a point of note: there doesn't have to be an abundance of examples to show that ἐν ταῖς ἡμ�*ραις τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ means what the earliest Greek speaking commentators on Hebrews -- as well as the translators of Hebrews into Latin and Syriac, took it to mean.

Absent (a) the a priori of ancient belief not only in a sub lunar "fleshy" realm above the earth, but also one that had "days" and contrasting ears, and (b) the provision by Earl of examples in Hellenistic literature where the expression itself or any analogues of ἐν ταῖς ἡμ�*ραις τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ are used of non earthly/non historical persons to mark out both a period in, and a "then and now" of, their "heavenly life", what else but a designation of historical existence would ἐν ταῖς ἡμ�*ραις τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ have been taken to mean by Greek speakers?

That ἐν ταῖς ἡμ�*ραις τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ does not mean, and was not taken to mean, "when X was alive (on earth)" is Earl's claim. It's up to him, if he wishes to make his case, to provide examples that show that at the time Hebrews was written the expression had another sense.

Jeffrey

Toto

Are you on the JesusMysteries yahoogroup?

This is where I see Earl's point about tone-deafness. Your objection does not engage Earl's point, which I read as just a reason not to be bound by a literalist reading of the idea of crucifixion. You are trying to make this one statement, by itself, a positive argument for a mythicist reading of the passage, and then refuting it by claiming that it does not make any more sense than a literal interpretation of the crucifixion.

Are you used to reading literary criticism?

EarlDoherty

I’ve been doing repairs to my piano and need to catch up.

For both Don and Jeffrey (and others, who regularly argue along such lines), I need to make a couple of general points, which I’ve made before. Christianity was anything but unique in some of its ideas, but it did have its own distinctive elements. The fact that some of its expressions are not found to be paralleled in other literature is hardly some kind of slam dunk argument against my position. The best example is the crucified Messiah. That’s unique to Christianity, and even in the context of an HJ is claimed by some NT writers to be based on scriptural prophecy. As far as we know, no previous Jewish sect derived a crucified Messiah from the Jewish scriptures. Does this make Christianity a fancy?

I’ve often said that some of the things which seem unique to Christianity would be expected to be found only in mystery cult soteriology, and we have virtually nothing surviving from that field which would contain such ideas and show that there were parallels to Christian thought in pagan salvation religion. (Although that is an exaggeration, since we do have many indicators of similar ideas.)

Jeffrey’s query about “in the days of his flesh” is certainly esoteric, and I would not try to pronounce on it, but I fail to see why he considers it a silver bullet. He is also taking it in isolation, while failing to consider all those other usages of “flesh” in phrases throughout the epistles which refer supposedly to Christ’s earthly incarnation. (I have an Excursus in Part Two of the article which discusses this curious exclusive usage of such terminology to allegedly refer to the incarnation.) It is not a case of Jeffrey or anyone else being able to ‘tease out’ some possible earthly meaning behind the Hebrews 5:7 phrase, as curious as it might be; it is also a case of considering why this kind of odd and awkward terminology has been chosen by many independent writers and documents to describe a life on earth, and never anything more natural—or clear. I would expect Jeffrey to combine his analysis of 5:7 with that larger question of the general terminology of early Christianity to refer to Jesus’ sojourn on earth. Moreover, does he have any examples in non-Christian literature where a writer uses “flesh days” and other related terminology to refer to the life on earth of an incarnated god, or anyone’s life on earth? (Which, of course, indicates that once again, he hasn’t really contributed anything substantive to the discussion; we all should note that when asked to supply examples in the literature for what he was suggesting, he simply sidestepped the request.)

My second point is also one I’ve made before. The epistolary literature of early Christianity, inside and outside the canon, is a wasteland for anything which clearly speaks of an incarnated Son, let alone of the Gospel Jesus and the events of his earthly life. In desperation, historicists seize on a handful of terms and passages like “flesh” or “the likeness of a man,” the word “cross” itself, etc., and ignore everything else. Since “in the days of his flesh” and other like passages are never accompanied by historical markers (5:7 is accompanied by examples from scripture as to what he did in those “flesh days”!—something Jeffrey fails to address), such appeals are hardly conclusive. Yet they are held on to for dear life, repeatedly shoved in the face of mythicists even when the latter have offered alternate interpretations and explanations, and point to far more serious problems in other passages which historicists fail to come to grips with.

