steph
June 4, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Jacob:
Casey does not argue that the author of Mark was a native of Galilee. This is a misrepresentation of his work. He argues that Mark was at the very least a bilingual and he argues that it is most probable that the author wrote outside Israel within the Roman Empire. He argues against the tradition of Rome given the early Christian ideological commitment by the second century. There is no ‘supposition’ that Mark was bilingual. It’s extraordinary that a scholar can write whole books and have his conclusions taken out of context of argument and evidence and branded as ‘supposition’.
Casey does not ‘link Aramaicism to historical accuracy’ and neither does he ‘imply Aramaicism as a historical criterion’. Casey has devoted books to arguing historicity of some narratives which contain Aramaisms. He has also argued his methodology and demonstrated clearly that the criterion is not enough on its own at all and thus it is never appealed to on its own. On your point 1, read his books. Arguing that the author of Mark was at least bilingual, Casey argues that the sayings were collected in an early Christian context so of course they could have been collected in Israel and passed on at festivals in Judea. Modern translation experts not only know that people trying to translate and transliterate make mistakes, but they make the same mistakes, which can be classified. No it doesn’t make Casey’s hypothesis falsifiable at all and I can’t imagine why you think it should. Casey does not discuss a trilingual context but it is clear throughout his work that the author of Mark was working in an environment with more than two languages. You demonstrate complete lack of understanding and sympathy for multilingual translators but hopefully Joe’s clear and incisive description has enlightened you.
By the way, it’s often an advantage to spell names accurately and Hoffmann, has two enns.
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rjosephhoffmann
June 4, 2012 at 7:44 pm
Hahahaha: It’s very funny isn’t it: we can argue over transcriptional errors and diphthongs—yods und gimmels–from 2500 years ago and no one thinks a second n in Hoffmann matters–though it spells the difference between Germany and Holland (or Sweden), and often enough between Jews and “Gentiles”; very funny!
steph
June 4, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Verily, lack of attention to detail, accuracy, historical and cultural context, can get you into all sorts of ‘trouble’. This reminds me of the good old American Herr Wernher von Braun – learning Chinese.
spin
June 5, 2012 at 11:23 am
This is all very sad really. The dynamic duo had the opportunity to deal with something a bit more tangible than their rather down market slagging of mythicism. Instead of taking that opportunity, “Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey” fell at the first hurdle mumbling incoherently about dishonesty and other tangents, while slandering “steph” spent several posts producing nothing but raucous noise. Let’s call it “Aramaic Folly: A Story of Incompetence, Bias and Ego”. I’m sure your readers will be impressed. It has been revealing and entertaining.
And you anecdotal experiences from Lebanon! They really consolidated the notion that the writer of Mark “was working in a trilingual context where Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic competed with koine and Latin in everyday discourse.” With anecdotes like that who needs evidence?
The Jesus Process has got off to quite a train wreck. You certainly got good value for money.
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rjosephhoffmann
June 5, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Thanks, Dr Spin: Scholarship proceeds from taking seriously the inexpert comments of anonymous drive-by snipers like you, and your named cohort–Godfrey, Carrier, and Doherty–who can only harp on what they can’t understand or invent preposterous defenses for a discredited and yellowing thesis about the existence of Jesus, the crumbling pillars of which have been reduced to powder through this debate. I gather that this valedictory acknowledges that you cannot plug your diphthong into Bayes and get a satisfactory answer? You have been unable to produce one whit of evidence to refute Professor Casey, preferring instead to put a respectable title in scare quotes, on the order of what a Vridar aficinado (whose name and qualifications escape me) had done with “pure mathematics” thinking perhaps it was a heretofore unheard of term. –And you are the folk who are defending statistics? I fail to see how a reference to Lebanon and Israel (that’s the region we are discussing one way or the other, isn’t it: look at the map) which I venture to say are just faraway places for you is not relevant to linguistic contexts, and for just the reasons I said, though I did not say that an allusion to context constitutes evidence of anything.
Train wreck? Aunt Sally’s corset! Look you lot: You have had Paul’s silence explained to you in detail that you have yet to acknowledge or understand; had a plausible explanation given for the Aramaic under-pinnnings of Mark’s gospel, lost the battle over the identity of James, been made aware of the more serious factual errors in mythicist writings, reminded that the naive historiographical tendencies and legend/fact mixture of the gospels also appears in Roman historical writing, and challenged to produce serious counterarguments–which you have failed to do. I suppose Doherty has come off worst because along with Acharya S. (Dorothy) he holds the most stubbornly troglodyte ideas about myth, and seems to have retired to a friendly corner hoping that this will all die down. It won’t. There may yet be some life in the Carrier pitch, but it has been fatally wounded by the laws of inapplicability and parsimony. It is a pre-dead horse that won’t lie down.
It would be one thing if this conversation were being carried on by scholars with real points of view and not just evidence-deniers who enjoy being bad boys(and girls) by testing the teacher’s patience. It is cute. Merely cute. And I suppose it keeps Vridar’s numbers up and his fans (and the Carrierites) happy, which is the name of the game, right? That is the travesty really, because many of your ilk profess to value evidence, and science, and reason but are quite boneheaded about assessing anything except the myth of Christian origins that you have invented for yourself. Please–by all means–ignore my irrelevant anecdotes and read for edification Morton Smith’s concise and withering assessment of mythicism in Jesus in History and Myth. But in case you can’t find the time offline the gist is this. Jesus fits not the pattern of a hero or a god but a job description that was common in Hellenistic Palestine–or rather several non mutually-exclusive job descriptions. The god-stuff (pardon my language) is what happens to this pattern post-resurrection (event). You do not have to be a NT scholar to see the pattern. But you do have to be able to read a gospel for what it says and not for what you think is broiling under the surface. In Mark alone, you will find a magician, a healer, an enthusiast, an end-time prophet, and an outlaw. These are not job descriptions from the 19th or 12th or even the 8th century, but they are for the Hellenistic Jewish world. And while you read Smith, lose your attire: older men don’t look good in diphthongs.
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Neil Godfrey
June 8, 2012 at 5:12 am
RJH writes: “preferring instead to put a respectable title in scare quotes, on the order of what a Vridar aficinado [sic] (whose name and qualifications escape me) had done with “pure mathematics” thinking perhaps it was a heretofore unheard of term.”
Presumably at the time RJH wrote this he had not read Tim Widowfield’s post addressing the sad results of RJH’s dabbling with the paranormal (professing to read thoughts) http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/hoffmann-serf-reviews-my-bayes-theorem-post-proving-this/
rjosephhoffmann
June 11, 2012 at 5:21 pm
I did read Mr Widowfield’s post and actually used the comments of one of his respondents to draw out the analogy between Jesus denial and a law case. I didn’t see anything especially redeeming about it; he says he knows the difference between pure and applied mathematics and we must take him at his word. I have no idea why he then alludes to the practice in American universities of combining the fields as Cambridge isn’t an American university, but I take him at his word on that as well. More troubling is his attempt to weasel out of his putative error by saying that he was of the opinion that statistics was included under applied mathematics (which I had never mentioned). Statistics is the applied spawn of probability theory which belongs to pure mathematics: Huygens, Gauss, et al., but I think gambling and games of chance have been used as a source of examples for a long time, and if the implication is that Bayes’s theorem belongs to the level of doing card tricks at a party, I am with him. Btw, look up the definition of the word “screed” before you deprive it of all meaning.)
David Marshall
June 5, 2012 at 12:15 pm
I haven’t had time to answer Hoffman yet; I don’t entirely agree with his points about Mark.
But let me address both sides in this tiff over Aramaic vs. Latin, first.
I’m an outsider to this specific debate — I come to NT studies from the perspective of comparative religion, or theology of religions more precisely. I read some koine Greek, but neither Latin nor Aramaic. But I’ve read (and written) enough in the general field to follow the argument with interest and a reasonable degree of understanding.
Internet debates go the way of the devil, more often than not, as water pours down when it reaches the lip of a dam. But perhaps a couple comments from one not yet too near that lip might (who knows?) help.
My impression is that both sides have made some interesting comments, and know enough to belong in the debate.
It also seems that there has been some misreading, some misunderstanding, perhaps culpable to some slight degree, on both sides.
The issue appears to be not whether Mark had a Latin background — that seems to be accepted all around — but whether he also had an Aramic background, or whether his Aramaic renderings were mere “borrowed tradition.” This latter strikes me as a worthy question, and the discussion has made me more interested in pursuing it some time.
I would think that not only specificly linguistic questions about Aramaic leavings in Mark or elsewhere would be relevant to deciding that issue, but also “how translators work” in general, as well as in the specific social-historical-lingual context in which Mark found himself. I gather Casey has touched on all these issues in his work.
Specifically, I am wondering if one can find examples of Romans borrowing as much as Mark does, either from Aramaic, or some other provincial language, just to add “local color” or because their source passed it along? Maybe this question is naive, and a positive answer wouldn’t undermine any evidence of seat-of-the-pants translations from Aramaic in Mark. But I hope the debate doesn’t descend into a content-free mud-flinging free-for-all, less because I’m innocent of ever enaging in those myself, than because a lot has been interesting so far, and the outstanding questions are more interesting than the mere fisticuffs.
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rjosephhoffmann
June 5, 2012 at 12:51 pm
@David: “Specifically, I am wondering if one can find examples of Romans borrowing as much as Mark does, either from Aramaic, or some other provincial language, just to add “local color” or because their source passed it along?” This is a brilliant question. First because with all the chat about influences we forget that Mark’s gospel is written in everyday Greek, not Latin; that Latin in the Augustan age was at its most complex and this is not a Latin Mark would have handled terribly well (try a few lines of Vergil) and that the cultural interplay usually dictated that writers would aspire to be proficient in the language of their colonial masters–e.g., Josephus’s Greek, which is prety good–rather than trying to emulate folk traditions by importing the odd word or phrase from the provinces. You may however be missing (or mything) the hidden question here: because the moment you concede that Mark’s Aramaism is “natural” rather than contrived, you lose the game of believing that the Gospel of Mark (apud Bauer and boys) was a forgery perpetrated in Latin and clevery disguiied in “ordinary” Greek with sprinklings of badly formed Aramaic thrown in for good good measure. What do ya get? Jesus. Unfortunately we are missing a modus operandi for this forgery: to start the Christian church so that it might grow strong, overthrow the Roman order and kill Jews? Most of the reasons for holding this conspiracy theory, which is a sub-genre of mythicism, are simply bilious. .
steph
June 5, 2012 at 2:22 pm
David wrote ‘I gather Casey has touched on all these issues in his work.’ He has dealt with them at some length as well as providing bibliographies to scholarship in other fields…. and there is still a mything enn… Perhaps it’s an example of cultural interference in translation.
Jacob Aliet
June 5, 2012 at 3:57 pm
I reproduce below the substantive portion of Jacob Aliet (aka “Dr Spin”‘s) last comment, an attempt to double sum up his case against Casey. It was, indeed, a very good game as Jacky Spin says, but its only point is to cling to the last gasp mythicist hope that there is no Aramaic source for Mark or else you lose (yet another) pillar in your decrepit argument. [yr 'humble moderator J. Hoffmann]
Alright, lets sum this up…
I stated four problems for Casey’s theory that the author of Mark (hereafter AMark) was (a bilingual) translator who wrote the gospel by translating from Aramaic source….
For all these three, I and spin have provided specific examples and expected specific answers…
I rest my case. Thanks for playing.
You are most welcome Jacky Spin. Thanks for being played.
Jacob Aliet O. Agwa
Born: 1976
Profession: Computer Programmer (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer)
Degrees:
Currently pursuing an M.B.A. at Nairobi University, Kenya (expected completion in 2007).
B.Sc. Information Technology, Moi University, 2001.
Internat’l Diploma, Institute for the Management of Information Systems, 1997.
Affiliations:
Member, Institute for the Management of Information Systems
Publications:
“Globalization–Not Counter-Penetration and Domestication: A Response to Prof. Ali Mazrui.” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2007).
Personal: I am a metaphysical naturalist with interests in science, history, Greek, biblical and ancient Near East studies, literary theory, and philosophy.
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brettongarcia
June 6, 2012 at 6:14 am
Finally? As long as we are all now making attempts to discover the real names, the real personalities behind the verbiage, we might as well recall the reason for all this interest in Aramaic behind/within the Greek of the New Testament. Remember that the reason for all this discussion, the hope of many recently, has been that we might begin to see the outline of the original, perhaps Aramaic-(proto-Persian/Arabic) speaking authors of the New Testament. In fact? Many people think that Jesus himself spoke Aramaic. And so? If we look at the traces of that language, influencing the Greek of the Old Testament? The hope (and in Ehrmann, the near-assertion?), is that we can begin to see or hear the outline, the voice, of Jesus himself.
But is it true? By looking at traces of Aramaic in the Greek of the New Testament, are we getting closer to seeing the outline of Jesus himself? It may be that if we find traces of Aramaic in the Greek of the Gospel of Mark say, there is no more or less there, however, than the traces of Latin influences. While Latinisms in the Greek of Mark,would might lead one to suspect a Roman church of writing much of the New Testament. And lead us not to Jesus, but to Rome. (Assuming Jesus himself had no roman influences).
While for that matter? It may be that Aramaic influences within the Greek of the NT, might merely indicate/forward, longstanding influences in Hebrew and Greek after all; parts of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel, were written in Aramaic.
Or? Even if we find the outline,the traces of a possibly Hellenized Jewish author, or a Judaised Greek, in the occasional mashup of Greek and Aramaic? That might be simply yet another ecclesiastical author or editor in the Eastern Med.
Or finally, I suggest here? No doubt there were many Aramaic influences in the Greek of Palestine, c. 400 BC-200 AD; many “borrowings” or “loanwords” and so forth, as semanticists call them. And those multi-cultural borrowings are moreoever, not peculiar to a single individual; but are common to the language used by many resistents of Jerusalem, Palestine, in this era.
So that? Regarding the reason for all this; regarding the key attempt to reconstruct or hypothesize, the outline of a single person – perhaps Jesus himself – from these various Aramaic influences? Might not quite work. Culling out Aramaic influences from the New Testament, MIGHT or might not, outline an originary individual. Indeed, if such borrowings were widespread, then any attempt to reconstruct an individual speaker, from these borrowings, would amount to nothing much more or less than …. the over-reification of a linguistic stratum; the over personification or anthropomorphization, of a cultural melding. To create a false “individual.” A “person” that we might call, say, “Mr. Loadwords QBorrowing Q. Loanwords.”
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rjosephhoffmann
June 6, 2012 at 6:18 am
@Garcia: Using the kind of CSC that precedes any theory: (1) What is your first order explanation of why there are Aramaic loan words transliterated (some badly) in the gospel attributed to Mark? (2) Why are there so few of them?
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Brettongarcia
June 6, 2012 at 7:53 am
Joe Hoffmann et alia.:
Lacob Aliet (Dr spin?) above, seems to have articulated a few good, now-standard responses to the argument here. In his 3- or 4-point objection on June 3, and in his summary.
One major objection? Is that in the gospels, the use of Aramaic – and or loanwords, garbled transliterations – is so spare, as to be “oramental.”
A key case in point, that was perhaps not fully articulated above? Is the last prounouncement of Jesus on the cross, which is often offered in Aramaic. In Mat. 27.46 (and Mark 15.34): “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying Eli, Eli, lamasabach-thani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast hou forsaken me?” (KJV).
Here, someone might suggest that “El” has long since become a standard name for God, in Hebrew it seems? (Cf. Aramaic, Arabic).
More importantly? Note that this whole Aramaic speech, as it is often presented, is extremely rare. (t is itself highly questionable, and highly likely to be ornamental. (All the more so if it is clumsy, or merely transliterated. Some scholars today suggest that other scholars not too long ago, put it into Aramaic, to make it look authentic?)
In any case though, this particular Aramaic phrase is problematic in many other ways. Though here many are looking just at linguistic evidence, it is also extremely important to consider the theological context of this particular remark, especially. Namely: Jesus is here on the cross, uttering a sentence wherein he clearly assumes, that he himself, Jesus, has been abandoned by God.
Incredibly, Jesus is here saying he had been abandoned by God. Which leads us quickly to a profound theological problem: logically, either 1) Jesus is right – and Jesus was abandoned by God. In which case, Jesus could not be God. Or 2) Jesus is wrong, and he had not been abandoned. But? Being wrong … he therefore could not be the Son of God. (While the apologetic defense that Jesus is just quoting the Old Testament, does not hold: since in a sense, the whole NT is a “quote” of the Old; and those quotes are meant to be relevant to the new situation on hand, not just the old).
The above Aramic pronouncement of Jesus is perhaps the most famous example of Aramaic in the New Testament. But it is is in fact, very, very highly problematic in two ways – both linguistically, and theologically – for many traditionalist believers. Theologically … since it does not lend support to the idea of Jesus was the Son of God. Indeed, it does not even support the idea that God supported Jesus in any way. (And for that matter, it does not lend Bultmannian support to the Jesus of “Faith” either. Since here, Jesus himself “doubts” as many note; and does not deserve our faith in him, either, it would seem).
Possibly to be sure, even that conclusion is acceptable for Jesus Historicists? Since, if we ignore all these problems, it DOES furnish some evidence for the thesis that in fact, there might have been an historical Jesus; but this very traditional also noted that the real Jesus himself did not regard himself as being closely related to, or favored by, God. (“El”).
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Brettongarcia
June 6, 2012 at 6:29 pm
In general? I regard the attempt to reconstruct a Aramaic Jesus, or an early Aramaic author of the gospel, to be essentially prone to simply reifying or personifying a linguistic stratum that had been found in both Greek and Hebrew, for hundreds of years by the time of Jesus. Such reification merely produces the false image of a false “person”; that is best called, parodically, “Mr. Loanword Q. Borrowing.”
That is my main objection to such current efforts and hints at an “Aramaic” voice in the New Testament, found here and elsewhere in remarks by Ehrman and others. But in addition, Lacob Aliet (“Dr spin”?) above, seems to also have articulated a few current, emerging objections to the argument claiming a clear Aramaic personality behind the gospels. Objections articulated in his 3- or 4-point objection on June 3, and in his summary.
One major objection? Is that in the gospels, the use of Aramaic – and/or garbled transliterations – is so spare, as to be “ornamental.”
A key case in point, that was perhaps not fully articulated above? Is the last pronouncement of Jesus on the cross, which is often offered in Aramaic. In Mat. 27.46 (and Mark 15.34): “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying Eli, Eli, lamasabach-thani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (KJV).
Here, someone might suggest that “El” or “Eli” has long since become a standard name for God, in Hebrew it seems? (Cf. Aramaic, Arabic). So that we see interchange between Hebrew, and Aramaic, going back perhaps quite some time before the time of Jesus.
More importantly? Note that the whole Aramaic speech on the cross, as it is often presented, is extremely rare, in being presented in our English bibles in apparent, rough Aramaic. (Rare as it is, it is itself highly questionable, and highly likely to be ornamental. All the more so if it is clumsy, or merely transliterated. Some scholars today suggest that other, earlier scholars, simply put it into Aramaic, to make it look authentic?)
