Vinnie

How does Ben Witherington writing for money serve as a rhetorical or sound-bite refutation of "mythicist's write for money"? If a person argues that Doherty writes only for money, that Witherington may have done this has absolutely nothing to do with mythicism or Doherty. Its mudslinging and its petty. There is no practical application with any of this. I say we stick with the arguments and leave the ad hominem comments at home. A dismissing statement that Freke and Gandy only write for money is an ad hominem attack. Its a non-effective argument. It attacks their character, not their POV.

There is no clear case of the pot calling the kettle black here either. If I were to say that mythicists write only for money and you were to say well Witheringrton does it I'd say who cares. That Witherington does it will never negate the fact that all mythicists do it! See? In all honesty, Witherington would have nothing to do with my statement that "mythicists write only for money". Unless he is actually the author of such a statement it is useless. So the statement does not "stand to lose even its rhetorical bite" by Witherington's action (if impure). It has nothing to do with it.

I'd be willing to bet that there are "Christians", "atheists", "Jews" etc. all over the place who are operating for solely for money. Hell, look at televangelists! None of this is groundbreaking news so why lower oneself and revert to mudslinging?

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Vinnie
How does Ben Witherington writing for money serve as a rhetorical or sound-bite refutation of "mythicist's write for money"?

Because many people claim that serious conservative scholars don't do that kind of vulgar thing.

with mythicism or Doherty. Its mudslinging and its petty.

That's right. Welcome to the world of NT historical scholarship. Read the recent archives on XTALK on the Jesus-mythers. My humble response on this, quite polite, never saw the light of day. Moderation there is entirely one-sided.

It attacks their character, not their POV.

Oh, but it is very effective. It saves having to think about their claims.

mythicists do it! See? In all honesty,

Do you think that this debate does not have its propaganda side? In a historiographic environment whose motto really ought to be "NT Historical Research: Saving History for Jesus?"

so why lower oneself and revert to mudslinging?

I'm not. I'm saving Witherington to use against those who sling mud.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

The names of these many people? I know its a slightly unfair question but I don't think the majority of people think that all "Conservative Christian Scholars" would never do anything vulgar. These (presumably) Christians that you are referring to probably don't know the majority of conservative Christian scholars (if they know even a few) on a personal level and are in no position to judge their character or motives. Pointing this out when they argue stupid things like "mythicists write for money" instead of saying "so does Witherington" would work a little better, no?

Some Catholic priests do vulgar things. Benny Hinn does vulgar things, I do vulgar things (sometimes I drive while intoxicated). This has nothing to do with mythicism or Earl Doherty, however.

Welcome to ethics 101. Because someone throws mud at you does not mean you have to throw mud back at them.

And regarding xtalk, tThe moderators of X-Talk may allow mud-slinging and hand waving dismissals of Christ-mythicism. You and I may disagree with that but as a privately owned list and they are free to run it as they see fit. I certainly don't agree with their poilicy if that is it but I don't pay out of my pocket to run that list and I have no say in how it is run. I think XTalk restricts mythicism discussions. By default its purview is to discuss the HJ within the critical consensus (which excludes mythicism). Isn't that what someone said to one of your posts in there a while back? I haven't followed XTalk in a long while though and I'm not completely aware of their policy or the situation. With that being said and even if it were true there is no reason for them to attack mythicists with ad hominem arguments (if they do that). If that is a "scholarly" list then fatuous and puerile comments should not be welcomed there.

Its also false and entiurely misleading, much like you seem to think Witherington's book will be. What makes you better than him in this regard? He may say his book will be effective and cause good much like you are suggesting despite not adding much to anything. Its easy to make excuses for inappropriate behavior.

No I do not think that but I do think that you can choose not to be a part of all that propaganda and useless drivel. NT research seems to be making progress and opening lots of dorrs that aren't conservative. The bedrock of conservative NT Research has slowly been chipped away and you can't say that it hasn't. Historical Jesus research and all the criticism applied to the Gospels has changed a lot of things.

You can't logically use Witherington. It doesn't apply. You can use it for impact but whatever impact it gives will be through deception. Any thinking person will see through it. That Witherington's motives for this book may be impure has no logical reach as an argument against the described scenario of mythicism being attacked. Its useless and serves only to deepen the polarization and add to the mudslinging.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

I understand and fundamentally agree with your objections, Vinnie, but the world is not a place where people avoid mud-slinging. So I too have to be able to reply in the same vein. Really, it's that simple. I would like have reasonable discussions, but I'm afraid that's not always possible.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

Well I agree that sometimes we have to say things for impact because logic just doesn't reach some people. I've done it and I've been mad at people and got into mud-slinging matches but I won't advocate mudslinging and I don't "delight" at the false motives of others (whether Christian or atheist). But I can understand a situation where you know a person is constantly lieing but no one else does and then they finally mess up and get caught. It may give a person some temporary satisfaction but its not something I would consider worthy of delighting in. Anyways, I don't think our views are that far apart on this.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

They are not. But my sad experience has been that people act in bad faith far more often than we like to think. I come to these debates out of an Asian studies background, and longtime involvement with the island of Taiwan, where so many of the big name academics are quietly or openly on someone's payroll, and where the Chinese, Taiwanese and US intelligence services have had a huge influence on the research process and on the educational process -- my China and Japan econ profs at GW were CIA analysts, while my Taiwan prof worked for the CRS and now works for the CIA. So whereas I think you are more likely to choose a stance that assumes one's opponents are acting in good faith, I am more likely to assume that at bottom my opponents are not acting in good faith. You are correct that I still must be constrained by ethics in my dealings with the Other Side, but at the same time, I know the arsenal of dirty tricks that can and is employed. I used to work for the democracy movement here, you know.

