Toto

There is disagreement about this. Carrier is a professional, Mueller an amateur. Are you so sure of yourself that you can say that those who have reached different conclusions use "fallacies, distortion, and badly-supported speculation?"

Why did you not quote the paragraph following that? emphasis added. I think that this meets your objections.

I don't think that he overstates Paul's silence - you can't just link to a previous post that you made as if that proves something.

Doherty does not make things easy for himself - he accepts the standard view that Paul wrote the 7 "authentic" letters as we have them, without assuming orthodox interpolations and corrections to force the mention of a flesh and blood person. But this Christ "born of a woman" is still not firmly anchored in recent history.

I disagree that you have shown that the argument is "bogus". The point is debateable.

Zeichman

Are there many exceptions to the opposite, I might ask? Are there many MJers who don't want a strong secularization of America (or whatever country)? Freke and Gandy seem to be the only exceptions which come to mind (sparing the Extreme Biblical Studies group).

THe question is this (and I know what the answer is going to be), can atheism, in the context of Biblical studies, function as much of a confession as my Bultmann's Lutheranism, or Crossan's ex-Catholocism?

To clarify: I am not asking IS it a confession, but whether or not it can function as one. Personally, though I am Lutheran, I don't believe that this confession greatly impedes my objectivity. I'm more than willing to buy books by mythicists, provided a scholarly background. But, for example, John P. Meier, though a brilliant scholar, is certainly impeded by his confessions, as he is willing to grant the notable possiblity of virginal conception and fleshly resurrection. Even Robert Funk betrayed his liberal biases when he wrote that he believed John 7:52-8:12 could be traced back to the HJ. I believe mythicists can become biased in this same way, which is painfully obvious in certain examples, such as Achyra S and her ilk. The question is, is such a bias visible even in Doherty or Price? Certainly, as post-moderns, we cannot claim that no one is unbiased, but does this perhaps act in a manner detrimental to their scholarship?

Given that I'm posting this on the iidb, I realize what the responses will largely be, but please consider this.

Toto

From what I can glean, Doherty is a Humanist and a Canadian, and I assume would like the world to be humanistic and secular, but got his impetus towards mythicism from G.A. Wells. Wells is an academic linguist, and I don't know of any particular political or ideological stance that he is committed to.

Robert Price started out as an evangelical, and only became an unbeliever when his study of apologetics showed him how bad Christian apologetic arguments are. But he retains his original conservative political beliefs which are at odds with most Humanists. He is not officially a mythicist.

There is another group of mythicists which I would label "New Age," which includes Acharya S and Freke and Gandy, and some of the early Theosophists, who are really neo-gnostic. I think this group is the most likely to put a spin on the evidence.

American Atheists (Madalyn Murray O'Hair's group) is officially committed to the mythicist position, and Frank Zindler of that group has written a book and articles on the subject.

But an advocate who wanted to push a political agenda of secularization would do well to avoid mythicism. The historical Jesus is as much a Deist or Humanist character as a Christian character, and is very popular with Americans. It is much more politically savvy to claim that the religious right is misinterpreting Jesus, and to try to make Jesus a liberal. This leads me to think that most mythicists are drawn to that theory from their view of the evidence, not political considerations.

youngalexander

Hey, that's me.
Yet, I suspect that it is also every other MJer, and for similar reasons.

Altho I have been an unbeliever for almost half a century, until the last five years or so I simply automatically assumed that there was a HJ. After discovering Wells, Doherty, IIDB, etc I came to the conclusion that the evidence for a HJ was not all that it was cracked up to be.

It always strikes me as rather odd that while the vast majority of people are perfectly willing to regard 'other' deities as mythical, they exhibit an attitude of shock & horror whenever their own is called into question. Of course, this is by no means an historical argument, more a presentiment. Nevertheless, what would you reckon the odds that of all the deities which have been invented thruout human history and worldwide, it just so happens that the only true one happens to be in our time (range) and culture?

I heartily agree with this. I am very keen to 'push a secular agenda' and do not give a monkeys toss about MJ/HJ, save that it is an interesting question. Clearly the best way of bringing a secular (& dare I say Bright) light to the populace is to leave them with the notion that Jesus was a marginal jew or itinerant sage, etc, whose teachings have been purloined by the organised religiosi for their own nefarious ends.

This will leave splendid chaps such as us to get to the truth of the matter.:notworthy:

jjramsey

If I had more confidence in Carrier's judgment, I might take his being a professional more seriously. However, if I constrast Carrier's enthusiastic review of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, where he writes "MacDonald's book is built like a crescendo: as one reads on, the cases not only accumulate, they actually get better and better, clearer and clearer," with the more negative review from the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, which says, "Persuasive arguments are set side-by-side and given equal emphasis with farfetched comparisons, the cumulative effect of which is to undermine the force of the book's major thesis," the impression I get is that Carrier is perhaps too quick to embrace questionable scholarship, his credentials notwithstanding. My point here is that Carrier has given me reason to not give him the benefit of the doubt, in spite of his professional standing.