In any case though, if it is not ornamental, this particular Aramaic phrase is extremely problematic in another way, than just linguistic. Though here many are looking here just at linguistic evidence, in regarding the apparent Aramaic phrase on the cross, it also extremely important to consider the theological context of this particular remark, especially. Namely: here, Jesus is on the cross, uttering a sentence wherein he clearly assumes, that he himself, Jesus, has been abandoned by God.
Incredibly, Jesus in the Aramaic phrase on the cross – as narrated in Mat. 27.46 (and Mark 15.34) – is implying that he had been abandoned by God. Which quickly leads us to a profound theological problem: logically, either 1) Jesus is right – and Jesus was abandoned by God. In which case, Jesus could not be God. Or 2) Jesus is wrong, and he had not been abandoned. But? Being wrong … he therefore could not be the Son of God. (While the common apologetic defense, that Jesus is just quoting the Old Testament, does not hold: since in a sense, the whole NT is a “quote” of the Old; and those quotes are meant to be relevant to whatever new situation is on hand, not just to idly invoke the old. Suggesting that Jesus himself felt abandoned).
The above Aramaic pronouncement of Jesus is perhaps the most famous example of Aramaic in the New Testament. But it is very, very highly problematic in two ways – both linguistically, and theologically – for many traditionalist believers. Theologically it is problematic… since, incredibly, it does not lend support to the idea of Jesus was the Son of God. Indeed, it does not even support the idea that God supported Jesus, in any way. As it has Jesus himself telling us that God has “abandoned” him. (While for that matter, it does not lend Bultmann-ian support to the Jesus of “Faith” either. Since here, Jesus himself “doubts” as many note; and does not deserve our faith in him either, it would seem).
Possibly to be sure, even that theological or Christological conclusion is acceptable for Jesus Historicists? Since, if we ignore all these problems with this theology for conventional Christianity, the Aramaic phrase DOES furnish some evidence for the Historicist thesis. That in fact there might have been an historical Jesus; but this very Aramaic tradition also noted that the real Jesus himself, did not regard himself as being closely related to, or favored by, God. Jesus here is finally, just a rather ordinary human person. With no particularly strong tie to God or ultimate truth, after all.
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steph
June 7, 2012 at 11:37 am
You seem very muddled BG. Why don’t you try reading the recent secondary literature on Aramaisms in Mark? Jesus’ cry on the cross in Mark is not problematical for critical scholars. It is only problematical for orthodox Christians and the early Church which is why the later gospel authors changed it.
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Brettongarcia
June 7, 2012 at 1:55 pm
To the extent that Jesus’ “doubt” as it is called, remains a part of the Bible – and one conflicting, by your own account, with later parts? It remains a theological problem for say, believers today.
Unfortunately, I do not presently have access to a scholarly database; would you care to briefly explain why Jesus’ doubt, is not longer a problem for scholars? For those of us without access to a scholarly library, if you would present the substance of scholarly arguments, rather than summary judgements, would be better.
rjosephhoffmann
June 7, 2012 at 6:21 pm
@Garcia: Maybe you mean to refer to the “agony” in the garden? I know some exegetes who see this as an expression of doubt. You can see an appeal to this idea as theology at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19881130en.html the Vatica website. Ps 22 is much on the mind of the authors of the passion narrative:
Tehillim 22:17 ?? ?????? ????? ??? ????? ??????? ???? ??? ?????
According to the Jewish Publication Society Bible the verse is translated:
Psalms 22:16 (22:17) For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have enclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.” (JPS)
???? = Like (a) lion. According to the King James Version bible the verse is translated:
Psalms 22:16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. But ‘pierced’ seems to me an overstatement for dug, though Gk for pierced is already present in the LXX.
Anyway, whilst you ponder that: Ps 22 was not considered a declaration of despair; read it. Its attribution to Jesus is typical as it was one of the usual “prayers before death” spoken by most Jews on the point of dying–nothing unusual about it. ‘Mark quotes the words in Aramaic. One may suppose that the cry appeared so characteristic that the witnesses who heard it, when later recounting the drama of Calvary, deemed it opportune to repeat the very words of Jesus in Aramaic’. Try reading this: http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/19-Psalms/Text/Articles/Heinemann-Ps22-BS.pdf
stephanie louise fisher
June 7, 2012 at 4:27 pm
You ask me why Jesus’ doubt is no longer a problem for scholars and assume it requires a small essay to enlighten you. It has never been a problem for critical scholars who may be liberal believers or not religious at all. You are still very muddled between orthodox believers and critical scholarship. The Jesus of history is not the Jesus of dogma. Schweitzer identified Jesus as a mistaken prophet and scholars have known this for over a hundred years. Ever since biblical scholarship identified the differences between the gospels when viewed synoptically by Lessing, Holtzmann and others after the Enlightenment, one of the pieces of evidence for the priority of Mark’s gospel has been the doubt expressed in it by Jesus on the cross and the glossing over by later evangelists, evidence of their later redaction. For critical scholars the ‘problem’ is determining the method of applying criteria to evidence in order to be as accurate as possible with history. No problem exists for critical scholars in what we will find. We have found an observant human Jew who lived in the first century and was crucified, not a divine man. This is the “the substance of scholarly arguments” and not “summary judgements”. Critical scholarship is about following the evidence where it leads. You are determined to identify critical scholars as some sort of fundamentalists. You really are confused, but should not project your inability to understand simple logic and accuse me of insubstantial arguments when answers are clear and simple.
mick
June 6, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Boanerges, seems to me, to be more likely a transliteration of the Aramaic bnai regesh (sons of rage). Thoughts anyone?
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steph
June 7, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Older scholarship advocated this trying to transliterate ß?a????e? back into Aramaic, and this led to the invention of an Aramaic word regaš. This scholarship has since been refuted and regaš shown not to exist. H.P. Rueger, ‘Die lexikalischen Aramaismen im Markusevangelium’, in H. Cancik (ed), ‘Markus-Philologie: Historische, literargeschichtliche und stilistische Untersuchungen zum zweiten Evangelelium’ (WUNT 33. Tuebingen, 1984), p. 77, proposed to believe in an Aramaic regaš on the basis of Tg. 1 Ks 18.41; Tg. Isa. 17.12f., in neither of which it means ‘thunder’, and undated and uncited sources from an unmentioned Arabic dictionary. We should not proceed like this.
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mick
June 7, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Hi Steph, long before “older scholarship” advocated that ß?a????e? should be bnai regesh, it had already been done many many centuries before. Whoever produced the syriac peshitta quite comfortably saw ß?a????e? as bnai regesh.
Were they “inventing” a word too?
steph
June 7, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Scare quotes????? Older scholarship is simply not recent more advanced scholarship, Mick. Is that clear? And yes, Spin, the Peshitta was translated many many years after the New Testament writings were canonised. J.Aliet: that’s what happens when culture interferes with translators. “Quite comfortably”?!! The irony is so ghastly. The consequence is the invention of new words which could be misappropriated as evidence for earlier Aramaic, such as is the case with Rueger.
mick
June 7, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Steph, I dont know when the peshitta was produced I know Metzger acknowleded that Voorbus demonstrated that it predated rabbula of Edessa.
My point is only that if whoever produced the syriac peshitta saw ß?a????e? as bnai regesh, and bnai regesh transliterates quite easily, then , to me it is a better fit.
Obviously the word regesh did exist, its just that it didn’t literally mean thunder, but rather tulmut or commotion or something similar.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, just to voice my opinion. Can you explain what you mean when you say regas has been shown not to exist?
mick
June 7, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Checking on CAL I see that regesh does not mean tulmut but, rage (amongst other things). rg$ V
011 Syr to rage
012 Syr to stir oneself
013 Syr to sense
014 JBA to feel
041 Syr to rage
042 Syr to be moved
043 Syr to sense
031 passim to sense
032 Syr to make to sense
033 BibArDan to gather together urgently
034 Syr,JBA to stir up
033 Syr meTul to inform
061 Syr to sense
LS2 713
steph
June 8, 2012 at 11:15 am
The original transliterator was so incompetent that they transliterated ??? ???, ‘sons of thunder’, as ß?a????e? (Mark 3.17). By the fifth century the Peshitta transliterator had done their best to produce a Syriac version of what was regarded as a sacred Greek text, containing ß?a????e?, an error. They produced what they did on the assumption that the words in the text in front of them did exist, whether they were previously normal Aramaic, or not. The point is not that regaš did not exist, but that it did not mean ‘thunder’ in anything like the Aramaic of Jesus’ time (no independent attestation) which you acknowledge, whereas ??? does. Jerome noticed a mistake, though he did not explain it. In commenting on the names at Dan. 1.7, he added, ‘filii Zebedaei appellati sunt filii “tonitrui”, quod non, ut plerique putant, “boanerges” sed emendatius legitur “banereem”’. Jerome’s ‘a’ then ‘e’ for the two shewas will be noted. For the text, see F. Glorie (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera Exegetica. 5. Commentariorum in Danielem Libri III (IV) CChR.SL LXXVA (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964).
Hans
June 7, 2012 at 12:57 am
Is that the self same Spin who posts on rationalsceptics I see posting here?.
He certainly was good for afew laughs there. http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/what-can-we-reasonably-infer-about-the-historical-jesus-t219-4240.html#p583364
Reply
steph
June 7, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Casey wrote an essay which is published here on New Oxonian. Casey does not indulge mythicists, who cower behind multiple identities, in on-line debate. He does not oblige those who hijack this site to attack his work which they have not understood or read but are determined to misrepresent. But Jacob Aliet, pretending not to be ‘spin’, has found a new preaching podium for falsehoods and other incompetencies, on Richard Carrier’s atheist ‘freethought’ blog. It’s a shame he cut and pasted so much because among other things, he perpetuates his inaccurate spelling which is merely a demonstration of his inattention to accuracy, detail and context.
‘Spin’ cited two pages, available on google, from one book by Casey. This is not evidence of having read his work or even one book. Furthermore, misrepresenting what he cites (eg Casey was not making a case for an Aramaism) is more evidence he has failed to understand Casey’s arguments or accurately represent them. In fact, consistently misrepresenting his arguments and failure to demonstrate comprehension of his arguments at all, is evidence of his incompetence. It is also blindingly ‘unarguable’ evidence that he has not read his work. There is further evidence of not having read his work with his claim that Casey’s case rests on four reconstructed passages when Casey has published much since ‘Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel’ and reconstructed many more passages. Furthermore he persistently talks about Casey’s translation studies when I quite clearly said Casey had listed relevant literature in his bibliographies of translation studies and work in other fields.
There are not the problems for Casey’s thesis that ‘spin’ (aka Jacob Aliet) claims. Neither are Casey’s arguments dependent on a Galilean origin and failure to understand why is more evidence of not having read his work. ‘Spin’ (aka Jacob Aliet) has failed to understand the problems of translators, and his convictions about implications of geographical inaccuracies, his convictions about Rome (the centre of myth? hallelujah) and Latinisms are not a ‘rational response’ and have been refuted on the essay thread. It’s all a game to him and his target is Casey because he is compelled by his mythicist bias to reject all arguments for Aramaic. The problem is he is too incompetent to understand Casey’s arguments and he lost the game he invented. Complaining about his anonymous identity being compared to other mythicists who apply similar ‘tactics’ when his specialty is vitriol, repetition of mistakes, persistent lack of comprehension, “feeble” untruths (Steph didn’t promise Casey would respond one day and Hoffmann didn’t admit not understanding any arguments etc etc etc) and cowardice (further dishonesty) with anonymous identities, is the real irony.
Reply
Blogger Godfrey’s Reply (1) to Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey of the The Jesus Process ©®™ « Vridar says:
June 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm
[...] So when Casey quotes Earl Doherty saying that his aim was to reach “the open-minded ‘lay’ audience” (p. viii of Jesus, Neither God Nor Man), he cannot conceive that such an audience as encountered on the internet could be viewed as “open-minded”. Doherty writes that he intended to reach the open-minded people beyond the confines of academia but Casey implies that such an audience simply does not exist on the internet: This [Doherty's reference to "the open-minded 'lay' audience"] is as inaccurate as possible. The internet audience is ‘lay’, but it is not open-minded. . . . (Casey, Mythicism, A Story of Bias, Incompetence and Falsehood). [...]
Reply
steph
June 8, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Entertaining psychological assessment of Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey by ‘Dr’ Blogger Godfrey, if not irrelevant and littered with falshoods. For example, Doherty observes that “it is generally agreed” among the scholarly community that there is no evidence for Galilean synagogues in the time of Jesus. Naturally Casey does in fact deny that this is generally agreed among his peers, contrary to Godfrey’s assertion. Casey argues there were places where people met regularly for worship and other things, but that we just don’t know whether they were separate buildings. Again, contrary to Godfrey’s assertion that he does not address it. It’s ironic Godfrey takes such objection to what he describes as Maurice’s elitist attitude, when Maurice has never encountered this reaction from colleagues students and friends, until he became a focus of mythtics. Godfrey can’t cope with The Jesus Process at all. I wonder why he is so afraid, poor dear.
Reply
Neil Godfrey
June 9, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Hi Steph,
I would appreciate your itemizing what you see as any “falshoods” in my post since I do try to be accurate and honest in what I write. Corrections are always welcome, though it would be even nicer if they were offered with an understanding that I may have unintentionally committed errors.
But I fail to see how the one example you provide is actually a falsehood. Casey is clearly disputing what he sees as the presence of synagogues in Galilee and not — at least not in the way he has expressed himself in his essay — Doherty’s claim about what “is the general view among his peers”. The “general view” is at no point discussed by Casey.
And yes, I think we all know about the hypothesis that synagogues were not separate buildings (our culture is not that “low context”) but surely Casey is addressing — as is Doherty — the clear understanding of the term as found in the gospels. And Casey confirms this by concluding with references to archaeological sites of synagogue buildings.
That is all clear enough to me and is how I have interpreted Casey in good faith according to his own words — and by reference to the sources he cited.
Again, you fault my identifying what I see as the elitism of Casey by countering that Casey is not elitist in person. I am quite sure you are right and Casey is always a gentlemen with people he meets. But again, i am analysing the words of his essay, his thoughts expressed about “internet audiences” in his post. Now I fail to see anything positive in any of his words applied to “internet audiences”.
Perhaps Blogger Casey might like to publish a clarification and qualify his original claims if you do not believe he has expressed himself accurately.
steph
June 9, 2012 at 11:33 pm
“I do try to be accurate and honest in what I write. Corrections are always welcome…………”
That’s interesting. Ironic.
Maurice Casey is finishing writing a book which will go to press at the end of July.
Neil Godfrey
June 9, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Steph, have you actually read Schweitzer’s chapter from which I quoted? Have you read what he says about Christianity needing to ground itself in a metaphysic and not on an historical event? I ask because what you say here is in conflict with his words as translated into English in 2000. I have little to dispute with other points you have made about Schweitzer but I do think you are ignoring another facet of his thought as expressed in the chapter from which I quoted.
But again, the bigger question is, do you fault the logic of S’s words that I quoted? Do you dispute that the logic of his words is relevant to historical methods today?
Reply
steph
June 9, 2012 at 10:05 pm
What a ridiculous question. I notice another extraordinary fiction in which you imply Casey has not read Doherty or Malina, part of the Context Group. I wonder what all these assumptions reflect. Perhaps therefore the question is whether you read the whole book (preferably in German for ‘his words’) and how many, if any, of his other works you have read. Obviously it is your interpretation of Schweitzer, not Schweitzer, even in translation, that has failed. And you constantly misinterpret him and fail to understand historical context as you demonstrate again. Most Christians’ faith has always been based on a metaphysic, and critical historical scholars’ view of Jesus, like Schweitzer’s own view of Jesus, is based on, historical methodology. What Christians believe should have no influence in how academic enquiry is pursued and personal mythtic or religious views are nothing to do with critical scholarship. Therefore your comment which I quoted above is irrelevant and misleading.
Reply
Neil Godfrey
June 9, 2012 at 11:49 pm
Steph, it is not “an extraordinary question” but a very sincere one that arises from your repeated failure to address the actual quotation of S’s that I used, and from your statements on what you think S said about the needed future grounding for Christianity that contradict what S wrote in chapter 23. Instead of scoffing that I should ask the question, why not answer it with a simple and polite Yes or No?
If you read what I wrote you would see that I was raising the possibility that Blogger Casey had not read Doherty’s “whole book” for himself because he says things about it that I cannot understand if he had read it. It would actually be in his favour if he had not read it whole since one would not want to accuse him of knowingly lying or lacking the most elementary reading comprehension.
Reply
steph
June 10, 2012 at 12:59 pm
It is an extraordinarily impertinent question Neil because it is you who perpetually and arrogantly fail to recognise or just ignore your error. Of course I have read Schweitzer’s whole book and the German edition too. I keep quoting Albert Schweitzer, and asking you to see him in his historical context as a committed German Lutheran who wrote long before the current stage of the Quest of the Historical Jesus, as it has been called since this was the title of an English translation, also a long time ago. It is quite ludicrous to imagine that I could do this without reading his book in the first place. I have also read much of his other work on ethics and theology including his autobiography. I’ve even looked into his musical composition and performance. Your insistence that others should believe as you do is distorting your ability to be self-critical and compromising logical comprehension.
Why is it I wonder that mythtics, hearing their faults critiqued, can only throw back their own inadequacies critiqued, verbatim from the critique, and accuse those who have described them with exactly the same description? Perhaps it’s something to do with dependence. And attempting to apparently ‘criticise’ Casey by identifying him inaccurately is facile and petty. He wrote one essay for publication here. Blogger is an identifier for purposes of clarity. It is not a derogatory label. He speaks favourably of many blogs in his forthcoming book. He devotes a section “in order not to cast any aspersions on excellent scholarly blogs. Some scholarly blogs are very helpful to scholars and students, because of the large amount of useful information which they provide.” He lists and describes various blogs from Goodacre, NT Wrong, Sheffield and Dunedin School to New Oxonian. Your excruciating pretence at politeness here is quite a contrast from your blogs and comments at Vridar isn’t it.
Neil Godfrey
June 10, 2012 at 6:54 pm
Stephanie, all I asked was if you have read chapter 23 of the book in question. Have you?
A simply Yes or No will do.
Neil Godfrey
June 10, 2012 at 6:57 pm
You have overlooked my other question, too: Do you fault the logic of S’s words that I quoted? Do you dispute that the logic of his words is relevant to historical methods today?
Would you like to answer this directly, without shouting out about a lot of stuff we both know and understand about Schweitzer but that has no bearing on the point raised here.
steph
June 10, 2012 at 9:24 pm
I thought the answer was implicit. I’ll clarify: no, and yes, other than for historical value. And obviously ‘the stuff we both know’ is why. ppp.
Blogger Godfrey’s Blog Reply (2) to Blogger Casey’s Blog Post on the Internet « Vridar says:
June 9, 2012 at 7:16 pm
[...] a false assertion and I am surprised Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey would write it since he says elsewhere Lack of honesty is sufficient to mean that a person is not a proper [...]
Reply
When Is Paul’s Silence Golden? « Vridar says:
June 10, 2012 at 11:16 pm
[...] were treated recently to another dose of apologia run amok in Maurice Casey’s “frightful” diatribe against Earl Doherty. Following in the footsteps of fellow apologist, J.P. Holding, Casey explains [...]
