Iskander

Albert Schweitzer dedicates a long chapter to Bruno Bauer and he also writes about others.

Religious arguments are as old as human history. In saying that Albert’s was ’the first book’ I revealed the generous nature in me which finds it easy to praise the achievements of my fellow men and women. But, on reflection and to accommodate your nature, I will say Albert’s book was the last

Sheshbazzar

Wasn't my dispute, wasn't invoved in it, only entertained and informed a bit by it. 'Bout as much chance of having it moved as of hell freezing over. Can't afford to upset the religious lunatics ya know.

gurgle gurgle gurgle... gulg! Down the drain. Oh well.

ApostateAbe

Right. My nature is especially critical.

DCHindley

I would think the Soviet Onion would have based this on the reverence that Engels and Kautsky had for Bruno Bauer:

Engels:

"The Holy Family," 1845, ET 1956, tr Richard Dixon & Clement Dutts. [A critique on the Young Hegelians and their trend of thought which was very popular in academic circles at the time. The "holy family" refers to Bruno Bauer and his younger brother Edgar, who were representative of Right-Hegelians. "Right" in this case refers to holding fast to Hegel's philosophy without modifications.]

"Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity," in Sozialdemokrat (1882) [Bauer's legacy - he died in April this year - was "he irrefutably proved the chronological order of the Gospels and their mutual interdependence, ... by the very contents of the Gospels themselves. ... And, if almost nothing from the whole content of the Gospels turns out to be historically provable — so that even the historical existence of a Jesus Christ can be questioned — Bauer has, thereby, only cleared the ground for the solution of the question: what is the origin of the ideas and thoughts that have been woven together into a sort of system in Christianity, and how came they to dominate the world?"]

"The History of Early Christianity" in Neue Zeit (1894). [He says that for Bauer ""the New Testament accounts of Jesus and his disciples are deprived ... of any historical background: they are diluted in legends in which the phases of interior development and the moral struggles of the first communities are transferred to more or less fictitious persons. Not Galilee and Jerusalem, but Alexandria and Rome, according to Bauer, are the birthplaces of the new religion.]

Karl Kautsky:

"The Forerunners of Modern Socialism." vol 1, 1895. [Contains an analysis of "primitive Christian" development in a socio-economic perspective. Not a word about B. Bauer or Kalthoff, although he does credit Plato's Utopian republic with setting the stage for later communistic societies, including Essenes and early Christianity.]

"The origins of Christianity." 1908. [Mentions B. Bauer and A. Kalthoff's determination that we cannot really know the historical Jesus from the scant records available to us, only what the writers about him wanted him to be. However, Kautsky says we can learn something of the economic situation of the writers about Jesus.

Albert Kalthoff:

"The rise of Christianity. New contributions to the problem of Christ." Leipzig 1904.

"What we know about Jesus? A statement by W. Bousset." Berlin 1904 [Wilhelm Bousset (1865-1920) was one of the pioneers in the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule or "History of Religions School," which established the scientific and comparative study of Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity.]

"Zarathustra preaching. Talk about the moral conception of life of Friedrich Nietzsche." Jena 1904.

Arthur Drews:

Die Christusmythe 1909 (Transl. C. Delisle Burns, The Christ Myth, London 1910) 2d ed. 1924

Looks to me that the Marxist intelligentsia had determined that there was never an historical Jesus long before Drews. In fact, they never call Jesus a Myth, only that he was created in the mind of early Christians as projections of their own psychological and economic struggles. The form of that Jesus was fashioned by the effect of syncretism from the cultures represented at Rome, where "Jesus" crystallized.

From the dates of these publications, it seems that Kalthoff had more influence on Marxist thinkers like K. Kautsky, who was one of the greatest philosophical thinkers among them, than Drews had. Both Drews and Kalthoff were active proponents of Monism (a kind of Unitarian movement with ultra liberal theology that did not require a historical Jesus), so I think that Drews picked up on this from Kalthoff.

DCH

aa5874

Most people who believe Jesus existed are either Christians or fundamentalist who may want to go to heaven to be with their Lord and Savior.

In fact, ALL persons who claim Jesus existed cannot produce a single eyewitness report of any supposed contemporary sources.

Incredibly, a writer under the name of Paul claimed his Jesus was REVEALED after he consulted Entities without Flesh and Blood. See Galatians 1

Based on Acts 9.8, andActs 22.11, when Paul heard from Jesus, he was Blinded by a Bright light.

The Pauline letters and Acts have completely Destroyed any attempt to use Paul as a Witness for an Historical Jesus.

This is Ehrman in "Jesus Interupted".

1. The Pauline writer is absolutely worthless as a contemporary witness of Jesus.

2 The Gospels are historical problematic with discrepancies, contradictions and event of Jesus that most likely did NOT happen.

Ehrman's Historical argument for Jesus of Nazareth is probably the weakest and absurd argument of the weak and illogical arguments known to mankind.

aa5874

Ehrman's Historical argument for Jesus of Nazareth is probably the weakest and absurd argument of weak and illogical arguments known to mankind.

Ehrman discredits his sources for his argument for Jesus of Nazareth.

Most people who believe Jesus existed are either Christians or fundamentalist who may want to go to heaven to be with their Lord and Savior.

In fact, ALL persons who claim Jesus existed cannot produce a single eyewitness report of any supposed contemporary sources.

Incredibly, a writer under the name of Paul claimed his Jesus was REVEALED after he consulted Entities without Flesh and Blood. See Galatians 1

Based on Acts 9.8, andActs 22.11, when Paul heard from Jesus, he was Blinded by a Bright light.

The Pauline letters and Acts have completely Destroyed any attempt to use Paul as a Witness for an Historical Jesus.

