PhilosopherJay

Hi Zeichman,

Thanks for the clarification.

The problem is the Jesus character lies at the crossroads of history and literature. Unfortunately, historians are not generally up on the progress of literary theory in the last 50 or 60 years and literary theorists have not really studied ancient history enough to pronounce on the subject. A far as I know there is no college department that studies the field properly by combining these two subjects. In Philosophy, there is an opportunity to pick and choose areas of study and combine them in new ways, but philosophers tend to be thoughtful (or lazy) and dislike the drama.


Also, the faithful and theologians put out thousands of nonsensical books each year that makes the field daunting to enter unless one has a strong stomach and lots of free time.

Robert Price and Burton Mack are certainly on the edge of the promised land. Earl Doherty, Archarya S.,Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have already crossed over. I'm pretty sure, Frank Zindler, Hermann Detering, Michel Hoffman, Darrell Doughty, Michael Turton, and Evan Powell are over, to name a few. There are a lot more whom I can't think of on the spur of the moment.

Honestly, I don't look at people's degrees when reading their arguments. I'm only interested in the quality of their arguments. Degrees are really a modern phenomenon, the first Masters and Ph.D.'s, I believe, were given out in the 19th century. In studying this field, I've read excellent arguments by people without any degrees and many poor arguments by people with them.

Warmly,
Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Not necessarily. I know that in Philosophy 50% of the philosophers think the other 50% are crazy. Read what Schopenhauer has to say about Hegel.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Zeichman

Again, few of those cited are what I termed as scholars before. Freke, Archarya, etc. are anything but, as most have cited their "studies" as representative of the garbage that they perceive JM scholarship to be. To be a scholar, and to overthrow some 200 years worth of mainstream scholarship, it'll take a LOT of secondary resources, and undermining the assumptions made in forming many of the hypotheses. When Doherty and Price make sloppy mistakes that indicate that they either do not understand the scholarship they're talking about or are simply intellectually dishonest, it reinforces the skepticism that HJ scholars have in regards to the legitimacy of their endeavors. Though there's no flawless piece of scholarship, cringe-worthy examples can be provided for both of these gentlemen, and undermines their own authority. Also, if I disagree with basic assumptions made by a someone (Turton on the two-gospel hypothesis, or Thomas' complete canonical dependence, for example), I cannot feel the least bit engaged with his or her scholarship. The fact that he doesn't even try to deal with the fact that his findings are almost completely undermined if one goes with what is close to consensus scholarship on these things does not help either. Hm... that last sentence was rather wordy. To rephrase: Turton does not explain how his findings stand up if he is incorrect about something as basic as the relationship between Luke and Matthew. It would be WELL worth his time to deal with this scholarship, if only as a hypothetical situation. Goodacre explains how his theory about Thomas and Luke still stands up even if one accepts certain parts of the Q hypothesis. Turton does not attempt any such thing. Because his findings only work within a small corner of scholarship, it is rather underwhelming.

In addition to the points that Chris Weimer has made, looking at degrees are important when one argues from his or her own authority, which Doherty does. I agree that arguments are more important than qualifications, but when one appeals to one's own authority, or simply speculates, there's little reason for me to believe that person.

jjramsey

Karl Barth purportedly was the Bible scholar in question, though that may be an urban legend.

Chris Weimer

This smells like pure bullshit. Every last word. Can you verify any of the said above?

[Modern] philosophy is hardly an historical science, unlike Biblical studies or Classics.

Once again, hardly. You can ignore 90% of "confessional" books and do just fine in the field.

Crossed over? To what, the freak show? Archarya S, Freke, and Gandy are repeatedly thoroughly debunked. Their scholarship is horrendous, even by undergrad standards. Pure and utter garbage, the lot of it.

Doherty's is fantastic with no real support. Fanciful, but merely so.

Frank Zindler's a quack who uses shitty scholarship. To be clear, there is no Mithraic god named Simon Peter. I'm surprised Atheists even still use that one, but I haven't checked their website in three years. Michael Turton, for all his parallels, doesn't even know Greek. To be honest, while it's impressive at first, it usually comes down to seeing parallels where none really exist. Psychology has documented so many cases of this. Hermann Detering is 150 years too late to be credible. What's Darrell Doughty's position on Jesus again? I didn't think he published much on that man... Michael Hoffman, is he even considered sane anymore? And who is Evan Powell?

No, but I'm worried about your ability to examine the arguments without a degree. Or at least without the necessary training.

And what's your criteria in examining this? By the people you mentioned above, you must have some interesting criteria...

In it's present form, sort of, but really it dates back to the middle ages, and the concept back even further. Rigorous education in a field has long been standing tradition. Can you tell me about your Greek education?

You know what? I can say the same thing. But for the most part, it just ain't true.

It's sounds way too much like some creationist lauding "creation scientists" while denigrating those with degrees... Conspiracy theory the lot of it is.

If you cannot get a degree, what does it say about you? Heck, even Carrier has a degree, and Price, in the relevant field. I'd dare not say it should be that hard.

Cheers.

Chris Weimer

I find 100% of philosophers crazy. There's a reason why so few of them are left. Science has replaced it almost entirely.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Chris,

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay View Post
The problem is the Jesus character lies at the crossroads of history and literature. Unfortunately, historians are not generally up on the progress of literary theory in the last 50 or 60 years and literary theorists have not really studied ancient history enough to pronounce on the subject. As far as I know there is no college department that studies the field properly by combining these two subjects.