Reply
steph
June 11, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Godfrey makes things up, and malicious best describes them. Appealing to Buckaroo who is still fixated on my sexuality, Godfrey misrepresents the Jesus Process with his neurotic symbol obsession and erroneously claims I ‘feed’ Casey my ‘grievances’ which he will ‘spew’ out in his book. This is ridiculous and a malicious falsehood. When I mentioned Casey’s forthcoming book with the implication that all necessary response will be published in it, Godfrey claims I made an ‘implied threat’. Does Godfrey pretend he knew nothing about the book he’s known about for over a year? He inaccurately claims ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ received a ‘lukewarm response’. He claims superior knowledge to Hoffmann. He knows nothing about Hoffmann and inaccurately assumes things of him which are untrue. I think the rants belong to Godfrey. Casey is not a blogger – that is an inaccurate label in a misguided attempt to insult. Casey is not an apologist, and does not ‘follow Holding’ another falsehood and attempt to insult. However Holding is indeed a Christian apologist and it appears that Godfrey must be doing mythtic apologetics.
Godfrey expects us all to quote Malina as if he’s an unbiased authority. We do indeed, from necessity, keep up with scholarship published by the ‘Context Group’ but see Crossley, and especially Crossley in ‘Jesus in an Age of Terror’ pp. 119-34 etc, for substantial critique of Malina et als regarding the so-called ‘Arab mind’ etc. Godfrey complains that Casey does not mention that Conybeare dated the Testament of Solomon in the first century CE when he wrote in 1899, before even a decent text and translation were available. It should be obvious that his work is out of date. He made more appropriately, careful reference to Schürer-Vermes-Millar. Schürer-Vermes-Millar, in a section primarily the responsibility of Vermes, note correctly that its ‘complex textual history naturally makes it difficult to date.’ There is however good reason to think that ‘it was current in some form around A. D. 400’; further, ‘the archetype of all the full versions (incorporating the demonology) cannot have been put together before the early third century A. D.’ This means that it is quite ludicrous of Doherty to conclude on the basis of this evidence that ‘by Paul’s time they [i.e. the demons] have become vast powers that infest the heavens.’ There is no such idea in 1 Enoch, and the Testament of Solomon shows only that such ideas were believed by some people some 200 years after Paul’s time. But Godfrey’s bias defends Doherty uncritically here.
His final sentence is ludicrous psychological projection. I won’t address all the silly mistakes and falsehoods I see in Godfrey’s posts because Casey can do that himself, without anyone ‘feeding’ him grievances. Godfrey gives him plenty of those. Poor dear – he describes me and Casey as a ‘dangerous pair’. Be afraid, very afraid of being exposed, poor dear. (ppp).
Reply
steph
June 11, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Godfrey makes things up, and malicious best describes them. Appealing to Buckaroo who is still fixated on my sexuality, Godfrey misrepresents the Jesus Process with his neurotic symbol obsession and erroneously claims I ‘feed’ Casey my ‘grievances’ which he will ‘spew’ out in his book. This is ridiculous and a malicious falsehood. When I mentioned Casey’s forthcoming book with the implication that all necessary response will be published in it, Godfrey claims I made an ‘implied threat’. Does Godfrey pretend he knew nothing about the book he’s known about for over a year? He inaccurately claims ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ received a ‘lukewarm response’. He claims superior knowledge to Hoffmann. He knows nothing about Hoffmann and inaccurately assumes things of him which are untrue. I think the rants belong to Godfrey. Casey is not a blogger – that is an inaccurate label in a misguided attempt to insult. Casey is not an apologist, and does not ‘follow Holding’ another falsehood and attempt to insult. However Holding is indeed a Christian apologist and it appears that Godfrey must be doing mythtic apologetics.
Godfrey expects us all to quote Malina as if he’s an unbiased authority. We do indeed, from necessity, keep up with scholarship published by the ‘Context Group’ but see Crossley, and especially Crossley in ‘Jesus in an Age of Terror’ pp. 119-34 etc, for substantial critique of Malina et als regarding the so-called ‘Arab mind’ etc. Godfrey complains that Casey does not mention that Conybeare dated the Testament of Solomon in the first century CE when he wrote in 1899, before even a decent text and translation were available. It should be obvious that his work is out of date. He made more appropriately, careful reference to Schürer-Vermes-Millar. Schürer-Vermes-Millar, in a section primarily the responsibility of Vermes, note correctly that its ‘complex textual history naturally makes it difficult to date.’ There is however good reason to think that ‘it was current in some form around A. D. 400’; further, ‘the archetype of all the full versions (incorporating the demonology) cannot have been put together before the early third century A. D.’ This means that it is quite ludicrous of Doherty to conclude on the basis of this evidence that ‘by Paul’s time they [i.e. the demons] have become vast powers that infest the heavens.’ There is no such idea in 1 Enoch, and the Testament of Solomon shows only that such ideas were believed by some people some 200 years after Paul’s time. But Godfrey’s bias defends Doherty uncritically here.
His final sentence is ludicrous psychological projection. I won’t address all the silly mistakes and falsehoods I see in Godfrey’s posts because Casey can do that himself, without anyone ‘feeding’ him grievances. Godfrey gives him plenty of those. Poor dear – he describes me and Casey as a ‘dangerous pair’. Be afraid, very afraid of being exposed, poor dear. (ppp).
Reply
Concluding Response of Blogger Neil Godfrey to Blogger Maurice Casey of TJP®©™ « Vridar says:
June 11, 2012 at 8:05 pm
[...] of a book was a suspicious indicator that I had not read the book. Well, our next circus act is Dr Maurice Casey censuring me because I “did not give proper references” in a blogpost. Ouch! (I hyperlinked [...]
Reply
The F.A.C.T. of the Resurrection of Jesus « Ratio Christi-At The Ohio State University says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:00 am
[...] by Joseph of Arimathea. Therefore, I generally leap with joy that they have not fallen into the internet mythic Jesus sensation and agree with some of the following points: Jesus’ crucifixion is attested by all four Gospels. [...]
Reply
Biblioblog Carnival “according to Mark” « Euangelion Kata Markon says:
July 3, 2012 at 8:15 pm
[...] the endless debates about mythicism? After May’s launch of the Jesus Project (courtesy of Maurice Casey, Steph Fisher and R. Joseph Hoffman), Hoffman continued with posts about the arguments of Shirley [...]
Reply
How I Escaped Fundamentalism — 5 Myths about Ex-Fundies « Vridar says:
July 4, 2012 at 10:09 pm
[...] of the universe will probably change over time, but that’s all right. I’m reminded of Casey’s calumny: One example is blogger Neil Godfrey, an Australian who was a baptised member of the Worldwide [...]
Reply
Apologetics & Frustration: the Follow-up « Philosophical Bread says:
July 10, 2012 at 3:30 am
[...] just apologists who treat such sceptics in this way; pretty much all Biblical scholars do. I think this article, by a scholar who certainly is no Christian apologist, explains the distaste for scepticism about [...]
Reply
Seriös eller oseriös debatt? « Jesus granskad says:
July 14, 2012 at 3:00 pm
[...] blogg, så lät den brittiske nytestamentlige forskaren Maurice Casey där publicera ett inlägg, Mythicism: A Story of Bias, Incompetence and Falsehood, vilket väl kan sägas vara symptomatiskt för denna debatt. Argumenten består mestadels av [...]
Reply
stevenbollinger
November 18, 2012 at 4:15 pm
I really don’t know what to make of all of this.
Casey writes: “the view that [Jesus] did not even exist. This view, unknown in the ancient world, became respectable during the formative period of critical scholarship in the nineteenth century”
I’ve heard another story: that this view has never been widely respected in academia, that the first academics to suggest that Jesus’ historicity was not certain tended to get fired for their trouble, and that to this day some theologians, clergypeople and scholars of the Bible and ancient history who aren’t entirely certain are under great peer pressure to keep it to themselves. Is all of that just more mythicist myth?
If it’s not entirely myth, if there is in fact a systemic tendency to discourage discussion of the question and to disparage people who do — or, if they are academics, to claim that they don’t exist. I know it always annoys me when someone claims I don’t exist — then that would fly in the face of Casey’s assertion that the academic authorities on the historical Jesus are all just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people, as open-minded and intellectually curious and unbiased as can be.
And speaking of authority, I don’t know of another area of inquiry than that of the historical Jesus where non-academics are so frequently attacked for being non-academics. If someone’s arguments are unsound, fine, attack her arguments. But to disparage her lack of a PhD before even addressing her arguments makes one guilty of the fallacy of appeal to authority. You don’t need a PhD to know that. You don’t necessarily even need to take an introductory course in formal logic to know that.
But Casey goes further in this particular fallacy, when he says that Doherty, Murdock and Godfrey all “claim” to have certain degrees from certain institutions. What is the reader to make of this? Is he imply that they have lied about their formal educations? if so, why doesn’t he come right out and accuse them? Does he mean to be witty here? Is this business about “claiming” to have degrees an inside joke of some sort?
For my own part, I am not at all impressed when someone goes on at such length about their opponents’ lack of Doctorates. Address what your opponents actually say. And if there is something to these allegations of systemic bias, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if there are people with open minds on one side, and with thorough training on the other, and relatively few with both.
Of course, Casey does eventually get around to commenting on what Doherty, Murdock, Godfrey and other mythicists have actually said. Let’s say for the sake of argument that their work really is as inept as he claims — would that in itself prove anything about the existence of Jesus? No.
And by the way, Casey does not even mention G A Wells, who has addressed those early-twentieth-century works by Smith et al which, according to academic orthodoxy, laid the whole matter to rest.
I know that I do not know nearly enough about Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic to have an independent opinion on Jesus’ historicity. I’m just taking other people’s word for a lot of things. And I see abundant reason to mistrust just about everyone weighing in on the matter.
Reply
steph
November 19, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Steven – you quoted a little bit in which Casey pointed out that the view that Jesus did not even exist was unknown in the ancient world, and became respectable during the formative period of critical scholarship in the nineteenth century. You say you have heard another story, with which you don’t show a lot of concern for dates or cultural context. You say for example that the first academics to suggest that Jesus’ historicity was not certain tended to get fired for their trouble. This was true in the nineteenth century, and has nothing to do with modern scholars to whom Casey has made favourable reference. You continue that to this day some theologians, clergy people and scholars of the Bible and ancient history who aren’t entirely certain are under great peer pressure to keep it to themselves. Is all of that just more mythicist myth? No, but it has nothing to do with the scholars to whom Casey referred, and is entirely consistent with perfectly plausible gossip about people employed in American theological seminaries, and there is increasingly plausible gossip that it has become true in the UK, due to the employment of Americans from conservative theological seminaries. It is extremely difficult to check up on all this now, but it has nothing to do with other people with whom we work with in independent British universities. You misrepresent all this too, commenting on Casey’s assertion that the academic authorities on the historical Jesus are all just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people, as open-minded and intellectually curious and unbiased as can be.
He never made any such assertion. What he referred to in a very short article was the critical scholars among whom he has been happy to have spent most of his life, whether they were Christian, Jewish or irreligious. They were not concerned by ‘peer pressure’ or the ‘constraints of academic tenure’, except that they were united by an absolute determination to oppose any threat to the academic freedom of people in universities, regardless of status, colour, race, religion or creed. I think Casey would stand by that, provided that it is understood to the critical scholars to whom he referred, not to anyone who can be referred to as academic authorities on the historical Jesus.
He does discuss Wells in his forthcoming book. By the way, Joseph Hoffmann has written an excellent foreword to George Wells, ‘The Jesus Legend’. http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Legend-George-Albert-Wells/dp/0812693345
Reply
Lazarus and Osiris? « James’ Ramblings says:
January 18, 2013 at 2:01 am
[...] But there are also a number of Christian apologists, as well as scholars who are not beholden to Christian apologetics, who dispute that many of these so-called parallels indeed are parallels. See here at Yahoo Answers (only the answers here to the question about Lazarus and Osiris are not particularly well-documented), and also Maurice Casey’s critique of D.M. Murdock’s work here. [...]
Reply
What Can We Know About Jesus? Resources on the Historical Jesus and Historicity of the New Testament « Ratio Christi- At The Ohio State University says:
January 19, 2013 at 6:31 pm
[...] The Jesus Process: Maurice Casey: Mythicism: A Story of Bias, Incompetence and Falsehood [...]
Reply
Apologetics & Frustration: the Follow-up | The Bread of Thought says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:09 pm
[...] just apologists who treat such sceptics in this way; pretty much all Biblical scholars do. I think this article, by a scholar who certainly is no Christian apologist, explains the distaste for scepticism about [...]
Reply
Prove the Bible in One Paragraph | The Great Christian Debate says:
March 5, 2013 at 6:45 pm
[...] that Jesus had to be real and he is his own person. Some great articles I’ve been led to are here, here, and here. There are no sufficient arguments detailing that Jesus was mythical. The greatest [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Jesus Process: A Consultation on the Historical Jesus
by rjosephhoffmann
Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus
© 2012 R. Joseph Hoffmann
Framework
While the New Testament offers the most extensive evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus, the writings are subject to a number of conditions that have dictated both the form and content of the traditions they have preserved. These conditions did not disappear with the writing of the first gospel, nor even with the eventual formation of the New Testament canon. They were expressly addressed by Christian writers in the second and third century who saw an incipient mythicism as a threat to the integrity of the message about Jesus. The history of this controversy is long, complex, and decisive with respect to the “question” of Jesus.
The process through which the memory of Jesus was preserved was a reflexive attempt to relay what was known and what was believed about him, while at the same time separating the received traditions from the corrosive effects of a pervasive salvation myth. The process cannot be established by analogy to the way in which historical traditions were preserved in contemporary histories such as Livy’s (or later, Tacitus’s) books, and it cannot be discounted by reference to antecedent and unrelated mythologies which have influenced the form of transmission.
This essay is in part an attempt to clarify procedural issues relevant to what is sometimes called the “Christ-myth” or “Non-historicity” thesis—an argumentative approach to the New Testament based on the theory that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. I have come to regard this thesis as fatally flawed and subject to a variety of objections that are not often highlighted in the academic writings of New Testament scholars. The failure of scholars to take the “question of Jesus” seriously has resulted in a slight increase in the popularity of the non-historicity thesis, a popularity that—in my view—now threatens to distract biblical studies from the serious business of illuminating the causes, context and development of early Christianity.
It is my view, simply stated, that while facts concerning the Jesus of history were jeopardized from the start by a variety of salvation myths, by the credulity of early believers, by the historiographical tendencies of the era, and by the editorial tendencies of early writers, the gospels retain a stubbornly historical view of Jesus, preserve reliable information about his life and teachings, and are not engulfed by any of the conditions under which they were composed. Jesus “the Nazarene” did not originate as a myth or a story without historical coordinates, but as a teacher in first century Roman Palestine. Like dozens of other Hellenistic teachers, but lacking sophisticated “biographers” to preserve his accomplishments, Jesus is distinct only because the cult that formed around him perpetuated his memory in ritual, worship, and text, while the memory of other attested personalities of antiquity, even those who enjoyed brief cultic popularity like Antigonus I, Ptolemy I and Demetrius of Macedon are known to us mainly through literary artifacts.
The attempt of “mythicists” to show that Jesus did not exist, on the other hand, has been largely incoherent, insufficiently scrupulous of historical detail, and based on improbable, bead-strung analogies.[1] The failure of the myth theory is not the consequence merely of methodological sloppiness with respect to the sources and their religious contexts; that has been demonstrated again and again from as early as Shirley Jackson Case’s (now dated) study, The Historicity of Jesus (1912). It is a problem incipient in the task itself, which Morton Smith aptly summarized in 1986: The myth theory, he wrote, is almost entirely based on an argument from silence, especially the “silence” of Paul. “In order to explain just what it was that Paul and other early Christians believed, the mythicists are forced to manufacture unknown proto-Christians who build up an unattested myth . . . about an unspecified supernatural entity that at an indefinite time was sent by God into the world as a man to save mankind and was crucified… [presenting us with] a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the Gospels.”[2]
The following remarks are designed as a kind of summary of what we know for certain about the conditions and the process through which historical tradition emerged. It is a preface of sorts to a more ambitious project on the myth theory itself and what we can reliably know–if anything—about the historical Jesus.[3]
i
The Literary Matrix:
We can acknowledge, first, that the gospels came from somewhere. Scholars disagree widely about the when and where, but the textual tradition, based on when datable writers first use them and quote from them has settled many issues as well as establishing a controversial but adequate relative chronology of Paul’s (and the Pauline) letters.[4] As Helmut Koester has shown[5], fragments based in oral tradition appear in the Apostolic Fathers (early second century), writers who do not seem to have possessed all four, do not use them authoritatively, and who do not quote from them extensively.[6] The heretic Marcion of Sinope (b. ca. 70 CE, d. 154)[7] was probably the first to attach a gospel to a collection of Paul’s letters.
At the same time, we cannot be sure that Marcion was not acting from a precedent that has been lost to history except through its effects. The “gospel +” pattern is evidenced in the combination of Luke and Acts, and the Fourth Gospel and the Johannine letters. It is not unreasonable to wonder if Marcion was using a pattern developed much earlier in the Pauline circle, in which the “gospel”—which traditionally in New Testament scholarship has been seen as a self-referring term used by Paul to mean his preaching or message—actually referred to a written source to which his letters were seen to be an indispensable addition. That, at least, is how Marcion saw it. The “contest of gospels” referred to by Paul in Galatians 1.11-13 appeals against private preaching, with Paul “boasting” that his gospel was given through divine revelation: G?????? ??? ?µ??, ?de?f??, t? e?a??????? t? e?a??e??s??? ?p’ ?µ?? ?t? ??? ?st?? ?at? ?????p??·
In refusing to assign title to his own gospel, Marcion does not seem to have challenged but rather preserved Paul’s claim to its uniqueness; but the question of whether Paul’s “preaching” is coterminous with the content of that gospel (normally thought to be an assured conclusion of New Testament scholarship) must remain a live question. It seems clear that Marcion did not share the view of modern biblical scholarship that Paul possessed no physical record called “gospel,” a fact habitually overlooked in New Testament studies, as also is the heretic’s claim that his gospel was older than the ones being circulated in the churches of his day.[8] I regard the reference to (RSV) “perverting” (metastreyai means to alter or to change) the “gospel of Christ” a reference to an established, probably written tradition, as polluting a fluid oral tradition does not seem a sensible way to interpret the fractures in the Galatian community.
The African church writer Tertullian,[9] determined to see Marcion as an apostate, believed he had maliciously “mutilated” the gospel in such a way as to diminish the physical reality of Jesus. We now are relatively certain that Marcion was working not from a canonical gospel but from a lost prototype akin to a synoptic source which lacked, among other things, a birth narrative and significant portions of the resurrection story. Careful and cautious analysis of Tertullian’s description suggests that this source: (a) was an archetype or very early version of a written gospel, and (b) that it is antecedent to the synoptic tradition, judging by Tertullian’s unfamiliarity with the text and his preference for a later more expansive version—a “Lucan redaction.” This lost gospel is significant in Jesus- studies because, unlike the “sayings source” [Q] which is necessarily hypothetical,[10] Marcion’s gospel is multiply attested, was composed very early, and despite Tertullian’s exertions to make it so, is not a Gnostic composition.[11] It also brings Paul’s contribution to the development of early Christian literature into closer alignment with historical traditions, a fact which is often ignored in favor of the standard model of literary development.
