Asha'man

I also think the virgin birth was taken from an earlier tradition, but for a completely different motive. I suspect that the model for Jesus was born illegitimate. (The Jewish bias against bastards may have contributed to his rebellion against the Jewish authority) Early writings didn't mention his parantage out of embarrasment. Later writings borrowed the virgin birth idea from mythology to "explain" the illegitimacy.

At the very least, this explanation seems to have the advantage of simplicity.

Nomad

I would like to comment briefly on Micheal's statement above. It is not correct to say that "conventional scholarship" would necessarily equate "earlier" with "closer to the truth". At most they will accept that earlier traditions demonstrate what was believed prior to the writing of the Canonical NT. It is a common error to equate early with true, and it was certainly not my intention in my XTalk posts to make such a claim. I specifically said that I was not making any claims as to the historicity of the Infancy Narratives given in Luke and Matt. My objection was first of all to Malhon Smith's use of the claim of a virgin conception as a reason to date Matt and Luke as later rather than earlier, and secondly, to Smith's statement that Luke probably saw Isaiah 7:14 the same way as did Matthew, and even assumed it. Both claims are, in my view, virtually indefensible.

My difficulties with Eisenmen rest on the fact that he has no objective controls that can be used to test his theories. In effect, his imagination can run unchecked, and no one has the means to question his findings, except to point out the most obvious errors (like equating James with the Teacher of Righteousness). This has caused the great majority of scholars to reject his findings. I have little interest in debunking Eisenman at this point. My only question here, is have you read any critiques of Eisenmen's works? And if so, by whom?

Personally, I would suggest you start with Geza Vermes and The Changing Faces of Jesus, or J.P. Meier and The Marginal Jew, Vol. 1-3.

You may even wish to offer your book review on XTalk, and see the responses you will get there.

Nomad

Vorkosigan

I can't offer my book review on XTALK, I try not to post there. If you know of a good critical review of Eisenman on the net (not the garbage on Holding's site), I'd be thankful. The sites I've hit are almost universally positive.

I have read "The changing faces of Jesus" and liked it, but since the gospels in and out of the NT are fiction and myth, I don't see how we can recover any HJ from it. It's like trying to discover the "Historical Frodo," the story of the cunning Hobbit who pretended to ally with the southern claimant to the throne of Gondor, Sauron, during a struggle for the throne among several claimants. The amazing Frodo assassinated him and slipped out of Mordor in the uproar, to join the forces of the upstart Aragorn, who had legitimated his claim by faking a story about how he was related to the ancient kings of gondor. In the current text we have, Aragorn has reduced the former ruling family of Gondor to a "Steward" position in order to further legitimize his claim, and minimized the contributions of the hobbits to his conquest by eliminating their crucial gift of troops from the story. A fragment of the original still survives, however, in the appellation "prince of the halflings" that the crowd calls Pippin....and in the oral tradition, recorded in the text, of Frodo going in and throwing down Sauron's castle.

When you sift fiction, it's still fiction, even in a "reasonable" format of scholars like Vermes or Brown. GIGO. What you need is a method like Eisenman's that enables you to sift through the fictions and discover the underlying trends of overwriting and propaganda so you can figure out what happened.

I do not know of any NT methodology that is "controlled" in the sense you appear to mean, Nomad. Methodology is probably the great weakness of NT scholarship, as Crossan and others have pointed out. Of course, that is one of the problems when you work with fiction and myth, your methodologies tend to have strongly subjective/aesthetic elements in them, the way, for example, Meier rejects some miracles while accepting others, but not giving any real method for sorting "true" miracles from "false" ones. Eisenman works this way as well, as does Brown, NT Wright.....I can't think of a single scholar who doesn't work this way when grappling with these materials.

That is why Eisenman is often quite measured in his judgements about how far he can go with the evidence he has. He's perfectly aware of where the limits are. His descents into hyperbole are mostly judgements about the behavior or attitude of participants and writings, particularly Paul, which I thought were entirely uncalled for.

