Toto

About Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?

Published: 16-01-2014

At least one blogger thinks that this will be the death knell for mythicism, but the emotional tone of this would hardly be necessary if the case were so clear.

stephan huller

People are crazy.

hjalti

Hurrah!

neilgodfrey

I found blogger Maurice Casey's original venture into the slaying of mythicists quite a hoot: It can be found at http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com...maurice-casey/ I seem to recall that he faulted me for using hyperlinks to reference sources in my blogposts instead of writing out citations in full academic style, and for (shock, horror) making an argument that he had never heard before. He also took particular exception to the blogging forum itself. If you were a blogger you were, by definition, shallow and false. I could not resist pointing to the obvious - that Casey was himself responding as a blogger!

I was really quite surprised that he seemed to think it worth his time to try to respond to several posts of mine on Vridar, and I would not be at all surprised if his Latinisms appendix is a continuation of one of those responses.

The original post to which he responded is Roll over Maurice Casey: Latin, Not Aramaic, Explains Mark's Bad Greek. My response to this, along with his other criticism, is at Concluding Response of Blogger Neil Godfrey to Blogger Maurice Casey.

Maurice Casey showed in his earlier book, Jesus of Nazareth, that he loves to psychoanalyze atheists and mythicists generally. If an atheist expresses the slightest criticism of anything religious he or she is a bigot, in Casey's eyes. He stereotypes, mind-reads and generally tears apart the character of mythicists. I was even condemned as a heartless monster for displaying a photo of thousands of books scattered on a library floor as the result of a New Zealand earthquake (one that did not, mercifully, cause mass casualties as a later quake did) and making some flippant comment as a librarian myself. Casey immediately threw this back at me as if I was making a joke of mass casualty victims. Atheist mythicists are such evil monsters.

I fully expect more of the same in this new book.

Steve Weiss

Schweitzer could find no historical Jesus. Was he incorrect?

Grog

Don't forget Casey's reference to the famous statement by the blogger/librarian Godfrey that he never touches, let alone reads, a book.

MrMacSon

perhaps posting the photo of the books scattered on a library floor caused the second quake?? :devil:

Steven Carr

I believe Casey argues that Latinisms in Mark prove that it came from an Aramaic source.

See his Jesus of Nazareth, page 341, where Casey argues that speakers of Aramaic sometimes had to use Latinisms, and so the prescence of Latinisms in Mark shows there must have been Latinisms in Mark's Aramaic source.

Casey has never seen this Aramaic source that Mark used, but he can translate it better than anybody who ever lived, better than people who actually had it in their hands and saw it.

Steven Carr

Casey slated me for a statement that I corrected literally one minute after I originally posted it!

Maurice is a crank. As far as I can tell, his groundbreaking work on reconstructing the Aramaic originals of Greek works is just ignored by professionals working in that field.


They lack Casey's psychic powers of translating manuscripts he has never seen.

I asked Stephanie Louise Fisher many times to tell me the track record of Casey in reconstructing the Aramaic originals of Greek documents.

She could not name a single document Casey had got right. Not one.

spin

It is illuminating to read what Edward Cook, a well respected Aramaicist and DSS scholar, had to say about aspects of Casey's work here and here.