This is Ehrman in "Jesus Interupted".

1. The Pauline writer is absolutely worthless as a contemporary witness of Jesus.

2. The Gospels are historical problematic with discrepancies, contradictions and event of Jesus that most likely did NOT happen.

The HJ argument is now Obsolete.

ApostateAbe

Shoot, you are embarrassing me.

aa5874

The writings of Ehrman are the most Devastating writings against an HJ of Nazareth.

Ehrman himself has gone on Public debates and have explained in details how the Jesus stories were fabricated or manipulated.

Ehrman has shown that virtually all the accounts of Jesus, including events at the crucifixion, are implausible and most likely did NOT happen.

1. The Census of Quirinius is no way historically correct according to the Ehrman.

2. The exchange of Barabbas for Jesus is "completely implausible" according to Ehrman.

Ehrman has confirmed that stories in the NT about Jesus were fabricated.

Yet the very same Ehrman in his folly would use ONLY the very Discredited Sources to attempt to establish the history of His Jesus of Nazareth.

The very claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem is Denied by Ehrman but he use the very same source to claim Jesus was NOT born there.

Ehrman fails to understand that he is Discrediting his sources.

Ehrman fails to understand his own findings.

Ehrman has found that the NT is a source of Perjury but Relies on the very source for the history of his Jesus of Nazareth.

The HJ argument is Discredited by Ehrman's own writings.

DCHindley

Hi Abe,

Aw shucks ...

Actually, I had already researched the matter for an earlier thread, and just cut & pasted.

DCH

Roo Bookaroo

"To spare us all further pain", you can nearly feel poor GakuseiDon's heart bleeding from mortification.

Well, before GakuseiDon got drowned by the juggernaut of the thousands of words dumped on him, when he still had the audacity of questioning the deity, he posted some advice on Vridar to a poor soul who was wandering about in the fog searching with a lamp for an honest "World of Myth".

"I don’t know if anyone can help. In an online discussion, after I recommended this page and paying attention to Doherty, all of Doherty’s ideas were dismissed with a single statement: Doherty's whole thesis is founded that Paul’s Jesus resided in a fleshly sub-lunar realm, which he asserts was a common feature of Middle Platonic thought. This idea is met with a universal “What? Do you know anything about Middle Platonism? It doesn’t say that at all.”

Has this been addressed and does anyone know of a link or book I can read to understand how to respond to it?"

GakuseiDon, who had reconnoitered the sublunar space with his powerful binoculars and special long-distance flashlights, summarized his earth-shaking findings in braver than usual terms (that was well before he went into a temporary retreat to lick his wounds from the severe beatings inflicted for his unforgivable transgressions):

" [Y]ou won’t find Doherty’s “World of Myth” theory in any books or scholarly essays on how people thought back then. It is missing from John Dillon’s comprehensive “The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220″. It is missing from the primary sources of pagan literature like Plutarch, as well as secondary sources. You can’t open a scholarly book and read a chapter about “the World of Myth” theory, because it doesn’t exist.

For me, Doherty distorts the thinking of the pagans and Jews in Paul’s time in order to jam his theories in. And that is a damn shame, because how they thought back then is fascinating. All rationalists need to resist that kind of agenda-ridden distortion, whether it comes from the bad apologetics of the fundamentalists, or the bad apologetics of the mythicists. Ask yourself: how would you go about proving or disproving Doherty’s theories? "

(Comment by GakuseiDon — 2012/06/27 @ 11:21 pm, on Vridar)

I got curious myself. I reviewed extensively Gilbert Murray's "Five Stages of Greek Religion" (1951), then Jane Ellen Harrison's "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" (1922) and "Themis- A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion" (1927) and finally Walter Burkert's "Greek Religion", all undisputed scholars of this field. All of them first-class studies and fascinating reading.

There was no trace of any "World of Myth" or "Myth of World" to be found in any.
They all explained that there was no generality of vision, or Weltanschauung, no dogma, no book of beliefs or rituals applicable to all (unlike the Jews with their Torah, and even there, variations existed, which is what gave a pretext to the prophets to start foaming at the mouth).
Every ancient writer was free to give free rein to his imagination and create whatever variants he liked, without this implying any validity of what the next writer in the same city might freely imagine too. Practically nobody had access to a full library of manuscripts to check anything against anything else.
Athens alone had dozens of various interpretations at any given time, and they kept varying with every generation, all from 800 BC to ca 400 AD. Every city had its own schools and groups, its rituals, its sanctuaries, its special festivals and ceremonies, its readings of poetry and invented new hymns, and the gods or heroes took whatever shape and name that pleased the locals. So, in Greece alone there were hundreds, even thousands of different interpretations. One given manuscript in no way pre-empted the rest of the educated elite in the city, the rest of the country and the rest of the other generations over the 1,200 years of recorded history of ancient Greece.
And this was only for Greece. A similar unscripted variety existed in other countries as well: Persia, Syria, and major cities of the Roman Empire, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, etc. Religious themes and poetry were a wonderful activity for skilled writers.
Generalizing about what the "ancients" believed is, from our modern perspective, practically impossible. All beliefs were located in time and geography. Even thinking of universal parameters of the ancient world is a modern distortion of perception. Those ideas didn't float in the air for everybody to grab as if from a shelf. They were highly personal reflections on readings and free-style imaginations feeding on the current and local take on customs, rituals, festival programs and myths.

This is the final word in scholarship from somebody like Walter Burkert.

I hope that GasukeiDon will read this, that it will help him gather his wits about himself, bandage his wounds, and emerge from retirement an older but wiser combatant, to participate in this decidedly high-level scholarly debate.