Michael

Vorkosigan

<a href="http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rpeisman.html" target="_blank">Robert Price's Review of Eisenman</a>

<a href="http://www.jesusarchive.com/books_reviews_Eisenman.html" target="_blank">Here is a review with some criticisms</a> (the first paragraph of criticisms is justified, the second paragraph seems to indicate that the reviewer has not read the book)

<a href="http://www.tektonics.org/RE.JBJ_0670869325.htm" target="_blank">JP Holding's "review"</a> I noticed when I opened Holding's site that I got a casino advert....

<a href="http://www.bookreviews.org/Reviews/1570031746.html" target="_blank"> Here's a review by Eisenman of another book on James</a>

<a href="http://answering-islam.org/Literature/eisenman.html" target="_blank">Here's a critique from a weird, anti-Islamic angle</a>

<a href="http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/archives/1997a/msg00182.html" target="_blank">Here is a much better negative review posted to XTALK in parts</a>

<a href="http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/archives/1997a/threads.html#00181[/url" target="_blank"> Here is the thread index from XTALK where the book is extensively discussed</a> )scroll down til you find the threads)

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/27/reviews/970427.27saldart.html" target="_blank"> Here is a negative review from the NYTimes</a>. The author seems to be a conservative Catholic scholar, which is probably why the review snidely misrepresents in a nasty, simplistic way, Eisenman's claims.

Michael

[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

John the Atheist

Michael,

I had an Eisenman "jolt" today as I was walking around one of the missionary schools in Southern Taiwan today (we;re searching for a school for my son). Posted on one wall was the quote from John: The Truth Will Set You Free. When one thinks over how "freedom" works in James and Paul.....one sees why Eisenman thought the Gospel writers really dug cynical humor.

I would have never thought it myself, since I found the Bible so humorless.

More digressions....
Both Matt and Luke have Mary being a virgin. However, this is popularly assumed to be due to Matt's misreading of Is 7:14, but Luke did not read Matt so how did he know of this tradition? Obviously, he is referring to an earlier tradition. In conventional scholarship, this "earlier" tradition is "closer to the truth" but in Eisenman this tradition is no closer to the truth. Mary's virginity actually absorbs a tradition about James, who is said in many sources to have abstained from fornication and died a virgin (no doubt this accounts for his short temper).

That would do it, alright. Does he mention any Essene influence?

Asimov noted if Luke is read alone,“it is easy to argue that a virgin birth is not intended.” St. Jerome also acknowledged that Matthew's bit was a mistranslation in his day, but this didn‘t keep him from going on and falsely using the Latin word virgo.

Off on another tangent. What in the heck are you doing in Taiwan? Did you say it was work related?

John

[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: John the Atheist ]</p>

Vorkosigan

That would do it, alright. Does he mention any Essene influence?

Yes. He sees the Xtians, Essenes, Nazoreans, Sicarii and other groups as more or less variations on the same theme: all groups dedicated to perfection of piety through adherence to the Law and anti-Roman messianic sentiment.

Asimov noted if Luke is read alone,“it is easy to argue that a virgin birth is not intended.

Really? But in all the translations of Luke 1:26-7 I've looked at on the Net, they all say "virgin" named Mary.

Off on another tangent. What in the heck are you doing in Taiwan? Did you say it was work related?

Yes, I'm teaching English at a university here. Just finished the hiring process today, in fact, with a unanimous department vote in my favor.

Michael

John the Atheist

Well, to clarify he states she is a virgin, but it isn’t a clear statement of the virgin birth to be found in Matthew. He points out that Mary while a virgin at the time of the annunciation, she was engaged to be married, and Gabriel’s words might mean she was to conceive after her marriage with Joseph had been consummated in the ordinary sense of conception. He thought it odd of Mary to ask the Angel “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” since she was fixing to be married. But he points out that commentaries suggests she intended to be a perpetual virgin even if she married. (Don’t know why Joseph is hanging around then. That poor bastard.)

Asimov acknowledges that Christians generally still accept the annunciation as signifying Jesus’ birth of a virgin. But in verse 35 the angel answers “...The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee...” So we have Gabriel answering her in the future tense.

