J-D

What you say may be so: but I haven't seen it demonstrated.

It is, of course, not possible to demonstrate that any position is in error if the position is not clearly defined in the first place. A position with no clear agreed meaning is not right; it isn't even wrong.

Toto

Thanks for that description of the historical Jesus industry.

I'm not arguing for hegemony, necessarily. It looks to me as if the historical Jesus hypothesis is just group think at this point.

It's hard to get past the romantic popular picture of Jesus in our culture. Liberals love him because he redeems the world through selfless love, and conservatives love him because throws their enemies into a pit of fire. What a guy.

Adam

I guess LegionOomaMoi intends to be trashing Mythicism here, but I would agree with Toto that it applies to the Consensus as well. Yes, that's hegemony. It's even permitted to change methods and portrayals, as long as all agree that HJ is firmly in the hands of these scholars who create Jesus in their own image by proceeding subjectively through each pericope rather than taking what is in the gospels after bracketing the least objectively substantiated by Higher and Lower Criticism.

J-D

So which is the group of experts, what are the basic assumptions they don't challenge, and what are their unsound methods?

Grog

I'm not sure what mechanisms you are saying hegemony requires. I agree that when we look at the academic level, we see Kuhnian paradigm at work. But when we look at the societal level, I think there is evidence of hegemony at work. I see clearly the manipulation by the ruling classes of societal norms constantly. When politicians invoke God, the underlying assumption is they are talking about the Trinity God, whether or not they even believe in God. In fact, one almost nearly MUST make a statement of belief in God or that will itself become a campaign issue, not promoted necessarily by the masses, but by the most powerful instrument of social control: the corporate controlled media. This sounds like conspiracy, but it is just hegemony, there is no need to plan these things out in a backroom, it is all understood.

Every time there is a disaster, you will hear a reporter talk about the "miracle" and interview a survivor who thanks God or Jesus for answering their prayers. Does the REPORTER who invokes miracle talk even BELIEVE in God? My guess is there is about 70% chance the answer is 'no.' Does the producer who produces the segment believe in God? Probably not. Does the anchor who introduces the segment gushing about miracles believe God? Does the CEO of the corporation? The board? All along, you probably have most of the people involved NOT believing in God yet promoting God belief, and in this country (US) that is synonymous with Jesus-belief. Do you ever hear the reporter interview the person who does not believe God? I never do. Is there ever the question about, well, what about the person who was in the WRONG place on the bridge...their prayers were not answered. This is the overarching mechanism of cultural hegemony at work, within which NT studies/Biblical studies operates.

Without cultural hegemony, NT studies would not be able to exist. There would be no endowed chairs, research grants, etc. Without an endowed chair from which to pontificate, there would be no irascible Bart Ehrman to kick around. Nor would he have a privileged societal position to maintain with his defense of the cultural hegemony (which is what we saw with his book DJE?). Now, did Ehrman one day say, "I am going to defend the cultural hegemony that I see being attacked by a fringe group' ? No. He operates fully within that sphere and does not, from what I see, ever question it (unlike someone like RJH who, in my opinion, sees it, and seems to be making a conscious decision to defend it).

In any given society, unless a breaking point is reached, there will usually be less than 10% who challenge the hegemonic norms. That's what I believe we see here at FRDB, the 10% who challenge the norms, set aside, marginalized, ridiculed from the ruling class if even acknowledged to exist. The TRUTH (whatever that means) has no bearing on what is promoted as "correct." Ehrman is correct BECAUSE he maintains, supports, defends hegemony. That is by definition. We can pick away point by point on his book, but Ehrman has given the masses their answer to a growing, nagging question. They don't need to actually read the book, because it doesn't matter what it actually says. It only needs to be known that the titular question is answered in the affirmative.

LegionOnomaMoi

That varies depending on the theoretical model, but broadly speaking it requires an ability to exercise control over discourse and manipulate the public. Socio-cultural hegemony (as opposed to a political hegemony) requires a particular type of discourse between the elite and the "lower class" (usually sanctioned to some extent by the lower class) constantly maintained through pervasive dissemination of propaganda or similar forms of reinforcement. In other words, if the reason the historical Jesus is so widely accepted among experts is due to hegemony, we would expect to see a far more cohesive group ensuring their view is adopted by the public through a persistent engagement via various media with the public. Moreover, we would expect that either new generations would overthrow older, or that new mechanisms and paradigms be adopted and reinforced. Hegemony is about control. It's difficult to attain even in a particular region over a long period of time, let alone across continents over 200 years. Even Kuhn would have a difficult time explaining this one, because we have no consistent paradigm. A commonality among incredibly diverse views coming from a wide variety of specialists over decades and decades of research doesn't fit well into any explanation of an academic theory/belief held in spite of evidence to the contrary. The only realistic way to explain such unanimity over one part of a cross-disciplinary investigation lasting so long which doesn't involve them simply being right is that the general approach to ancient history no matter what the subject of inquiry is or the specialist is flawed. And, in fact, when we apply the approach used by mythicists to ancient history in general, we are left with a vacuum. If the philosophy of history and historiography implicitly adopted by mythicists (through their analyses of texts, scholarship, etc.) is the correct one (or more correct), then all we can say for most of ancient history is...not much of anything.

There's two problems here. The first is that the only way the media is able to make an issue out of a politician's statements about religion is because the "masses" eat it up. Second, you're talking about the US. More than any other country, Germany has been the heart of historical Jesus studies, and while for a century or so France, England, Italy, and the US have also been major players, that still means that out of all the countries where historical Jesus scholarship has been an area of intense research for some time, only one fits your description.

Except that isn't hegemony. That's a worldview. Hegemony needs to be constantly reinforced and maintained by the elite, through force or through other means (e.g., "manufacturing consent"). I think you need to look at how historical Jesus studies take place in other countries, and how these countries are when it comes to Christianity, media, corporations, etc.

mountainman

Its a conditioned collective consciousness/subconsciousness.


The fundamental hypotheses relate to chronology.

The historical question will always remain when did this hegemonic posturing actually start?



It means the ANCIENT HISTORICAL TRUTH.


It's a catch 22 situation triggered by the ancient historical truth or falsity of the historical jesus story.

The field of operations is ultimately the field of ancient history.

The mythicists seek a revisionist history to explain the falsity of the HJ.

Toto

The experts are the scholars with PhD's in New Testament studies, their basic assumption that they do not challenge is that there was a historical Jesus bearing some resemblance to the gospel Jesus, and the unsound methods are the criteria that they use to extract historical bits from the gospels.

LegionOnomaMoi

Do you have any idea how many scholars have in some way dealt with the historical Jesus and who do not have PhD's in NT studies? Or biblical studies?

anethema

Not all there is Price .the problem to my mind is the difference between new testament studies and ancient history studies. They both talk apples and oranges from the get go. There is no ancient historian who would for aminute , say Kenneth Kitchen who would vouch for the historicity of Enoch based on the preserved sources. He would argue (he cites in his book "the third intermediate period in Egypt") for the existence of Smenkhare a male for which there way less evidence than Enoch. To him the mere monumental, inscriptional attestation only in heirogliphic form gives the belief biographical weight. In my opinion the egyptology and ancient history descriptive "ephemeral" applies in most of these cases, including HJ.