Marcion was also an editor and perhaps the earliest collector of Paul’s letters, lacking a number of the “deuteropauline” compositions (some written in direct response to his activity) but possessing one to the Laodiceans[12] which seems to have been a model for a letter like Ephesians and sections of Colossians, now usually reckoned to be secondary to Paul as well. As David Trobisch has suggested,[13] Marcion was challenged by his contemporary and arch-enemy Polycarp of Smyrna by a fuller edition of the gospels and letters (which Trobisch sees as the first “edition” of the New Testament) to prevent his short canon from becoming dominant. Based on linguistic analysis of his work, Polycarp is also the likeliest candidate to be the author of three anti-Marcionite epistles called the Pastorals (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus).[14] The historicity of Jesus is not, as such, at stake in this literary warfare, but historical traditions are.
The primary point of reference in the study of the Jesus question is the controversial context in which a particular interest in the humanity of Jesus first becomes apparent—this against the background of a number of salvation cults, with discrete saviours and myths, where no such historical interest can be documented.[15] As Walter Bauer demonstrated in relation to the development of early orthodoxy,[16] Roman historical interest as exhibited by Mark’s gospel rather than Anatolian eclecticism, as reflected in Paul, would be largely responsible for the shape of this controversy and decisive in preserving its historical components.
It is a major weakness in the argument of the mythicists to point to the Hellenistic mysteries, with their utter lack of historical orientation, as an explanation for the religious environment in which the gospels were formed. Often, their litany of dying- and rising- god cults gives the impression of attempting to create a chain of direct influence through the simple duplication of unconnected traditions. In fact, we have no examples from classical antiquity[17] of a religion that insisted from the beginning on the historical existence of its founder in both explicit and implicit ways and no way of explaining why Christianity would differ so markedly from the cults in this respect.[18]
ii
The Later Second Century
By the time we enter the late second century, Christian bishops like Irenaeus [19] (fl 176), and later Tertullian himself (fl 205), are working with a fixed set of four gospels and a collection of letters closely resembling what we possess today and which had become standard sources for refuting heretical opinion.[20] Knowing what we know of the controversies of the period, that in itself, combined with the evidence of the gospels having circulated from Gaul (Lyon) to Carthage as an a???????a, is an impressive early achievement. Irenaeus quotes from all four (and from 21 of the eventual 27 books), and also is the first to quote indubitably from the Book of Acts,[21] usually thought to originate from the same writer or school that produced Luke’s gospel, which in turn is the one Marcion is accused of mutilating.[22]
Irenaeus’ goal is not to argue that Jesus “really lived,” but to show that a “living voice of tradition,”[23] separate from heretical interference, survived down to his own day—the basis for the more elaborate doctrine called “apostolic succession.”[24] While almost no one ignores the apologetic intent of Irenaeus’ claims about apostolicity, it would be irresponsible to think that he systematically misrepresents the traditions of an earlier period. In fact, the possession of large numbers of Gnostic writings has now vindicated much of what he had to say about the teaching and practices of the Gnostics, lending greater weight to what Irenaeus says about the traditions he claims to represent.[25] While he quotes from written Gnostic sources, he regards the control against heresy not simply oral precedent but “delivered,” graphic tradition, largely because the Gnostics “normatively” appealed to secret oral traditions. [26]
It is true that the existence of the gospel traditions about Jesus and patristic appeals to them do not prove his existence. What they prove instead is a coordinated effort to prevent a deposit of historical tradition from being eviscerated by the religious mythicizers of the period.[27] The actuality of his existence was not the topic of discussion in the ancient period.[28] It is taken for granted by all ancient commentators, including Paul, whose entire career pivots on the message of the crucified/historical Jesus and the glorified Christ (1 Cor. 1.23; 1 Cor. 15.3-14). [29]
But viewed against the background of first and second century Latin history-writing especially, the story of Jesus is not as unusual as has been thought, and its “uniqueness” has been more a function of the sacred status accorded to the books by the Church than any essential ingredients in their composition. That is to say, the question of Jesus has been infected with the doctrine of the divine nature of the gospel’s protagonist as well as with the later belief in the inspired authority of the text–both essentially outcomes of patristic discussion–making the issue of “historicity” as the term is normally used, more compelling than it deserves to be.
Book I of Livy’s History[30] does not prove the story of Romulus, or the ruse used against the Sabines, even though he believes it to be factually solid; yet no one doubts the existence of Rome or Augustus, apart from anything credulous Livy might have thought, and got wrong, about Rome’s beginnings. Moreover, we know the gospel writers weren’t writing that kind of history, even though Luke seems to have been challenged to produce something akin to it “from the sources available among us” (1.1-4)—but ends up telling essentially the same story as Mark, with ornamentation and flourishes, and a special tranche of tradition that seems to have been unique to his region.[31] Indeed, Hellenistic critics of early Christianity, beginning with Celsus (ca. 177) carp at the unoriginality of the legendary elements of the gospel without calling into question Jesus’ existence, and this is so, presumably, because the historical literature of the time was fraught with such legends. Take this for example from Livy’s account of the birth of Romulus and Remus:
But the Fates had, I believe, already decreed the origin of this great city and the foundation of the mightiest empire under heaven. The Vestal [virgin, Rea Sylvia] was forcibly violated and gave birth to twins. She named Mars as their father, either because she really believed it, or because the fault might appear less heinous if a deity were the cause of it. But neither gods nor men sheltered her or her babes from the king’s cruelty.[32]
Or this from Suetonius’ account of the return of Augustus to Rome subsequent to the events of the ides of March, 44 BCE—an episode which becomes the later basis for the Christian Aracoeli legends:
When [Augustus] returned to Rome from Apollonia at news of Julius Caesar’s assassination, the sky was clear of clouds, but a rainbow-like halo formed around the sun; and suddenly lightning struck the tomb of Caesar’s daughter, Julia …. [33]
Celsus presses his main objections against Christian teaching in propria persona as a “Jew” for the purpose of denigrating the novelty of the Christian faith, an objection grounded in the accusation that its founder had appeared “only recently.”[34] He does not challenge the importance of prophecy and augurs, merely the idea that Jesus (as opposed to a hundred others) had fulfilled them. In fact, his choice of persona is almost certainly dictated by the fact that neither Jews nor pagan critics doubted that Christianity had had an historical founder, this despite the muddled nature of so-called “external” sources like Josephus and Tacitus, and the “anti-gospel” Toledot Yeshu, dating from the sixth century CE, but incorporating Talmudic traditions from an earlier period.[35]
While it is fairly common for myth-theorists (as well as others) to point to the unreliability of the external notices, the absence of any suggestion among Jewish and pagan polemists that Jesus was the contrivance of a small clutch of believers—while explicable on other grounds—is as noteworthy as the absence of any tendency among the church fathers to defend against such a “slander.” To explain this away, we would be obliged to say that the Jews and pagans “bought” the Christian story wholesale after it was fully formulated; but passages such as Matthew 28.11-15, elements of the Magdalene tradition, as well as of the controversy-stories render such an explanation implausible and point as well to an early date for competing accounts of the resurrection.[36] The controversies enshrined in the New Testament, as John Fenton recognized two generations ago, bring us very close to the live debates in which the history of Jesus was being compiled, but not created in the churches.[37]
We also know that the gospels, whatever they are, were not designed to convince people that Jesus existed. They were written (eventually) to recall key moments in a brief public life—narrative snapshots based on reminiscences, sayings, and hearsay “traditioned” by various communities, but fairly early in point of time compared, say, to the distance between Livy ( BCE 59-CE 17) and the Roman Republic of the sixth century BCE. As old and inconvenient as this defense of the historicity of important elements of the gospels may be, it is still a detail to be reckoned with.
The tension between the purposes of the gospels—to “bring” the news of Jesus to the Jewish diaspora and the Roman provinces–and the worldview of the gospels is even more important because the (perhaps inflated) apocalyptic fervor of the earliest communities, which cannot have been the same voltage in all sectors of the Christian diaspora,[38] would not necessarily have been friendly to the more mundane aspects of tradition: thus, the delay of the end-time and its corollary—the fact that Jesus did not come again–seems to have set into motion an effort to recover historical elements of the life of Jesus that the passage of time was threatening to occlude[39]—not only the core story of his death and resurrection but information about his teaching and predictions. One of those stories—that of his trial and death—is entirely probable if not a chronicle of events, like the story of the death of Hannibal[40]—and one of them—the resurrection, like the story of Alexander’s conception[41] or the apotheosis of Romulus[42]–is not historical, but does clearly refer to historical outcomes: the belief of Jesus’ followers. It is difficult if not impossible to point to equivalent outcomes in relation to the beliefs of ordinary Greeks and Romans being triggered by events close to their own time.[43] The legendary and the “factual” are comingled in all ancient history, from Thucydides onward. But as an axiom, the incredible in ancient literature does not nullify the credible, or if it did we would know almost nothing about anything before the dawn of modernity.[44] For this reason among others, it is perilous to regard disaggregated analogies to the legendary matter in the gospels as proof against the totality of their assertions and “reports.”[45] As Paul Veyne has shown, in the ancient world the miraculous, the legendary and the historical walked upon a single stage, and our judgments about “what really happened” are imperiled even as we try to view it.[46]
iii
Is Paul’s ‘Silence’ Active or Passive?
Third in sketching the process, there is the “problem of Paul,” or rather Paul’s imputed silence concerning Jesus of Nazareth and his preaching of what Schweitzer called a “Christ-the-Lord mysticism.”[47] Myth theorists have often worked from the general postulate that as Paul’s writing is earlier than the written gospel (a simplistic assumption at best), it is remarkable that Paul seems to know nothing of the historical tradition concerning Jesus of Nazareth.[48] I believe this assumption is grantable to the mythicists only if it is the case that there is no supervening reason in Paul’s career that makes ignorance a more compelling reason for his silence (or virtual silence) than some other explanation. In my view, there is a clear reason for Paul’s unhelpfulness which has nothing to do with him not knowing the Jesus tradition but much to do with his not knowing Jesus of Nazareth.
We have Paul’s letters less because of their literary value and theological significance than because one unusually persistent heretic roamed the provinces from Pontus Bithynia to Rome trying to convince people of the second century that Christianity could be boiled down to believing in a heavenly redeemer who slipped past the archons and became a sacrifice for sin.[49] It may seem surprising that anyone would be persuaded by Paul’s conglomerate of Jewish tradition and Hellenistic theosophy, but Paul was not wedded to a univocal view of Jesus. A propagandist driven by success and a man of many messages,[50] Paul changes course and charts new argumentative paths when he needs to, and he needed to because a great many of his “churches” didn’t like him or what he said.[51] Moreover, a great deal of the Pauline tradition and the need for additional letters in his name is simply graphic confirmation of his obscurity and incomprehensibility.
The battle for Paul’s name and “authority” has been over-stressed, however, and edges on the anachronistic.[52] His reputation is para-canonical rather than original to the tradition. His prestige was not at all guaranteed in the first and second century: it was largely an accidental quarrel over interpretation, forced on church writers by a specific heresiological crisis. Historically, the mythicist view assigns him relevance on the basis of a significance that is contextually untenable—as though Paul and the Jesus-tradition are synonymous “equi-valent” terms: as Paul is an early witness to the tradition (the argument normally runs), where is the tradition in Paul? [53] In fact, it is a lamentable feature of the mythicists that no single study has emanated from their circle that deals in a mature way with the historical, constructive features of Paul’s thought, as their main interest has been to use his silence about Jesus forensically to “prove a lacuna” in tradition that more careful analysis shows does not exist.
Ernst Käsemann aptly observed more than fifty years ago that most writers of the second century found Paul’s theology unintelligible.[54] In general, Paul does not deliberately contribute anything to a discussion of the historical Jesus and the dating of his letters is work fraught with danger and despair. This disjunction in early Christianity has been recognized since earliest times—first of all by the writer of the Book of Acts, which seems to have arisen, at least in part, in the anti-Marcionite fervor of the mid- second century..[55] The battle for “ownership” of Paul artificially magnified his importance; but in fact, there would have been no nettle for this quarrel if Marcion had not tried to make the Apostle authoritative to the detriment of the gospels. His theology may very well have sunk without trace and stayed sunken.
It seems to me that this distinction between what early writers called the apostolikon (meaning, almost exclusively, Paul) and the euangelion needs to be reiterated in the appropriate historical context: The survival of Paul’s letters and theology is largely accidental, stems from controversy, theological and political dispute, and is as much polemically charged as it is theologically spontaneous. The existence of the gospels is purposeful, even when specific controversies arising later can be identified within the text. To use the former as a criterion or standard for the historical memory preserved in the latter is to establish a relationship between the two that runs contrary to their separate development. The silence of Paul as a passive matter—based on his ignorance of any historical tradition or a very rudimentary one–is untenable. The reasons for his active silence are considered in the following section.
iv
Competing Christologies and Complicit Silence
And so we are thrown back to the gospels, chiefly but not exclusively on the synoptics. Are they pristine, objective, verbatim accounts of the life of Jesus? Hardly. Are they infused with assumptions about who Jesus is and approximations of what he said?[56] Yes. Can we find “heresiological”, or more properly controversial material in them—material intended to defend a sketchy proto-orthodox teaching about Jesus against less acceptable beliefs? Of course—as John Fenton showed,[57] especially in relation to Matthew’s gospel. These considerations, however, are the surest proof that Jesus really lived and that the preservers of the Jesus-tradition knew what they were defending: they were squeamish about the divine man Christology[58] that dominated in much of the church, and is at least “available” in the gospel of John. The tenuousness of their task is already implied in the phrase “Jesus Christ”[59] though given different prior outcomes, they might have regarded the phrase “Christ the Lord” too extreme–a quiet reason for their general disuse—or rejection–of Paul’s theories in shaping their Christologies.[60] It is remarkable that the gospels use the much earlier descriptions “son of man” (? ???? t?? ?????p??, with its clear rootage in Hebrew and Aramaic passages: cf. ??? ???) and “(a)son of God” (with meanings ranging from goodness to royalty; cf. Ps. 2.7), in reference to Jesus. Yet unless we can conclude that Paul was actively rejecting or was ignorant of terms he may have regarded as anachronistic, useless to his broader purposes, or pejorative, we are obliged to see these traditions as being in competition by the ’50's of the the first century CE. Christology is not metaphysics in the first century; it is part of the broader contest of ideas in which historicity is at stake.
When I say that Jesus “really lived,” I mean lived in history, like anyone else. It has to be said this way because the idea of historicity is a construct of the Enlightenment and later, when scholars like Leopold von Ranke,[61] Theodor Mommsen[62] and others turned their gaze on the difference between legend and actual events, defining history, no more and no less, as “what really happened” (“wie es eigentlich gewesen“)[63]. In the mid- twentieth century, scholars thought they could answer this question by settling once and for all what “kind” of writings the gospels really were: short stories, encomium, chronicle, tall tale, Kleinliteratur,[64] Hellenistic novel, narrative drama, a script for a mystery religion–Christos Soter?[65] None of the analogies quite stuck, though everyone had a favourite one. In the end however, the safest solution was to say that a gospel grew organically out of the experiences of people who had heard Jesus, or had heard about him, and had come to believe that he was some sort of savior or redeemer, or prophet—or (unhelpfully) all three.
The theological matter of Christology is nothing more than recognition that the gospels are a stew of opinions consisting of what people believed, surmised, and reported–expressed with appropriate irony in the Markan “confession” scenario (8:27-33) where Jesus is given to inquire, Who do men say that I am? [66] Peter’s response, is not especially telling and Mark does not mean for it to be.[67] That is to say, the gospels are not coherent sources for the life of Jesus, and even when we are brought to the edge of knowing who Jesus really is (cf. Mark 15.2), the gospel writers offer impressions, often attributed to opponents, crowds, onlookers, or followers, rather than “data.”[68] Only in the jesuine discourses of the Fourth gospel is the natural reticence of the synoptics cast aside in favor of bold assertions and self-reference. As they stand, they invite preaching and interpretation (Mark 16.15; Matthew 28.18f.; John 20.31) and that is just how Paul and his associates used them. That these sources also grew in scope as a result of their function is also probable; but the alleged linear development from “kerygma” to “written gospel” (the Dodd-Bultmann uniqueness-hypothesis) is a theologically loaded way to conceptualize the process and stems from over-attention to the intratextual domain of the canonical writings themselves.
Once purged of the mythical and the obviously legendary, the guessing about original tradition begins. Indeed, it begins prior to that because plausible theories exist for belief in the resurrection that do not rely on a supernatural interpretation of an event following the death of Jesus.[69] Just as we have to account for the existence of the Jesus-tradition in the gospels, we have to account for belief in the resurrection of Jesus. That has been the central task of academic New Testament criticism for more than a century while only a literalist fringe have been occupied with defending (and attacking) its “historicity.”[70] Denying that the resurrection was a historical event, using nothing more than textual variants that have been charted for two centuries, does not provide that explanation.[71]
Thus we are required to confront the intentions of the gospel compilers—what they are trying to do: how does this intention reflect the context from which the gospels emerge? Were they inventing a story, repeating one they thought to be true, or adapting such historical traditions as they possessed to a larger frame of reference that included both legendary embellishments and a myth or paragon of salvation?
Using premises that predate the contemporary understanding of myth, myth-theorists have normally held that the gospel writers (or as for Drews and Bauer, an individual, original writer) wrote fraudulent or consciously deceptive tales. [72] It is important to emphasize that myths do not arise from fraudulent intent; they arise as explanatory stories. For the most part, the gospels (unlike the Book of Genesis) fail as myth because they fail to explain anything. It is true that over time Christian theology educes consequences of enormous importance from the story—doctrines like atonement and salvation—but the stories do not arise as narrative subterfuges to explain how salvation happened. As William Henry Furness, following Renan,[73] observed in the nineteenth century, their authenticity and integrity lay in their artlessness and not artifice.
“Myths” as that term has been used in modern scholarship, especially in anthropology and phenomenology of religion, are typically etiologies of why something is as it is, or how it came about. Genesis is an etiology of the world, the creation of humankind, languages, sacrificial customs, and finally (beginning with Abraham) of the formation of the Hebrew nation. Even when populated by ordinary people, places and names, this etiological function is not far from the surface.[74] Are the gospels etiologies in this sense, and if so, what are they attempting to explain?
