No Robots

You want mythicists to get a free ride to pursue their goal:


I think not.

spin

You can think what you like. Nobody's going to stop you. But don't give us crap from elsewhere.

If you want to defend a "historical" Jesus here, stick to the rules of scholarship using evidence. Otherwise you are wasting people's time here.

If you think you have some sort of mission to protect the world against logic and scholarship, this ain't the place.


spin

EarlDoherty

I still have my doubts that Smith was responsible for that link, if only because I can’t believe he would do so after our exchange on Crosstalk, which took place a year before that link appeared. But if he did, he didn’t maintain the courtesy, because a couple of years later I asked the moderator of that site (stated as Smith) to change the address of the link, since my ISP address had changed, but the request was not answered.

That Crosstalk/Yahoo search engine leaves a lot to be desired. First of all, it won’t bring me back beyond June of 1998. My posting on Mahlon Smith was May 7, 1998, entitled “Re: Fallback Jesus”. I don’t have a message #. I have the text of the posting on paper, but not electronically, as I lost it in a computer crash in 2003. However, if you doubt its authenticity, you can ask Jack Kilmon, who a few years ago expressed doubt that I had bested Mahlon Smith in any debate, and I sent a copy to him. He had no further comment to me on the matter.

If you can find it buried in some archive, it starts out: “As I said in yesterday’s posting to Yuri….” It was one of my lengthier postings, and runs to 5 printed pages. If you’d like an excerpt or two, I’d be happy to oblige. (Someone privately requested to see a copy of it, so I’ll see if I might find the time to type it all out, although perhaps with the information I’ve provided it can be tracked down in the archives.)

The posting by Stevan Davies was Feb 26, 1999, entitled “why goranson is wrong”. The search for that date turns up nothing, since there is a gap between the 27th and the 15th from the search engine. I’ll give you a few quotes from it here. His comments are certainly germane to the discussion on this thread:

That was written on the basis of my website. The book didn’t come out until almost a year later.

All the best,
Earl Doherty

No Robots

There's the iron fist under the velvet glove.

spin

You can give silly cliches as much as you like.

The non-conformist has seen more of the iron fist than the conformist ever can. If you don't like the rules of scholarship, why bother here? If that causes you to feel persecuted, feel free, but don't expect any sympathy if you don't want to try to participate openly, following the rules of good scholarship. All societies have certain rules. If you don't follow them you don't belong to the society. One rule here is to attempt to use logic and evidence.


spin

Rick Sumner

The full posting is found here.

As for your posting regarding Mahlon Smith, Crosstalk didn't exist until June 4, 1998, so you're either mixing up the date, or the forum you posted it on. The first post (a test by Mark Goodacre) can be found here.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

gstafleu

You can certainly define things that way, and there is even logical consistency to that definition. But I think you can lose something with it as well. What you can lose is sight of the fact that a "99 percenter" agrees with you for 99%. Take for example the Jesus Seminar (not that they are anywhere near the 99%). For them the part of Jesus that is of paramount importance for the religion--son of God and atonement through crucifixion--is in fact a myth. When you are talking about the myths involved in the religion that is of some importance, I'd say.

Here is a dilemma in my thinking that I haven't resolved so far.

Say that somehow convincing evidence pops up that your minimal version of an HJ existed and that there was no more to him than that minimal version--what exactly would that change? The religion would still be based on a myth. We now just have a historical figure whose name was used. An interesting historical detail, no doubt. But it doesn't give the signs "He died for our sins" any more validity.

I sometimes wonder if people forget that the fact that HJ-MJ is of more than passing academic interest is because of the religion. Once the basis of the religion is shown to be myth, as the Jesus Seminar did, the main argument is over.

That's part one of the dilemma. Part two is that the work of Doherty and Price is fascinating to me. For the record, my money is on the 100% myth version. So why do I find this fascinating while the debate essentially ended with the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar?

I suspect the interesting thing here is to see how such a myth came into being, and to find out that not just the obvious bits are myth, that is the various supernatural parts, but that the whole thing was completely made up. And not only that, it was made up in such a way that enormous amounts of people simply believed it.

So to answer my own question of a few paragraphs above, what difference does 100% myth make, the difference it makes is the astonishment that comes over you when you realize that there is totally nothing that is true about the whole religion, not even some hapless sucker whose name got (ab)used.

S.C.Carlson

Actually, the original Crosstalk list (sponsored by HarperCollins) was started in October 1996--at least that's what my oldest email says. It did not get archived until 1998.

Rick Sumner

Ah, that explains it.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

jjramsey

Hmm, do you have a copy of Doherty's "As I said in yesterday’s posting to Yuri…." posting?

Speaking of that post, I'd call this an argument from silence:

Given that the post in question was five pages long, and Kilmon had written this:

it could easily be that his silence was due to deciding that you were not worth his time. I would not be so quick to declare victory.