J-D

It sounds as if you're saying that it's difficult to get a hearing for ideas which have an academic consensus against them.

It's not automatically difficult to get a hearing for ideas which have an academic consensus against them.

But maybe I've misunderstood what you're saying and you actually meant something different.

J-D

Now it sounds like you're saying that 'hegemony', by definition, incorporates all those ideas which win any significant degree of acceptance and that therefore, again by definition, it's impossible for an idea to win a significant degree of acceptance against hegemony, since by winning any significant degree of acceptance it automatically, still by definition, becomes part of hegemony.

However, by that logic, there's not automatically anything in the existence of hegemony to prevent any idea at all, even one which starts out from outside the hegemony, from winning acceptance.

It sounds almost as if you're saying that those ideas which are currently accepted have an advantage over those ideas which are not currently accepted, in the sense that they don't have to win acceptance because they're already accepted. I suppose that's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. It's a bit like a competitor who has not yet qualified complaining about the advantage held by those who have already qualified: there's no automatically legitimate grievance there. It's unfair in those cases where the qualified competitors qualified unfairly, but it's fair in those cases where the qualified competitors qualified fairly.

LegionOnomaMoi

First, there is no single "mainstream" version. Second, even under the closest, most applicable modern interpretation of Gramsci's theory, the only way you can interpret historical Jesus studies in this light is by ignoring the vast majority of academic discouse. If we exclude the political conceptions of hegemony and look solely at how the concept is applied to academic discouse, there remains a wide gap between it and historical Jesus studies. Take Fish's description of "interpretive community". It still requires "assumptions" which are never challenged and never derived from observations. Only 1) again, the assumption that Jesus never existed has been challenged more than once for over the past 100+ years, and even in many modern works (even in much more "conservative" modern reconstructions, like Dunn's Jesus Remembered) the possibility is broached. This violates also Terdiman's central criterion for hegemony, the automatic legitimation of an assumption. Even more importantly, as Hilfer points out in his study of hegemony in academia (specifically literary studies), the shift in power and the collapse comes from new waves of students, which has been occuring now within Jesus studies for 200 years.


That's the central problem with you little notion. It's a view which depends on the interaction of a small subset of academia and what is mostly an online community of amateurs with widely varying degrees of competence. Apart from this little realm of interaction, academics from various countries with various backgrounds and numerous approaches, assumptions, beliefs, etc. neither assert nor care about "prestige" but about attacking, supporting, defending, or proposing ideas. A classicist who writes about Luke doesn't attack a theologians study on the grounds that she or he has a degree in theology. When Dunn criticized Wells' approach it was on the basis of his assumptions, and when Wells responded, he said nothing about Dunn's educational background. Almost without exception. Doherty's response to my post was quite instructive. The perceived hegemony is the result of ignoring the vast majority of work in historical Jesus studies and concentrating on the online back and forth.





Who gets ejected? Again, the idea that Jesus is a myth has been seriously addressed over the past 100 years. Who gets ejected and from what position?

spin

I'm pleased that you've become an expert on hegemony in five minutes, such that you can become as prescriptive in this subject as you were with linguistics, but I'm not too interested in your efforts to exert hegemony. Your tangent here is more interesting. The "idea of Jesus as a myth...." It is stimulating how the amateur historian looks not at the topic, but at the red herring. You don't need to worry about Jesus as myth: it's Jesus in history that you need to worry about. I have stated the problem at least twice for you and you have been lax to take the notion up.

[T2]You, like them, cannot turn traditions into history. You have no way to separate plausible ahistorical information in traditions from historical information.[/T2]
[T2]When you can find a way to extract what is a datum of veracity about the past purely from a tradition source do let me know.[/T2]
If you want to do history, then do it. Don't simply change the topic onto mythicism. I don't care about the arguments that go "how else?" and discount the alternatives. Neither should you. The topic is "how?", affirming the evidence. Attempting to discount other theories does not affirm yours. The historian's job is to attempt to say what happened. Saying what didn't happen is running defense, not putting the ball over the line.

The discussion about hegemony explains why people can't give up on the historical Jesus. Whether you like it or not historical jesusism is the academic status quo. You remember those amateur historians who have "seriously addressed over the past 100 years" "the idea that Jesus is a myth".

I wish you luck as you struggle with the enormity of hegemonic values in our societies.