Every last word smells like pure bullshit. Let see, what are the last words in each sentence -- 'Literature,' 'subject' and 'subjects' -- Nope, I can't smell them, they just look like different squiggles to me. Maybe you meant just the last word -- that would be 'subjects'. Nope, even alone I don;t smell anything different in the last word than all the other words.

Perhaps it is because I am a city boy and I have never smelled "bullshit'. I need to get out to the country and smell some. But how would I know if it is pure. I mean, isn't a bull's shit made up of different things it has eaten. How do you measure the purity of a bull's shit? Is there a kit I could buy at a farm store that would measure the purity?

Okay, wait, maybe I'm taking this a little too literally. I should consider it in light of what the emotivist philosophers said about ethical judgements, they simply reflect the feelings of the speaker/author. Okay, by saying it is pure bullshit, you're saying that you don't like it. Okay, that's better. You're saying that you don't like what I said. By saying "pure bullshit" you emphasizing how much you don't like it. Also, by saying "every last word" you're not saying that you dislike every last word, you're saying that you hate every bit of it. So "every last word" means you hate every part of it. So "pure bullshit" means it is something you totally hate and "every last word" means you hate every part of it.

Now I put forward a number of propositions and as I understand it you hate each of them. Here they are:

1.The problem is the Jesus character lies at the crossroads of history and literature.

2. Unfortunately, historians are not generally up on the progress of literary theory in the last 50 or 60 years

3. and literary theorists have not really studied ancient history enough to pronounce on the subject.

4 As far as I know there is no college department that studies the field properly by combining these two subjects.

1. Now I don't understand why you would hate the first statement. Even the most devout Christian will admit that a great deal of the material we have about Jesus is not history. Very few people accepted the recently discovered Gospel of Judas as history. Obviously, if not history, the story it tells must be literature.

Now it is true that I feel that every text we have about Jesus falls into the category of literature, but that opinion really has nothing to do with this statement. All you really have to do is accept that some text about Jesus falls under the category/field of literature. So, I don't think that your expression of hatred for this concept is rational. You might explain, if you would be so kind, to explain why you don't think the character of Jesus falls under the two categories of history and literature.

2. When I say that historians are not generally up on literary theory of the last 50 or 60 years, it is based on the histories that I have read by historians over the last 20 or 30 years. They rarely mention literary theory in their works and it does not seem to have affected many of them, at least the ones that I have read. This is not to blame historians, literary theory is a complicated field, as is history, and would not expect people who are expert in one field to be expert or knowledgeable in the other.
Now are you saying it is bullshit because it is a trivial observation, one so obvious that it adds nothing to the discussion or are you saying that it is wrong? If you are saying it is trivial, I would agree to some extent, but that it is relevent to the concept that I'm putting forward. I mean, I'm putting forward the concept that the study of the Jesus character really lies between the two fields at its edges and most of the people in the two fields tend to congregate towards the middle. Historians tend to look at hard political and social facts of the distant past, while literary theorists look at the fantasies and entertaining stories presented by authors, generally in the present or not too distant past.

3. "and literary theorists have not really studied ancient history enough to pronounce on the subject." This is hardly surprising considering the great numbers of modern authors and literatures that one must be familiar with, not only English, American, French, German and Russian, to name a few, but even new recent ones from South American, Africa and Asia. I remember reading only one essay on an Old Testament story by Roland Barthes and it seemed to me fairly pedestrian. Otherwise, I can't recall literary theorests devoting any time to the history of Early Christianity. if you can recommend any material in this area, please do so.

4. Now, I must say that I haven't studied the curriculums of University departments in the recent ten years or so, and perhaps some do now combine vigorous studies in both history and literary theory in single departments, but they didn't in the 1990's. Hopefully, if they do now, we will be seeing the fruits of such research in the next few years.


Now, for the statement "Can you verify any of the above?" this is an epistemological question. As I studied in epistemology, when someone asks this type of question they are asking for the preliminary grounds for statements. Technology, this isn't really debating the question or proposition, but starting a new argument over the grounds for the question or proposition.
Before offering grounds, it is up to you to dispute the argument. Expressing the idea "I don't like the argument" even in the strong terms that you do cannot be considered rational dispute of the argument. If you would care to dispute the argument, I might be willing to offer a defense of it in which was grounds was offered, but since I think that the argument is rational and adequately true, I won't offer my grounds for it.

Did I mention that philosophers tend to be damn lazy? In my case, besides being damn lazy, I am also damn busy. So if you really want to get me to respond, offer clear compelling and rational arguments against my propositions.

To be fair to everyone, I only try to answer one question at a time, so please limit your questions to one or two. If you ask multiple questions in the style that you have done, you are not really asking questions, but making statements (while disguising them as questions). This is proper for political columnists and theologians, but is hardly proper for a real dialectical discussion.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Philosopher Jay

Chris Weimer

Nice try, PJay. I'm saying that it's baloney. It's made up. That what you wrote is bullshit.

Dictionary.com can be your friend.

Try again.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Chris,

Okay, now you've really got me confused. Is it baloney or is it bullshit. I mean I don't eat baloney personally, but I do have friends who eat baloney, so there is a big difference between baloney and bullshit. As far as it being made up, yeah, of course I made it up. Its not like I stole it from somebody.

Okay, I'm being facetious.

Here's the thing, I'm getting that you strongly don't like the sentences I wrote, but I'm not getting why.

Let's start with the first sentence: 1.The problem is the Jesus character lies at the crossroads of history and literature.

If you believe this is baloney, made-up, and bullshit, then explain to me why.
I'm clear that you've made a judgement in this case, but I would like to know the reasons for the judgement.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Sometimes I find 200% of philosophers crazy.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay