doubtingt

No, it is an pretty accurate description of the reality of historicist "scholarship", certainly more accurate than anyone has good reason to believe the NT is regarding historical events.

Historicists by and large begin with the faith-based presumption of historical accuracy. However, the first fact that real scholarship must start with is merely that there is a body of related tales and stories. The other most certain related facts we have come from the physical, earth, chemical, biological, and psychological sciences which reveal that at least numerous aspects of the tales particularly parts directly involving Jesus are so contradictory to all observable and reliable evidence as to be ruled virtually impossible. These conclusions are supported by more evidence and reason than any the historicist might hope to reach.

The historicists must make numerous additional presumptions such as, there were also a set of actual historical events, and the correspondence between these events and the tales is so great as to neccessitate the conclusion that the tales are largely an account of these events, despite the fact of numerous fictional portions which directly undermine the plausibility of the authors' historical intent and/or capability to recount such events.

It is the historicists burden to provide the overwhelming evidence required to show the neccessity of their numerous speculative presumptions that go beyond the facts. Not only have they failed to do so, they generally refuse to acknowledge a need to do so, or to explicate in terms of rigorous principles of evidence-based reasoning what evidence is needed to do this and why such evidence meets the burden.

Instead, they expose their lack of will and/or capacity for reasoned scholarship by asserting that it is non-historicists who have the burden of refuting the numerous presumptions that the historicist position presumes.

jjramsey

:rolling:


Take a look at the more modern assumptions of Biblical scholarship.

jakejonesiv

Keep us posted Jay! I am looking forward to reading it!


Jake

jakejonesiv

Really? Then where did John 3:13, Phillipians 2:5-11, and Col 4:9-10 come from? Unless you think this really happened.

This is just a version of the gnostic redeemer myth. (Christianity did not exist before the second century).

Jake

doubtingt

Yes, quite revealing. You have presented a one man's pronouncement of what he claims his scholarly principles are as though it in any what whatever qualifies as evidence regarding the actual methods of argument practiced by the majority of those advocating a historical Jesus.

What this reveals is your own lack of understanding about what it means to reason from evidence.

jjramsey

They came from first century Christians. Seriously, my point was that Amaleq13 was saying that there was a preexisting archetype of a Descending Son which Christians reused. Obviously, the New Testament itself isn't exactly evidence that the archetype predated Christianity.

If you browsed some of the biblioblogs, or even just visited http://www.ntgateway.com, you'd find that the "one man's pronouncement" to which I pointed was representative of a big swath of Biblical scholarship. If you had even skimmed E.P. Sanders, John P. Meier, or the textbook The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, or poked around http://www.virtualreligion.net/iho/, you'd know that the "faith-based presumption of historical accuracy" wasn't even close to a given by the historicists.

Chris Weimer

I'm actually getting sick and tired of the same accusation of me being an apologist, assenting to faith-based biases, etc... And I'm not even a Christian!

Not to detract from others getting the same treatment. All of this is merely ad hominem attacks because they can't deal with the evidence.

Toto

Perhaps "faith-based" is not the right term - but HJ is not "evidence-based" by any honest meaning of the term. It is clear that scholars like Crossan assume the existence of a historical Jesus without hard evidence. They take the shorter reference to Jesus in Josephus as some indication that there was some guy of that name associated with early Christianity, and then use methods to extract some evidence of the historical Jesus from the gospels which depend on the assumption that there was a historical Jesus. Or they use the existence of Christianity as the deciding evidence that there was a Jesus Christ at the beginning of it, although we know that there are religions based on imaginary founder figures (Confucius, Luke Skywalker. . .)

Yes, it's a big swath of Biblical scholarship, because there's a big market for it among both Christians and others, but it's all based on quicksand.

Am I wrong? Tell me what else there is. I've skimmed Sanders, Meiers, Theissen and Merz, and some others that you don't mention.

jjramsey

That depends. Some HJers, like Crossan, are well-aware that the NT certainly has a lot of legendary material, but want a Jesus that is somehow attractive. This is how you get Jesus as a Cynic sage, or any other kind of sage for that matter. This is Jesus as a Great Teacher(TM), which even those who don't buy the legendary stuff can like. IMHO, the HJers who have gone in the direction of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet have done a better job of following the evidence. Not too surprisingly, this Jesus isn't a good fit for we moderns, and arguably, he's even embarassing. I'd say that you have given the apocalpytic HJers short shrift.

I can't say that I'm impressed by the MJers treatment of the evidence. Paul's emphasis on an exalted Christ is exaggerated into an utter silence about the HJ, and any references that indicate that Paul understood Jesus as having been human are explained away by speculations. Inconvenient texts are judged as interpolations on shaky grounds. Propositions like kata are interpreted in idiosyncratic ways. This does not inspire confidence.

doubtingt

I have read some of the writings (it would be inaccurate to call it "research") of historicists. I have yet to encounter one who begins by explicitly acknowledging that the HJ position requires numerous added assumptions and thus the burden lies squarely upon HJ proponents to show that the totality of the evidence (which includes the scientific evidence against the plausibility of the miracles and its implications for author's intent of historical recounting) compells us to conclude that these are not just stories but stories that correspond so closely with real events that they must be an effort to recount these events.

This is what it would mean to conduct real scholarship on the question of HJ, not simply scrounging for selective corresponding facts and ignoring the obvious reality that such facts fail to discriminate fiction from historical accounts.

What I see are arguments that would only be seen as convincing and supportive if the conclusion were already presumed. Which tells me that they are arguments for and by people who either accepted (or at least heavily biased in favor of) this conclusion prior to any reasoned evaluation.