Chris Weimer

No, and I believe Toto was referring to Christians in particular, not necessarily scholars. That they (believers in general) prefer to cling to fantasy over reality is the norm.

Vorkosigan

Yup. i tend to agree. Aarrgh. I need to go get a PHD in NT studies.

Vorkosigan

Exactly. No single book can do the job. Everything has to be comprehensively reworked, verse by verse.

Bede

I think Vork's work on Mark could form the basis of an excellent PhD. OK, he'd have to learn Greek, but as Kirby and I will both vouch, that is good fun in itself. "The Historical figure of Jesus in Hebrews" would also make an excellent PhD thesis.

As many of you will know, I harbour some very controversial ideas on the history of science and I am following the path Kirby laid out. It seems to me, that if I am going to convince anyone, the credibility that comes from a PhD is absolutely essential.

So, if people do actually care about the Jesus Myth thesis, they do need to do the leg work. While it does take years, it is worthwhile in itself.

Bet wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Vorkosigan

Too old, no money. I'll just have to be another fringe mythicism merchant.

Amaleq13

Maybe books like Doherty's can serve the purpose of inspiring the next generation of scholars?

Toto

The word paranoid verges on being an insult and adds nothing to this discussion.

I made the unremarkable comment that there is a paucity of evidence for the historical Jesus (which you agree with). I am only saying that a lot of Christians and others take the few scraps of evidence that exist and like to think that they constitute sufficient evidence of the existence of Jesus. Read Steve Mason's book on Josephus and the New Testament - after much analysis he does not authenticate the TF, but claims that the later mention of James the Brother of Jesus is just enough evidence to tip the balance in favor of a HJ. Think about that.

Their fantasy is that there was a historical Jesus, a perfect person who either was God incarnate and died for our sins, or a remarkable founder of a new religion who was crucified because he was too good to live, or whatever other fantasy about Jesus that one prefers.

andrewcriddle

That isn't how I understand Steve Mason.

(I'm quoting here from the 1st edition 1992 because I can't find my 2nd edition copy but IMS the passage is roughly the same in both editions) I read this as saying

a/ The TF in its present form is not genuine
b/ it is somewhat more likely than not that some form of the TF is genuine.
c/ However all that the genuineness of some unspecified form of the TF would establish is the historical existence of Jesus.
d/ but the almost certainly genuine reference to James the brother of Jesus in Antiquities book 20 does this whether or not the TF is genuine in any sense.
e/ Anyway whether or not Josephus mentions Jesus the NT writings establish his historical existence on the preponderance of evidence.
f/ Therefore although some form of the TF is more likely than not genuine this conclusion tells us nothing whatever that we didn't know already.


Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Done in Greek and with proper references to the relevant literature you could submit a paper based on your research into chiasms in Mark, even without studying for a PhD in NT.

Many academic journals will accept rigorous and well presented work from people whose training is outside that particular field.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Further to Toto's response to Gak's comment, talking to a few Assyriologists I know, they try very hard to keep out of the field of biblical archaeology because it is a quagmire. They were in fact worried about my interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls because that topic was tarred with the same brush of unsubstantiated self-serving that they'd come to be used to. The avoidance of anything related to biblical studies tells just how little appreciated and dangerous the field is. It is politically safe to steer away from biblical subjects if you are a serious scholar.

That's one universe. Now let's cross over into the underverse (it hurts at first). People who are in this field almost all believe to some degree in the basic tenets of what they are analysing, ie they have no objective distance from the subject. (Obviously, one can respond with the proposition that people who don't believe can't understand or have a bias against the subject, but I don't see those people crying about the analysis of other ancient religions, as they do about their own.)

I agree that there is ultimately no way of guaranteeing objectivity in any analysis, but the way around that bind is to declare one's perceived biases upfront and try to work out ways of circumventing that bias. By removing bias we have a better chance of understanding and analysing that which we are investigating. Our job is to try to understand our sources 1) as the writers intended them (both for the perceived reader and for the writer) and 2) in the context in which they were written.

