Gregg

Normally, I would agree with you. I think it's funny when creationists or Flood advocates or the like say they feel insulted because we won't take their ideas seriously (even though we actually do, in a way, because we actually engage their arguments and reject them point by point with logical, consistent arguments and solid evidence). But this situation is clearly different.

In the first place, mainstream scholars have not "rejected" the current Jesus myth thesis, in particular Doherty's. They have barely even addressed it. Doherty has published 2 or 3 negative critiques of his thesis on his site and in none of them do they actually engage his arguments and evidence point by point and convincingly refute them. If his thesis was so obviously "implausible" and nothing but "pure speculation" this should be easy enough. Instead, the critics mostly attack a caricature of his theory, and give the same old arguments for Jesus' historicity that Doherty discredits on his site.

In the second place, mainstream Bible scholars are not scientists, they are academics, and most of them have deep personal and professional reasons for wanting to maintain the status quo as far as Jesus' historical existence goes. Does this sound like a "conspiracy theory," like that advanced by creationists and IDers to explain why the mainstream scientific community rejects their views? Perhaps it does, but do you really think mainstream Bible scholars are eager to embrace the idea that Jesus never existed, especially when it's easy enough to skirt around the issue? Do you think the colleges and seminaries that pay those Bible scholars, and the alumnis and church members who write the big checks, would be thrilled? Look how effectively the teaching and open discussion of evolution has been muted in many places. With the Jesus myth thesis, we are talking about questioning the existence of the fundamental element of an ancient, cherished belief system that millions of people cling to with the fierceness of a child clinging to a security blanket. Yes, I'm sure mainstream Bible scholars and their employers are really keen to upset all those folks.

In the third place, Doherty's thesis is clearly and demonstrably not "pure speculation" as Riverwind puts it. I don't think even one of his most vehement critics, Gakusei Don (iidb nickname), would make that claim. Furthermore, Richard Carrier, who clearly has an interest in being taken seriously in the world of Bible scholarship, has basically endorsed Doherty's thesis. If Riverwind took the time to find something out about Richard Carrier I think she'd agree he's not a person who is likely to be persuaded by mere "speculative" arguments.

jakejonesiv

This is just another in a long series of "Appeal to Authority" on your part. Do you have anything else?

Roger Pearse

To summarise:

1. This is different because scholars have ignored it.
2. They can't make money selling books widdling on the bible.
3. It's not speculation because Richard Carrier says so.

To which:

1. Scholars ignore wackos. That's because they can't get any work done otherwise.
2. Ehrman does.
3. Unfortunately this assertion only begs the question.

I don't propose to reiterate this. But if someone hasn't grasped that this theory is fringe, then there is little more that one can say.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Gregg

It's a lot easier to distort and misrepresent my argument and to dismiss Earl Doherty and Richard Carrier as "wackos" than it is to actually address the mythicist case, isn't it? An appeal to authority is certainly acceptable as a reason to give an argument consideration, which is all I was using it for. I wasn't saying "the JM thesis is true because Richard Carrier supports it."

Do you want to give me REASONS I should consider Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier "wackos"? Do you want to actually address their arguments and evidence and explain why they're wrong and I should regard the whole thing as fluff and speculation? Or do you just have way too much time on your hands to deign to investigate anything "mainstream scholars" have rejected?

I don't bother investigating the claims of, say, alchemists because I am aware that there is a huge amount of scientific research out there disproving alchemists' claims. Do you honestly think Bible scholarship is as exacting and precise a discipline as chemistry? Do you honestly think all Bible scholars are unwaveringly objective and not influenced by personal and professional interests?

No, I do not expect you to investigate every Jesus myth theory that comes down the pike. But when one stands out from the crowd in terms of level of scholarship, quality of argumentation, evidence, etc., maybe it deserves more than a sneering dismissal. Scientists actually took the time to look into Michael Behe's arguments and reject them point by point, because Behe is a biologist. Doherty is a highly informed amateur scholar who has written a well-argued and -researched thesis that has been published in a Bible studies journal, and his thesis has been endorsed by at least one respected professional scholar. It is not junk scholarship.

If you think Doherty's case is so easily refuted, then why don't you actually REFUTE it?

jakejonesiv

Your position expressed above, is becoming more difficult to support all the time. Clarice recently posted
THE JESUS PROJECT ~ Innaugural Announcement.

Jake

P.S. What is really fringe is the belief that Jesus rose from the dead and wafted into the sky in front of witnesses. That is totally WACK.