I think this whole ossuary thing has shown that. Consider the thunderous silence out of the SBL meeting in Toronto, and the behavior of Shanks, Lemaire and the other pro-ossuary types. So many academics have quietly concluded, I suspect, that the ossuary is a fraud of some kind. But they do not speak out, because they have seen what happens to those who do. This affair is following the same sad path that the Backhouse Affair, the Cyril Burt Affair, and other famous frauds have followed: public and private attacks on critics, followed up with lawsuits and so on. Meier's comments are so equivocal that I suspect he thinks it is a fraud, but will not say so out loud. The silence/acquiescence of the scholarly community will result in (as actually happened in the Backhouse and several other cases) embarrassing exposure by interested amatuers, or exposure long afterward.

Fake artifacts automatically create their own constituency, and this ossuary is no exception. It came, in fact, with a ready-made constituency already accustomed to unscrupulous assaults on the Bad Guys: conservative scholars who fight to Make History Safe For Jesus. And it comes into a field where history is not only highly contested, but where methodological tools for historical assessment are contaminated by historicist bias, and where reliable historical (as opposed to textual and epigraphic) tools are almost completely lacking. Finally, it neatly locates itself right where the mainstream historicists and the religious conservatives intersect: the death of James. Eisenman was right: it appeals directly to 20th century scholarly prejudices.

In a forgery like this the forger's goal is to get the fraud out into the academic community as rapidly as possible, where scholars will defend it because the collective face of the community is at stake, not because of the artifact itself, but because forgers in this type of case typically pull smaller stunts before working up to major pieces like this. Thus the scholarly community finds itself forced to defend not only the current object, but also all the other objects associated with it somehow. Further, in addition to this, the ossuary now has a whole new constituency, the ROM's investment in it. This is almost perfectly parallel to Oxford's investment in Backhouse's spurious oriental artifacts (I urge you to read Trevor-Roper's The Hermit of Beijing, about the Backhouse case). I suspect scholarly opinion will now be mobilized to protect that investment, producing the full range of defensive instruments, from glossy articles in popular magazines, to underhanded attacks on critics, to lawsuits and indignant, planted newspaper articles.

The major objection to the modern fraud thesis is the weighty feeling that It Can't Happen Here. But it can, and I strongly suspect it has, more than once in this case, in fact. I won't name any names for obvious reasons (I am already under investigation here for my completely innocuous website on English teaching due to harassment from Taiwanese yammerheads). Just check out this story about fraud on Japanese archaeology. Japanese archaeology exhibits some of the same features of NT historical scholarship, especially in its nationalist bias, parallel to NT scholars' historicist one. In this light, I am most interested in the fate of Lemaire's other find, the ostracon he found in a private collection and sold for several hundred thousand dollars.

Archaeological fraud is extremely common, and frauds take a long time to get unmasked. More importantly, the public is often unaware that objects are thought to be fake. For example the famous Brassempouy Lady, a neolithic artwork most of you are familiar with, is widely considered a fake by experts, but one constantly sees it in history and textbooks as an example of neolithic art.

So worse than Witherington writing to make money, Vinnie -- to return this rambling discussion to its main point -- is that he is writing before the scholarly concensus has come in, and knows it. In other words, he is not merely writing to make a quick buck (more power to him for that!) but to avoid having to take into account subsequent findings about the validity of the inscription and the ossuary it rests on. He has to know that his book will leave the lingering impression that the artifact has the scholarly stamp of approval even if it is later disconfirmed. This is an act of singularly bad faith. In a perverse way, Vinnie, yes, I do find such a display of bad faith "delightful" in that it confirms what we skeptics always say about NT historical studies -- that the actual state of evidence, in the last analysis, is really irrelevant, especially to the conservative wing of NT historical scholarship.

Vorkosigan

Cretinist

Details and links please.

Vorkosigan

http://ntgateway.com/xtalk/

is the homepage for XTALK, the moderator scholarly list for HJers. Mark Goodacre posts there, Crossan once in a while. Our own redoubtable Peter Kirby is there, as are several of us, who lurk. Archives can be found by scrolling down. Follow the thread labeled "The Dreaded Jesus Mythers."

Cretinist

I found all this before you replied (too curious to wait for your response), but could you post your censored response here?

Vorkosigan

Can't. Didn't save a copy. I was responding to one of Jack Kilmon's attacks on mythicists, and pointed out, very politely, the Ben Witherington affair and a couple of other problems. In any case, I wrote a much more pointed response to him on JM, which I couldn't have written on XTALK anyway.

Vorkosigan