gurugeorge

Just up on Doherty's website here.

Lots of juicy stuff. Here's a little taste, on Price's discussion of Midrash in the gospels:

In an earlier book, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, Robert Price gave us a thorough picture of the Gospels as based on midrash—from start to finish. (“Midrash” being the reworking of earlier passages and themes in the Hebrew scriptures to create new renditions for instructional purposes.) That is, virtually all features of the Jesus story, from birth, through ministry and miracle-working, through his Passion and death, were modeled on or constructed out of Old Testament passages, with elements from popular literature and Greek mythology woven into the mix. What was not part of that mix was anything that could be separately identified as based on actual memories and traditions of Jesus’ own activities and experiences.

If I may offer an analogy, it is as if someone set about to write a biography of John F. Kennedy and fashioned a story which was put together out of elements of the life of Theodore Roosevelt, each incident of Kennedy’s alleged life being reworkings of the events of Roosevelt’s life. If Kennedy were portrayed as taking part in World War II, leading a charge up some hill on Guadalcanal in exactly the same terms and details as biographical reports of Roosevelt’s charge up the hill of San Juan in Cuba in the Spanish-American War of 1898, so that we could tell the Kennedy incident had been fashioned directly from reports relating to Roosevelt, we then could not say without independent corroboration that Kennedy had ever undergone such an experience. (In actual fact, he did not.) If every single incident in Kennedy’s alleged biography were similarly identified as fashioned out of Roosevelt’s career—and those of other older Presidents—could we even say that this was a biography in any sense of the word, that it had any factual relationship to Kennedy’s life experiences? And if we had no contemporary corroborative reports on the very fact of an individual named John F. Kennedy who was President of the United States, could we be sure from this ‘biography’ that such a man and President had existed at all?

We happen to know that John F. Kennedy was in World War II, and we know of some of his exploits, particularly the incident when he was the commanding Lieutenant of PT Boat 109. In that dramatic sinking of his ship in August of 1943 in the Solomon Islands, he distinguished himself with exceptional bravery and leadership, something well worth recording on its own terms. It would be a matter of great puzzlement to us if a biography of Kennedy did not include this incident, or if it was ‘described’ in terms that were identical or near-identical to some past naval exploit performed by some other figure, so that we could not distinguish any specific connection of it to John F. Kennedy. And we would be exceedingly puzzled if virtually every event in the biography of Kennedy could similarly not be distinguished as having any historical connection with him. ‘Explanations’ that so much respect for previous Presidents was in vogue that everything to do with Kennedy had to be presented in terms of those previous Presidents would hardly satisfy us, or make sense of the total absence of anything specific to Kennedy himself.

Yet this is exactly the situation we face in regard to the Jesus of the Gospels, for his “biography” is entirely made up of midrashic creations derived from the Hebrew bible (the “teachings,” especially in John, are a separate issue), with nothing that can be identified—beyond the known historical characters and settings which provide the story’s background—as factual, as “history remembered.” Such a situation would defy all logic and human instinct if such a writing were purported to be the biography of a real historical character who had made such an impact on his followers that he was turned into a part of the Godhead. On the other hand, it would make much better sense if this character and story were simply symbolic, someone who had not lived an actual life that would have contributed its own details and traditions to the formation of a story about him. The ‘explanation’ that nothing of an historical nature was known about this nevertheless historical figure, thus requiring an invention based on scripture, does not help, let alone make sense in itself, since we would have to question how such a figure about whom nothing was preserved could possibly have had the effect he allegedly had, and could possibly have been preached and embraced—especially as God—by countless others.

Zeichman

I have a few issues with Doherty's generally helpful review.

"This view, quite naturally, has been generally resisted by mainstream scholarship, for it opens up a dangerous can of worms. It would mean that our Gospels, in their canonical form, enjoy no guarantee of being pristine, or anywhere near the original versions. It would mean that they passed through previous formative stages wherein significant changes could well have been made which were agenda-driven. To some extent, of course, we already know this, since Matthew and Luke are basically agenda-driven revisions of Mark; and mainstream scholarship has for a while acknowledged that John as we have it has passed through more than one stage of redaction. But a major revamping and expansion of one of our supposedly reliable Gospels as late as the mid-2nd century is a particularly threatening scenario. And especially in this case, since a concomitant conclusion is that the same Ecclesiastical Redactor in the mid-2nd century also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, this being another compelling aspect to the case presented by John Knox. This would be disastrous to the orthodox view of the history of early Christianity, for it would essentially reveal what many have already suspected: that Acts is a late, agenda-driven fiction, designed to further the interests of the 2nd century Roman Church, again in response to Marcion and his co-opting of Paul, as well as to the factional rivalry within developing orthodox Christianity, between traditions which were rooted—at least in legend, if not in fact—in Petrine circles vs. Pauline circles."

