Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Like I said, maybe he isn't. Some time ago, I found out that Hoffmann supports a sort-of postmodernist position on the historical Jesus, where we just don't know one way or the other, much in the same way as Robert M. Price and you. I have a lot of contempt for that position, as it is a philosophical approach that neglects all judgments of probability, though such judgments are the only way historical conclusions can be made. It is not aligned with scientific empiricism. Instead, it is aligned with unlikely fringe theories, whose advocates want to put their positions on the same level as the mainline theories strongly backed by the evidence. Before I was deeply involved in the historical Jesus debates against atheists, I saw the postmodernist arguments regularly among creationists, who would never explicitly identify with the philosophy of postmodernist, but they are generally the same arguments. "We all have the same evidence, you have your interpretation, we have ours, and who is to say that your explanation is better than ours?"

Hoffmann is and has been an anti-religious activist. He was chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion for seven years, and he was senior vice president of the Center for Inquiry.

On the other hand, Hoffmann has academic creds. He got his theological doctorate from Oxford, and he was a professor at several campuses.

There is no dichotomy between academics who are "well qualified" and academics who are "extreme." They may overlap, and those were the kinds of participants in the Jesus Project. My judgment about what happened in the Jesus Project came from Hoffmann's blog entry titled, "Rethinking the Thinking behind The Jesus Project." In it, Hoffmann writes:

The first sign of possible trouble came when I was asked by one such “myther” whether we might not start a “Jesus Myth” section of the project devoted exclusively to those who were committed to the thesis that Jesus never existed. I am not sure what “committed to a thesis” entails, but it does not imply the sort of skepticism that the myth theory itself invites.

I think April DeConick's explanation for why she left the Jesus Project is much more direct and revealing.

My decision about The Jesus Project

After reflecting for two years since I was initially contacted about participating in The Jesus Project, and recently determining the actual goal of TJP which had always been vague to me, I have decided to step aside.

First, the goal to prove Jesus' existence or not is methodologically a black hole from my perspective.

Second, another quest for what we can know about Jesus will turn up nothing new, because each thing that will be identified will be easily deconstructed by the members of the group. When this happens, I can imagine that the minimal-to-nothing "evidence" could be framed as "proof" for Jesus' non-existence. The media will have a heyday - "now scholars prove that Jesus didn't exist" or "scholars say that we can know nothing about Jesus".

This line of reasoning became very evident to me when Tom Verenna quoted a statement of mine published on my blog (in which I stated that the historical Jesus we reconstruct only exists in our imaginations) as somehow aligning with his myther position, as giving validity to it. This is simply false. Because I recognize that my colleagues in the Jesus Seminar have constructed the historical Jesus from their imaginative interpretation of the evidence available, has no bearing on whether or not Jesus actually existed.

In fact, I think that Jesus did historically exist, although I cannot prove this anymore than the mythers can prove he didn't. I have reasons to think that he did exist, including the fact that Paul knew Jesus' brother James and that Hegesippus reports that he knew that the grandsons of Jesus' brother Jude had been interrogated under Domitian. And yes I know how mythers get around this evidence (how it is deconstructed), just as I know how Christians have traditionally gotten around it using some of the same arguments (since human brothers don't coincide with theologies like Mary's perpetual virginity, just as they don't coincide with the position that Jesus was not a historical person).

Unless there is a new orientation to the project, I will not be participating in it, and wish those who remain part of TJP my best.

So, the take-away point is that the Jesus Project was infested with scholars who wished primarily to advance the hypothesis that Jesus was merely myth. That isn't to say that they are unqualified scholars. But, they would qualify as both "extreme" and "hacks," at least in my estimation.

Originally Posted by hjalti

Right, Detering is all about selling his books, and that's why you can get his stuff free online.

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

OK, tell me where I can get Paulusbriefe ohne Paulus?: Die Paulusbriefe in der hollandischen Radikalkritik and Der gefalschte Paulus: Das Urchristentum im Zwielicht freely online.

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

DCHindley, thank you for such an explanation of postmodernism. I wouldn't claim that either the creationists or the Jesus-skeptics are all that deeply involved in the convoluted variations of postmodernist philosophy. I think, at most, they simply borrow the arguments and the general positions. It is more about the promotion of uncertainty and relativism (as a normal person would understand those concepts) more than backing such positions with a robust philosophy. They may even try to distance themselves from the philosophy of postmodernism and to instead associate it with their opposition, all the while depending on postmodernist-like arguments and positions. That is what the creationists do, at least.

Originally Posted by hjalti

Well, The falsified Paul is here.

Originally Posted by hjalti

Well, the other book doesn't seem to be available online. But it's a 500+ book from 1992, I doubt he's getting rich off it. And most of his work is available online.