mountainman

It's just another academic circus Earl.
The HJ still cracks a whip in the minds
of the like of Christ Weimer.

Many questions which should be asked
are left carefully wrapped and protected
in a host of unexamined postulates.

I may be down the scale some quantum leaps
from where your contribution is generally
assessed Earl, but I'd like to make you aware
that the process you describe above is active
at a number of different levels of scholarship.

I have been accused by Chris Weimer of
presenting ridiculous lies in my thesis, and
then find I am unable to defend myself
against these accusations at the ANCIENT_L
list server.

These things do not rest easy
with my sense of justice.



Pete Brown

EarlDoherty

This is one reason why I don't worry too much about interacting with scholars. If they really do find the existence of an historical Jesus less interesting than things like cultural milieu, social theory, and the rest of the esoteric sort of stuff Zeichman itemizes, they're welcome to putter around in their isolated irrelevant world. But don't expect me to join them. These things are not going to change the way our society behaves, the irrationality that permeates it, the damage to human rights and education and all the rest of it that is bogged down by popular investment in Christian traditions about a Jesus of Nazareth.

If The Jesus Project is not going to move beyond such current scholarly navel-gazing while failing to commit itself to an honest investigation about Jesus' existence, it's a waste of time, and it will pass into history as yet another scholarly exercise that had zero impact on the things that matter, or even on the history of NT scholarship. What has been the lasting impact of the Jesus Seminar? It seems it's already relegated to inconsequentiality (scholarship already knew that 3 quarters of the sayings attributed to Jesus were likely not genuine, even if they didn't admit it publicly, and we didn't need the Seminar to tell us that Jesus' physical resurrection was a product of later development), to be supplanted by new phases which will end up not getting any closer or more conclusively to an accurate picture of Christian beginnings either. It would seem from Hoffman's comments that the Project doesn't have any more stomach for it than Zeichman does.

If Zeichman expects me to spend my time in the new edition on the sort of thing he seems to be interested in, he may be disappointed. My object is to “Challenge the Existence of an Historical Jesus,” not worry about the cultural milieu of early Christian communities or their development, or how minutely we can define the Cynic roots of Q. In a few weeks I will be posting on my website a lengthy, comprehensive and definitive study of the Epistle to the Hebrews, much more thorough than anything I’ve done before on it, which will demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that no HJ lies in the background of the writer’s thought, but that it is indeed a “cosmic Christ” of the sort that Hoffman seemed to dismiss as outside the ken of The Jesus Project’s interests. (That essay will be condensed for a chapter of the second edition.)

Earl Doherty

Zeichman

If your goal is to change the world, fine. I simply find these things interesting in themselves. Or at least more interesting than the question of Jesus' message and/or historicity.

I agree with your assessment of the Jesus Seminar. Many people were too eager to discredit it, which inevitably contributed to its irrelevance. This isn't to say that there aren't valid criticisms of the seminar (Akensen's appendix in "Saint Saul" is helpful and certainly not dogmatic). If the Jesus Project is going to be by invitation only (or application, as Hoffmann's reply to my post seems to imply), then selectivity is a vital step to credibility. Given that few mainstream scholars have given this question serious thought (and the few that have, sadly, were not listed as fellows), this may not be enough. I seem to be rambling. My point: even laypeople open to or familiar with historical criticism remain skeptical of groups like the Jesus Seminar. THe Jesus Project needs to find a way to rectify or at least avoid this. The explicitly non-sensationalistic aspect of the Project is an important start.

Sorry, I must not have been clear. I simply meant an extended and systematic approach to NT documents, as it sounds like this essay on Hebrews will be. I didn't mean about the social scientific stuff. If I might be direct, does this mean you do not intend to partake in The Jesus Project, or only that you are a bit leery as to its actual (instead of ostensible) openness to your position?

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Hoffmann was pretty open to the non-historicity of Jesus, but just not satisfied with the way it was argued by Doherty, Price, and others. Can someone tell me the book that he wrote the intro to when he discussed this? And am I right in this assessment? I've only heard this second-hand, so I'd like to know if I'm wrong.

Zeichmann

spamandham

Heh. Surely Toto caught this one and let it slide.

Regardless, as far as I can tell, your degree of rigor is 100x that of Chris'. It isn't obvious he has any credentials whatsoever, earned formally or in practice.

Toto

From earlier in this thread: this postBook description

R._Joseph_Hoffmann - an interesting bio of Hoffmann on wiki. I've heard him speak in Los Angeles several times, and I don't think he has strong feelings one way or the other on the question of historicity.

Toto

Oops.

Chris is a scholar in training, an undergraduate.

youngalexander

Thus - we absolve him.:angel:

Roger Pearse

I have a feeling that this may be a vanity article, tho, as was remarked on the talk page and replied to with:

"It is a cross reference bio. prepared by the research associate and containing verifiable biographical and bibliographical facts. --RJOSEPHHOFFMANN 12:58, 28 June 2006"

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Doug Shaver

I'm no scholar, but I remember when I first heard about the Jesus Seminar in a Time or Newsweek story about their first publication. My initial reaction was: How is this news?

gstafleu

Isn't there a bit of begging the question here: you take historicity as a prerequisite because "I don't find a compelling reason to think otherwise"? But apart from that, aren't Jesus's thoughts and sayings also more or less indistinguishable from preexistent and generally extant thought at his time (the "Jesus didn't say anything original" argument)? That is what Price argues fairly extensively (and to which I try to make a minor contribution in this thread).

I'll immediately recognize my laymanship here, but aren't things like subtexts and veiled language dependent on the image the originators of the texts and language had of their subject? IOW, if early christians did indeed have a mythical Christ in mind, wouldn't that change the interpretation of the subtext and veiled language?

Gerard Stafleu