LegionOnomaMoi

As an undergrad, I majored in Psychology & Sociology (joint major) and classical languages, with a minor in cognitive science. So I spent plenty of time even then on sociological theory. The fact that all you can do is assert the existence of a hegemony, and when questioned first claim that the very questioning is evidence, and now claim that I just don't have the requisite expertise to understand the concept you claim is at play here, would be funny if it weren't sad. Your background is what again? Cognitive science (with a focus on dynamical systems and linguistics) may be what I do for grad work, but unlike history (which is a hobby) I actually have a degree in sociology.

If your claim has any basis in reality, surely you can do more than first simply assert its existence (and use a denial of its existence as evidence) and then claim that I simply lack your expertise which is required to understand. Apparently you can't.

I don't need to "worry" about anything. I'm interested in the historical reality (whatever it may be, or even if it exists at all), to the extent it can be known, of Jesus. At the basis of this is whether or not there is any reason for believing that a historical Jesus was the catalyst for the religion that became christianity and is bears some relation to our earliest sources about him. Whatever problems exist in going beyond this point (and there are many), I've yet to see any plausible explanation of our sources which is anywhere near as likely as a historical figure upon whom Christian myth is based. If there is one, great. But whatever the case, I am concerned with the most probable reconstruction based on the evidence we have, not imagined hegemonies because of your experience with the blogosphere.

This is an epistomological claim, not fact. All ancient historical sources rely on traditions, myth, rumor, etc. The foundation of ancient historiography is myth; any historian seeking to use greek or roman historians is necessarily seperating traditions from historical information.


I don't. That's why I'm not pursuing a doctorate in history. I want to understant it to the extent it can be.

I'm not discounting them. I considered them and find them implausible. I find the sleights of hand necessary to explain away the references to Jesus' brother in various independent sources almost laughable (on a side not, by the way, after our debate concerning the X the Y of Z construction, I decided to write a paper on the subject and wrote to Dickey to ask her opinion. She was quite supportive).

No, it doesn't. The simple reason is that this figure stands out among a select few who are the most influential in history (not necessarily through anything they actually did or said, but through others' depictions of them). The same is true of Socrates, where we find a parallel situation. It has nothing to do with hegemony.

That so many scholars with various backgrounds all think that at the very least we can say he existed is only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for hegemony. If it were, evolution, general relatively, the historicity of Augustus, etc., would all be products of hegemony.

EarlDoherty

Legion,

First of all, who are these wretched mythicists whose scholarship is so poor and who are ignorant of Greek? Your problem (and it is shared by many anti-mythicists) is that you confuse amateur (in its derogatory sense) people on the internet who put forth their views on DBs with very little proper research to back them up—although there are historicists just as bad who come onto DBs and pontificate about the HJ also with very little if any research to back them up—between mythicist supporters like that (they are essentially a peanut gallery) and those who have truly researched the question and have published well thought-out books and/or web sites.

I know that Freke and Gandy and Acharya S have been convenient whipping boys. What would people like you do without them? They give you allegedly representative examples of “bad mythicists” which you use to tar the whole lot. But who are the rest? And who are the “good mythicists” (I know you never used the phrase)? There aren’t that many because there aren’t that many who research and publish on the question. G. A. Wells, Robert M. Price (and he backs a much improved Acharya S since her first book), myself, Alvar Ellgard (must say I haven’t heard anything from him in years), Herman Detering, Richard Carrier, Thomas L. Thompson, a couple of others with not too shabby credentials; there are also a number of very competent scholars (self-educated: history is full of self-educated scholars) who publish entirely on the internet; our own Michael Turton is one. That entire list, as far as I know, is well versed in Greek. We’ve all published competent material. So where is this mountain of “bad mythicism” that has overwhelmed the good stuff and which you say has ‘proven’ to you that it’s all a crock?

I don’t know why I can’t get across to you that acknowledging from the beginning of the 20th century that a real HJ can’t be identified or described from the record is not the same thing as acknowledging that the evidence would indicate that no such figure existed, and such admissions were nowhere near from the same shrunken vantage point of most recent scholarship. Dibelius never postulated that Jesus was a non-entity who did or said next to nothing. Yes, the era of Dibelius was also engaged in countering Jesus mythicism, and to that extent they had a line in the sand, but the part that was behind that line which they were defending had a lot more substance in their minds than what I was referring to on today’s scene. Truly “critical scholarship” barely existed in that day—except among mythicists.

You talk about the “hostility of the debate on the internet.” That debate is not engaged in by established academia, at least it is only starting to be. It has nothing to do with whether established academia has a new hegemony. And you largely miss my point that it is the behavior of such academia when they DO comment on, or engage in debate with, mythicism that indicates very strongly that there IS an hegemony involved. One doesn’t indulge in what I have described if it is simply a disagreement over evidence or the interpretation of it. Insider academia has been doing that among themselves for generations (and you’re right, that is not hegemony—I never said it was), but rarely if ever do you see in that context the kind of reaction toward different views that we do in the historicist-mythicist debate. That’s a whole different ballgame, and it’s got hegemony written all over it. And you’re right, it’s sad.

