Toto

I respectfully disagree that degrees or profession are the most relevant items. To think that a degree would make the scholar's conclusions more trustworthy implies that there is some historical method like the scientific method. But so far we have not been able to discover one.

It would be more useful to list the religious affiliation of the scholar, since that is often the source of their assumptions.

Jayman

That's totally false. IMO any scholar doing work on the historical Jesus should explain his methodology. Here's a brief overview of some of the criterion used in the quest for the historical Jesus.

There's the criterion of multiple attestation which says that if a story is present in multiple sources or in multiple literary forms it is more likely to be true.

The criterion of embarrassment says that a story that would be embarrassing to Jesus is more likely to be historically true because Christian authors would not want to embarrass the person they thought of as the Son of God.

There's the criterion of dissimilarity which says that if a story/saying about Jesus is dissimilar from both Judaism of the time and Christianity of the time it is more likely to go back to the historical Jesus.

godfry n. glad

Y'know, Peter, your work is head and shoulders above anything else out there and yet, you throw it out to the lunkheads around here and they just pick holes in it. You just can't keep 'em satisfied here, can you? (Which is why you keep comin' back for more...right?)

I want to echo Toto's point that Robert Price missing from that list is a major oversite. He needs to be included.

I also echo those who suggest a way at a quick retrospective of Bultmann, Schweitzer, et al, would be a distinct improvement. But I do understand that your focus was contemporary.

Also, I'm not sure whether you'd be interested in including the Radicalkritik folks from the Netherlands/Germany. Their focus does tend to be heavily upon Paul, but it is germane to list.
Hermann Detering, perhaps?

Then, a fertile field for addition to your list would be an approach to one of the major underpinnings of Jesus/New Testament studies: Q. I think that representative authors in Q studies would also be a beneficial addition. Y'know, Kloppenborg and Robertson and so on....

Thanks again for all your _fiiiiiine_ work.

One of the lunkheads,

godfry n. glad

Toto

You picked those up from Meier, right? But all have been criticized, none can establish that there was in fact a historical Jesus.

For instance - the criteria of embarassment is used to claim that Jesus' baptism by John was an embarrassment to early Christians, so they were unlikely to have invented it. But what if it were invented by one group of early Christians, and only became embarassing to a later group with a revised theory of who Jesus was? What if the baptism were not embarrassing, but had some hidden meaning? Meier's criteria have not persuaded others in his profession. See <a href="http://www.courses.drew.edu/sp2000/BIBST189.001/method.html" target="_blank">this course syllabus</a>.

But this is a separate topic. Peter is looking for feedback on his excellent web page. Adding that sort of detail might destroy the utility of the web page as a summary.

Autonemesis

Damn! I thought it was going to be a guide to historical theories on Jesus.

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>

godfry n. glad

Toto did quoth:

To this, I heartily agree.

And quoth again did he:

To this, I respectfully disagree. My reasons? Well, I think a lot of people, particularly intelligent, thoughtful people, delude themselves about their "beliefs". Honestly delude themselves. I would bet that many of those on the list would tell you that they hold no particular religious opinion or affiliation, while their writing might indicate otherwise. Also, many people change religious affiliation over the span of a lifetime. Previous religious training or experience would ALSO could be as (or more) relevant to the understanding of the author, and...it would render a mere stated present religious affiliation (or non-affiliation) not ENOUGH information. The same goes with where one grew up and where (as well has how much) one was educated. Down this path, we end up issuing questionaires to prospective authors which ask something to the kin of:

"Do you now, or have you ever been, a member of the following:.....?"

"Do you now, or have you ever, subscribed to one or more of the following creeds:...."

I don't think we want to go there.

Besides, labelling them just takes the fun out of finding out where they do come down. Now, if authors wish to _volunteer_ confessions of faith, then that's just more grist for the mill, eh?

By the way, Toto, I like the cut of your jib, despite my disagreement on this point. I was jumped in this forum for pointing out that one of these major authors was a practicing Roman Catholic priest. It was pertinent, important, factual information, which the author did not hide, but did not advertise...yet, when I unveilled this not particularly startling tidbit of information, I was accused of "poisoning the well". &lt;sigh&gt;

...I got over it.

godfry n. glad

Jayman

Yes, I have read Meier, but they are present in other works. I admit that there are weaknesses in the methodology, but I think it's the best we can do. When multiple criterion converge and support a given story then it is more and more likely to be historical. IMO we can find an awful lot about the historical Jesus (especially compared to most other people of antiquity).

Ether

It looks like it is a Mac problem it happened to me as well. I am running an iMac G4 800Mhz with Mac OS X and Internet Explorer.

What program did you use to build the webpage?

Vorkosigan

This might be true. Unfortunately it looks like all the gospels are dependent on Mark one way or another (and on each other), and lack the kind of independent attestation that would be needed to really make this criterion work.

Hey Toto! Did you see that post by Glen Finnan?

• Good points. By these standards, Freke and Gandy (published by a non-
  scholarly New Age press), Doherty and Wells (published by highly
  partisan skeptical / atheist humanist groups) would not make the
  list. They don't deserve to be here any more than Barbara Thiering.

Apparently ad hominems are OK on XTALK if they are directed at atheists and skeptics, but not at believers. I was rebuked last month for expressing similar sentiments about a Xtian. I decided not to complain -- nothing will change, and I don't want to be delisted....

Vorkosigan

Jayman

I disagree. Alhtough much of Matthew and Luke are based on Mark they still use stories from Q and from their own independent sources. The precise relationship between John and the Synoptics (in terms of sources) is a debatable question, but he does seem to have some of his own stories as well.