yalla

Geza Vermes "The Changing Faces of Jesus" p. 150
In a discussion of "Q" and the alternative[s] as source for the synoptics Vermes says this:
"From the POV of our quest for the faces of JC in the gospels the precise solution of the literary conundrum is of little importance. So instead of wasting more time on it I will start from the assumption....."

Now this worries me. Because "Q" or one of "Luke'' or "Matthew" copying the other is fairly obviously, I would have thought, directly relevant to the subject of Vermes's book.
It ramifies directly on the sources for those faces he is discussing.
But he does not wish to "waste time'' and the next bit is "[I will assume] the general scholarly dating of the syn/gees is acceptable.."Mark" shortly after.. 70CE. etc "
I reckon there is too much of this acceptance of "general scholarly" as a basis, too little time spent on fundamental aspects.

And Vermes presumes an HJ..."The language of JC and his Galilean disciples was Aramaic..." page 2 do you mind. Assertion as if fact without examination.

It appears his catholic education and time as a priest did not allow him to divest himself of such assumptions when he reverted to Judaism.

Vorkosigan

Things seem to be different where you are, Prax. There Bart Ehrman doesn't interact with other scholars, and Catholics do not affirm the Nicene Creed every Sunday.

Vorkosigan

doubtingt

Wow, this statement makes it pretty clear that this guy and likely the organization he represents have no understanding of what reasoned, evidence based scholarship is, or an interest in open-minded thinking, which is all that "skepticism" is. The fact that the head of a supposed scholarly professional organization would show such disdain for critical thinking is grotesque.


Whether they were put off by the offering of the donation has no bearing on the utter lack of scholarly principles revealed in this statement.

Steven Avery

First, the Nicene Creed is a statement of faith, not an oath.
And more significantly, I rarely hear of it being a standard in Christian circles.
Hi Vork.. did you actually read my earlier post ?

Catholics (and perhaps some Orthodox) are the specific subset of what you would call "Christian scholars" who may have a requirement of an affirmation of the Nicean and Athanasian Creeds. This may apply to folks like Raymond Brown and Dominick Crossan, (when he was a Priest), but even that may have lots of nuances. Catholic views are not something about which I know a lot.

However, you were referencing all Christian scholars, and apparently you are unwilliing to even acknowledge that your words do not apply to most Reformed, Protestants in general, Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostals and others that would generally be called evangelical or fundamentalist.

As for Ehrman, the context was a willingness to publicly debate his theories of corruption with those who take a radically different view, such as the close-by Professor Robinson. Of course Bart goes to conferences like SBL and gives talks, and will even be on a panel.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Amaleq13

If the faith is genuine, what is the difference?

I am not arguing that such an affirmation of faith is a binding requirement of the individual's church but simply an assertion of the individual's deeply held convictions. The only thing that "requires" the individual to adhere to it is the strength of their faith and the seriousness with which they take such an affirmation.

freigeister

This is true only for Trinitarians. Antitrinitarians reject the Nicene Creed.

Scholars must apply the same critical methodology to the study of both the NT and the Book of Mormon. I do not know why you continue to claim that there is no generally agreed upon methodology. Have you looked at Peter Kirby's article on historical method?

If you want to test a hypothesis, you assume its truth and then test it against all known facts. This is fundamental to scientific procedure. In the case under discussion, we assume the historicity of Christ and test all known facts in light of that assumption. If this testing reveals insuperable contradictions, then we must reject the initial assumption. We can in the same way assume a mythicist outlook at the outset and test that against the facts. In the end we may have to choose the assumption that entails the least contradictions with the known facts.

Llyricist

This is so funny. In order to defend the Christian scholar's scholarly integrity, these people have to implicitly question their seriousness (integrity) as Christians.

Diogenes the Cynic

How can you test for the existence of HJ? Hypotheses have to make falsifiable predictions. What is a falsifiable prediction which can be made by the existence of HJ? Your prediction has to be more than something which wouldn't contradict HJ, you have to be able to show something testable which could ONLY be true if there was a HJ. I'm not aware that any such prediction can even be inferred, much less tested. In the absence of falsifiable predictions, you don't have a scientific hypothesis. You simply have an unsupported premise with no grounds even for a provisonal assumption of truth.

freigeister

Diogenes:

I don't know why you are talking about predictions in this context. They pertain to experiments in the physical sciences. We are discussing here interpretation of documents. I am suggesting that in order to establish the truth or falsity of our interpretation of a document, that we test it against facts that are generally known and agreed upon.

doubtingt

No, this is just the opposite of scientific procedure and any rationally sound, unbiased procedure in history or other fields of inquiry interested in empirical questions. You must start out assuming that any hypothesis which asserts a positive claim (e.g., X exists or existed, variance in X and Y systematically relates, X causes changes in Y) is FALSE. What you start with is the presumption that the NULL hypothesis is true, which is essentially the negation of the hypothesis under consideration.

The positive hypothesis continues to be presumed false and acceptance of the null retained until evidence arises which cannot be adequately reconciled with any conceived state of the world in which the null is True.

Starting the inquiry by presuming the truth of any positive claim X, sets the whole enterprise up to be little more than a act of confirmation bias, apologetics and excuse making in favor of X and against all alternative hypotheses, without rational warrant to favor X over these alternatives.

The directly observable fact that can be presumed true is the fact that prompts the question, not a hypothetical answer to the question itself. In this case, the fact that initiates the inquiry is that some set of texts contain a story centered upon a character(s) referred to as Jesus. All possible accounts for why such texts exist and why they refer to this character (of which a real historical figure is but one of many) start out on equal footing, which can only be done by presuming them all false. If any one hypothesis is presumed true from the beginning, then all alternatives that preclude this one are neccessarily presumed false, and you couldn't come up with a more defining example of bias and unreason than that.