You raise a parallel with Socrates. Where in the academic discussion of this issue do you find the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth condemnation by advocates of an HS against those who might suggest he did not exist? Is it because, despite the problem, we have better and more evidence for Socrates’ existence than we do for Jesus? Would that were the case (and maybe it is), then mythicism would have a better argument than the Socrates deniers. But the point is, there is no ‘front line’ in the Socrates debate which involves such fierce personal attack—with not much to back it up—against an MS as there is for MJ. That tells me something. A new hegemony.

Well, right there you’ve shown your fundamental shortcomings. You say you work in a university. Well, universities don’t tend to carry mythicist books, and they certainly don’t carry mine (the odd one in Canada does). I do not say: “We can’t determine what is fact or fiction about this character.” I haven’t conflated anything. I make a case for saying: “The best interpretation of the evidence is that he did not exist.” Moreover, I say: “Here is the alternative plausible explanation for the rise of Christianity without an historical Jesus.” And it works a helluva lot better to explain things like the content of the epistles than the HJ hypothesis.

I am not an agnostic in regard to the existence of God. I don’t say “We don’t know whether God exists or not,” and I certainly don’t accept anyone saying that I should not call myself an atheist because I or we really can’t “know.” That’s not the point. I prefer to make judgments and decisions. Being an agnostic is a cop-out. It means you are not willing to make the best informed judgment you can and go with it, live your life by it. One might still be wrong, but at least you’ve committed yourself and have armed yourself with arguments to defend that judgment. That way you may even reach a position which becomes for you a virtual certainty. I know I have.

That is what I have done in regard to the existence of Jesus. For me, bringing the most careful and thorough regard for the evidence and my ability to make deductive judgments, with background knowledge I have gained (regardless of whether Ehrman likes my formal credentials or not), I declare that “it is almost certain that Jesus did not exist.” Based on almost 3 decades of intensive study, that for me is a 98% probability. If you want to budge me from that position, you don’t attack me personally and call me a charlatan and an incompetent (I’m not talking about you specifically). If that’s the best you can do, even with a dozen PhDs to your credit, I will tell you to your face that you are defending an hegemony. If that’s all but the sum-total of your counter-arguments, you are indeed “desperate.”

And if you “don’t care” why are you on the battle lines? Why are you defending historicism with as much intensity as anyone else in the historicist camp? Why is the very thought that traditional scholarship involves an hegemony such anathema to you? Because you let Acharya S and Freke and Gandy give you nightmares?

Earl Doherty

spin

Should I remember that?

I'll leave you to your musings on the subject. Was it "Hegemony for Duffers"?

How the religion came about is secondary to what you need to deal with: the historicity of Jesus.

Arguments relying on silence where the silence may easily be lacunae are not arguments. Arguments that blather about probability are reflections of the arguer not the weight of the argument. What you consider to be plausible is an interesting tangent.

This doesn't change the necessity for the epistemology.

You won't understand it unless you roll your sleeves up.

Fuck, that is abysmal, pedantic language analysis.

Your comment about sleights of hand is purely hypocritical (and continuing the red herring). You fucked up on your assertion of Jesus' brother. You can convince yourself that you can force this eisegesis, but the text does not help you. You merely assert two variables and that is merely middling the evidence. (And I'm pleased that you wrote to Dickey.)

You are still not doing your job. As I said, discounting the alternatives is not supporting your preferred theory.

"Yes, it does."
"No, it doesn't."
Yes, it does."
"No, it doesn't."

:deadhorse:

I see. Where is the parallel situation to a contemporary criticism of Socrates by Aristophanes? Where is the evidence of any contemporary reports of Jesus?? This rhetoric of yours is just plain rubbish.



This is the problem with The Duffer's Guide to Hegemony. Values held in a hegemonic situation are not necessarily false. You are confusing two separate issues, the validity of the notion of the historical Jesus and the reason for its ubiquity.

LegionOnomaMoi

Yet another post in which you continue to make a claim without any argument to back it up other than discounting my educational background. This is particularly ironic, given that a central component of your criticism of historical Jesus scholarship is the dismissal of those who lack the necessary education, while failing to actually support their claims or defend their positions. So far, you have done exactly this.


