Solitary Man

And yet, there are plenty of atheist, agnostic, Jewish, and other non-Christian scholars who still dismiss the idea of the Jesus Myth.

dog-on

all of whom rely on the same, flawed, a priori reasoning...

Jeffrey Gibson

Could they? Possibly. But the real question is: Do they

And the answer to this question is No.

Witness for example what (the Catholic) DePaul University has done with Crossan, now Emeritus professor at DePaul, who challenges the Catholic teaching of a bodily resurrection of Jesus -- i.e., nothing despite claims from certain Catholic circles that Crossan is a heretic.

And let's also note that not only that the hidden assumption here of universities as a monolith is about as bogus of an ide as one can find, but that the view that stands in the background here that scholars are afraid to write about what they believe is true or to go against the "mainstream position" for fear of being canned is a pile of crap. Part of the enterprise of scholarship is to challenge long held beliefs.

Witness what Sanders did with his Paul and Palestinian Judaism vis a vis the "Lutheran"/mainstream Protestant stereotype view of Paul and the "doctrine" of justification by faith; or what Weisss and Schweitzer did with the Renan/Harnack "liberal protestant" view on the place of eschatology in the teachings of Jesus; or what Caird (in his Language and Imagery of the Bible) and Wright (in his Jesus and the Victory of God) did with the view of what apocalyptic language and literature is all about; or what Zeitlein did to the "standard" view of the date of the DSS; or what Crossan did with his Who Killed Jesus with Raymond Brown's claims in his Death of the Messiah) or to "standard" and confessed views on the tomb tradition and bodily resurrection with his "big" Jesus book. Witness what Robert Funk tried to do with the view of the authenticity of most of Jesus' sayings and what Bultmann, Schmidt, and Dibelius did to the once "orthodox" and widely held idea that Mark's outline of Jesus' minsitry was reliable history; what Wrede (in his The Messianic Secret) did with the (at the time) universally held idea that Jesus claimed to be Messiah during his lifetime; or what Eiseler and Brandon did in publishing the view that Jesus was sympathetic to the Zealots. Witness the challenge issued by Goodspeed and others to the view of the "authenticity" of Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastorals; or that issued by Yoder, Horsley, Wright, Carter and others to the view that Jesus, Paul, and the evangelists themselves were not concerned with "political" issues or the Roman imperium. Witness what Votaw, Aune, Burridge, Talbert and others have done with the "mainstream" position (grounded in Bultmann and Dibelius) that the Gospels were sui generis vis a vis the question of their Genre. Note how Pervo and others are challenging the "standard" view that Acts is a firts century product.

Let's also note that not a single one of those mentioned above lost their teaching posts by publishing their views. Indeed, some obtained prestigious positions at major universities (Sanders to the Dean Irelands Chair at Oxford, Yoder to Notre Dame, Wright to the Canon of Theology post at Westminster Cathedral, etc.) because of what they wrote.

Those who believe that there is a widespread tacit/secret agreement among NT scholars only to reinforce and not buck what the "standard" position is at any given time (if indeed there is one) have never been to an SBL meeting. They certainly have no grasp of the history of NT scholarship.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Of course you have solid evidence that shows that the "reasons" you say are the ones which stand behind scholars' decreasing (or lack of) of interest in the JM position are actually the ones that account for decreasing interest, don't you.

Given this, may we see this evidence please?

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Given the apparent certainty with which you say this, you must be intimately familiar not only with who these atheist, agnostic, Jewish, and other non-Christian scholars are, but where it is within their works that do what you claim they do. Otherwise you could not make -- or expect us, as you apparently do, to trust as true -- the claim you advance above

I wonder, then, if you'd be kind enough to cite where it is within the works of the scholars you are so familiar with the "reliance" you claim is they display can be found?

With thanks in advance for your providing such citations,

Jeffrey

~M~

This is a pretty big issue for this forum.

Huon

Prosper Alfaric, (May 21, 1876 – March 28, 1953). Catholic priest in 1899, he was professor of dogma in Bordeaux, and later in Albi (SW France). In 1910, he abandoned the priesthood. In 1932, he published a book :"Did Jesus exist?" (Jésus a-t-il existé ?). His answer was No. He was excommunicated in 1933. His Phil. Doctorate (1932) concerned St Augustine, with a secondary thesis on the writings of Mani. He was professor of History of religions at the University of Strasbourg, from 1918 to 1945. His friends of Union Rationaliste published in 1955, 1956, and 1959 3 books of him on the social origins of Christianity.

Jeffrey Gibson

What point are you trying to make with this?

Jeffrey

Toto

This is all very interesting, but it still fails to explain why none of these supposedly unfettered freethinkers have become involved with either proving or disproving the existence of a historical Jesus. (You sent me some articles by Shirley Case, but they hardly settle the question, and they are quite dated.)

I don't see that you can show an evil business conspiracy, but there has been a rise in Evangelical Christian political power since 1980. Evangelicals are not big on the sort of fine theological disputes that used to define heresy, but the idea of the existence of Jesus is, for some reason, extremely touchy with them. (And there are some evangelicals who are rich businessmen, but I don't think it is necessary to try to track some connection there.)

My own theory is that for most of the post-World War II intellectual history of America, it was important to intellectuals to have Jesus as a historical figure. He was a non-supernatural humanist wisdom teacher who would not be acceptable to a traditional Christian, but he was important to them, and validated their liberal politics and opposition to war and poverty. Our own No Robots has raised this position to dogma, but it used to be more widespread.

We are now in a sort of post-modern deconstructed age, where the question of the existence of a historical Jesus is not important, because it is unknowable with any degree of certainty, and the business of scholars is analysing texts and disputing questions of language. And besides, if you take Jesus seriously, you have to be a pacifist and a socialist, and both of those movements have not fared well.

But this question of whether Jesus existed is still much more controversial and unsettling than the question of the dating of Acts. It brings out an emotional response that is difficult for a young scholar to deal with, especially if the question is not really important.

If you want to examine why this question is so touchy with evangelicals, look at the recruitment literature for CCC. Realize that if there were no historical Jesus, the pitch would fall flat.

Toto

This is on topic - scholars who are mythicists, as opposed to the digression that we have gotten into.