Toto

Who are you calling bone-headed - people who have devoted their professional lives to the study of the NT? Why are you so confident?

Yes, you certainly do, and you have no professional creds behind it.

OK, it's time for you to start providing some sources for your bald assertions. Why do you think this is so? I assert that Robert Price is primarily interested in reading the religious texts on their own terms and not as a source for made up history. You?

Who do you consider a maximalist? It sounds like your own private definition.

Why is this so obvious?

ApostateAbe

I call their theories bone-headed, not their persons. Sometimes smart people can have idiotic ideas, and all it takes is wishful thinking, either of themselves or of people who buy their literature.
Well, I am not asking you to take my word for it, so don't get the wrong idea.
Both Hoffman and Price are very deeply involved in anti-religious propaganda (see their list of publications on Wikipedia), and I project their motivations for their theories from the same pattern I see all over the place in the anti-religious community that I have been deeply part of. People like that want to believe only the worst about religion, especially Christianity, so they do. Again, I am not asking you to take my word for it. I have made my conclusions based on my own diverse experiences.
A maximalist is someone who wants to maximize the historical value of certain religious texts. William Lane Craig would be a good example. I think the definition is common.
His writings place him within that time. He was at the Council of Jerusalem, for example, and he met Peter and James.

Toto

You don't know the first thing about this. Price is a former evangelical who had to drop his faith after his research and study showed him that his previous beliefs were without foundation. He is clearly anti-evangelical. But he still finds religion attractive, and attends an Episcopal church in North Carolina. Hoffmann is post modern and eclectic, but I have never seen him to be anti-religion. He has even tended to distance himself from the more polemical of his colleagues.

Have you actually read anything by either of these scholars, who don't actually agree with each other on all points? I don't think that is possible, given your mischaracterizations.

Craig is definitely not someone who is looking for the most probable theories that fit the evidence. The only evidence he needs is that Jesus touched his heart, and he shapes all the other evidence around that.

This alleged council is only known through second century Christian writers. Other parts of Paul's letters use gnostic terminology and references to post 70 CE events. How are you going to resolve this? Why do you think this is so simple?

ApostateAbe

No, I haven't read their material. It is possible that I am getting a distorted picture of who they are because I know of them only through the people who advance their arguments. You obviously know more about them than I do.



That is exactly right.

I don't know specifically what you are talking about, sorry.

gurugeorge

I think there are some people like that, sure, but you don't have to be a mythicist to be anti-religious; it affords the anti-religious cause no particular extra leverage to suppose that Christ didn't exist at all. Maybe you could say it makes religion that bit more open to ridicule ("what were all these clowns doing believing a bunch of BS for centuries?").

The point is, it's really the extant and evident myth of the Christ (the full-blown hellenized saviour godman) with its effect on the psyche, that is (or ought to be) the target of anti-religious thinking anyway. For a hardcore rationalist to find there was no guy there after all is just ho-hum, just another bit of evidence of religious stupidity.

So what you are insinuating is not really a good enough reason to blanket suspect mythicism. Anyway, this type of argument is ad hominem from the start.

show_no_mercy

What wrath of god befell the Jews "at last" when Paul wrote (assumed to be the 40s or 50s)? This "at last" only makes sense post-70.

ApostateAbe

Yes, I did not mean to imply that their biases mean that they are wrong. I made a point about their anti-religious biases in order to counter the claim of Toto that "If you keep knowledgeable scholars like that [Hoffman and Price] away from the discussion, you will be left with ideologues who are overconfident about their ability to find history in theological tracts - usually because of their own biases." Both minimalism and MJ are popular among anti-religious advocates (especially atheists), reasonable or not, seemingly because it makes Christianity seem much more foolish than otherwise. Some deny this, like Toto, and I have a lot of difficulty understanding how this could be a controversial point, because it seems as plain as day.

ApostateAbe

When your argument depends on subtle nuances in language, then you should argue from the original Greek. In English, we understand that if someone uses the phrase, "...at last," then the events are happening and it is obvious to everyone. But that isn't necessarily the implication of the Greek word τέλος. Jesus is quoted using the same word in Matthew 10:22, "You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved," where "end" is the translation for τέλος. So, my tentative explanation is that Paul was simply making an apocalyptic prediction about the Jews.

aa5874

But, an hypothesis or a theory cannot be maintained or tested with uncertainty, perhaps faith, honest belief, guesses or speculation.

All that can be said as of now is that some believe "Q" existed but there is no corroborative evidence to support such belief.

Toto

But this does not counter my point, even aside from the fact that you have mischaracterized both Price and Hoffmann. If you threw everyone out who could be accused of bias, there would be no one left at your table.

Why do you think Christianity needs any help looking foolish? Why is a religion based on a mythical Jesus more ridiculous than a religion based on an apocalyptic nutcase?

The debate between mythicists and historicists on this board is mostly between secularists in any case.