The two are inseperable. Without the religion, their would be no figure Jesus who either does or does not have a historical reality. Either there is a historical figure behind the religion, or there isn't. Either way, an explanation for our data must necessarily deal with how the religious Christ came to be. The very fact that you view this as secondary is an indication of your failure to adequately deal with the question at hand, and is a central failing of mythicists in general. Just as many historical Jesus questers seek to explain away this or that problematic piece of evidence in their reconstructions of the historical Jesus (not his existence), mythicists go out of their way to find (often bizarre, and at least implausible) explanations for various pieces of evidence while ignoring or inadequately dealing with the existence of the Jesus sect/early christianity itself.


Probability is all we have: the best explanation for the evidence is the one that is most plausible. That is the basis for historiographic epistemology. Of course, given your blather about hegemony, I wouldn't be suprised if you rely on post-structuralist, neo-marxian, or some other epistemological approach which amounts to "history is what I want it to be, and those who disagree are supporters or subjects to an constructed worldview (patriarchal, elitist, post-colonial, whatever) they don't even realize exists."

And they exist. More than one. Some I personally agree with, many I don't. If you believe that all ancient historiography is useless (and, if you contend that there is no current epistemologically valid methodology for seperating history from tradition, rumor, myth, etc., in pre-early modern historiography, then all ancient historiography is meaningless), then you are certainly entitled to write off all the works of ancient historians. At least then you would be consistent.



The fact that your knowledge of linguistic theory makes it impossible for you to understand a construction grammar analysis doesn't mean I fucked up. It simply means you have no clue what you are talking about.


Try reading the 200+ years of scholarship on the "socratic problem" in which more than one scholar has suggested that the socrates of Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, etc., is nothing other than a literary construct.
In Paul, who knew his brother. You can explain away "brother of the lord" and "according to the flesh" and all other such evidence, but the same has been done for Aristotle's literary construction of a Socrates.

And the continuing assertion of the existence of your construct without reference to evidence, merely a sad defense consisting of "it's more complicated than that" and "you lack the educational background to understand".

spin

You need to finish the book.

So you seem to admit that there is no Jesus accessible by historical methodology and fall back on claims that you can get to a Jesus through the religious tradition. Skewered by epistemology.

"mythicist blah... blah, mythicist..." I can understand you trying to float this rubbish, as you have no historical Jesus to fall back on. Your job is to do substantive history not joust with mythicism. Whether you're successful on the jousting track or not won't change the fact that you are only running defense.

Hence no historical Jesus at all.

Relying on subjective best explanations and most plausible when you have no evidence is vanity.

The thing that you don't include is evidence. Understandable, because you haven't validated anything.

Still trying to obfuscate the problems by confusing them.

I don't. You are just preparing to bait and switch...

...get it?

Another does of "It's not me. It's you!!"

:hysterical:

Another bait and switch.

We need evidence, not eisegesis. It's sad that you have nothing better than to rely on a text that doesn't even say what you want it to.

Truth seems to hurt. What page are you up to?

EarlDoherty

And who's to say that they are necessarily wrong? Because only an incompetent would put forward such a theory? Which of these scholars is called a lunatic and a charlatan? They are not, only because they have the proper credentials after their name?

Wouldn't you say that those who disagree with them do so on the basis of examining their arguments and properly rebutting them? I doubt that they do so on the basis that, well, everyone has always believed in the historicity of Socrates, so that makes them wrong. Or on the basis that it's a foregone conclusion that these Socrates deniers are incompetent and "hopelessly unlearned" (as Maurice Casey says of mythicists).

The difference between the two groups is that one is defending its very raison d'etre, its own hegemony. As for the other, I daresay such classicists' careers are not built around studying Socrates to the exclusion of all else. They do not come from a discipline which formerly had confessional interests toward Socrates--and still does to a great extent. The Socrates question is no doubt simply a part of their interest in ancient Greek figures of one sort or another. Name me a single classics professor who has lost his job over suggesting that Socrates might not have existed or some other radical idea about him.

The same is not true in New Testament studies. The existence of an historical Jesus remains the new hegemony (admittedly the only one left). There may be individual scholars who will maintain that they base it on the perceived evidence, but if they claim that this is the only basis adopted by the discipline as a whole, they are not deceiving anyone. And regardless of what they think they perceive as evidence (if they ever devote any thought to the question), they rarely present that evidence to rebut the mythicist case ("brother of the Lord"?--what a joke), preferring to simply focus on lack of proper credentials, as if that proved anything. (Ehrman actually tried it, and look how miserably he failed.)

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck...well, it's probaby a duck.

Earl Doherty