In my view, even the most esoteric of them, the Fourth Gospel, remains an unsuccessful hybridized attempt to relate a stubbornly historical tradition to a pre-existing mythological structure. If there are etiological components, like the Prologue in heaven (1.1-16, a creation story), they are not consistently developed and demonstrably false to the historical traditions preserved by the authors in other sections of the work. And the jesuine discourses, even at their most obscure and theologically charged, are “spiritualizations,” as Maurice Wiles has called them, rather than falsifications of these historical traditions.[75] That John was driven by a different agenda was widely acknowledged even among the church fathers—a spiritual gospel according to Clement of Alexandria[76]— and almost all critical church historians and biblical exegetes since the Reformation, not one to be read merely as a history of Jesus.[77]
People of the first and second century did not need to be persuaded that there were gods, omens, miraculous births, and returns from the jaws of death. The stories of gods and heroes routinely used the motif because, after all, it was core to the idea that a god was immortal. If you read the stories of Osiris, Persephone, Heracles, the deaths of gods, the sojourns to the underworld, and their triumphal return, you can be forgiven for saying that Jesus was a hero like that. The fact that one gospel begins by declaring that God became man (? ????? s??? ????et? ?a? ?s????se? ?? ?µ??) shows the attractiveness of a mythical overlay of events that John (erratically) sees being played out on earth and in heaven at the same moment. Likewise, Paul’s vision of a descent to a lower world followed by a triumphal ascent through the archontic hosts to a higher one (Philippians 2.5-11) encourages the thinking that we have on our hands a garden variety savior myth with historical trimmings. That, of course, is the hub of the mythicist argument.
But what is only partly true of the Fourth Gospel [78] is flatly wrong with respect to the synoptic traditions, something even a casual reader of the texts can discern by intuition without having to go deeply into questions of date, provenance, and composition. These historical elements, as Harnack realized a century ago, were vulnerable from the beginning to an encompassing myth that threatened to (and in the case of the Gnostics did) overwhelm it.[79]
Rather than being constructed myths, the gospels were, among other things, attempts to bring an existing and unruly mythology under control. I do not subscribe to the view that this process can be expressed in the formula “from Jesus to Christ,”[80] as liberal theology tried to chart its development in the nineteenth and through most of the twentieth century. The gospels reflect partisan struggles within individual communities corresponding to those Paul describes in 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians. In some of those, from as early as the fifties, if not earlier, the historical particulars of the life of Jesus had been rendered insignificant by the totalizing attraction of a salvation myth. Paul attempts to take control of this myth with his strange concoction of Jewish and “Hellenistic” additives, but he does not attempt to confront it head on or to challenge it with historical information. Judging from the outlook and practice of the Corinthian church at least,[81] to do so would have been to sacrifice the congregation there entirely. The argument in 1 Cor. 15.45f. rejects a temporal history in favor of a typology (the first and second “Man”) that functions mainly as allegory, but comes as close as Paul ever comes to developing a fully fledged mythology of salvation, one briefly reiterated in Roman 5.12-17.
In its purest form, this encompassing myth is Gnostic and perhaps our closest approximation to it, outside Paul, is the so-called Hymn of the Pearl.[82] It is that mythology, in some form, that Paul knows from his vantage point in ancient Turkey where Anatolian myth blended with Greek mystery ideas to the detriment of all historical interest.[83]
Paul is able to exploit that mythology as a “non-follower” of Jesus (a non-apostle who insists on his right to be called one) because the story for him is not about “flesh and blood” which after all can “never inherit the kingdom of God.”[84]
On a few occasions, to nullify the “judaizing” fraternal claims of the superior apostles (hyperlian apostoloi) who are related to Jesus by blood (as brothers or cousins) or adoption, especially James the Lord’s brother,[85] Paul sometimes generalizes the concept of the brothers (adelphoi) to refer to Christian believers, converts or neophytes symbolized in the mystical body of Christ (the “man from heaven”) though Jesus himself does not become (and is never accounted to be) one of these brothers; he is rather the spiritual sine qua non—The Lord–through which the community comes into being.[86] No one can “boast” because all are one in Christ Jesus. Without understanding Paul’s apologetic motive for this usage, the author of Acts maintains it as a synecdoche for the community (e.g., Acts 1.16; 11.1; 13.26; 20.26 [KJV only]), often associated with believers, listeners, aspirants or “children of Abraham” but also maintains the historical precedent that the apostles are distinguished from the brothers and the unique status of James.[87]
The elimination of James as a “prop” for the historical Jesus has been a priority of the myth theorizers from the beginning of the twentieth century, but has also simply exploited the confusion over the identity of James, or multiple James’s, as an alternative structure of facts. The most familiar example of this is Arthur Drews’s[88] insupportable contention in The Christ Myth (German, 1909) that the easiest way to dispense of the brother-tradition is to recognize that the term “brother” is used equivocally in the sources:
Certainly that James whose acquaintance Paul made in Jerusalem is designated by him Brother of the Lord and from this it seems to follows that Jesus must have been an historical person. The expression Brother is possibly in this in this case as so often in the Gospels a general expression to designate a follower of Jesus, as the members of a religious society in antiquity often called themselves Brother and sister among themselves. 1 Cor. 9.5 runs “Have we not also the right to take about with us a wife that is a sister even as the other apostles and brothers of the Lord and Cephas.” It is evident that the expression by no means necessarily refers to bodily relationship but that Brother serves only to designate the followers of the religion of Jesus.”[89]
Famous for his academic inexactness and sensationalism even in his own time, Drews begins his observation with the glaring mistake that the “followers” of Jesus may here “as is so often the case in the gospels” be referred to as brothers in an honorary or cultic sense. In fact, followers and disciples of Jesus are never once addressed as brother(s) in the gospels in any of the instances where a clear biological relationship is asserted.[90] Then, into the tortured syntax of 1 Corinthians 9.5, he inserts a relative construction missing in the Greek, to justify his belief that “sister” is being used as a circumlocution for “believer.” µ? ??? ???µe? ????s?a? ?de?f?? ???a??a pe????e?? ?? ?a? ?? ???p?? ?p?st???? ?a? ?? ?de?f?? t?? ?????? ?a? ??f??; The more obvious meaning of course is “a sister,” [or] “a wife” (i.e., a woman), which has, in fact, become the majority translation. As to the phrase “brothers of the Lord,” it either excludes the higher ranks of “apostles and Peter” or must envisage them as biological brothers (cf. Mk 3.31, Matt. 12.46; K; Lk 8.19; Jn 2.12, 7.3, 5, 10), such as James, who is not mentioned here. Without Drews’s conclusion that the language of the mysteries, absent in the gospels, can be invoked to explain a verse in the epistles, the most obvious translation would be that brothers of Jesus, along with apostles, were seen by Paul as having a right to female companionship or service. The context of the passage, indeed, makes this the only coherent translation: Paul is here talking about the right of an apostle to be served, be paid, and have a share of the earnings (“the fruit’) of his labour, not about “the Christian mystery.” The phrase “brothers in the Lord” in Philippians 1.14 suggests that the author could make a clear distinction between a relational genitive such as Galatians 1.19 (?de?f?s t?? ??????) and an instrumental dative (?de?f?i ?? ?????) such as we find in Philippians 1.14.[91]
Yet to assume that Paul’s deliberate and defensive disuse of the tradition nullifies the tradition is abjectly nonsensical. The Christian story as we know it and celebrate it in the Church is basically Paul’s mythos, especially in its Eucharistic form. It is missing in John, who uses Eucharistic images in a different, arguably a more physical and anti-gnostic way (“I am the bread that has come down from heaven”), and works from a slightly different variation on the core salvation story. But it seems clear in both cases (Paul implicitly, the Fourth Gospel directly) that the writers are exploiting a prior tradition and that this tradition was centered on an historical figure named Jesus.[92]
But the Jesus tradition did not begin there. It began simply enough in Roman Palestine with the teaching of a figure named Jesus and his teacher, John the Baptist. The historical moorings are crystal clear and plausible; the prologue in heaven (John 1.1-15) is later. It is manufactured: it is exegesis. Paul’s salvation story is not earlier than the historical elements of the gospel. It is a highly speculative interpretation of the tradition, though not a rejection of it. While Marcion seems to have singled out a pattern of corrupting the gospel, dating back to the apostles themselves,[93] Paul does not polemicize against tradition—just against those like Peter and James, who use it for self-aggrandizement.[94] Both Marcion and Paul, however saw corruption of tradition as a program carried out by “historical” followers of the Lord, not by devils.[95] In asserting this, Paul becomes the first interpreter to place his interpretation of the gospel ahead of its historical embodiment.
In broad outline, the message of Jesus concerning the coming kingdom of God—that is, his eschatological message– is completely plausible. It is both historically credible and fits into most of what we know from other sources about Roman Palestine at the time of Roman occupation. In that story, Jesus does not fall out of the sky or propel himself back into it[96] –he simply lives and teaches and dies, a victim of the raucous age. The question of what he taught and the completely useless attempt of various Jesus seminars and quests to isolate authentic sayings will surely go down as one of the most regressive episodes in biblical-studies history. It seems certain he said some of it and the fact that others said similar things (Nihil sub sole novum) is proof, not disproof, that he said some of it. I have never budged from the view that Jesus was an eschatologist, that he preached judgment and repentance, probably in fairly stark terms. The gospels make no bones about it. What they do in addition to repeating the kerygma in conventional language drawn from a variety of Jewish apocalypses is to make Jesus not only the agent of change but the focus of deliverance.[97]
What the gospels also do is to make Jesus the agent of judgment, the unexpected, unheralded, and finally unrecognized messiah.[98] This is an apologetic stance forced on believers and recorders by the discomfiting events of the later first century. Yet even their rationalization of events is within the domain of the predictable: the belief that Jesus said something specific about dates and times trails off into uncertainty about dates and times (Mark 13.32) like a father’s rash promise to buy a daughter a diamond for her eighteenth birthday and his demurrers on the last day of her seventeenth year. Nothing is more ordinary, more explicable.
But even here, the synoptic gospels are notably sketchy, even circumspect, about the extraordinary or as critics in the post-Enlightenment era would call it, the “supernatural.” And in Mark even the extraordinary is related in matter-of-fact terms using both temporal and geographical markers, a trait of Hellenistic history but not of myth and legend.[99] Mythicists have often pointed to the fact that the gospel writers sometimes get the geography and temporal markers wrong—a feature readily noted by most New Testament scholars[100]–without complaining about the same persistent tendency in secular historiography from roughly the same period.[101] It is difficult to know what historical standard they are invoking, or whether their naivete is simply a result of having a deficient knowledge of the ancient world.
Moreover, the “incredible” elements of the gospels do not form a coherent narrative scheme: the miracles, a dozen healings, a few unlikely wins in debates against “teachers of the law.” Collectively, these do not constitute a myth; they are the legendary bits, though the Jesus-deniers often conflate myth and legend–which in fact serve different literary purposes and have different origins.[102] But the historical Jesus undergirds—and is presupposed by–the legends, in a way distinct from purely legendary figures like King Arthur and Robin Hood whose entire existence is predicated on adventure, feats and tests of stength, and romance. In general, apart from the obviously miraculous and legendary elements of the gospels, such as the birth stories, the story of Jesus is mundane and possesses none of the primary characteristics of pure legend: it is the story of a teacher gone wrong who is killed for his teaching and probably also for some of his displays of magic and healing. Only later, and under the watchful eye of canonists, do stories about Jesus like those contained in the apocryphal gospels achieve fully legendary proportions.[103] Put a bit flatfootedly (though this is not a new argument), the gospels do not show sufficient consistency to be pure legend and are not abstract enough nor sufficiently symbolic to qualify as “myth.”
v
Saving Jesus from the Gnostics
Fifth and finally: it becomes the job of the early Church to protect the core reality of a flesh and blood Jesus against the second and third century mythicizers, the Gnostic covens. The early writers, known and unknown, do this partly by bringing Paul under control—Paul who virtually disappears from view in the early patristic period.[104] They do this by lambasting Marcion’s attempt to subordinate the gospel to the letters by giving the gospels precedence; they do it also by continuing to write tendentious letters in Paul’s name—especially the so called Pastoral epistles with their transparently anti-Marcion bias. They do it by writing minor texts assigned to other apostles—James, Peter, Jude, and John—to diminish Paul’s standing at a period when his teaching had lost relevance. That these are forgeries, or more politely pseudonymous works, is now widely accepted. That the deuteropauline correspondence is radically different from the same technique in the hands of the heretics is equally obvious.[105] Just as the gospels reflect the real life context of first century Palestine, the canonical letters, authentic and inauthentic, reflect real life situations that have arisen in the later life of the Christian community. In the long run, it is their contribution to the historical life of communities—a certain practical relevance lacking in Gnostic writings–rather than proof of authorship that guaranteed their survival.
This protective reflex is very early, and at least goes back to the time of Polycarp, Ignatius and the author of the pastorals who warns specifically of those who follow the elaborate myths.[106] This “protection” is called for by the worry of a teaching that Jesus Christ “did not come in the flesh.”[107] In its most radical form, that is to say in Gnosticism, human nature is devalued and a doctrine of spiritual elitism more extravagant than anything we find in Paul is put forward. According to Irenaeus who spends years of his life gathering evidence about them and attempting to sort them out (“though they spring up like weeds”[108]) they were not a unified front but a congeries of sects, each with a slightly different salvation story. In their more flagrant but milder form, they stretch back to Paul’s day and to the time of fourth gospel (which may in part have originated in their circles.) Being a “docetist” or a Gnostic was a matter of emphasis, but all would have argued that Jesus was a kind of apparition, not a flesh and blood human being. He was not historical though historical is not a term they would have comprehended. As a revealer, he was preternal, might have come before, might appear again, but never in a time-bound, material sense.
The battle between orthodox writers and the Gnostics (and their forerunners) was foremost a battle over a theory of atonement or redemption: if Jesus did not possess flesh, it was thought, he could not have redeemed flesh.[109] For the Gnostics, flesh cannot be redeemed; thus a true savior could not possess it (cf. 1 Corinthians 15.50). [110] But the basis for this theory was the bedrock historical material of the gospel: the life and the crucifixion and death of Jesus as real events, not cosmic tokens of salvation available to the te?e??te?e?– the “perfect ones.” It is an interesting but common feature of most mythicist narrative about the New Testament that they have a very poor grasp of the Gnostic literature, and rely extensively on earlier myth-theorists whose works were written two generations and more before the Nag Hammadi documents were available to illustrate the shape of a fully fledged Christian myth. Perhaps the most odious example of polemic masquerading as scholarship is the work of a certain Richard Carrier, whose vanity published (Lulu, 2009) Not the Impossible Faith manages in over 400 error-strewn pages to ignore entirely the fundamental theological challenge of the New Testament era.
As all New Testament scholars know, or should know, the difference between a Gnostic gospel and a canonical gospel is not only a difference in “style” but in purpose. Joseph Fitzmyer once famously called the Gnostics “the crazies of the second century.”[111] That may or may not be so, but their success is evidence of the general popularity of their cause and seems to have justified the concern of orthodox bishops.
The euphoria that greeted the Nag Hammadi discovery of 1945 and the first publication and translations between 1972 and 1984 encouraged extreme notions that the Gnostics were a liberal heterodox alternative to “male dominated” conservative orthodoxy.[112] But we are in a better place today to judge the threat of Gnosticism as it was seen in its own terms– not by autocratic bishops ruling from their thrones by fiat–that is a Hollywood parody of the second century church–but by leaders of a young religious movement struggling against a tide of religious mythicism. The living tradition that Irenaeus defends is historical tradition; it extends from Jesus to John to Papias and the elders, and even includes references to teachers who had “gone astray” from tradition like Cerinthus and Marcion.[113] Indeed, the standards of historicity were strict enough for Eusebius in the fourth century to call Papias’s judgment into question on account of his chiliasm. It includes before the fourth century a critical element that rivals anything in secular historiography, both in Papias’s comments on the evangelists and Eusebius’ negative feelings (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.13) about Papias’s gifts as a reporter.[114] As to Papias’s dates, we have Irenaeus to thank for identifying him as “a man of old time” (Adversus Haereses V 33.4) and thus a contemporary of Marcion and Polycarp, and perhaps just as significantly an Anatolian from provincial Hierapolis
To challenge every speck of this tradition is certainly possible, but what possible motive would there be for doing so? The simple insistence of the early writers is that the historical tradition about Jesus came first, the “myths,” according to the Pastor, later. Indeed, cumulatively, that is just what the texts as we possess them suggest is the case. The church fathers would have been in a position to distinguish paradosis (what was delivered, and considered authentic) from the “myths and fables and old wives tales,”[115] and what was new from what was received. To impugn their motives moves us away from a methodological suspicion of sources into the realm of master-theories, cynicism and baseless assumptions for which there is no textual support.
The core of Gnostic belief was not that there was no Jesus but a salvation myth that did not require him as a distinct personality. By contrast, for all their legendary embellishments, the canonical gospels want to insist on the historical reality of Jesus, located in a specific corner of the Roman world at a particular moment in time. That corner is Roman Palestine, and the basic details are true to life and credible. In saying this it would be jejune to suggest that I am defending the miraculous; but I would want to defend the historicity of the healing stories. It would be simplistic to say that critical New Testament scholars are still arguing for a physical resurrection; but many, including myself, regard the basic proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus as a historic and defining event in the history of the church, though its form varies from source to source (cf. 1 Corinthians 15,6).
Modern scholarship has unearthed many figures from the period whose careers run roughly parallel to that of Jesus: Judas the Galilean, Jesus Barabbas, Theudas, Shimeon bar Kochba and John the Baptist himself have similar proportions and messages, and inhabited a social world of religious insurgencies, banditry, and political opposition to Rome in a countercultural Judaism that ends with a bang in 70CE. The unveiling of that social world has further solidified our confidence in the portrait of Jesus in the gospels.[116] It is a social context about which the mythicists are largely silent and, given their presuppositions and methods, embarrassingly deficient. The age was an age of radicals, revolutionaries, messianic claimants, and self-styled prophets of the end time. We have investigated targums, pseudepigrapha, ostraca, ossuaries, tombs, and remnants of village life that put us tantalizingly close to a village like Nazareth.[117] The net result of these investigations has not been to push the gospels in the direction of fantasy and fabrication but to establish a probable landscape within which the events described in them plausibly occurred. It does not take a great deal of historical or literary sophistication, for example, to see that the rudimentary nature of their contents places them squarely in the first and early second century, proximate to the events they describe, rather than at a perceptible distance from these events, as the apocryphal and Gnostic writings are.
If the Nazareth tradition embedded in the synoptics and John is more elaborately attested in the gospels than in other literature contemporary to it, the most efficient explanation is that the gospel writers knew about the place because Jesus, in the tradition they possessed, was associated (even if mistakenly) with it, not that they invented it. Matthew’s laborious attempt to find a prophecy to fit it (and various attempts to invent an alternative etymology for “Nazareth” and “Nazarene” based on Hebrew and Aramaic roots)[118] suggest that the village was an embarrassment to the followers, as it was already traditioned in Mark’s famous story of Jesus’ failed attempt to preach there and Luke’s finessing of the older tradition (Mark 9.1; 6.1-7; cf. Luke 4 .16-30). Recent excavations (2008, seq.) led by Yardena Alexandre[119] show that Nazareth (as Bagatti had conjectured) was small (±500), but (as Princeton archaeologist Jack Finnegan argued) a strongly Jewish settlement.[120] The basic picture that has emerged is entirely compatible with what the gospels say about the area being inconspicuous, poor, and suspect (John 1.46; cf. 7.41). Nevertheless, even if the identification of Nazareth could be proved to be mistaken and the name educed from the phrase “Jesus the Nazarene,” there would hardly be a strong case for rejecting the Galilean provenance of Jesus or his actual existence; it would show only that the gospel writers were attempting to sort out a tradition that had come to them unsorted.[121]
Contextually, the gospels are about right, though they get things wrong. Like your grandmother’s stories, they changed over time. Details were lost and some geographical details were modified and forgotten—and others like Bethlehem, invented as a way of doing what every leader since Epirus and Augustus himself tried to do: improve a pedigree or establish a res gestae of their deeds .[122] But the description of Pilate, of Herod Antipas (another casualty of pedigree), the muddled version of the trial, and the mechanism of punishment and death are completely plausible. They were no more written by eyewitnesses than Livy’s descriptions of Republican Rome; nor is that the standard we normally require in ancient history. Once the peculiar nature of the history contained in the gospels is acknowledged, it is useless to try to hold them to a historiographical standard higher than that expected of their secular counterparts—unless the point of the inquiry is not to discover the facts within the sources but to discredit the sources.