Now when I look at his actual arguments for Doherty's interpretation of the sub-lunar realm, I can't say I find them convincing. If one actually looks up the parts of Plutarch's Isis and Osiris that he quotes, they don't support his case that Osiris was incarnated in the sublunar heaven. What is curious is this paragraph which looks like a straightforward block quote:

Notice that the part of the quote after the ellipsis is actually several paragraphs before the part before the ellipsis.

Judging from the article on Middle Platonism in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Carrier has mistaken Plutarch's allegory, sketched below, as describing events happening "literally" in the sublunar heaven:

So far, it seems pretty clear that the sub-lunar realm was simply what was below the firmament, namely the earth and the air above it. Interestingly enough, even Carrier's quote of Plutarch, "For that part of the world which undergoes reproduction and destruction is contained underneath the orb of the moon, and all things in that are subjected to motion and to change," points to that. Given this, the only place to even plant a cross in this sub-lunar realm is, well, the earth. Doherty's response to this is that it is a crude literalism, but that literalism is apparently what the Middle Platonists themselves believed.

Not really. Doherty's main objection is that the Jews could not have deified someone regarded as a human being--as Moses was. Yet they came very close to doing just that with Moses. All that the above paragraph adds is that Jesus was a recent man. It hasn't overrun the basic objection that the Jews already had precedents that, contra Doherty, made deifying a man a thinkable thought.

Actually, the link was to a post by Ben C. Smith, not me. And I don't see why linking to another post is a problem. If a pertinent argument has already been made on one thread, why reinvent the wheel?

This applies to those who make the historical Jesus out to be a sage or someone speaking out for social change, but it doesn't fit well with those who have come to the conclusion that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, a figure that can be regarded as a religious loon.

But we are not talking about a Jesus who is necessarily a deity. We aren't really discussing theology at all. If anything, what we are really arguing about is historical method and whether the mythicists' approaches are valid, or even intellectually honest. It is the perception that the mythicists aren't playing it straight that is one of the motives for arguing against the MJ.

Iasion

You never get tired of this false claim, do you jj?

I do not believe Jesus existed.
I am not an atheist.
I did not reach my view due to atheism.

Indeed, many who do not believe Jesus existed are NOT atheists.

Somehow, I don't think you will EVER grasp this.

Iasion

Chris Weimer

MJ is not "taboo". It has, at least in my parts, been thoroughly discussed and debated and I've concluded on the evidence so far that it is false. Do note that I am an atheist, I'm not Christian nor do I particularly like the Christian religion (we would be better without, but that's a topic for PA&SA), I spend much of my time encouraging atheist activism - but first and foremost I'm a scholar. Heck, I was even an MJer once (especially right after reading the American Atheists website several years ago, which since then I've myself thoroughly debunked many of the claims there). So it's not a matter of religion, or philosophy, or bias, or anything of the sort. Sure, there will be biased scholars, and scholars, as JJ Ramsey mentioned earlier who are impeded by confessional stances, but to look at me squarely and say that I'm some sort of apologist is very insulting. Can we please stick with the evidence?

Thank you.

PS - And that goes for everyone, including myself.

Toto

Have you read the book? I have. I can see the point of both reviews: there is a difference of opinion between two readers. You can find even more variations in opinions if you look around. But MacDonald is an established scholar. His book might float some theories that others do not accept, but that's still within the realm of academic respectability.

I thought Doherty's main point was that if Paul had tried to elevate a recently alive man to the status of Christ, it would have met with objections. And "close to" does not contract what Doherty said. There is this quote from your selection, which validates Doherty's point: "Against such excessive adoration of a human being a reaction set in among the Rabbis. . ." But where was the reaction among the first century rabbis?

Why pretend that it has answered all objections?

You and others have implied that people are attracted to mythicism for political or other reasons. My point is that if you have ulterior motives, you will pick a politically compatible version of Jesus, preferably the tolerant liberal hippy Jesus who preaches separation of church and state.

If you assume outright that ALL of your opponents are intellectually dishonest or not playing it quite straight, you have a problem. You have given me the impression that you are dogmatically committed to a historical Jesus and that you prefer to mischaracterize the mythicist case. It really is not very persuasive to read posts dripping with contempt.

It's getting late for me, but pretty soon Vork will come along and ask you for your historical method, so get ready.

Iasion

Greetings,

But surely this proves Doherty's point.

If ANYONE deserved deification, it was Moses - the fact that they "came very close" but did NOT proceed to deification shows that there were powerful reasons they could not - because it was blasphemy.


Did anyone express the thought that Moses could be deified?


Iasion

jjramsey

Doherty seems to be going much beyond that, trying to say that the Jewish mindset would have made such an elevation impossible.

But then there is this matter of how Jews even got to the point of such "excessive adoration" in the first place. If Doherty were right, it wouldn't have gotten that far.

Also, if there were a reaction by first-century rabbis, would we have necessarily heard of it? Most of the letters in the NT are addressed to Gentiles, not Jews, and most of the growth in Christianity among Gentiles.