Zeichman

Incorrect. The failure of its advocates to seriously engage with critical scholarship is why it is so hard to consider the arguments. As I said before, engagement with mainstream scholarship is generally superficial and does not anticipate the most obvious of counterarguments. Additionally, the self-description of one as a "radical" is not conducive to acceptance of one's views. If it were presented in a more reserved, professional, and less-agenda-driven way, it would be far easier to take in. However, there seems to be a tendency to sacrifice quality of research for quantity of topics addressed. E.g., if one started with a very convincing case for a specific reading of Paul, then later supplemented it was a complimentary hermeneutic of Mark, it would be much easier to take seriously. Instead, there is a relatively clear preference for style over substance, rhetoric over argument, and excluded middle over honest engagement.

But if these claims are as insurmountable as you suggest, then I would encourage you, Doherty, Price and everyone else to submit your claims to peer-reviewed journals. Surely if the content of the arguments is so wonderful, then there would be little reservation to publish it. Instead, the ignorant-expert-ridden land of the internet and self-confirming grounds such as the Jesus Mysteries listserv and IIDB seem to be largely (though not exclusively) the extent of involvement with others.

S.C.Carlson

Articles to the leading journals (NTS, JBL, etc.) are reviewed on the merits, not on the credentials of the submitter. You don't need a theological or Bible studies degree to publish in these journals. I know one guy who got published with only an engineering degree and a law degree.

Stephen

Chris Weimer

Indeed, Stephen. And to everyone's surprise, that lawyer has actually made waves over a certain addition to a certain gospel, and is, again to everyone's surprise, and to our satisfaction as well, is, as I've heard, going to join a certain respectable university's PhD program in Religious Studies come this fall?

S.C.Carlson

Yes, at Duke.

Stephen

GakuseiDon

Yes, this has been brought up many times. Mythicists don't have to unload the full 800 pound gorilla straightaway. They could do it bit by bit, to build up a body of work conducive to their views. I'd love to see Doherty try to argue his view that Tatian didn't worship a Jesus Christ in a peer-reviewed journal. This wouldn't really impact on historicity by itself, so would be less likely to be rejected, at least on that score. Personally I think he would be torn apart.

Amaleq13

"only"?

Gregg

I don't know why Doherty would argue this, since he doesn't claim that Tatian didn't worship Jesus Christ.

And now I would like to state that I am putting you and Chris on ignore. I could have argued MJ/HJ with you both until the cows came home, and perhaps you might have even changed my mind one day. But your inability to see the obvious and glaring flaws in the OP's analogy, indeed your embrace of this analogy--and furthermore your dismissal of several excellent posts illustrating the serious flaws in the analogy as mere "hand waving"--has revealed your profound lack of respect for MJers as well as a deficit of good judgment. I have no desire to have my intelligence or integrity further insulted by either of you, and I have no reason to believe that your judgment is any better on any other issue. Some other HJer, who recognizes the fallacy of comparing MJers with creationists and IDers, will have to take up the torch for you as far as I'm concerned.

Malachi151

Let's not forget, of course, that for about 200 years prior to Darwin people had published popular works touting evolutionary concepts, from Julien de La Mettrie, to David Hume, to others, they all put forward popular criticisms of creationism and various forms of evolutionary concepts. Most of the people who put forward evolutionary concepts prior to Darwin were not naturalists, they were philosophers, and thus they were denied merit by the naturalists, all of whom were of course clergymen as "biology" was at that time a theological field.

Darwin himself was a freak instance of a clergyman who was trained in a seminary, as virtually all naturalists at that time were, who happened to be able to change his mind and go against his theological training.

Nevertheless, Darwin published his work, The Origin of Species, in a popular format, and likewise was criticized for doing so.

"Creationism" was opposed by "unqualified" people for hundreds of years before Darwin, and they were all rejected precisely because they "weren't qualified". And who was qualified? People trained in naturalism by the seminaries.

How was this impasse finally broken?

By someone who had been trained in a seminary but then changed him mind. And, he published his theory in a popular work (though there was a small scholarly presentation prior to that as well)

Chris Weimer

Modern Historical Jesus studies are so far from practicing theology I'm surprised there isn't a bigger backlash to it, although the backlash to the Jesus Seminar from the Christian right is huge as well.

There lies the fault with the hand-waving. You can pretend that only the clergy is operating historical Jesus studies, but the fact is that it is so striking from what the actual Bible says, and is also the product of what was originally amateurs turned scholars, that anyone who says the comparison is not valid does not know, or chooses to ignore, the history of Biblical studies.

GakuseiDon

He believes that Tatian was someone who followed a "Logos" religion. From here:

We turn now to Tatian, a pupil of Justin. He was converted to Christianity, he says, by reading the Jewish scriptures... But while still in Rome, sometime around 160, he wrote an Apology to the Greeks, urging pagan readers to turn to the truth. In this description of Christian truth, Tatian uses neither "Jesus" nor "Christ" nor even the name "Christian." Much space is devoted to outlining the Logos, the creative power of the universe, first-begotten of the Father, through whom the world was made—but none to the incarnation of this Logos...

... the apologists as a group profess a faith which is nothing so much as a Logos religion. It is in essence Platonism carried to its fullest religious implications and wedded with Jewish theology and ethics...

If I have Doherty wrong, I'd like him to clarify. I'd also be interested then in his reasons for why Tatian didn't mention the name "Jesus Christ".

I would suggest that you don't put Chris Weiner on ignore. He is an atheist and knowledgeable on this topic.

I wrote earlier that the analogy is only partly true. This is part of what I wrote in that post:

I've used the "MJ is the equivalent to ID" analogy before also, but it isn't really related to the equivalent strengths of their cases. IMO the evidence for a HJ is so small that it should be questioned, and I have no problems with that.

Where the analogy makes sense, however, is the attitude of proponents.

I still believe that. Doherty proponents simply won't investigate Doherty.