mountainman

My contribution to the agenda of the Jesus Project
is to take heed to the analyses related to the field
of Eusebian studies, previously mentioned by Jay
and others.

That an assessment of Eusebius should be ignored
by The J Project would be a pity, since the
data (it is unfair to call it evidence) by which the
project is concerned, passed across the desk of
Eusebius (in one form or another).

J.B. Lightfoot's assessment of the situation
still stands, as far as I am aware.


Might I be so bold as to enquire as to whether the Project
will have on their agenda, an assessment of the source
author Eusebius?

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

gurugeorge

Yup, nice post, pretty much what I thought you were saying.

And that's the problem with Zeichman's position. Zeichman is quite correct that in terms of the the academic mechanism of peer review, etc., MJ stuff is unlikely to get a look in. In a time pressured world, academics have to use brutal sorting algorithms that might just miss out some truth, but that's quite understandable and quite reasonable. (e.g., in all the piles of crank submissions about perpetual motion machines a famous physicist gets in the mail, who knows, there might just be one of them that's pure genius. But because the chances are there won't be, the physicist uses the brutal filter of chucking it all in the bin - or, if they're more kind hearted, sending a standard reply declining the opportunity to sanction the crackpots' ideas.)

Now, the HJ biblical studies crew would like to give the impression that they are a serious academic discipline, just like any other, with peer review and all the rest of the crap-filtering stuff. And indeed they do have that academic apparatus - but the fact is, the field of biblical scholarship has no right to that scholarly apparatus, because it hasn't even begun to demonstrate the historicity of its primary character.

Because of this, it's actually standard HJ biblical scholarship that is the crank discipline, so if anything, calling MJ-ers cranks is like the pot calling the kettle black! (But in fact less so, because people like Doherty do in fact attempt to shoulder their burden of proof - they try to demonstrate how texts and beliefs about what they believe is a non-existent character might have appeared.)

It's obvious how this came about as a matter of history: a long time in the past, a character was proposed to exist, and evidence was put forward, supposed eyewitness evidence of his existence. That was good enough for centuries, good enough for many people to believe it, good enough for a civilisation to build up around that "proof", good enough for academic disciplines to grow up around that "proof", taking that evidence's validity as evidence for granted.

But now standards for calling something "evidence" are higher, and the Christian canon, considered as the proof it purports to be, can be seen to have more holes than a Swiss cheese, so it obviously won't do as evidence, without a lot of deep investigation. (i.e. it might still provide evidence, but only inadvertently, as it were)

So really, to maintain its right to the panoply of academic crap-filtering apparatus, the field of HJ biblical scholarship has to get real and demonstrate the existence of this "Jesus" character from scratch. It cannot rest on the laurels of a tradition that started with a less stringent acceptance of gospel stories and the rest of the canon as sufficient "proof" of his existence.

Zeichman

Again, I suspect that NT scholars probably aren't encountering largely because it IS a populist thing and not a trickle-down sort of thing. Think about it this way: a) at most, a Biblical studies professor might encounter this when one student (who perhaps encountered your site) asks how we know Jesus lived at all. The typical Josephus/Paul's references response is given and suffices because the student probably isn't intimately familiar with the ins-and-outs of your arguments. Or b) someone who is intimately familiar with your work would be more likely to avoid taking a biblical studies class at all, because of reasons probably similar to what gurugeorge said in the quote I have below. (I might ask how many people here have taken college or graduate level courses on the NT or biblical studies WHILE they were MJers; I could well be wrong on this) The scholar then does not encounter someone who knows your views at all. Because of the every-jackass-can-say-what-he-or-she-pleases aspect of the internet, most scholars probably aren't going to go there for the "latest" in NT studies. Where do they go? I probably don't need to mention the peer-review system again, do I?

I'd hate to bring in the MJ/HJ equivalent to Godwin's Law again, but couldn't one say the same thing about creationism? There's a reason why it doesn't get attention in peer-reviewed journals and only in accessible garbage.

Jeffrey Gibson asked me to post this, which is relevant here:


I personally have significant reservations about much of Kloppenborg's work, and I would not commit myself to it. Mack's ideas, I think, were flawed because of his hyper-source criticism, though his "radically social" approach to Christian origins is near the top among ideas I wish were more influential.

Hardly. Everyone has the right to reject something they find to be dubious. "Controversial" is not a codeword for "liberal" or "radical." I would call Wright's defense of Jesus' fleshly resurrection controversial in the same way that Mack's ideas are. I don't think that it's a matter of the academy "not being ready" for certain ideas, but that certain ideas have rather obvious problems and are difficult to accept. This is why the peer-review system is so important.


I would have to imagine HB and Jewish scholars would take offense to that over-generalization. To turn the tables, the converse has not been demonstrated either.

gurugeorge

(I'm talking about HJ-based biblical scholarship of course, I have no quarrel with any other kind). Nah, it's not symmetrical at all. MJ-ers have gone to great lengths to carry out their obligation - everything they write tries to show how the texts and beliefs about a "Jesus" could have arisen in the absence of a "Jesus".

