Clarice O'C

Greetings, :wave:

Many here will be pleased to learn of this long-awaited development and perhaps attend and/or whip off a message of kudos to The Jesus Project via Gwen MacRae gmacrae@centerforinquiry.net and best wishes.

http://www.cfiwest.org/calendar/JesusProject.htm

Clarice O'C

* * *
What if ...
the most influential man in human history never lived?

THE JESUS

PROJECT

Please join us for the
OFFICIAL WEST COAST INAUGURATION
with a presentation by R. Joseph Hoffmann

Sunday, February 18 at 2 p.m.
(Following the regularly scheduled lecture at CFI-West)
- admission is free -


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The Center for Inquiry Transnational, in conjunction with its Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) announces the creation of the Jesus Project. The Jesus Project will enlist the talents of scholars from many disciplines to try to determine the likelihood of Jesus of Nazareth having ever existed.

Spearheading this important undertaking is the Chairman of CSER, R. Joseph Hoffmann. The goal of the project, according to Hoffmann, is not to "prove" the non-existence of Jesus, but to take the theory as a "testable hypothesis" and use the best methods of critical inquiry to reach a probable conclusion.

Members of the Project include James M. Robinson (senior consultant), editor of the international Q Project and of the Nag Hammadi (Gnostic) Library project; Van Harvey, a leading philosopher and historian and chair emeritus of Religious Studies at Stanford University; Gerd Luedemann, a Jesus Seminar veteran and professor at the University of Goettingen; Robert Price, editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism; and other leading scholars in biblical studies, classics and ancient history, social anthropology and archaeology.

The Jesus Project will meet twice a year as a public seminar at universities and other venues in North America. For further information, contact Gwyn MacRae.

All are welcome!

The Center for Inquiry-West
4773 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90027
2 blocks west of Vermont
at Berendo
map

Gregg

Sounds cool! I hope special invitations and plane tickets have been sent to Richard Carrier and Earl Doherty. You can send me one too, if you happen to think about it ... :-)

Malachi151

Cool. I'm a CFI member and this is the first I heard of this I'll defiantly be contacting them and looking into it.

lpetrich

I think that they should also ask: if there had been a historical Jesus Christ, then what is historical in the Gospels? History vs. myth is a continuum here, because one may believe only some parts of the Gospels are historical. In fact, that is a necessity, considering how the Gospels contradict each other on several important issues.

Gregg

Not sure what you're saying here. It's a necessity to believe that some parts of the gospels are historical because they contradict each other on several important issues?

After reading Spong's "Liberating the Gospels" and then discovering what Doherty had to say about the gospels (not to mention the rest of his JM thesis) then learning recently that Richard Carrier is writing a book in which he demonstrates that virtually all of Mark is symbology and midrash, I really feel that "believing" some parts of the gospel are historical takes a leap of faith. Carrier says the odds are strongly in favor of Mark being entirely allegory, mythological fiction. And since the rest of the gospels, even John, are essentially reworkings of Mark, what reason is there to believe there's anything historical in them? "Because people remembered things differently"? How about "Because people originally knew that what Mark wrote was allegory not history, so they didn't feel any qualms about adapting his work for their own purposes."

We can say with reasonable certainty that Pilate existed, that there were Sadducees and Pharisees, and we know that Israel and many of the locations in the gospels existed. (It's also possible Mark used actual Jewish rabbis, rebels, and martyrs as "models" for his Jesus character.) But you can find references to actual people and groups and places in the Greek myths about their gods, and in many other works of fiction. In fact, often the protagonists in such works interact with these historical figures, like Victor Henry in "War and Remembrance."

Anyway, the Jesus Seminar has already addressed this issue of "some" of the gospels containing history, of there being "some" authentic quotes of Jesus in them. I think they did as good work as can be expected if you begin with the assumption that there has to be a historical figure in there somewhere. It's time the "fully myth and allegory" view received some undivided attention.

Sven

[emphasis mine]
Based on which standard, please?
If you're looking at the number of Muslims and the development of Islam, one could as well argue that Mohammed was the "most influential man in human history". And one could easily argue for Alexander the Great, Napoleon, etc. to have been this guy.

Gregg

I don't think Muhammad is quite there yet, but he's catching up. As if we need blind faith in someone else who thought he had a direct hotline to God. And unlike "Jesus," this one slept with 13 year old girls, stole other men's wives, raided caravans, ordered rape, took and sold slaves, massacred whole villages, and had people killed for criticizing him. What a wonderful role model, and a billion Muslims consider him the most perfect man who ever lived.

Anyways, I think that although people today continue to be affected by the actions of Alexander, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Washington, Napoleon, Lincoln, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, etc., you don't have huge numbers of people declaring their absolute faith in any of these men. In other words, they certainly had a vast impact on history, which choes to this day; but do millions of people claim to be influenced by them, almost as if they lived yesterday? (I mean consciously influenced--obviously, millions of Americans for example share some of Washington and Lincoln's philosophy, but for the most part they probably don't think about Washington and Lincoln every day (or even once a week).

Sven

Oh, this is the standard. Problem is of course that people are not influenced by the person Jesus, but about what others have said about him or even what they think Jesus has said.

Malachi151

Even if the Gospels were real, Jesus himself was not influential, his story is what was influential. All of the Jesus impact is indirect. Were he a real person, his only achievement would be inspiring people to take action. This, of course, happens to be equally effective for a myth.

mountainman

It certainly assists the sales of the story to have a supreme
imperial mafia thug, with an "eminent theological mind", order
50 copies of the bible within 5 years of Nicaea, and to edict
for the destruction by fire of the writings of key and instrumental
eastern academics, and for the beheading of people caught
'secreting' said writings.

And, of course, equally effective for a fabrication;
for a fiction of men composed by wickedness.