Magdlyn

Because all those authors are not Jesus Mythers. IIRC, they're all selling a historical Christ! They are treating much of the gospels as reliable fact. They're not gonna jump on Doherty's wagon, are they?



But for understanding the Nag Hammadi codices and their relation to the canon, the alternate views of Jesus, surely.

Hardly. A knowledge of Greek at least, yes. But you are the one who said a qualified Bible or Jesus scholar should know ALL the relevant languages. That would include 2 or 3 Hebrew dialects, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin, at least. Was that not your opinion?

Now you're backing off? You're saying just fluent in Greek and a little bit of a couple others? Well, then there might be more than a few hundred of those... :huh: I am having a hard time understanding. You are not being consistent.

Antipope Innocent II

Er, no. What's that got to do with anything? You seem a bit confused.

I pointed out that if the wicked old Churches were evilly stifling Jesus Myth theories in academic discourse, it's rather weird that they aren't stifling other non-traditional interpretations of Jesus as well. You said that these non-traditional interpretations were only found amongst the "fun" books and asked for real scholars who presented them. When given Ehrman and Mack as examples, you said they are "all we've got".

This is clearly wrong.

I just gave you about seven more examples that I found simply by looking at my bookshelf. They are all leading scholars who present views of Jesus which are totally at odds with the "traditional Christ of faith".

So how is it the wicked Churches are managing to suppress the Jesus Mythers and let these other non-traditional, non-Christian views run rampant?

Ben C Smith

I think you may have read my no exceptions statement as meaning the languages. I meant the scholars. Let me add a bracketed comment to the statement to make it clearer:

One has to be able to handle the ancient sources in their original languages. No exceptions [that is, anyone who calls himself a Jesus scholar must do this]. Period.

I did not specify exactly which ancient sources, though perhaps I should have.

My comment on being expert in 1-2 languages probably leaned too low. I think most (all?) doctoral programs in the related fields require proficiency in at least two, and of course strongly encourage more.

At any rate, we can bicker about the exact number of languages all week, and the fact will remain that the Greek requirement alone culls a number of people off the list Jay was compiling.

Ben.

Roger Pearse

I'm sure that, in the modern academic life, there is a requirement for at least some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew to become a professional biblical academic. (Mind you, I was astonished on talking with a US patristic scholar to learn that he didn't know of any scholar who could read Latin like English).

I'm not sure that I entirely agree that scholarship on history *requires* mastery of the original sources. I'm thinking about this from the Syriac or Armenian point of view, where knowledge of it is minimal in almost every discipline. But scholars then rely on translations (e.g. the Chronicle of Eusebius), and this is considered acceptable because it is understood that no-one will know these languages.

Magdlyn

Oh, all right. I was confused as to your point.

OK. Let's back up a little. My point is, yes, there is more of a range of what is acceptable to say about Jesus Christ these days, because of what has been discovered about early Christianity (and Judaean polytheism, for that matter) that is at odds with traditional Church history.


Nowhere did I say it was the "evil wicked Church" that is suppressing exploration of the Jesus Myth idea. I believe I said it was the scholars themselves suppressing the idea, self-policing for fear of ridicule and loss of tenure and income. My hope is, we will gradually get there, esp as you bring to my attention Crossan quit the JS b/c its criteria for authentic Jesus sayings was too lax. If all we have to go on for a Jesus Nuggetman is a certain rhetorical style which includes being catchy and sarcastic, well, that is not much to base the existence of the Founder on, much less an entire legitimate savior religion.

Ben C Smith

I certainly cannot.

My impression is that knowledge of the ancient languages across the board has become less and less fluent over the years since, say, the nineteenth century.

Surely Armenian and Syriac and Coptic and Slavonic and Georgian and other languages on the ragged edge of biblical studies are not required for most kinds of ancient history. Scholar practically equals specialist to some degree (even in its official dictionary definitions), so specialists in one area will rely on specialists in other areas at the edge of their own disciplines. But should one call oneself a scholar of the Edessan church without knowing Syriac? I think it would be awfully odd to call oneself an historian of ancient Rome without having Latin under the belt. Likewise, I think it would be odd to call oneself a Jesus scholar without knowing Greek and either Aramaic or Hebrew (or both).

Ben.

Roger Pearse

Me neither. But I expect that both of us have gone to bed with a text with a modern Latin preface and been able to read most of it fairly readily. So I can see that it should be possible.

Even since the mid-20th. At Cambridge and Oxford they have abandoned expecting classics undergraduates to come up knowing these languages. This *must* have some impact on the standard of graduates output.

Not a scholar of Syriac, I agree; but a scholar of Syriac history? Well, I think it might be possible.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ben C Smith

Yes, sometimes the modern Latin just flows. This, for me, is at least partially due to its resemblance to the Romance languages, one of which I am fluent in.

A scholar of Syriac history who does not know Syriac? I guess you and I disagree there. I cannot imagine calling myself a scholar of [fill in the blank] history without knowing at least the [fill in the blank] language.

I can well imagine a scholar in a somewhat broad field, linguistically speaking, not being versed in every single language within his or her area. For example, someone working in ANE history might not know Egyptian, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and all the other languages of that area and era at once; this is what leads to specialization.

Do you really think it proper to call oneself a (qualified) Jesus scholar without Greek and probably at least one other ancient tongue?

Ben.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Antipope Innocent,

Regarding the issue of misrepresentation, I can understand how you would see it that way. However please note the question that I was responding to.

Magdalyn wrote in post #4914904

My response post was #4917797
Since Magdlyn was talking about scholars, using the term "scholars" twice in a short paragraph, and making reference to my "lists of scholars" and I quoted him at the bottom of my reply, I thought it was obvious that we were talking about scholars. So for me the intended meaning of the term "mythicists" in my response was "scholarly mythicists."

The equivalent situation would be if someone had said "There are no great Japanese baseball players." Someone responds with a list of great Japanese baseball players. He is asked why he started this list of baseball players from Japan.His answer is that he was responding to the idea there were no great Japanese. The original writer says, "I didn't say there were no great Japanese, I said that there were no great Japanese baseball players, you have misrepresented me" The original writer feels that he has been misquoted and slandered as a racist. The list writer feels that his words have been taken out of context and he is being accused of something he did not do.

As I was addressing Magdlyn, it is up to him to say if he took the term "mythicist" in my response to mean mythicist scholars or mythicists in general.
If he took it to mean mythicists in general, then I apologize for my sloppy use of language. If he took it as intended "mythicist scholars," then I think we are dealing with a simple case of misunderstanding rather than misrepresentation.

Now, regarding narrowing things, the original statement in post #4906216 was
"You can count the number of actual professional academics who give the "Jesus Myth" idea any credence on the fingers of one hand."

I think this set of "actual professional academics" has been narrowed to living professional academics from relevant fields. This may have been what you meant from the beginning, but it was not what I thought you meant. So if you can accuse me of using the term mythicist in a vague, misleading fashion, I can accuse you of using the term "actual professional academic" in a similarly vague and misleading fashion.

But instead of accusations, which nobody is really interested in, I prefer to discuss the question of what is a relevant field in this context.

Why would you think that communications and psychology are not relevant fields. Doesn't the relevant text fall within the field of Communications and isn't an understanding of Psychology important to understanding the writers and audience for these texts?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Magdlyn

Hey, Jay, I have to think about your post, just wanted to point out, I'm a woman. Magdlyn, as in Magdalene.

Not to single you out,~ it seems to be a common misunderstanding here.