Now, a couple of observations about Jeffrey’s claims. The problem is, when you merely post long stretches of commentary or discussion with no personal input, and expect someone to extract something from them for which the poster offers no guidance, this is not only negligent on the poster’s part, it also indicates that he really doesn’t have a clear idea of what he wants you to see in it, or how he expects you to answer it. Throw all and sundry against the mythicist wall and see if it sticks, seems to be Jeffrey’s strategy. It’s quite possible, for all I know, that he hasn’t a clue about the subject matter he is ‘defending.’ “His friend” (I’m glad he has one) L. D. Hurst has made this analysis of the background concepts in Hebrews, but does Jeffrey know what they are? We have no way of knowing. Yet he expects me to have read and dealt with every single study, every background concept ever come up with in the 20th century, in one Internet article, while on his side he hasn’t personally chosen a single element from his reams of material which he is willing to point to and stand behind as in any concrete way supporting his antagonism to my article (one I presume he still hasn’t read).

Someone brought up Qumran, and its ‘background influence.’ Let’s see what Jeffrey’s “excerpts” have to say on Qumran.

The publication of the scrolls from Qumran brought to light an expression of sectarian Judaism that has been identified with the Essenes. The first serious attempt to propose Qumran as the conceptual background of the intended audience in Hebrews, which clarifies distinctive features of the argument of Hebrews, was published in 1955 by Y. Yadin (ScrHier 4 [1958] 36–55). He suggested that those addressed in Hebrews had formerly been members of the Qumran community and that they continued to hold some of their prior beliefs (38). In support of this proposal, Yadin identified several points of contact between the argument in Hebrews and the sectarian beliefs at Qumran. Yadin’s proposal was quickly followed by others who found in Qumran the conceptual basis for regarding believers as the community of the new covenant, for the conception of Jesus as a priestly Messiah, and for the distinctive interest in the person of Melchizedek in Hebrews. This construction of the conceptual background is the basis for the commentaries of G. W. Buchanan and P. E. Hughes. Hughes referred to Yadin’s article as “the best theory yet advanced to explain the occasion and purpose of the Epistle to the Hebrews” (14).

Looks like Qumran is the answer, right? And according to Jeffrey, I guess Hebrews is based on the concepts found at Qumran, and I should have presented my case in those terms. But wait a minute. Right in the very next paragraph of his excerpt, we find…

Little consideration seemed to have been given to the striking linguistic and conceptual differences between the scrolls and Hebrews. The scrolls from Qumran were written in Hebrew and Aramaic and are Semitic in conception; Hebrews is written in exceptional Greek and is hellenistic Jewish in conception. Detailed consideration of the arguments offered by Yadin and others in support of their proposal have shown them to be capable of other, more plausible explanations (cf. F. F. Bruce, NTS 9 [1963] 217–32; Coppens, NRT 84 [1962] 128–41, 257–82; Hurst, “Background,” 72–114). Moreover, the differences in the OT text to which an appeal is made and to the conception of the role of Melchizedek in 11QMelch and Hebrews are so fundamental as to preclude any influence of 11QMelch upon the argument developed in Hebrews (see Comment on Heb 7:1–25). There is no sound basis for affirming that Qumran provides the conceptual background for Hebrews. Similarities because of traditional exegesis of the OT are insufficient to offset the striking differences between Qumran and Hebrews.

So what is Jeffrey championing? Qumran or not Qumran? Jeffrey claimed to Ted that “the text I posted is not tangential. It is the supporting evidence you say I didn’t give.” Supporting of what? That Qumran is the background to Hebrews, as some scholars have maintained? Or that Qumran is not the background to Hebrews, as other scholars have maintained? How is conflicting evidence “supporting” of anything, except for scholarship’s own uncertainty and unreliability? What does he expect I should have said about Qumran in my article? Apparently I should have spent several hundred words discussing the pro-Qumran background concept, followed by another several hundred on the anti-Qumran concept. (I in fact did mention a few points to do with Qumran which I felt were pertinent to my argument.) Perhaps it would have served the purpose of demonstrating that much-vaunted professional scholarship can’t get its own act together, and what is declared the final word in one decade is chucked onto the scrap heap in the next. What Jeffrey expected on the subject of Qumran is, of course, not to be known, since all he did was throw texts at me with no identifiable commitment of his own toward them. Of course, he didn’t really expect anything. It’s all obfuscation and faux-rebuttal which he hopes will pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and create the image of discrediting me without him actually doing anything substantive or even show that he in fact knows anything at all on the subject.

Williamson’s argument has now been strengthened by L. D. Hurst’s extensive analysis of terms not treated by Williamson and by his fresh investigation of Jewish apocalyptic as the proper background against which to read elements in Hebrews that previously had been judged to be Platonic (“Background,” 22–68). Hurst concludes that Philo and the writer of Hebrews shared a common conceptual background rooted in the Old Greek version of the Bible. Philo chose to develop certain OT themes Platonically. The writer of Hebrews, under the influences of Jewish apocalyptic and primitive Christian tradition, chose to develop them eschatologically.