Stripped of its theological and liturgical embellishments—which are as masterful in their way as Plato’s fictional mise en scène for the death of Socrates[123]– the crucifixion drama becomes the simple story of the death of a Galilean troublemaker and teacher. Taken as it stands, it is the story of the death of the messiah, or of a son of god, replete with liturgical embellishment from the Psalms and the Wisdom of Solomon, among other sources. Almost all New Testament scholars accept that pious accretions form a heavy emulsion over the bare bones. But likewise, most realize that the simple factual recitation of these events unaccompanied by such interpretation would be false to the story as they rationalized it and understood its significance. If modern literary criticism has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as uninterpreted narrative. The gospels do not exist “propositionally”: they exist “hermeneutically.” It has not been the task of New Testament scholarship since the time of Strauss and Feuerbach to answer the question “whether” Jesus rose from the dead, but rather how the early Christians understood this belief, and how it arose within the religiously and politically charged environment of the time. Even if all questions of interpretation could be decided in favor of factual assertions, the gospels would still not exist propositionally.
Vi
The Mythicist Position – The Paul Cipher
The cumulative effect of these considerations drowns the mythicist position, which had its beginnings in the excitement of radical New Testament scholarship in Holland, Britain and America at the end of the nineteenth century, and in Germany before that. As a connoisseur of these and later mythicist theories, I can safely say, almost no stone was left unturned in attempting to debunk the gospels. Those stones have now been turned over and over, without much effect and nothing hiding under them.
Despite the energy of the myth school from Drews, Robinson, Couchoud and van Eysinga down to Wells, its last learned, reputable proponent,[124] its conclusions have been rendered wrong by the historical scholarship of the later twentieth century.[125] It remains a quaint, curious, interesting but finally unimpressive assessment of the evidence—to quote James Robinson’s verdict, an agenda-driven “waste of time.” Methodologically it disposes of anything contrary to its core premise—Jesus did not exist—in a quicksand of denial and half-cooked conspiracy theories that take skepticism and suspicion to a new low. Like all failed hypotheses, it arrives at its premise by intuition, cherry picks its evidence in a way that wants to suggest that the ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity of texts and traditions are meaningless inconveniences invented by the discipline of New Testament studies, and defends its “conclusions” by force majeure. The myth theory, in short, is a dogma in search of footnotes. Most of the ones it continues to exploit in the form of references, problems, and allusions are a century old. While it is untrue to say that the theory is not taken seriously by responsible scholars, it happens to be true that its most ardent supporters, then and now, have been amateurs or dabblers in New Testament studies and those least equipped by training or inclination to assess an enormously complicated body of evidence.
History as a discipline has been in the business of exposing fraud at least since the time of Lorenzo Valla.[126] But the exposure of fraud is not the discovery of factuality or truth—of “what really happened.” History requires a certain patience with ambiguity, sometimes surgical care with delicate sources that have an ounce of reliable data buried beneath the layers of additions and corrections. Harnack believed that the procedure was like peeling husks away from a nob of corn,[127] but it was an unfortunate image, as his critic, Alfred Loisy reminded him.[128] New Testament scholarship has learned more recently to distinguish between event and allegory which are unevenly blended in the story of Jesus. However that may be, the outlines of an historical figure are clear. As the hyperactive Tertullian argues in his treatise on the Flesh of Christ (De carne Christi, ca. 212), against the mythicizers of his day,
Why do you allege that that flesh is celestial which
you have no data for thinking celestial, why deny that that is
terrestrial which you have data for recognizing as terrestrial? It
hungers when with the devil, is athirst with the Samaritan
woman, weeps over Lazarus, trembles at the prospect of death–
The flesh, he says, is weak–and at last sheds its blood. You take
these, I suppose, for celestial signs. But, say I, how could he, as he
said would happen, be despised and suffer, if in that flesh there
had shone any radiance from his celestial nobility? By this means,
then, we prove our case that in that flesh there was nothing
brought down from the skies, and that that was so for the express
purpose that it should be capable of being despised and of
suffering.[129]
The language is odd to us, because Tertullian is arguing against a renegade disciple of Marcion named Apelles. But the message is plain: Jesus was real.
When I began my work on Marcion at Oxford, I entertained the idea of the non-historicity of Jesus. I was obligated to because Marcion also toyed with the idea–and rejected it. His sole surviving gospel was his lonely concession to that reality, while his project—to give Paul’s theology pride of place over it—was dominant in his thought. His followers like Apelles seem to have assumed the so-what attitude that can be traced back to Paul’s contempt for the hyperlian-apostoloi, the super-apostles, with their boast about knowing Jesus “after the flesh.” “So what if we knew him that way,” Paul sneers, “since we know him that way no longer”(2 Cor. 5.16).
But Paul, writing in the fifties of the first century, says more in that irritated and offhanded comment than he does anywhere else in his letters about the historical Jesus: he tells us why, as a personal matter, he does not “preach” Jesus’ life story, but instead begins with the skandalon of his cross, a usage that means Paul knew at least one piece of information about Jesus, and also that preaching it came at a price among Jews and “Greeks.”
Unfortunately, a standard response to the “opponents” controversy between Paul and the Jerusalem church among the mythicists has been to ignore the controversy, or to deny the existence of the Jerusalem church, or (even) to deny the existence of Paul himself.[130] When Mark Twain felt the plot and character in a novel called Those Extraordinary Twins had become too cumbrous to drive the story forward he decided to drown the surplus in a “poison well.” Loads of surplus information lay at the bottom of the mythicist well.[131] Much of that material concerns our lengthening understanding of the world and context of Paul.
There is no reason at all to doubt the best attested schism in the earliest history of the church (if we discount the ones for which the evidence is less clear). This schism was at least partly about the claim of “certain men from James” (Gal. 2.12) to be physically, perhaps familialy close to Jesus—while Paul “every bit as much an apostle as they are!”—grounds his message in a revelation of the risen Lord. In the bitterest sections of 2 Corinthians, the New Testament’s most complex letter, one which seems to have had special relevance to Marcion judging from Tertullian’s long-winded handling of it in the Adversus Marcionem—we have some insight into the first corporate management crisis in the Christian religion. Unsurprisingly it is a war between executives appointed by the founder and an upstart “idea man” who came on board after the founder’s death. Even “Luke’s” conciliatory prose in the Acts of Apostles, written more than fifty years later, doesn’t succeed in erasing the damage created by the schism. Yet the crisis itself points indubitably past the legend of the twelve to the historicity of Jesus, his disciples, and James.[132]
What mattered in the early church, however, was the significance of Jesus’ unexpected death—its projected meaning as the mysterious conquest of evil, and its consequences, by the powers of God’s grace—not the basic humanity of the sermon on the mount or the (unoriginal) piety of the Lord’s Prayer, or the choosing of preachers to carry on the cause. It was that significance variously construed that created the apostolic community, drove Paul’s missionary work, and the hostility towards it, inspired Marcion’s gospel of love, and Irenaeus’ defense of living tradition. Or rather–what mattered more was the significance of his death, since there is no evidence that interest in the mundane and the super-mundane aspects of the life of Jesus did not arise at around the same time and in some sense as competitive motifs.
For all his speculativeness and infatuation with Paul’s theology as he knew it, Marcion was also something of a literalist, and very probably an Anatolian Jew, where Christianity developed early inroads and was fully fledged by the time of Pliny’s governorship in 110-13—a period when Marcion would have been active as a teacher. A core part of his teaching is that there is a greater and a lesser God, Jesus being the embodiment of the love and goodness of the higher, previously unknown power. But the evolving church could not even accept this much. It risked a kind of theological incoherence (which it seems to me remains long after Chalcedon) in insisting on the total humanity and divinity of Jesus rolled into one.
Further, Marcion detected no literary artifice in the gospel he possessed: he held that the followers of Jesus were poor pupils and finally false witnesses to his teaching. He does not base this finding on a literary “motif” in the gospels (where at least in Luke the apostles are already caught up in a process of rehabilitation)[133] but on a skepticism towards the trustworthiness of the apostles that comes from Paul himself. Was Paul its source, or simply a recipient of the “false apostle” theme? What were Paul’s criteria for his sneering dismissal of the pretense of superior apostles? Is a formerly historical, celestial Jesus, once known physically, who can continue to impart revelation and appoint apostles after his death more relevant for Paul’s odd message not more useful than an historical Jesus who appointed them all during his lifetime? Or can we be myth theorists about it and say the entire conflict is manufactured by story tellers?
***
A Conclusion among Others
What I have just recited is a lesson plan for why I believe no serious and responsible scholar who makes a thorough study of the discussions of the early church would argue that Jesus never existed.
The gospels alone, even when the unusual circumstances of their composition and their interdependence and differences are taken into account, do not prove him. But the complex of material that survives and tells us the story of Christian beginnings points to conclusion that Jesus existed, when and where the gospels say he did. The core elements, many of the details, and especially the conflicts and controversies that form the stage for the life of Jesus, are still irreducibly clear. They are not the work of a mastermind, or a master-forger, or a duplicitous tale-spinner. They are the work of serious if culturally limited writers who are trying to do their best with collected traditions existing in a variety of what later scholarship would call “forms.” Whether Jesus gave the sermon on the mount in a field or on a hilltop, all at once or in bundles, does not negate the tradition that he gave it at all. Too much has been claimed for the heuristic value of suspicion in probing a naïve literary tradition, not enough attention to the persistence of a consistent frame and the historical coherence of its central character. In their own way, and at a time when Jesus might simply have been gobbled up by a dozen analogous myths and rituals, the gospel writers and their interpreters, the church fathers, insist on this frame.
As I remarked in the Sources of the Jesus Tradition, God- denying and Jesus-denying are different tasks. I do not think the evidence of history is dispositive in deciding the existence of God in the most general sense of that term and apart from its cultural expressions. I think the Bible, both testaments, and all other sacred literature, is collectively unhelpful in settling the question.
But I think the basic factuality of Jesus is undeniable unless we (a) do not understand the complexity of the literature and its context, or impose false assumptions and poor methods on it; (b) are heavily influenced by conspiracy theories that–to use a Humean principle—are even more incredible than the story they are trying to debunk; or (c) are trying merely to be outrageous. To repeat Morton Smith’s verdict on Wells, the idea that Jesus never existed requires the concoction of a myth more incredible than anything to be found in the Bible.[134]
The use of any single “theorem” to deal with the values discussed here beggars the credible. Yet there are self-appointed experts in this camp who lead equally gullible and unwary amateurs down a path of pseudo-mathematical probability based on the absurd notion that the gospels can be approached using true or false modalities, without reference to the recipients who neither accepted nor understood the preaching about Jesus in modal terms. It invites the opposite of careful research because it relies on an anachronistic and “legal” approach to the gospels as a collection of truth claims that can be answered yes or no. But that is not what the textual tradition gives us to decide. The “Jesus Tradition” is so-called because it is less than a history of events as we’d want to know them. Between Jesus and us, the community intervenes, not once but pervasively. It is their voice we hear, not the voice of Jesus. That fact does not entail the conclusion that therefore Jesus had no voice, anymore than repeating a story your grandmother told you entails that you made it up and had no grandmother.
When the Ann Arbor conference Jesus in History and Myth convened twenty seven years ago, the then best-known advocate of the Jesus-Myth theory, George A. Wells, was aboard for the deliberations. I was then a fledgling assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
In my own presentation, “Other Gospels, Heretical Christs,” I commented on the possibility that we need to change our view of the gospels from corroborative to corrective, a fairly unexciting conclusion, I thought, considering what we know today about their interconnections. That is, we cannot use the synoptic writings as mutually corroborative testimony to a single event, as they were regarded once upon a time, in Tatian’s day. But we can regard them as serving independent corrective functions in relation to the traditions they incorporate and each other, a fairly common device among classical historians as well. “What are they correcting?” Wells shot at me when I finished, “since there is no indisputable historical detail to serve as a standard.” At this, the late Morton Smith, who ‘required’ a historical Jesus to serve as the hero of his magician theory, said “Well, they might have flown off in all directions. They didn’t. Their resemblance is pretty strong evidence that they were trying to preserve something and I believe it is historical memory.”
“And while we’re at it,” Smith went on, “what is an indisputable historical detail?”
And this brings me back to the starting point. They preserve something, and I believe it is historical memory as well. They might have gone off in all directions. The apocryphal Jesus story does just this, with tales of ascents into heaven, a divine brat who slays his playmates, and a revealer who descends to hell and puts demons in irons.[135] That is pure legend. It “flies off in all directions.” The Gnostic gospels do it too. But the canonical gospels do not. If a contrived mythology is the sufficient explanation of these literary artifacts, it is the job of the myth theorists to explain why they are such poor examples of the mythic tradition—not why they tell the tale of a man who ascends triumphantly into heaven, in some late accounts, like Romulus in the famous apotheosis of Livy–but why they begin with someone who bothered to touch the ground at all.
In short, the gospels stand as the best refutation of the myth theory of their origins. So indirectly do the theological defenses of the reality and humanity of Jesus. So finally does Paul’s self-confessed rejection of the historical Jesus in the context of his fight with “those who were apostles beforehand.” They are in essence and substance a refutation of a particularly seductive soteriology, the tale of a divine being sent from above to an elect few to whisper the gnosis of salvation.
We cannot say how successfully they domesticate this myth to the historical reality of one man’s life, death and limited teaching. Gnosticism is our surest evidence of how it might have been if the historical contours had been sacrificed to a theory of salvation, and the gospel of John evidences an intermediate stage—a halfway compromise so to speak—between reality and myth. We know what a gospel is, in other words, because we know quite clearly today what failed gospels look like in the form of a prevenient mythology of redemption populated by abstract time-travelling revealers. Yet the preoccupation of the gospels is not cosmic, it is worldly and the teaching of Jesus ranging from advice on divorce to his adumbrations of his impending death—which I take to be commonsensical and plausible rather than prophetic—are the normal concerns of a man whose time is running out.
NOTES
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[1] Perhaps one of the best examples of bead stringing and analogue-accumulation in lieu of argument is the work of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? (Three Rivers Press, 2001), which takes its view of gnosticism (not a Hellenistic mystery as such) almost entirely from Elaine Pagels’s book on the topic, and is deficient in understanding the form, context, and workings of the Hellenistic mysteries in general.
[2] Morton Smith, “The Historical Jesus,” in R. Joseph Hoffmann, and Gerald Larue, eds., Jesus in History and Myth (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1986), pp. 47-8.
[3] The important studies, without prejudice to their quality and date are: S. J. Case, The Historicity of Jesus (Chicago, 1912), reflecting the state of the question at a relatively early date; F. C. Conybeare, The Historical Christ (London, 1914), a rational defense of the historical Jesus by a leading Oxford Orientalist; Maurice Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene, Myth or History (London 1928; rpt. Amherst, 2008), a clear refutation of the position by one of the leading French exegetes of his era; R. T. France, The Evidence for Jesus (London, 1986), a respectful but uneven indictment of the mythicism of G.A. Wells; and Morton Smith, “The Historical Jesus,” in Jesus in History and Myth, ed. R.J. Hoffman and G.A Larue (Amherst, 1986), who concluded that the myth theory is “almost entirely an argument from silence,” pp. 47-48)
[4] Issues variously summarized in Charles Horton, ed., Earliest Gospels: The Origins and Transmission of the Earliest Christian Gospels (Library Of New Testament Studies), (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004). A useful general survey is G.B. Caird, “The Chronology of the New Testament,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 1. pp. 599-60; Dennis Eric Nineham, Historicity and Chronology in the New Testament. Theological Collections, No. 6. (London: S.P.C.K, 1965); A.J.M. Wedderburn, “Paul’s Collection: Chronology and History,” New Testament Studies 48.1 (2002): 95-110; and Colin J. Hemer, “Observations on Pauline Chronology,” Donald A Hagner & Murray J Harris, eds., Pauline Studies: Essays Presented to F.F. Bruce (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1980), pp.3-18.
[5]Helmut Koester, The Synoptic Tradition in the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers (Synoptschen Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern (diss. Marburg, 1953); rpt. Texte und Untersuchungen, 65 (Berlin, 1957). Koester’s view is that there was a free oral tradition paralleling the synoptics until around 150CE. Only 2 Clement and Didache 1.3-2.1 form an exception. Koester’s argument pivots on the idea that orthodoxy and heresy “are not distinct categories before the time of Irenaeus,” though much pivots on the definition of “category” in his assessment. See also T.C. Mournet, Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency: Variability and Stability in the Oral Tradition and in Q, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2 (2005).
[6] While there are questions concerning the date of the Ignatian correspondence, these have often been pursued most vigorously in the history of scholarship by evangelical and “non-episcopal” theologians who have taken exception to this relatively early endorsement of the authority of bishops. Andreas Lindemann noted, for instance, that Lechner takes for granted the notion that the Ignatian Epistles were a late second century forgery by someone using the antithetical confessions of Noetus of Smyrna. The matter is admirably sorted out in “Paul’s Influence on Clement and Ignatius,” in Trajectories through the New Testament and Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew Gregory and Chris Tuckett (Oxford, 2007). An excellent summary of the connections between the controversies that link the earliest Antiochene church and that of Ignatius is Raymond Brown and John P. Meier, Antioch and Rome (Paulist, 1983). Following Lindemann’s statement of the difficulty of dating the correspondence, John-Paul Lotz has provided an interesting study of the controversy surrounding the how the concept of homonoia (concord) was understood in the churches of the second century; see his Ignatius and Concord (Vienna and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007).
[7] On Marcion, see generally A. von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, trans. by John Steely (Wipf and Stock rpt. edition, 2007); and R. J. Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity. An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century (American Academy of Religion/Scholars, 1984), p. 31 (on the biographical frame for Marcion’s activity), and Joseph Tyson, Marcion and Luke Acts: A Defining Struggle (Columbia, SC: USC Press, 2006).
[8] Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.4.2: ‘Alioquin quam absurdum, ut, si nostrum antiquius probaverimus, Marcionis vero posterius, et nostrum ante videatur falsum quam habuerit de veritate materiam, et Marcionis ante credatur aemulationem a nostro expertum quam et editum.’ (‘Otherwise how preposterous it would be that when we have proved ours the older, and that Marcion’s has emerged later, ours should be taken to have been false before it had from the truth material <for falsehood to work on>, and Marcion’s be believed to have suffered hostility from ours before it was even published:’ [Evans trans.]) That is to say, Marcion directly made the claim that his gospel was the basis for later versions of the gospel. Cf. 4.4.1.