When it comes to the context of the christian religion, we come up against a totally empty field: we don't know the context, we don't know where the documents were written (except broadly in the Mediterranean basin), we don't know who wrote them, we don't even know when they were written, except that the earliest traces are debated in time (is P52 from the end of the first quarter of the second century or the third?), so it is extremely hard to contextualise the documents.

We then go to the fourth century and extract possible citations of earlier works found in Eusebius, yet no-one has provided a method of checking the veracity of those citations.

So we turn to non-christian sources which were preserved by christians which contain overtly christian content. Here we find christian analysts wrenching their guts trying to work out what in Josephus's TF is veracious. They somehow find a kernel of truth in the text. Why, Gak?

The people here work on the assumption that you cannot trust the integrity of the christian analyst to provide tools of the trade which the infidel can use (datings of documents, exacting translations, analyses of source origins, etc). There is simply a bias which the infidel cannot extract from the tools. This is why the infidel has to reinvent the wheel. What a stupid thing to have to do, but we know that the house that the church built is extremely powerful and full of bias, just as the house that Gates built is, just as the house that Hoover built. I fear that Linux is too little too late to allow us to reinvent the computer world. There has been no real attempt to step out of the house that Hoover built. And who inside the house of God wants to step out to get any perspective?

The scholar studying ancient religions will usually miss an element because they are not practicants of the religion, but they can work at appreciating the praxis. The modern christian has little to do with those ancient believers and are therefore not a practicant of the ancient religion. S/he is just the modern heir of the religion in its modern state and has no appreciation of the ancient religion or its praxis, so is not better off than the non-believing analyst. In fact their modern religion gets in the way and they trip over it rather than getting closer to the religion as she was practised. How can such a person do anything to overcome those biases when they are perceived as if they were the same as the ancient practices? How can christian analysts expect to get at the foundations of the religion and its history, if they are not prepared to step out of their bias?

The scientist has to be prepared to abandon any theory that doesn't fit the evidence or stop being a scientist and become something else. This can be hard. A non-religionist analysing religion can be carrying a load of baggage, especially if that non-religionist has just discarded the religion. That baggage has to go, in order to make more objective analyses. But that baggage can go. How does the religionist discard their baggage, their bias? That would mean stopping their religious belief for the time of the analysis. Such an act is alien to religious belief. (Once out, how do you get back?)

Our societies (with the exceptions of other religiously biased societies) are nominally christian in orientation. Matters of religion are segregated into the hands of those who know about religion, ie religionists. Our societies are very much qualification oriented, because ignorance in most things is acceptible in order to allow people to be knowledgeable about a limited range of subjects, such as those necessary for one's job, or one's study. It's predominantly left to the religionist to regulate religious knowledge. One can understand that compared to people studying christianity at university, there are exceptionally few studying religions of ancient societies. This is accounted for because the vast majority of those studying christianity are modern religionists. The study of the religion is in the hands of christians. To pass exams you have to adhere to certain norms. The higher in the academic structure the more you have to adhere. If you go outside the standard range of accepted approaches, you might perhaps get your qualification, but you won't get a job. In the field of the Dead Sea Scrolls, anyone who doesn't adhere to the norms of the status quo interpretations of the material, usually don't get employed.

(Just think about the situation in which someone is really beyond the pale. Academia protects academia and religion protects religion. It's not strange that a non-religious non-academic doesn't get heard in religious academia. How can such a person's work be judged on its merits?)

Extremely few "objective" (with provisos already mentioned) scholars make it into the field of christian religious studies. The expertise necessary to give serious criticism within the field is relatively high, as must be expected. One usually has to have been through the mill to get there, so they have been inducted into the higher levels of religious academia. How does a person in such a position get to the point of not tipping the scales in favour of Jesusism, when there is not enough evidence? How can there be not enough evidence?


spin