Roo Bookaroo

Aa5874:

Don't get on your high horses too quick.
I am not defending any thesis of "Did Jesus Exist?"
After all I have written a full Amazon review of Doherty's ebook "The End of an Illusion".
Except for his fanatical apostle Godfrey, nobody else has.

My quote from Bart Ehrman was only to show that a professional scholar can sense from a quick perusal of "Neither God nor Man", the impossible task it would be to start examining all the speculations, suppositions and imaginings, all presented as "demonstrations" resulting from Doherty's idiosyncratic "logic", spiced up with "salt is salt, sugar is sugar..." and duck a l'orange, and Hamas, and Hitler, and Paris in 1888, and Ronald Reagan, and the fascinating story of "Bob and Jim" (that some movie-makers are considering for a comedy, I swear to God!), and what not...

And my observation that no professional scholar has tried so far, and my guess that none will try.

I contacted Paul Ellingworth who received a full copy of the 9 pages on Hebrews 8:4, and kindly gave me his reading of the whole controversy debated here, judging it's a waste of his time to intercede, and better to let it run its course until it dies a natural death.
I have abstained from quoting here the comments he was kind enough to send me.

Doherty is launched on his merry-go-round and nothing will stop him until physical energy starts failing or the machinery breaks down.
This is not square Irish dancing, but dancing in circles that a Dervish dancer would envy.

So relax about Bart Ehrman, and continue with your vigorous defense of your position about 8:4, Hebrews, and the whole megillah, that everybody has been applauding so far. You have the right kind of energy. But how long can you go on?

spin

This is just a summary for those who can't be bothered to read Roo Bookaroo's text wall ostensibly to DCH:

1. A rumination on DCH's avatar (done with Dave...)
2. Drews and Wells as influence on and sources for Doherty
3. Doherty's qualifications
4. Complaint that Doherty doesn't mention Drews or Wells
5. Theory as to why "real scholarship" avoids Doherty
6. Displeasure at Doherty's forum rhetoric and efforts
7. Doherty as fringe and scholars avoid fringe
8. Complaint about Doherty's contribution to this thread
9. Statistical complaint leading to complaint about length of Doherty's book
10. Ad hominem against Doherty
11. More statistics
12. Discussion of his pals' self-bannings
13. Final ad hominems against Doherty

The upshot of this 1500 word extended non sequitur is that Roo Bookaroo doesn't like Doherty and has yet again sought an opportunity to stalk him. He seems to go out of his way to attack Doherty, as evinced in the Amazon carve he posted. Roo is one of the recent major contributors to the Earl Doherty Wiki page and has sent similar longwinded missives to this forum whose only scope seems to be to attack Doherty. I think we should try to make cyber-stalking a violation of the terms of use of this forum.

I note that the next effort from Roo:

ostensibly aimed at aa5874, is another opportunity to attack Doherty. Talk about stalking!

Could you please take this somewhere else? All it will do beside fill up the archives with rubbish is to spur Earl to respond in kind. (The major difference is that Earl is out there with his name on the line. Roo Bookaroo is just plain old Roo Bookaroo, whoever that is. He has nothing on the line. He can say what he likes with relative impunity.) We certainly don't need this sort of thing.

I know, why don't Doherty and Bookaroo have a formal debate about something? Say, that the writer of Hebrews was consuming vast quantities of the top cola (before they removed the cocaine) while writing his epistle....

stephan huller

Yes I don't understand the obsession.

EarlDoherty

Another example of falsification. All these quoted things were not present in JNGNM. Most are taken from exchanges here, when naturally the tone and levity occasionally used is quite different from a book meant to be a scholarly product. As for things which were in the book, exactly what is objectionable about Paris in 1888, or Ronald Reagan, in trying to lay out an argument with analogies? Once again, Roo and those like him are bankrupt as far as available counter-argument and can only substitute lame ridicule in its place.

Omigod! The garrulous Roo Bookaroo, who never passed up anything he could distort, abstains from quoting scholarly comments?! One can be absolutely sure that they constituted nothing that could have been used to counter my reading of 8:4, or to cast aspersions on my logic or scholarship. IOW, even Paul Ellingworth, an expert on Hebrews, had nothing to say that could have been used against me. It looks like he simply appealed to the old cop-out that it would be “a waste of time” to try to respond to my arguments, the age-old retort based on the a priori dismissal of any mythicist, since they are all crackpots and could hardly have anything worthwhile, let alone threatening, to say. Ignore them, and they’ll expire on their own. (Funny thing is, they’ve been saying and waiting for that for two centuries!)

Thanks, Roo. You’ve just made my day.

And this thread has far from outlasted its value. The longer it goes on, the better my stance on Hebrews 8:4 looks.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

My comment to spin on his comment would be this: One of the issues in the whole mythicist-historicist debate is the reception which mythicism has received, not only in the present day but during its long and checkered history, the question of how much scholarship is involved in the mythicist viewpoint, and how much is involved in traditional scholarship's treatment of mythicism and its own received wisdom.

While I admit that Roo Bookaroo specifically has contributed zero scholarship to this debate, the overall spectacle of opposition to mythicism and individual mythicists is in many ways central to the whole discussion, whether by rank amateurs like Roo and others here or by alleged reputable scholars like R J Hoffmann. As such, exchanges like these have their value and legitimacy.

Besides, often enough, a kernel of insight or knowledge about a text will emerge even from such cat fights. (And if anyone is selling tickets, I expect my cut as a participant. I need to find some way to pay for all the bandages.)

Earl Doherty

stephan huller

In order to transform this discussion perhaps we better discuss the idea in early Christianity of in heaven as it is on earth or as Clement puts it:

There might well have been a Jesus in heaven and one on earth too.

Iskander

Is this wiki article the one you have written?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Christ_Myth


A description of the work Mr. Earl Doherty ought to have been included in this article. Mr. Doherty is one of the leading biblical scholars and it is important that this regrettable omission be corrected.

aa5874

Clement did NOT claim that there were two seperate characters called Jesus and of two separate origins.

Clement argued for ONE Jesus who was crucified at the AGE of 30 years in the reign of Tiberius.

Clement's Stromata 1.21

stephan huller

Incorrect, read Photius on the Hypotyposeis.

jakejonesiv

Earl,

I am a bit puzzled. I believe you are not guilty of plagarism, but one cannot do even the most elementary research on mythicism without encountering Drews. How did you so completely miss Arthur Drews? Did you avoid all previous scholarship on the subject and write Jesus Puzzle in a vacuum?

Did you also miss Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s essay on the influence of the mystery religions on Christianity?
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index....oc_500215_029/

Jake