I’m not sure what to make of it. Asimov doesn’t conclude one way or the other with Luke, but does make some interesting observations and gives you some things to think about. I’ve cut his commentary a bit short and one would probably do much better to read some of his thoughts starting on page 919 of his Two Volume Guide to the Bible.

Yes, I'm teaching English at a university here. Just finished the hiring process today, in fact, with a unanimous department vote in my favor.

Well, good luck with your new job.

John

Nomad

Actually, I have never done an internet search of reviews of Eisenman's work, nor have I read any beyond at Amazon.com. The critiques I have encountered come primarily in books, and centre around the concerns I expressed in my original post.

Take for example, how much actual information we have on James, the brother of Jesus. Using all first century sources, we have enough to fill perhaps a quarter of a page of single spaced type. Thus, for Eisenman to make his theories work, he is required to create as much additional evidence as he can, and this typically requires a good deal of special pleading. In the specific case of the Teacher of Righteousness scroll found at Qumran, it never mentions the name of anyone. Further, we have no evidence from any scroll found in the DSS that any Christian was ever known to the Essene community as a whole, let alone the totally unknown author of the ToR scroll. Yet this does not stop Eisenman from asserting that James is the person the author of this scroll describes.

If you do not wish to offer your review on XTalk, then simply post the question (even in a private email) as to what the community their thinks of his work.

If you consider all of the gospels and NT to be fiction and myth, then you are correct, you will never learn anything about the Historical Jesus. Filling that void with conjecture and speculation may then seem compelling, but it is not going to bring you any closer to any kind of historical truths. I offered Vermes because he at least allows the evidence to underpin most of his conclusions. With Eisenman we have a scholar who first builds a theory, then makes sure that his evidence is made to fit it, no matter how tortured the effort to achieve this.

Let me try this question for you:

With the Gospels, for example, we have external witnesses and testimony as to who authored them. Better yet, there is no mystery as to when they are talking about people like Jesus, or John the Baptist, or Peter, ect. But with the Teacher of Righteousness scroll, Eisenman has no mention of any names by anyone, no name of an author, and a dating that is implausibly late just to make his theory even close to realistic.

Why the double standard on your part in finding Eisenman's speculations brilliant, even as you find the works of Vermes, Brown, et al to be futile?

Let's keep this simple: Give me an example of the controls Eisenman uses in his dating of the Qumran scrolls?

Your pessimism as to how ancient history is studied is typically consistent. You think none of the scholars have any real means of controlling their methods. Yet you find Eisenman convincing in his arguments. Curiously, you have not mentioned your own biases, and predisposition to accept claims made that would reinforce your own prejudices (i.e. that the entire NT Canon is largely bunk).

First, anyone involved in the study is typically aware of the limits of the field. Yet conclusions are possible, they just need to be limited to what the evidence shows. How would you justify constructing a 1000+ page book on the life of a man who lived about 1900 years ago, and about whom no more than a few dozen words have been written, AND no extant copies of ANYTHING he (or his disciples) may have written or believed during their own lifetimes?

Actually, considering he rejects the evidence offered by the NT pretty much in toto, then makes up what he wishes from whatever sources he cares to choose, this is quite a statement from you Michael. An easy check is to test any claim against the total amount of available evidence, and to do so without blinding yourself with a priori beliefs like the entire NT being nothing more than fiction. Just treat it the way any ancient source is treated, and you may be surprised at what you can learn.

My recommendation is that you go looking for some serious critiques of Eisenman's work. The list of scholars at XTalk is as good a place as any to start, especially if you are unwilling to read some books from scholars with whom you may not agree.

Nomad

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: Nomad ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Take for example, how much actual information we have on James, the brother of Jesus. Using all first century sources, we have enough to fill perhaps a quarter of a page of single spaced type. Thus, for Eisenman to make his theories work, he is required to create as much additional evidence as he can, and this typically requires a good deal of special pleading. In the specific case of the Teacher of Righteousness scroll found at Qumran, it never mentions the name of anyone. Further, we have no evidence from any scroll found in the DSS that any Christian was ever known to the Essene community as a whole, let alone the totally unknown author of the ToR scroll. Yet this does not stop Eisenman from asserting that James is the person the author of this scroll describes.

