freigeister

I agree with you on every point. I think you would really like Brunner's book. There is quite a bit on Gnostics. On mysticism, he makes the very same caution that you do.

Vorkosigan

To get back to this:

Celsus, Rorty's argument on "boundary conditions" and underdetermination hinges on the same false misunderstanding that Plantinga has in his paper on naturalism, evolution, and belief, and on the same problem we saw at TWeb last year -- namely, the confusion of "facts" and "inferences", and of course, too much thinking about language, and not enough about evolution and cognition (a problem widespread among postmoderns). The question is not whether any narrative can correspond to realia accurately -- which appears to be the underlying understanding of how narratives should correspond -- but whether it can do so effectively and reliably.

Vorkosigan

Celsus

Even at such a level then, the case in ancient historiography shows that very little they wrote did correspond in ways we can confirm or to any realia. I just discovered Marcel Detienne's excellent salvo, "Pour un Débat sur les Historicités Comparées" ("For a debate on comparative histories") in Israël Construit son Histoire ("Israel constructs its history", eds. A. de Pury, T. Römer & J.-D. Macchi, 1996). Sorry, but it's a good example of how (European?) classicists can blow the (American?) biblicists out of the water: Even in such a short work, he goes through problems with memory and the ontological assumptions of Chinese, Roman, Greek, and Indian ancient historians to demonstrate exactly what makes uncovering a past behind these works impossible (while examining the representations and what they are intended for). Somehow, so many biblicists are still stuck in the Rankean empiricist assumptions of 2 centuries ago.

Big assumptions are still present, unfortunately, in modern historiography of the same period.

Joel

Edit: Waddayaknow, there's even an English translation: Israel Constructs its History which is a mite expensive.

Chili

Exactly and that is why it is called a myth. The mythmakers attached the reality of the myth to the land and its people so that seekers with 'curious eyes' would be motivated to defend that which they only have blurred visions of.

Was it nasty of them? No because it motivates the Church Millitant to increase the flock and be on guard within its own boundary. This is good and this is very good (the Rising Slave) but there better be some insight above them or they will pound their plowshares into swords once again and convert their cathedrals into warships (the Dying Slave). That, I think, is the reality that critics should be aware of.

Ted Hoffman

You have failed to bring out the significance of why Doherty should take his eyes off the job of explaining the silence and the emergence of Christianity, and instead focus on the Philosophy of his theory, or metamythicism.

At, best, you provide a red herring without offering justification. It can be compared to pointing out that Ted Hoffman has a red shirt - it may be true - but how is that tied up to the point he is making?

You need to provide a justification about why 'underdetermination' is the point - and why it should be put at the fore of the discussion regarding the nature of early Christian beliefs and Jesus.

Why should we not simply dismiss it as Celsus' pet theory that Celsus reflexively reaches for in every discussion - even when it is tangential?

Your objection simply has an anarchic effect; that of making their efforts appear a waste of time and serving no purpose.

You need to demonstrate that that is not simply a way of looking at it but that that is, indeed the case. Your position is evocative of the philosopher's palaver in Ecclesiastes: "Its all useless - its like chasing the wind".

What is guiding this conclusion? How have you arrived at what Doherty's theory lacks from a methodological perspective?

What (theories) are you comparing it with? Or is this just a personal opinion?

How, IYO, can it be strengthened?

Vorkosigan

I have no trouble agreeing to that statement!

What's to apologize for? Europeans do great work.

You've sold me on it. I'll see if I can dig it up on the Interlibrary here.

But isn't that a function of the historical claims of Christianity influencing representations of history?

Vorkosigan

andrewcriddle

(Sorry if this reply is late but I hadn't been following the thread)

I think it is clear that non-academic factors have tended to favour OT minimalism (particularly in Europe) while being unfavourable to Jesus Mythicism.

However, if we mean by Jesus Mythicism, not simply the idea that Jesus may possibly not have existed, but the attempt to explain Christian origins in terms of late pagan religion and mythology, then these ideas have major problems in modern academic circles.

Such ideas are working with a model of paganism in late antiquity which has little support in current scholarship. In the early 20th century mythicist ideas could be seen as explaining Christian origins in terms of ideas of paganism widely held in academic circles. Nowadays Jesus Mythicism is an explanation of Christian origins using ideas of paganism with little or no support among academics primarily interested in paganism.

It is quite arguable that the current academic understanding of late antique paganism has overreacted to the excesses of Frazer et al and over-minimized parallels between paganism and Christianity.

However, in the current state of scholarship in late antique religion, Jesus Mythicism does appear circular, interpreting ambiguous pagan evidence so as to emphasise parallels with Christianity and then explaining Christian origins on the basis of this decidedly minority view of paganism.

Andrew Criddle

Chili

The missing link here is that even without paganism the reality behind the Jesus myth would be the same. In the Jesus myth it must be the case that Jesus existed in the myth for it is not possible to attach a metaphor to a non existing reality. The only difference would be that without a pagan influence the metaphor would be different but the story still is the same. A myth is a word story wherein conventional words are used to describe a non-conventional story . . . which is real or there would be no story to be told.

Julian

Posted on the JesusMysteries list about an hour ago:

Hopefully, he'll do more work. I found his stuff to be excellent.

Julian

Vorkosigan

That's the old Jesus mythicism of the pre-war era. I think your comments about Frazer are dead on; more true say forty years ago. The various fields of mythology and comparative religion are so far advanced though, I don't think Frazer exerts any strong negative effect anymore. I mean if you ran around grad programs and asked students, I suspect you'd find that Frazer is known only among lit students who have studied people like Eliot and Graves. In other fields he is probably a name that people have heard of, but have never read.

Vorkosigan