Toto

Dave31: being on topic does not require being a cheerleader.

show_no_mercy

That part is true. I just thought the language was kinda iffy. I'm overall very skeptical of "paradigm shift" type of talk.

It's hard to separate when you're dealing with a Philosophy Doctorate and when you're dealing with a true believer. The human mind is very complex...

Dave31

I agree with both comments. My point was not that Salm is some sort of cheerleader (which he clearly isn't) but that his comment was actually on-topic.

People need to made aware that there is no requirement for New Testament scholars to study or investigate the case for mythicism. It is not a requirement for NT scholars to get their Ph.D. whatsoever. So, just because an NT scholar has a Ph.D. doesn't mean they know squat about the case for mythicism or astrotheology.

aa5874

And people who believe in Jesus, that he was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, the Creator of heaven and earth who walked on water and resurrected, do not need a Ph.D.

I would think that most people who consider that Homer's Achilles, the offspring of a sea-goddes, was a MYTH do not have a Ph.D.

Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost.

Who needs a Ph.D to claim Jesus was a MYTH like Homer's Achilles, the offspring of a sea-goddess?

Kapyong

Dave -

AcharyaS does NOT present THE mythicist position.

Rather - AcharyaS presents A mythicist position - HER posotion, a crackpot silly position that is NOT generally the same as the mainstream MJ thesis.



Kap

spamandham

Did this result in a rebellion? Is there reason to think Paul would have even known about this?

spamandham

Is there such a thing as the mainstream MJ thesis?

bacht

But why shouldn't it be? We can all accept that Christianity is somehow related to belief systems that preceded it. How can serious people say it arose ex nihilo?

Is the word "myth" the problem, as in any religious story outside of the Bible is myth, while the Bible stories are treated as historical? Please tell me we're past this kind of blatant bias.

maryhelena

"Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around AD 6" (Wikipedia)

Perhaps Paul took bits and pieces from this and that - and created his own storyline...Is there any reason to think that Paul would not know about prior historical events?

ApostateAbe

I see nothing wrong with advocates of a minority paradigm wishing to create a "paradigm shift." When I read the Wedge Document, the main problem for me seemed to be that they wanted to win over the general public first and the academia next. With a legitimate theory, it is the reverse. You win over the academia first and the public next. The academia tends to be much more willing to accept the best explanation for the evidence, and the general public tends to be ignorant and ideological. When you go for the public first and skip the academia because the academia is too closed-minded, then I take that to be a red flag. I don't think either Acharya S, Rene Salm or other mythicists/normalskeptics have made that strategy explicit, nor could they seriously hope to win over most of the general public the way that Intelligent Design advocates can (and have), but they can certainly hope to win over the bulk of lay people who are skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and anti-religious or anti-fundamentalism. Acharya S's literature can not possibly be directed at the academia, because the claims fall apart as soon as you follow the footnotes and endnotes, but of course many people outside of academia who are sympathetic to the conclusions are perfectly willing to accept the claims without doing the research. Dave31 often flaunts quotes from the big names who support the literature of Acharya S, and I take it as confirmation of my prejudices against such people--Rene Salm, Earl Doherty and (to a conditionally lesser extent) Robert Price, as well as a few other historical authors. Such authors, I think, should be more careful about what they advocate in writing, not in spite of the probability that they are hucksters on the same level as Acharya S, but because of that probability. Acharya S's writing is much easier to pin down as fraudulent.