Your criticisms here do not address the issues. We do not know who wrote the ToR scroll. We do not know who wrote "Mark" or "Acts" for that matter. But we know what they are talking about. Eisenman's position is that he knows what conflict the scrolls are discussing.

Again, your point about "Christian" is meaningless. The word "Christian" does not occur until later; at this point the various nationalist, Law-ful, xenophobic, male, communities which we know as Essenes and others, are in the process of becoming "Christian." Thus, this criticism is a non-criticism. We would not expect to find the word "Christian" in the scrolls, since the concept did not yet exist.

If you do not wish to offer your review on XTalk, then simply post the question (even in a private email) as to what the community their thinks of his work.

I might do that.


If you consider all of the gospels and NT to be fiction and myth, then you are correct, you will never learn anything about the Historical Jesus. Filling that void with conjecture and speculation may then seem compelling, but it is not going to bring you any closer to any kind of historical truths. I offered Vermes because he at least allows the evidence to underpin most of his conclusions. With Eisenman we have a scholar who first builds a theory, then makes sure that his evidence is made to fit it, no matter how tortured the effort to achieve this.

Right. Like Brown, Meier, NT Wright, and so forth don't operate with a pre-built theory that they shoehorn evidence onto? I read Vermes and was not impressed by his "evidence."

With the Gospels, for example, we have external witnesses and testimony as to who authored them. Better yet, there is no mystery as to when they are talking about people like Jesus, or John the Baptist, or Peter, ect.

But that is just Eisenman's point. It IS a mystery. Eisenman's claim is that in many cases the gospels are overwriting or absorbing claims about other figures. Thus, their clarity is illusory.

But with the Teacher of Righteousness scroll, Eisenman has no mention of any names by anyone, no name of an author, and a dating that is implausibly late just to make his theory even close to realistic.

There's nothing implausibly late about it. The carbon dates fall well within his parameters.

Why the double standard on your part in finding Eisenman's speculations brilliant, even as you find the works of Vermes, Brown, et al to be futile?

First, no double standard (Can you make it through a thread without making that accusation?) Eisenman's position is that the gospels are fictions. That is also mine. What double standard is here? I believe that Vermes et al are wrong and no HJ is recoverable from the gospels. That is Eisenman's belief as well. Eisenman's position is my own. How is this a "double standard?" Note that I do not consider Vermes incompetent, merely that I believe that Brown et al are wrong in supposing that there is any history in the gospels.

No matter how brilliant your methodology, you can't get fact out of fiction, unless you first give up your notion that you have "fact." Eisenman works up to his conclusion that the NT writings are fiction, have a particular political and social slant, and were written with a particular end in mind. He uses examples from the NT and other works to substantiate this. That's "evidence," though not the kind you would particularly like.

Let's keep this simple: Give me an example of the controls Eisenman uses in his dating of the Qumran scrolls?

Eisenman dates the DSS based on a broad variety of evidence. This includes the carbon dates (many of which fall within his range), internal vocabulary, and so forth. He assigns primacy to the internal data in the texts, because the external data is so uncertain. He has a long discussion of the dating problems, the controversy between scholars about the whole dating issue, and so forth on page 82-90 of the book.

Your pessimism as to how ancient history is studied is typically consistent......

Hmmm, I had a "double standard" a minute ago, now I am "typically consistent." Your argument works the way a pretzel looks.

...You think none of the scholars have any real means of controlling their methods. Yet you find Eisenman convincing in his arguments.

Wrong again. I said they had no controls of the kind you seem to be referring to. Rather, in all these arguments there are elements of the subjective. How is it Meier rejects the water walk but accepts the Resurrection? How is it NT Wright accepts everything and Marcus Borg much less? Can any of them put forth a methodology that all can use. Hell no.

Curiously, you have not mentioned your own biases, and predisposition to accept claims made that would reinforce your own prejudices (i.e. that the entire NT Canon is largely bunk).

On the contrary, I have made my own biases clear throughout this and other posts. I consider the NT fiction, not bunk. "Bunk" would be something like a discussion of the Rapture.