[9]Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, Latin with English trans. By Ernest Evans (Oxford: OECT, 1972), 1.1.
[10] The literature on “Q” is prolific; a popular general survey is Burton Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (New York: Harper, 1994). Mack’s thesis is speculative and on the fringe of New Testament scholarship. Also see: David R. Catchpole, The Quest for Q. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993; Adelbert Denaux, “Criteria for identifying Q-passages : a critical review of recent work by T. Bergemann” Novum Testamentum 37 (1995), 105-29; and the still sober discussion of Werner Kelber, The Oral and the Written gospel : The hermeneutics of speaking and writing in the synoptic tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. (Indiana, 1997); John S.Kloppenborg, Excavating Q : the history and setting of the sayings gospel (Fortress, 2000). Standard skeptical discussions are Austin Farrer, “On dispensing with Q,” Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), pp. 55-88 (never superseded); Michael Goulder, “Is Q a Juggernaut?” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996), pp. 667-81; and Mark Goodacre, The Case against Q (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2002).
[11] Cf. Hoffmann, Marcion (1984), xi.
[12] For a discussion of my argument concerning Laodiceans-Ephesians/Colossians within the broader context of the Pauline canon, see Stanley Porter, The Pauline Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 132-134. Further, Hoffmann, Marcion, pp. 252-279.
[13] David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford, 2000); see also his Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the origins (Quiet Waters, 2001). A credulous reconstruction of canonical origins that greatly underestimates the influence of Marcion is Harry Gamble’s The New Testament Canon, Its Making and Meaning (Wipf and Stock, 2002).
[14] On the “heresy” behind the Pastoral letters see Hoffmann, Marcion (1984), pp. 281-305; and Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke Acts: A Defining Struggle, pp. 26-45. Among older works, Martin Dibelius, The Pastoral Epistles: Hermeneia (Augsburg, 1989) and more recently, Paul Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament: The Occasion, Rhetoric, Theme, and Unity of the Epistle to the Philippians and Its Allusions to New Testament Literature (Mohr, 2001). The study by Kenneth Berding, Polycarp and Paul (Brill, 2002) suggesting that allusions in Polycarp to the Pastorals can be used to prove their early date is not persuasive. The general conclusions of von Campenhausen (1963) and Harrison (1921) especially on linguistic evidence and hapax legomena in the epistles have not been persuasively challenged.
[15] See the still most reliable survey, Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), and Hugh Bowden, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World (Princeton, 2010).
[16] See Bauer’s concise epitome of Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei in G. Strecker, ed., Aufsätze und Kleine Schriften (Tübingen, 1967), pp 229-33.
[17]The cult of the healer-god Asklepios is often referred to as analogous. Most descriptions date from the second century of the common era and beyond and are associated with precinct healings by animated statues. See Callistratus, Descriptions 10 (trans. Fairbanks) as well as Plato, Phaedo 118a; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 21. ; 2. 26. 1; Aelian, On Animals 7.13; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 3,4; etc. Aside from its distinction from the cults, there is the obvious fact that Christianity’s historical interest is as much a reflection of its Jewish and biblical beginnings as of its Hellenistic missionary environment. See Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period (Wipf and Stock, 2003): “It is not possible to say that Judaism maintained a straight course through the Hellenistic period…Still less can it be claimed that it was completely permeated by the Hellenistic spirit” (p. 310).
[18] Perhaps the most ambitious if also the most unsuccessful attempt to argue influence by accumulation is the work of Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle (self published by Age of Reason Publications, 2005). An older example of the genre is German controversialist Arthur Drews almost manically disorientated The Christ Myth (Die Christusmyth, 1909; ET 1910), which argued a kind of proto-Nazi paganism based on the theory that the totality of the story of Jesus was drawn from Jewish and Hellenistic cults of the period (see especially pp., 310-315). Drews is significant largely because he created the flashpoints to which many mythicists return again and again, and his conviction that the Christ myth was not an innocent process but a conspiracy perpetrated in the interest of finding support for their beliefs: “As early as the first few centuries of the present era pious Christians searched the Jewish and pagan writers for references to Jesus, convinced that such references ought to be found in them ; they regarded with great concern the undeniable defects of tradition, and, in the interest of their faith, endeavoured to supply the want by more or less astute ‘pious frauds,’ such as the Acts of Pilate, the letter of Jesus to King Abgar Ukkama of Edessa, 1 the letter of Pilate to Tiberius, and similar forgeries.” (Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus [1912], p. 1, McCabe translation). Without any attempt to discuss the criteria for establishing the spuriousness of these sources, he goes on to indict the gospels for perpetrating a fraud.
[19] Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3.4; ET by Alexander Roberts (reprint edition, CreateSpace, 2012)
[20]This basic function is often overlooked; for example, the Pastor’s advice that “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for reproof, correction and training in righteousness” (p??? d?das?a??a?, p??? ??e?µ??, p??? ?pa?????s??, p??? pa?de?a? t?? ?? d??a??s??? (2 Tim. 3.16) suggests a provenance for the letter within a specific heresiological context that did not exist in Paul’s day. On the Pastorals and Marcion, see Hoffmann, Marcion, pp. 231-305.
[21] C.N. Mount, Pauline Christianity: Luke-Acts and the Legacy of Paul (Supplements to Novum Testamentum: Brill, 20001) , esp. p, 23: “The obscurity from which Irenaeus rescued the text of Acts reflects the relative unimportance of Acts in the life of early Christian communities, and prevents ant firm conclusions about precursors to Irenaeus’s use of Acts for scholarly debate about the canon.”
[22] According to Williams, Marcion is accused on numerous occasions of omitting material from Luke’s gospel which does not appear in Luke at all; the most notable example is the accusation that he omits Matthew 5.17, which he charges three times over. Additionally, Marcion’s gospel underwent revision after the death of Marcion himself, though proposed ways of deciding the degree of change have not been persuasive. See Tyson, Defining Struggle, pp. 42-44.
[23] Irenaeus, Adv. Haer, 3.2.1: “But when we refute these people [the heretics] out of the Scriptures, they turn and accuse the very Scriptures, on the ground that they are mistaken or not authoritative or not consistent in their narrative, and they say that the truth cannot be learned from them by persons who do not know the tradition, and that that was not transmitted in writing but by word of mouth.”
[24] See Hoffmann, “The Canonical Historical Jesus,” in Sources of the Jesus Tradition (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2011), pp, 257-265.
[25] A good general study of Irenaeus is Denis Minss, Irenaeus (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994). There is no outstanding scholarly treatment of Irenaeus’ life and thought. See also Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyon (Cambridge, 2005), p. 180: As Osborne mildly understates the case, “If Marcion first propounded a canon of scripture, then Irenaeus’ canon could be seen as a catholic response.”
[26] Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries by Freiherr von Hans Campenhausen [Hans von Campenhausen] (1969), p. 170, regarding Adv.Haer, 3.2.1); D B Reynders, Paradosis, l’idée de tradition jusqu’a saint Irenée, RTA, 5 (1933), 155-191
[27] Especially Irenaeus’ arguments in Adv. Haer. 3.4.
[28] R. J. Hoffmann, “The Canonical Historical Jesus,” in Sources of the Jesus Tradition (2011), pp. 157-165.
[29] Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene (1926), p. 109. Ultimately the discussion is deadlocked between camps representing one of two views: one that claims Paul’s silence is ignorance and should therefore be construed as not knowing historical “information,” a view that Dunn describes, on the basis of what we know about the sociology if new religious movements, as highly implausible; and another view that sees Paul as essentially an interpreter and not a preserver and reciter of data. As the first clear instance of the controversial context through which the Jesus tradition came into existence and was moderated, it is clear that Paul’s position cannot be interpreted as mere ignorance, and unlikely that it stems from the feeling that the history of Jesus is irrelevant.
[30] T. Livi, Ab Urbe Condita, Liber I. 1-11; Latin ed., M. Alford (Macmillan, 1941).
[31]See David L. Dungan, Constantine’s Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2007) and John Clabeaux’s review of Hoffmann, Marcion, Journal of Biblical Literature ( Vol. 105, No. 2, Jun., 1986), 343-346. In fact I do not believe that Marcion’s gospel was UrLukas as that designation is conventionally understood, but a prototype existing within Marcion’s community, compiled by Marcion himself. The association with Luke, arguably based on his fictional devotion to Paul (Col 4.1.4; 2 Tim. 4.1-11) gives us some hint of the process through which the third gospel was domesticated. Millar Burrows’s serviceable discussion of “Special Luke” (9.51-18.14) is still useful for the general description of the material: Jesus in the First Three Gospels (Nashville, 1977). The provenance of this tradition is still a matter for speculation. As a thematic concern, it has often been noted that the special section contains a number of stories emphasizing Jesus’ concern for women and the poor. It is interesting circumstantially that Marcion’s gospel is attacked for emphasizing the benevolence of the “alien” God and the high status of women within the Marcionite churches. On the question of Marcion abbreviating Luke, see the discussion by Andrew Gregory, The Reception of Luke-Acts in the Period before Irenaeus (Tuebingen, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2, 2003), which suffers unfortunately from reliance on the hypothesis of Han Drijvers and Gerhard May.
[32]Livy, 1.4.
[33] (Aug. 95); see the discussion in Paul Burke, “Augustus and Christianity in Myth and Legend, “ New England Classical Journal, 32.3 (2005), 213-220.
[34] Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 116, quoted in E. Komoszewski, James Sawyer, and Dan Wallace, Reinventing Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI.: Kregel Publications, 2006), 313.
[35] On the last of these, see Hugh J. Schonfield, According to the Hebrews (London: Duckworth, 1937); the Toledoth text (primarily from the Stassburg MS) is on pages 35-61 and the still valuable discussion of Joseph Klausner Jesus of Nazareth: His life, times, and teaching (orig. 1922, Engl. transl. 1925, London, George Allen & Unwin) page 51; 1705 Hebrew version at http://lemidrash.free.fr/JudaismeChristianisme/huldreich.pdf; a superb recent discussion is David Biale, “Counter-History and Jewish Polemics Against Christianity: The Sefer toldot yeshu and the Sefer zerubavel,” Jewish Social Studies 6.1 (1999) 130-145 (evaluated from the standpoint of Amos Funkenstein’s concept of the purposes of counter-history.) Some of the Jewish sources are summarized in R. J. Hoffmann, Jesus Outside the Gospels (Amherst, 1987; 1991), pp. 36-53.
[36] This was essentially Goguel’s argument against the myth theorists of his day. On the absence of pagan and Jewish skepticism towards the historicity: “The importance of this fact is considerable, for it was on the morrow of His birth that Christianity was confronted with Jewish opposition. How is it possible to suppose that the first antagonists of the Church could have been ignorant of the fact that the entire story of Jesus, His teaching, and His death corresponded to no reality at all? That it might have been ignored in the Diaspora may be admitted, but it appears impossible at Jerusalem; and if such a thing had been known, how did the opponents of Christianity come to neglect the use of so terrible an argument, or how, supposing they made use of it, does it happen that the Christians succeeded in so completely refuting them that not a trace of the controversy has been preserved by the disputants of the second century?” (Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History, London, 1926, p 72).
[37] See the discussion of these tendencies in the essays edited by James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress; Wipf and Stock, 2006), and my own discussion of the question in “Other Gospels, Heretical Christs,” in Jesus in History and Myth, ed. Hoffmann and Gerald Larue (1986), pp. 143-155.
[38] The conversation since Ernst Käsemann first suggested eschatology as a problematical and defining issue has been largely centered on outcomes and inferences drawn from ideal situations, using Paul’s authentic letters and the synoptics as benchmarks in apocalyptic fervor. See New Testament Questions of Today (London: SCM, 1974) and Perspectives on Paul ( London, SCM, 1969). Several useful appraisals of the outflow of apocalyptic thought, which is especially relevant to the development of the canon, are found in Robert Daly’s edited volume, Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity (Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History; Baker, 2009); and Bengt Holmberg, Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles (1978).
[39] The question of how social memory was structured is a matter of heated debate and is interestingly summarized in R. Rodriguez’s revised Sheffield doctoral dissertation: Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text (Library of New Testament Studies; London: T&T Clark, 2010). The study contends that oral performances installed the Jesus tradition in early Christian collective memory and “became vital parts of the traditional milieus in which Jesus’ earliest followers lived, and that Jesus in early Christian memory provides the thread of continuity that binds oral performances to each other and to the written Gospels.”
[40] Cornelius Nepos, Hannibal 12.5; Juvenal, Satires X.164
[41]Plutarch, Alexander, 3.2.
[42] Livy, 1.16; more elaborately, Plutarch, Numa, 2; Ovid, Fasti 2. 475-532.
[43] Paul Veyne, Les grecs ont-ils cru a leur mythes? (1983) trans. By Paul Wissing as Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Veyne’s conclusion is that the ancients regarded the myths as belonging to a different time scale and did not expect “historicity” from them—a concept he finds alien to the conceptual world they inhabited. As the demarcation between “pagans” and “Christians” and to a certain extent “Jews” is highly artificial with respect to their historical predilections in the first and second century it is notable that early Christian literature appeals to the immediacy of the Christian experience and not to a historically uncertain long ago or “in the beginning”—with the deservedly famous exception of John 1-1-2.
[44] And even after: Howard Zinn has pointed to the use of Columbus’ 1493 description of “Hispanolia” (the Bahamas) as a tissue of lies confected to convince the Spanish court to equip a second voyage. See A People’s History of the United States (Harper, 1980), p. 2, compared to the severe account (ca. 1515) of the treatment of the Indians by Columbus in Las Casas’s History of the Indies.
[45] The most energetic accumulator of “parallels” was the freethinker John M. Robertson (1856-1933) whose Christianity and Mythology (1900) was a model of indiscriminate piecework. It was roundly rejected by F. C. Conybeare, who was a professor of theology, a member of the Oriental Institute at Oxford, and also a member of the Rationalist Press Association (The Historical Christ: or, An investigation of the views of Mr. J. M. Robertson, Dr. A. Drews, and Prof. W. B. Smith, 1914), accusing the mythologists of being “untrained explorers [who] discover on almost every page connections in their subject matter where there are and can be none, and as regularly miss connections where they do exist.” Conybeare’s final position was radically historical and akin to Schweitzer’s: “Thus the entire circle of ideas entertained by Christ and Paul are alien and strange to us to-day, and have lost all actuality and living interest. . . . Jesus Himself is seen to have lived and died for an illusion, which Paul and the apostles shared.” (Myth, Magic and Morals [1909], p. 357)
[46] Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? (Chicago, 1988), pp. 5-27.
[47] Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998), esp. pp, 3-36. Schweitzer’s sober approach to both Jewish and pagan sources for Paul’s mysticism and the contemporary assessment of Bousset, Reitzenstein and Deissmann still sets the standard for a historical typology of Paul’s thought. Less convincing is Schweitzer’s discussion of the Gnostic turn in Paul’s thought, pp. 71-73.
[48] A useful summary of the myth argument concerning Paul is given in P. R. Eddy and Gregory Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus (Baker, 2007), especially chapter 5; the book however suffers from a certain degree of methodological naivete and is best viewed as an apologetic response to the myth theory as an “attack” on traditional Christianity.
[49]Ephesians 2.1-12
[50]Three studies can be mentioned of the thousands that have been published: Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (Yale, 1990)’; *John Ziesler, Pauline Christianity (1983; 1990\2 [1991]); and Jerome Murphy O’Connor Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford, 19966). The opponent controversy was first extensively treated by Dieter Georgi, in 1964 and in The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Nashville, 1986). The classic short study in English is C.K. Barrett, “Paul’s Opponents in 2 Corinthians,” NTS 17 (1971), 233-54; and cf. Stanley Porter, Paul and His Opponents (Leiden, 2009). Schweitzerm Nysticism, pp. 75-99.
[51]Discussed masterfully in James D.G. Dunn’s The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids/New York, 2006), pp. 60-67. The defining study of Paul’s opponents remains The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians: A Study of Religious Propaganda in Late Antiquity (Studies in the New Testament & its World) (London: T&T Clark, 2000; original German, 1964.
[52] Dennis MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Westminster 1983).
[53] “The Epistles of Paul afford then precise testimony in support of the existence of the Gospel tradition before him. They presume a Jesus who lived, acted, taught, whose life was a model for believers, and who died on the cross. True it is that in Paul are only found fragmentary and sporadic indications concerning the life and teachings of Jesus, but this is explained on one hand by the fact that we possess no coherent and complete exposition of the apostle’s preaching, and on the other hand by the character of his interests. He had no special object in proving what no one in his time called in question—namely, that Jesus had existed. His unique aim was to prove (what the Jews refused to admit) that Jesus was the Christ.” (Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene, p, 109). See the recent mythicist arguments of Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle (Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999) or for a typical version of the argument from silence.
[54] Ernest Kasemann, “Die AnfängechristlicherTheologie,” ZThK 57 (1960), pp. 162-85. Published in English in Journal for Theology and Church 6, Robert W. Funk, ed. (New York, 1969), pp. 17-46.
[55]I have argued this extensively in “The Reclamation of Paul: The Orthodox Critique of Marcion’s Paulinism,” in Marcion (1984), pp, 233-280 and “How Then Know This Troublous Teacher?” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6.3 (Oxford: 1987-1988), 173-191. On the dating of Luke Acts: I follow F. C. Baur’s placement of Acts and canonical Luke in the second century. A solid and objective assessment is given in Tyson, “The Date of Acts” (2006, pp. 1-11). The following stages of development seem clear: The prototype of the text, already established, originating in Marcion’s circle as an anonymous composition ca. 100; (b) the intercalation of sayings- traditions (Q), independently of Matthew’s use of the same tradition; (c) a second century “Lukan” redaction, including the dedication, an infancy story, editorial additions (e.g., temple-finding) an expanded resurrection account, and ascension story carried over into a still later composition, the Acts.
[56] Thucydides’ disclaimer concerning the accuracy of the speech he attributed to others, such as Pericles, is apt: “In all cases it is difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions” (History of the Peloponnesian Wars, 1.22.1)
[57] John Fenton and E. A. Livingstone, Controversy in the New Testament.
Studia Biblica, 3 (1980) 97 – 110.
[58]On the divine man concept, see especially Aage Pilgaard, “The Hellenistic Theios aner: A Model for Early Christian Christology” in The New Testament and Hellenistic Judaism, ed. P. Borden (Aarhus, 1995), 101-112.
[59] The phrase “Jesus Christ” occurs only in the jesuine discourse at John 17.3 and at the conclusion of the prologue, John 1.17.
[60] Calvin J. Roetzel “Paul in the Second Century.” The Cambridge Companion to St Paul, ed. James D. G. Dunn (Cambridge University Press, 2003).Cambridge; less satisfactory, M. Bird and J. R. Dodson, eds., Paul and the Second Century (London: T& Clark, 2011).
[61] Van Ranke, Geschichte der romanischen und germanischenVölker von 1494 bis 1514 (History of the Roman and Germanic Peoples from 1494 to 1514, 1824) and Peter Gay and Victor G. Wexler, eds. Historians at Work (1975) vol. 3, pp 27-29.