Riverwind

First, you would actually have to delineate what, in this thread, I have said that is actually wrong. Ok...you said "very" single one of them, but that is untrue and dishonest.

Otherwise, I don't really care to prove anything. I state what I know to be true and allow others to come to that understanding for themselves. If I had the time, and I felt that you were truly open, then I would present some information. However, neither of these is true for me right now.

I did not say that Paul "and his contemporaries" (who do you consider to be his contemporaries with preserved writings?) knew about the gospels. That is something that you inferred incorrectly.

I was referring to early christian church fathers, many of whom are aware of the gospels and their contents. I was also referring to the fact that Paul is quite aware of the historical, bodily Jesus and at least some of his sayings.

Hmm...I don't remember him making a statement in "so many words". However, there are silences in his own material, there are places where he reinterprets/redefines Greek words (such as kata, which Carrier also has done, and which few scholars today or in the past would agree with), and he makes assumptions in some places about supposed interpolations (without a shred of physical evidence).

I'm sorry you're insulted, that certainly was not my intent. However, I can only state the truth as I see it, and I see the Jesus myth theories as impossible to disprove because they are pure speculation at base. That is why few serious scholars with bother with them. Those who do are those already predisposed toward Jesus myth theories.

If these are the only "Jesus historicists" you have read, then I'm afraid you have not read enough. The Jesus Seminar has been discredited by many good scholars. I wouldn't even consider "Spong" a scholar. He's a priest who wants Christians to stop believing in the divinity of Christ, similar to the Jesus Seminar's stated goals. To be unbiased, one must read works from a whole spectrum of scholars, not just those with which one happens to agree. There are myriad books on the historical Jesus which would be much more enlightening than the ones you've read up until this point. Stick a new thread here in this forum to get a better idea of what's out there. Better yet, ask Roger, as I know he knows of sources better than Spong and the Jesus Seminar.

Gregg

No, I did not say "in this thread." I said your assertions in the post I was replying to. And yes, they are wrong.You reject the mythicist case out of hand as "pure speculation" yet I am the one who is not open. I doubt you can give me any argument or "evidence" for Jesus' historical existence that I am not already aware of, but feel free to surprise me.I use "contemporaries" as a catchall for the rest of the epistle writers, although I realize some of them may not have lived during Paul's lifetime. Sorry I didn't make that clear.Yes, no mythicist I am aware of denies that many of the second century church fathers were aware of the existence of the gospels. And others who are regarded as Christian continue to show no awareness of or interest in the gospels well into the second century. The fact that second century church fathers knew about the gospels does not in any way support the historicity of Jesus.Then give me your evidence for this and allow me to address it from the mythicist perspective. Let's see Paul's references to the "historical, bodily" Jesus and his teachings. After I've addressed those, I can give you a whole boatload of quotes from Paul and the rest of the epistles that I'd like to hear your explanations for.Doherty's translation of kata was originally suggested by Bible scholar C.K. Barnett. He did not invent it. He is, however, not afraid to defend this interpretation, especially in his and Carrier's response to Bernard Muller. And you are incorrect; Doherty does not "reinterpret/redefine" kata to give it a meaning few other scholars give it; the word does in fact have more than one possible meaning, and Doherty explains why he believes the context supports the meaning he uses.