First, anyone involved in the study is typically aware of the limits of the field. Yet conclusions are possible, they just need to be limited to what the evidence shows. How would you justify constructing a 1000+ page book on the life of a man who lived about 1900 years ago, and about whom no more than a few dozen words have been written, AND no extant copies of ANYTHING he (or his disciples) may have written or believed during their own lifetimes?

Well, first off, Eisenman believes that many of the DSS writings WERE written during James lifetime and refer to him, so in fact, there is considerable material in many of the texts that refer to him. In any case, Raymond Brown did three volumes on John, and NT Wright is on third of his trilogy about Jesus, so surely 1,000 pages on James is no big deal.


Actually, considering he rejects the evidence offered by the NT pretty much in toto....

What are you talking about? Eisenman regards the NT as "evidence" and does not reject it. However, he does not regard it as evidence for an HJ. Or rather, he does not take it at face value as evidence for an HJ or for a particular HJ. He wonders what kind of evidence it might be, and how to best use it.

...then makes up what he wishes from whatever sources he cares to choose, this is quite a statement from you Michael.

Eisenman does not "make up things." Substantiate this claim, or withdraw it. Give me three cases.

.... An easy check is to test any claim against the total amount of available evidence, and to do so without blinding yourself with a priori beliefs like the entire NT being nothing more than fiction.

I don't have an a priori belief that the NT is fiction. I concluded that after much reading and exploring of the matter.

.... Just treat it the way any ancient source is treated, and you may be surprised at what you can learn.

I do treat the way any ancient source is treated, by comparing it to archaeology, to other sources, to what we know of natural law, history, and human nature. That is why I think it is fiction.

My recommendation is that you go looking for some serious critiques of Eisenman's work. The list of scholars at XTalk is as good a place as any to start, especially if you are unwilling to read some books from scholars with whom you may not agree.

That last charge is ridiculous. I have scholars with whom I don't agree all over my bookshelves, from Marx to Raymond Brown.

Michael

[ January 10, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

Haran

Michael,

I, like Nomad, think that you should check out more criticisms of Eisenman if you haven't already.

Most scholars date the DSS and especially the Teacher of Righteousness well before the time of Jesus. Here's part of the reason why, summed up from James VanderKam's The Dead Sea Scrolls Today:

Damascus Document
And in the age of wrath, 390 years after He had given them into the hand of king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, He visited them, and He caused a plant root to spring from Israel and Aaron to inherit His land and to prosper on the good things of His earth. And they perceived their iniquity and recognized that they were guilty men, yet for 20 years they were like blind men groping for the way. And God observed their deeds, that they sought Him with a whole heart, and He raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guid them in the way of His heart. (1.5-11)

Now, observing the times given in the paragraph:

587 B.C. (time of fall to Babylon according to most scholars) + 390 years (mentioned in text) brings us to ~197 B.C.

197 B.C. plus the 20 years (mentioned in text) "groping for the way" and we arrive at ~177 B.C. for arrival of the Teacher of Righteousness.

That is all from internal evidence, which Eisenman relies so heavily upon in his book. He seems to ignore this and also the dating of the majority of the DSS.

Eisenman and his theories and his textual translations are not spoken very well of in just about any book you can find about the DSS with the exception of Barbara Theiring (and we don't want to talk about her ). I could produce quotes from a wide variety of DSS scholars if necessary... You could also go to a prominent website and try out his ideas, if you like, at the respected <a href="http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/" target="_blank">Orion Center</a>, to see what kind of reaction you get.

His work is meant to cause a stir (as he states in his very own book), and it has...among the laypeople who buy his popular and controversial books.

I am currently reading James the Brother of Jesus and I am not impressed, as he comes across quite unscholarly and dogmatic, making one assumption after another.

I found it particularly amusing that he went on at great length about the importance of details within the DSS translations, complaining about Vermes' and Martinez' works among others, and then procedes to say that when it comes to Josephus, "any translation will do, as fine distinctions such as these in a historical work are not so crucial." Surely, he is aware of the scholarly debates on Josephus alone and that Josephus is just about the only source we have for the Second Temple period.

Ok. I'll get off my soap box now, but I have two little latin words about this scholar and this theories: Caveat Emptor!

Haran

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>