I think the real reason scholars don't accept the proto-Lukan Gospel of Marcion is because it completely undermines traditional models of the synoptic problem, which I've yet to see Doherty or Price address - though it sounds like he might in this book. If this were right, then there would be a highly questionable basis for positing Markan priority and far less so for suggesting a "Q" (let alone with layers!) ever existed. This, naturally, is because the Ur-Luke omits considerable portions of both. Without question-begging, it's a bit hard to hold up the model of synoptic origins (2-source) without contradicting themselves.

I would also strongly question whether this accurately characterizes Marcion:
"But the idea of an official canon seems to have arisen in response to someone who had the idea first, namely the Gnostic Marcion whom the Roman Church had excommunicated for unacceptable ideas. The main ones were that the God of the Hebrew bible, the traditional Yahweh of the Jews, was not the highest God. In fact, he was an ‘evil’ demigod—a Demiurge—who had indeed been the Creator of the material world and the physical aspect of human beings, enslaving them in the process."
"Gnostic?" hardly, he's completely Pauline in his sotierology. "evil?" No, for Marcion the God of the Jewish Scriptures is simply jealous. He is not "inferior" or "evil," just a God who seeks "justice" instead of "love" offered by Marcion's God of Jesus.

Either way, the review is helpful and I may well buy it. It sounds like a pretty neat read.

gurugeorge

Aye but there's the rub. Don't bits of Paul's Epistles sometimes look suspiciously proto-Gnostic?

mountainman

Outside of the literary tradition there appears to exist
no evidence of new and strange Roman god before the
rise of the Emperor Constantine, whom ancient sources
describe as, in today's terminology, a malevolent
despot.

If such a figure as Jesus were to have been invented by
this supreme imperial mafia thug, as a means to enhance
his control of both the military and the civilian populations
(we already know he used the figure of Jesus to create a
brand new Roman State Religious population)then we need
to re-examine the Council of Nicaea.

When this military supremacy, and long-service party,
summoned and presided over by an unstable despot,
is understood without the trimmings of theology, the
message of Arius and the message of the Emperor
Julian will be consistent with the implementation of
a fiction coincident with Constantine's publication,
of the first historical complete publication of the bible,
the Constantine Bible c.331 CE, the year close to
which Arius was poisoned in Constantinople.

There exists no scientific and/or archeological evidence
by which this political and military activity under the
Roman emperor Constantine in the fouth century
cannot fully explain the rise of christianity and its
associated "literature".

I would be very pleased to receive any comments
in regard to this alterative theory to the history
of our common antiquity by any parties.



Best wishes

Pete Brown
Did Constantine Invent Christianity

Zeichman

Personally? no. I think "gnosticism" is often overused to the point where it is becoming a useless term; it seems to mean everything and thus will soon mean nothing. I'm sometimes baffled as to why people get very insistent about allegedly gnostic (or proto-gnostic) elements in Thomas, for example. If it had been found anywhere other than at Nag Hammadi, I suspect that it wouldn't come up very often.

Ben C Smith

I too am very interested in reading this book, and I find the book reviews that Doherty posts to be perhaps the most useful pages on his site.

From the Amazon editorial book description (or via: amazon.co.uk):

Not until AD 367, forty-two years after the famous Council of Nicea, would Saint Athanasius begin sorting through and determining which works should be granted special status.

I seriously doubt Price says something so unguarded and just plain wrong. This is a reminder to all to read the book itself and not just the reviews, the editorials, or even the dust jacket, any and all of which may not reflect a genuine authorial perspective.

Ben.

matthewthomas

I seem to remember something about this once before:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...31#post3212531

Mt

gurugeorge

Perhaps that's exactly what Gnosticism was, a sort of catch-all term used by the Fathers for "everything that doesn't toe the party line" any heresy that laims to judge things for itself (rather than basing their judgement on Scripture for example, which would be just an ordinary heresy).

Anyway, I think you're probably a bit out on a limb if you deny elements of what looks like Gnosticism (in the stricter sense) in Paul!

Ben C Smith

And I seem to have forgotten all about it. :blush: I even participated in the thread in some very small measure toward the end.

Thanks, Matthew.

Ben.

Zeichman

Ben, I seem to recall that the discussion on the amazon page Price railed against this particular quote.

See this: http://www.amazon.com/Wasnt-there-a-...45&store=books

Right, but just because the Fathers did so, who had a vested interest in discrediting their opponents, does not mean that academically-inclined individuals in the 21st century should.

One can also see what looks like Buddhism in the synoptic gospels. It certainly doesn't indicate either a trajectory or a genetic relationship.