I address this contrast between Philo and the purported influence of Jewish apocalyptic in Hebrews. But I focus my attention on the fact that the latter claim (all the rage in these latter days, though I am not denying that a certain amount of such influence is present, just its degree and importance) is dependent on scholars suppressing the Platonic meaning (which is supported by the text) and insisting on reading nothing but Jewish linearity into it. (By the way, I guess Jeffrey would find nothing odd for someone to say that “in the days of their flesh” New Testament scholars like Hurst, Attridge and Williamson devoted themselves to studying ancient texts.) I do this primarily through my dealing with Attridge’s work, which postdates Hurst’s. Jeffrey accused me at one point of being guilty of a “shallow” (or a word to that effect, no I won’t take the trouble to look it up) treatment of Williamson—on what basis, no one knows, since he didn’t deign to explain himself (he never does). But I discuss Williamson at a couple of points in the article and point out a couple of dubious features of his reasoning. Perhaps if Jeffrey had actually read those passages, he might have been more enlightening as to their deficiencies.

And so on…

To read most scholarship over the decades on any NT subject, not just Hebrews, is to be confronted with a litany of changing opinion and chronic uncertainty and bafflement, even though each new generation pronounces its own views as though they are expected to be the last word and could surely never be overturned by the next wave of spanking new scholars fresh off their dissertations. The problem is, each new wave has still so far been a prey to the basic inherited assumptions and preconceptions that have always been brought to the study of Jesus. Yet with a sweep of his gracious hand—and mouse, which seems to have few demands made upon it but to highlight the reams of texts he can call up on his screen, never to be sullied by his own input—Jeffrey waves it all at us as though this is all he need do in response to my (and others’) attempt to bring something new to a tired old situation. From this vantage point, it seems to be all smoke and mirrors to cover up the fact that he has nothing else to offer. I’d use the F-word of him (no, it has five letters), but I fear the mods would object.

Quite frankly, I’ve had enough of it. It would be nice to have some substantive discussion about the actual content of my article and the pros and cons of its arguments, and I seem to regularly come here in the naïve hope that some degree of that can be achieved—that we might all learn something, including myself. But I think we have all come to realize that Jeffrey is here simply to prevent that from happening, and why he is allowed to get away with it is beyond me. By the time I am finished dealing with his disruptive tactics, I have no time or energy left for anyone else. I’d love to hear what Neil thinks—pro and con, but in an honest and contributive way—about what I have to say, or anyone else who genuinely wants a free-inquiry discussion of the matter. Even Don is worth responding to in some of his observations, and at least his tone doesn’t drip with scorn and outright malice for anyone who holds views he is not in agreement with.

So I am going to take a few days off (while Jeffrey rants and obfuscates even further, no doubt), and when I come back I am going to completely ignore him. Perhaps there will be some civil discussion that can take place with others. But if the tide has moved on by then, so be it.

Earl Doherty

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm. did I say I thought it was?

Problem is that you haven't demonstrated, let alone offered any real concrete evidence, that scholars have "suppressed" the alleged Platonic background of Hebrews. You've only asserted that they have.

Are you actually saying that Ellingworth, Lane, Williamson, Barrett, Hurst, Attridge, et al., haven't taken notice of, acknowledged, outlined, or put forward in their works as points of discussion, let alone engaged in any meaningful way with, the arguments that proponents of the Platonic background of Hebrews have appealed to in support of their reading?

How would you know what they've done, since as you yourself admit you haven't read them (or read them in full), and since, as your own article shows, the ones you quote you only know through the excerpts of their work that you found in Price?

<edit>

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

I take it, Earl, that you are referring either to this post (or is it this one?)

Either way, I'm extremely puzzled that you make the claim that you do that all I did within them was to focus on "trivial or irrelevant "errors" you made in the posts of yours that I was responding to, and did not in any way "address the major arguments" or the points that you made in said posts.

For even a cursory glance at these posts of mine shows your claim to be both wholly untrue and a pretty glaring misrepresentation of what I actually did do within them.

Shall we lay this down to another "misremembering" on your part of what I did.

If so, don't you think an apology to me for your whopper and your misrepresentation of what actually did in posts 3036415 and 3522005 is in order? One lambasting based on a "misremembering" of what I did can be excused, if indeed that's what the cause of attributing to me of things I didn't do/say really was. But two?

Jeffrey