I see no comparable "groundwork" anywhere in biblical scholarship with respect to their obligation to prove the existence of the entity they prate so learnedly about.

All I see is a gigantic, fascinating and no doubt enjoyable (for the participants) intellectual Heath Robinson contraption, based on no solid demonstration of historicity whatsoever. Of course I'm an amateur and not in the field, there might be something hidden away in academic libraries. If so, point us to it.

It seems to me that the JP is the first serious attempt at the kind of historical investigation that would be required to give a respectable intellectual foundation to the HJ idea. It's a matter of shame that the biblical scholarship "establishment" hasn't seen fit to clean its own house in this way itself, and that it's taken an initiative from outside the field to do it.

What is there to lose (apart from possibly sinecures, stipends and tenures, of course, but even that is unlikely) if the truth is established one way or another? A firm foundation for this "Jesus" character in historical fact would give HJ-upholders the right to use their "peer" review apparatus and all the rest of it with good conscience; would justify their (at present) unwarranted and rather cheesy scorn of the alternative.

Zeichman

You are obviously either unfamiliar with scholarship or are simply mischaracterizing it. While proving the existence of the historical Jesus has been a low priority, given that it is hardly controversial among credentialed specialists, some have written about it: http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/CritiquesRefut1.htm Doherty argues against most of the recent-ish ones here. Unfortunately, many of these have been written by comparatively conservative biblical scholars, who make use of dubious arguments and damage the credibility of their thesis. Why the hell write a book in favor of something that essentially no one disputes? What a great way to waste time and NOT make money. Might as well write an article arguing that ice cream tastes good.

And your own example of the JP refutes your claim about the complacency of scholarship. I will keep saying this: the best way to overthrow the mainstream is not to sit around complaining about it, but to directly address the claims that mainstream scholars make, and to make sure they notice. Otherwise it just looks like sour grapes.

spin

The notion of a historical Jesus is a "recent-ish" one. Its methodology is one of removal of dross not searching for historical evidence. Ooo, I don't like that bit... That might be serious boat-rocking scholarship to Propaganda Fide.

You are confusing biblical scholars with historians. Got any historians who have done the job? .. .. .. (smilie tapping fingers) .. .. .. No, I didn't think so.

Wishful thinking. The parascholarly nature of the enterprise demonstrates the complacency of scholarship at large.

You seem to have a rosy idea of academia, which is about holding onto your post. To get tenure -- so that you can say whatever you want -- you have to get down on your knees and get those lips working for a long while. Intellectual prostitution is not a functional trajectory for anyone with principles who wants to keep those principles intact. Academia in general is inherently conservative.

You're basically trying to shift the burden along non-scholarly grounds. You are aware that there is a scholastic bankruptcy in religious studies and to get them to do their job properly you want someone to go at them with a crowbar. And the only way you can see that happening is from within. That's the trajectory of degradation for idealistic political reformers. You can't change an institution from within. (You'd have more success by manipulating their funding.)

You've got to come up with a more useful suggestion than compromise your principles in the vain hope of changing academia. You sound like you're in cloud-cuckoo-land in the way you talk about changing the mainstream.


spin

Doug Shaver

Do you mean primary evidence?

The existence of most if not all of the known pre-Socratic Greek philosophers is inferred from references to their teachings in documents written years or decades, if not centuries, after their lifetimes. Those references are not primary evidence, but historians seem to consider them evidence nonetheless.

Zeichman

Spin, I'm not going to address anything you say until you can give concrete examples or cite sources. I'm going to restrain myself from launching into ad hominems that lend themselves so easily. I'll be a nice guy and give you another chance to back up what you say. I'll restrain myself and leave it at that.

spin

Can you have any real chance of making historical statements otherwise?

The importance of the pre-Socratic stuff is the ideas and what they contribute to the history of philosophy. Somebody had the ideas. The figures themselves are really just names to tag the ideas with.

Against that, a letter found in Hittite capital mentions an Assyrian diplomat called Babu-aha-iddina. The house of this fellow was found in the city of Asshur and we find that he was also a very wealthy merchant, as numerous tablets were found in the house identifying the owner and explaining some of his business. That's the stuff of history. (And he's just one of those indicators that David Rohl's fairy-tale revisionism is hopelessly wrong.)


spin

spin

What exactly would you like me to do for you? Specify observations from my direct experience?

You haven't restrained yourself on other occasions in this thread. You seem to have taken most opportunities to be nasty to others. Are you on a coffee break?

You are cherry-picking here. You've said other things that were apparently inaccurate or baseless, but you only go for the difficulties of academia.

I don't really have the intention for you of naming names of scholars who have had a hard trot because they actually had ideas before tenure. My impression from what you've said is that you have a rosy idea of academia. If on the other hand you'd actually had dealings with academic politics, you would have said something of relevance. You haven't, so you seem not to have anything tangible to say on the world of academia.


spin