But perhaps you meant that few scholars translate kata this way in the passage in question. What do you expect? The vast majority of Bible scholars and translators operate from the assumption that Jesus was historical and that Paul was talking about this historical, flesh-and-blood Jesus. Of course it's not even going to occur to them to translate kata as C.K. Barnett (or Doherty) suggests.They are hardly mere "assumptions" or "supposed" interpolations. Doherty does not simply wave away the few isolated passages that seem to argue against his thesis with an "oh, that's just an interpolation!" He knows he has to offer more than that, and in Supplementary Article # 3 (with Appendix) he addresses each questioned passage in considerable detail. In most of the cases, he is hardly the only scholar to doubt the integrity of the passage.Perhaps some of them are, but Doherty's thesis is not. Doherty draws many independent lines of evidence together to build a powerful circumstantial evidence case. Understand: he begins with the evidence, he draws his conclusions from the evidence. Does he speculate at all? Sure he does, he uses speculation to fill in some of the blanks, to show how one thing can plausibly lead to another where direct evidence is lacking. But this is a far cry from basing one's entire case on "pure speculation." Actually, I think he uses speculation far less than the historicists, with their many versions of Jesus.In some cases, your "serious scholars" (I guess Doherty and Richard Carrier are "unserious scholars") are probably justified in not bothering with them. Their dismissiveness is not justified in the case of Doherty's thesis, however. In any case, whenever I've seen these "serious scholars" deigning to notice and comment on Doherty's JM thesis, I've rarely if ever seen them address the actual arguments and evidence. Instead, as I mentioned before, they just airily dismiss it with "Oh, that theory's already been soundly refuted" (really? where?), or they attack a strawman JM thesis, or they trot out the same standard set of "proofs" for Jesus' historicity without acknowledging that Doherty has addressed those proofs on his site.Richard Carrier was not. It took him several years to be convinced.I don't know where Spong is in his thinking now, but I've never heard him say he wants Christians to stop believing in Jesus' divinity. Perhaps he's said he wants them to interpret that divinity in a different way. In any case, his book "Liberating the Gospels" is actually based on the research of British Bible scholar Michael D. Goulder. As for the Jesus Seminar, I cannot find that goal stated anywhere on their Web site. Can you please direct me to it?Another "unintentional insult" there. Assuming I only read those scholars "with whom I happen to agree." Did you notice that I mentioned that when I started reading Doherty, I didn't agree with him?Yes, there are myriad books on the historical Jesus. Do you know why? Because nobody can figure out who he is, so everybody and his grandmother has an opinion. Despite your protestations to the contrary, Paul and the other epistle writers are indeed eerily silent on any "historical" Jesus, and Paul in fact writes an earthly ministry for Jesus right out of the picture (Hebrews does this pretty effectively as well). The evidence that Mark's gospel is structured on the five books of the Torah, with the events of Jesus' ministry and especially the Passion (including Jesus' words) predicated on events and passages in the Jewish scriptures, and that the gospel is otherwise heavily shot through with symbolism, is pretty overwhelming. How exactly we are supposed to find a historical Jesus in this I have no idea, but people sure keep trying. But hey, if you or Roger want to recommend some books that offer a fresh perspective, some new, original, comprehensive and consistent arguments for a historical Jesus that rival Doherty's JM thesis for sheer explanatory power, I'll check'em out. Don't expect any miracles, though.

spamandham

I would say this is a horribly weak argument. Suppose we had an artifact that was carbon dated to the first century, and claimed to be the the actual writing of Jesus himself.

How could we show that it really was a writing of Jesus and not the writing of someone else, unless there were mountains of it, and they were attested by multiple first hand accounts? The probability of all that surviving 2000 years, assuming it originally existed, is pretty much 0.

It is unreasonable to expect preserved personal effects of anyone from 2000+ years ago. The occasional mumified body with personal effects is a rare treasure.

A better question is not so much why we have no such personal effects of Jesus, but rather, why we have no copies of manuscripts attributed to him, and why nothing survives (including possible copies) of writings from anyone who knew him personally, even though there's similar stuff about John the Baptist. It's as if Jesus was suddenly discovered no earlier than 50 CE - when Paul started writing about his "christ".

These are questions which must be hand waved away from a historical Jesus perspective, but that fit the mold of a mythical Jesus quite nicely. These things don't exist, because Jesus never existed, and Christianity was an unknown insignificant mystical cult until no earlier than the 2nd century.

Steven Avery

Hi spam, I know about the writings by Luke and other Gospel writers, and we often talk about the precise nature of that testimony. By context I don't think you are referring to the NT. And Josephus has a good section about John the Baptist, however he would not have known him personally. So to what do you refer here ? Writings from the Mandeans, or something else ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

driver8

If you've visited Rome you can't help but notice that the Catholic Church insinuates that it possesses numerous physical items related to Jesus. By insinuate, I mean that they will display them and they will allow certifed guides to tell the public about them, but they will apparently make no formal statement as to their authenticity.

For example, in St. Peter's there are supposedly artifacts that are withheld from public view but claimed as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Basilica

Perhaps radiocarbon dating of the cross and spear shaft or dna analysis of remnant blood and tissue could be performed.

In the little church of Santa Prassede in Rome one is able to wander alone and unimpeded off the street into the sanctuary of the Pillar of the Scourging:

http://romanchurches.wikia.com/wiki/Santa_Prassede

There is a little brass plate proclaiming this artifact was used to restrain Jesus while he was beaten. Undoubtedly the church does not believe in its authenticity as there is absolutely no security for this artifact and no advertisement of its existence. Again, with no challenge to authenticity, it must be convenient to just let the claim persist.

Of course, there are also the many bits remaining from the "crown of thorns."

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

Perhaps there's one near you.

It appears that, lacking anything authentic, there have been many eager to "find" evidence of some sort.