[62] Theodor Mommsen, A History of Rome (London: Routledge, 1996)
[63] Ranke, “Preface: Histories of the Latin and Germanic Nations from 1494-1514“, in Stern, The Varieties of History (New York: Vintage, 1973), p.57
[64] John S Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Trinity Press, 2000), pp. 3-5. This is not Koppenborg’s best performance but his assay of the reticence of New Testament scholars to take on the task of genre criticism is brief and precise.
[65] Charles Talbert, What is a Gospel? (Atlanta, 1984), provides a general survey of speculation concerning the genre of the gospels; see especially “Compositional Procedure and Attitude in Ancient Biographies,” pp, 124-8.
[66]The Christological discussions within Gustav Aulen’s Christus Victor (1969; rept, Wipf and Stock, 2003) are still instructive. See also Gerald Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus (Oxford, 2009)
[67] The Messianic secret as describe by Wrede and his successors explains only a fraction of the ambiguity generated by Mark’s technique; the idea that it was a theologico-literary device was based largely on an examination of references within the gospel. See also A. Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2001 [rpt. Of 1900 ET]) The Marcionite tradition on the other hand, perhaps driven by Marcion’s adulation of Paul and his conflict with the “twelve,” regarded the apostles as fundamentally ignorant, and explained the injunctions to silence as corrections of a “false witness.”Discussion in Hoffmann, Marcion (1984), pp. 75-83.
[68] The plummeting fortunes of the “messianic secret” since Wrede (1901) as an explanation for the secrecy motif in Mark and the synoptics is reviewed by James L. Blevins, The Messianic Secret in Markan Research, 1901–1976. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981. There is however nothing to be said for the idea that the theme is cognate to the secrets in the mystery cults since the central mimetic action of the gospels, the Lord’s last supper, is regarded as corporate, public and repeatable and no correlation exists or is asserted between the teaching of Jesus and this ritual act. Moreover, the parables are formally pedagogical not esoteric: their meaning is only “hidden” from the blind (unrepentant, unbelievers) who are equated with the wise of the world.
[69] Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology, John Bowden, trans. (London: SCM, 1994). An interesting conservative position is outlined by N. T. Wright, using Bultmann’s view that crucifixion and resurrection were not understood separately in the early community; see “The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Problem,” Sewanee Theological Review 41.2, 1998.
[70] A favorite debating topic in free-thought circles, a typical view is set down in a lecture transcript by Richard Carrier at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html, “Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection,” retrieved 5 May 2012.
[71] An interesting attempt, though finally unsuccessful, to examine the resurrection against the presuppositions of modern critical historiography is Richard R. Niebuhr’s The Resurrection and Historical Reason (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957). The penchant of some mythicizers to re-litigate the resurrection narratives is one of the most trying parts of their agenda. Both biblical scholarship and academic theology has long come to terms with the legendary components of the resurrection tradition; see especially Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, ii,: History and Literature of Early Christianity (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000) p. 64-65 and James D.G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). Besides these careful studies there are a number of attempts to discredit the accounts in the form of counter apologetics: see especially Robert Price, The Empty Tomb (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005).
[72] The suggestion dates from the dispute between D. F. Strauss’s idea that the gospels were composed by the “half conscious mythic tendencies” of naïve religious writers to Bruno Bauer’s more radical view in Christus und die Cäsaren (1877) that “communities do not write literature”; hence Bauer eventually came to believe that the first gospel writer, Mark, invented Jesus as a complete fiction. See on the evolution of his ideas, D. Moggach, The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
[73] R. Joseph Hoffmann, “William Henry Furness and the Transcendentalist Defense of the Gospels,” New England Quarterly, 56 (1983), 238-6
[74]Mircea Eliade, on the phenomenological side explores this level of meaning in Myth and Reality (Waveland, 1998); in anthropology, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth by Walter Burkert and Peter Bing (1986); and in cultural studies, René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, 1987).
[75]Maurice Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Cambridge, 2006).
[76] Clement of Alexandria (ca. 215-6): “the tradition of the old presbyters”, that the Apostle John, the last of the Evangelists, “filled with the Holy Ghost, had written a spiritual Gospel” (Eusebius, HE 6.14.7)
[77]Kyle Keefer, Branches of the Gospel of John: The Reception of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Library Of New Testament Studies: Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2009), drawing largely from Hans Robert Jauss’s theory of Rezeptionsaesthetik.
[78] As Henry Wansbrough says: “Gone are the days when it was scholarly orthodoxy to maintain that John was the least reliable of the gospels historically.” The Four Gospels in Synopsis, The Oxford Bible Commentary, pp. 1012-1013, Oxford University Press 2001; and see Douglas Estes, The Temporal Mechanics of the Fourth Gospel: A Theory of Hermeneutical Relativity in the Gospel of John, BIS 92 (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
[79]Harnack regarded this mutation, which he saw as the genesis of dogma, as the “acute Hellenization of Christianity,” (History of Dogma, vol. 1, trans. Neil Buchanan [Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1902], 48ff.) an opinion that while imperfect as stated expressed the vulnerability of history to increasingly esoteric formulations of the significance and identity of Jesus. Karen King’s discussion of the morphology of Gnosticism is also relevant: “Adolph von Harnack and the Acute Hellenization of Christianity,” in What is Gnosticism? (Harvard, 2005), esp. 55-109.
[80] An example of the usage is Paula Frederiksen’s From Jesus to Christ (Yale, 2000); the model has been taken over almost uncritically from New Testament theology (Martin Kähler, 1900) and the attempt to separate the “Christ of faith” from the “Jesus of history,” is a separation not dictated by the sources but by a theological program arising from critical scholarship. The fundamental flaw is the notion of a linear progression from data to corruption of data. In fact, the traditions from the start were preserved within specific controversial and interpretative contexts reflecting struggles with communities, regional perspectives, ethical and practical conflicts (e.g., marriage and divorce) and social identity. If Gnosticism was the greatest conceptual threat to historical tradition, it does not follow that historical tradition was unmarked by other challenges.
[81]Edward Adams and D.G. Horell, Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the Pauline Church (Westminster, 2004) brings together some of the scholarship of the last fifty years; C. K. Barrett’s 1964 study, Christianity at Corinth, is still useful; and on social demarcations, Gerd Theissen’s pioneering studies gathered in The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Wipf and Stock, 2004), edited by John Schütz, is indispensable.
[82] “Hymn of the Pearl,” from the Acts of Thomas in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., translation by R. McL. Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha : Writings Relating to the Apostles, Apocalypses and Related Subjects (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 322-411. Trans. by R. J Hoffmann, The Secret Gospels: A Harmony of the Apocryphal Jesus Traditions (Amherst, 1996), pp, 191-194.
[83] The Anatolian matrix has not received the attention it deserves; it is surveyed in Marcion, pp, 1-28. Not only Paul comes from the region, but Marcion, Polycarp and Irenaeus (from Polycarp’s hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor, (now Izmir, Turkey) where a variety of non-gnostic dualistic cults thrived.
[84]1 Cor. 15.50: ???t? d? f?µ?, ?de?f??, ?t? s??? ?a? a?µa ßas??e?a? ?e?? ???????µ?sa? ?? d??ata? ??d? ? f???? t?? ?f?a?s?a? ???????µe?.
[85]A credible recent survey is the study by John Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition (SPNT; Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina, 2004), especially as it concerns his critique of Robert Eisenman’s ingenious but unconvincing identification of James with the Qumran teacher of Righteousness. Puzzlingly, Hegesippus (d. 180?) Comm. 5.1, “After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem.” I consider the “James” and “Mary” traditions instances of doublets that were unsatisfactorily resolved by the compilers, both between the gospels and between the letters of Paul and the Book of Acts. (On the multiple-Mary problem, especially see Jesus outside the Gospels, pp. 41-50). It seems clear that apologetic tendencies govern this confusion. The external evidence is unhelpful and unreliable, causing the difficulty of determining which James is in view, as well as the possibility of pseudonymity and redactional stages, rendering any discussion of the name untidy: James the (obscure) father of Judas (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13); James the son of Alphaeus (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18; 15:40 [here called James the Younger]; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13); James the son of Zebedee and brother of John (Matt. 4:21; 10:2; 17:1; Mark 1:19, 29; 3:17; 10:35; 13:3; Luke 9:28; Acts 1:13; 12:2); James the Lord’s brother (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Gal. 1:19; called [?] simply James in Acts: 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; and in 1 Cor. 15:7), mentioned only twice by name in the Gospels (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3). Hegessipus’ conclusions however must be read back into the tradition to secure the identity of James as head of the Jerusalem church as Luke asserts. See also my online comments on the topic, “Faccidents: Bad Assumptions and the Jesus Tomb Debacle,” Butterflies and Wheels 7 March 2007, at http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2007/faccidents-bad-assumptions-and-the-jesus-tomb-debacle/ retrieved 7 May 2012. Since 2007 I have come to see Galatians 1, 18-20 as more problematical. While clearly reflecting a key element in the opponents tradition, it seems that 1.16 is in apposition to 1.18-19 as a list of the hyperlian apostoloi, though Paul does not use the language of 2 Corinthians 11.15//12.11; using instead phrases that imply historical priority (p??? t??? p?? ?µ?? ?p?st?????); for that reason, it is entirely possible that the phrase ton adelphos tou kyriou applied to James in Galatians 1.19 is meant to suggest biological relationship and as a term to distinguish James from the dishonesty (Gal 211-13) of Cephas. Rhetorically, in this section, Paul uses himself and Barnabas as a paradigm of faithful preaching of a gospel to the detriment of Peter, James and John (Gal 2.9), who merely “seem to be pillars”: ????ß?? ?a? ??f?? ?a? ???????, ?? d?????te? st???? e??a? de???? ?d??a? (i.e., of significance). Accordingly, the possibility that Paul is asserting biological relationship between James and “the Lord” in this passage between James and Jesus cannot be ruled out, since he is ridiculing the pretensions of the “reputed pillars,” not affecting to be inclusive.
[86] 1 Cor. 12.27; cf. 1.2; Rom. 12.5.
[87]Acts 1.13-14; Acts 12:17; Acts 15:13–21; Acts 21:17–18; cf Gal 1.18-20; 2.9-10, 12; 15-3-7; 1 Corinthians 9,5): Usually disjunctive as in 12.17, ?pa??e??ate ?a??ß? ?a? t??? ?de?f??? ta?ta. (“Tell these things to James, and to the brothers…”) and at 21.17, adelphoi is inapposite to presbyteroi as being believers of different rank.
[88] Arthur Drews, The Christ Myth, trans. C.D. Burns (London, 1910), pp. 172-174.
[89] Drews gives the source of his assessment the work of Dutch radical theologians, followed by Schlaeger in his “Das Wort kurios (Herr) in Seiner Bezeichnung auf Gott oder Jesus Christus,” Theol. Tijdschrift 33 (1899) 1. According to Schlaeger, cited by Drews, however, all passages including this one “which speak of Jesus as Lord” are interpolated!
[90] Mk 3.31, Matt. 12.46; Lk 8.19; Jn 2.12, 7.3, 5, 10
[91] One mythicist confidently says after missing this simple grammatical point that “Brothers in the Lord” (ton adelphon en kurio) appears in Philippians 1:14 (the NEB translates it ‘our fellow-Christians’). Surely this is the clue to the meaning of the phrase applied to James.” Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle website http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/rfset3.htm (retrieved 10 May 2012)
[92] I do not believe that Paul’s “cosmic” view of salvation presupposes any specific knowledge of the birth or life of Jesus; however, it is unwarranted to deprive Paul of those passages where a historic tradition may be implied based on the prior assumption that he did not now any! Gal 4.4; 1 Cor. 11.23-26; 1 Thess. 4.15 etc. The agreed conclusion that Paul did not write everything attributed to him does not translate into the principle that everything attributed to Paul was written by someone else.
[93]Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.4; see Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, p. 38.
[94] Cf. 2 Cor. 11-12; Considerable work has been done on the question by S. J. Porter,detailed in Identifying Paul’s Opponents, The Question of Method in 2 Corinthians (JSNT Supp, 40; Sheffield, 1990), 15-67 and Paul and His Opponents (Leiden: Brill, 2005). See my “The Pauline Background of Marcion’s Reform,” in Marcion (1984), esp. pp. 75-97.
[95] But see John 8:37-39; 44-47
[96] The legend of the ascension appears in the two Lukan compositions and as an addition to Mark (16.19). It is formally a legendary accretion, an apotheosis. It does not reflect a prevenient myth in the way, for example, that John’s prologue does. See on the topic generally Arthur E. R. Boak, “The Theoretical Basis of the Deification of Rulers in Antiquity”, in Classical Journal, 11 ( 1916), pp. 293–297. It is interesting that since earliest times the ascension has been formally less compelling even as a matter of devotion than the core legend, that of the resurrection, suggesting that belief in the former was neither as widespread nor as devotionally central to the communities, and may have been entirely lacking in many regions. The church tradition of The “Golden Legend” linked the ascension, even in terms of chronology (forty days according to Luke) to resurrection as a “certification.”
[97] The relevance of the Jewish apocalypses for the study of the gospels, especially Mark 13 and Matthew 24, has been settled for over a century; the classic study remains F C Burkitt’s 1913 Schweich Lectures, Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (London: British Academy, 1913).
[98] On the historical background of the arraignment and trial, see Gary Greenburg, The Judas Brief: Who Really Killed Jesus (Continuum, 2007), pp. 168-179.
[99]Generally speaking, as anthropologists and students of religion came to take a more impartial view of the world, it was recognized that certain Christian stories shared many of the features of myth, and could be called myths as long as the idea that a myth was necessarily false was shed. This is the point d’appui for Bultmann’s program of demythologizing. While a myth gives a religious explanation for “how things began” or “why they are as they are,” a legend is a story which may or may not be an elaborated version of an historical event, but is told as if it were a historical event, usually without allegorical or symbolic intent. See Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903; rpt. University of Toronto Press, 2011).
[100] Raymond Brown, for example: “Mark 5:1, 13 betrays confusion about the distance of Gerasa from the sea of Galilee Mark. 7:31 describes a journey from Tyre through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the midst of the Decapolis. In fact one goes SE from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee; Sidon is north of Tyre, and the description of the Sea of Galilee in the midst of the Decapolis is awkward. That a boat headed for Bethsaida (NE side of the Sea of Galilee) arrives at Gennesaret (NW side: 6:45,53) may also signal confusion. No one has been able to locate the Dalmanutha of 8:10, and it may be a corruption of Magdala,” Christ in the Gospels (Liturgical Press, 2008), p. 369)
[101] See Michael Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation, (Psychology Press, 1995), commenting that the ancient historians not only made mistakes but “rather too many of them. … Individual elements of the tradition were conflated, modified and sometimes invented.” (p. 83).
Jonas Grethlein, Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge [scheduled],2012), on the use of the plupast as an historical technique; A.H. Merrils, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series, 2005) on the use of classical description and authority; E T Merrill, “On certain ancient errors in geographical orientations,” Classical Journal (1966), 88-101.
[102] The view that myth serves a religious purpose has been challenged by a number of scholars; the most pertinent orientation for exploration of the use of myth comes from writers such as Alan Dundes; see “Binary Opposition in Myth: The Propp/Levi-Strauss Debate in Retrospect,” Western Folklore 56 (Winter, 1997), 39–50; for the concept as employed by phenomenologists and religionists, M. Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader, ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty, vol. 2. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) and Myth and Reality, trans. Willard R. Trask (NY: Harper & Row, 1968); also see G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures. Berkeley: Cambridge UP, 1973, which makes the contemporary case that the category of myth extends beyond religion and sacred story.
[103] See my introduction to The Secret Gospels (1996), pp. 4-28. Harnack wrote in 1900, “Sixty years ago David Friederich Strauss thought that he had destroyed the historical credibility not only of the fourth gospel but of the first three as well. The historical criticism of two generations has succeeded in restoring that credibility in its main outlines… What especially marks them off from all subsequent literature is the way in which they state their facts. This species of literary art, which took shape partly by analogy with the didactic narratives of the Jews and partly from catechetical necessities—this simple and impressive form of exposition was even a few decades later no longer capable of exact reproduction….When all is said and done, the Greek language lies upon these writings like a diaphanous veil and it requires hardly any effort to retranslate their contents into Hebrew or Aramaic. That the tradition here presented to us is in the main first hand is obvious.” (What is Christianity? (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, rpt. ed, of the original English translation by T.N. Saunders, 1957), pp 20-21.
[104]Michael Bird and Joseph Dodson, eds., Paul and the Second century (London: T&T Clark, 2011); on the usefulness of apocryphal compositions such as the Acts of Paul, see especially Andrew Gregory’s essay, pp. 169-188. On the other hand, a disappointing contribution from Todd Still, “Shadow and Light, Marcion’s (Mis)construal of the Apostle Paul,” shows none of the historiographical sophistication needed to cope with the patristic evidence.
[105]In general the comments of James D.G. Dunn distinguishing pseudonymity as a literary tradition with closer resemblance to classical imitation than to forgery are useful: See The Living Word (Philadelphia, 2009), pp. 53-56.
[106] References to “Jewish myths” (Titus 1:14), “myths and endless genealogies” (1 Tim 1:4, see 4:7), “what is falsely called knowledge” (1 Tim 6:20), the necessity of ascetic practices (1 Tim 4:3) and the denial of the resurrection (2 Tim 2:18) are interpreted in light of second-century Gnostic beliefs and as evidence of it.
[107] Polycarp, Phil. 7.1; cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.3.4
[108] On the origin of heresy, see Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 2.14.1 and Tertullian, Praescrptio, 7; 29-31.
[109] “The mighty Word and true Man reasonably redeeming us by His blood, gave Himself a ransom for those who had been brought into bondage. And since the Apostasy unjustly ruled over us, and, whereas we belonged by nature to God Almighty, alienated us against nature and made us his own disciples, the Word of God, being mighty in all things, and failing not in His justice, dealt justly even with the Apostasy itself, buying back from it the things which were His own” (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.1.1)
[110] Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (Boston” Beacon, 2001), pp. 189-199.
[111]“The Gnostic Gospels According to Pagels,” America, 16 Feb. 1980, 123.)
[112]Part of the confusion was propagated because of the belief that Marcion’s liberal church policies, castigated by Tertullian, were “Gnostic in character and that these policies therefore were typical of the heretical communities in general; see my critique, “De Statu Feminarum: The Correlation Between Gnostic Theory and Social Practice,” Église et Théologie 14 (1983), 293-304; and ‘The “Eucharist” of Markus Magus: A Test-Case in Gnostic Social Theory,” Patristic and Byzantine Review 3 (1984) 82-88; Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (Vintage, 1989), pp, 2-18. This popular introduction performed the useful service of alerting ordinary readers to the existence of the Gnostic sources from Nag Hammadi. In retrospect, however, the claims made on behalf of the gospels were extreme, especially as regards the “probative” value of Gnostic Thomas (GnTh) for “Q” See Maurice Casey, An Aramaic Approach to Q (Cambridge, 2005), p. 33. In her discussions, moreover, Pagels seemed to regard the nascent orthodoxy of Irenaeus as an episcopal prerogative exercised against beleaguered and misunderstood heretics, which is at best a liberal description of the conflict between aggressive mythicizers and defenders of historical tradition. See “One God One Bishop,” pp, 28-47. Also, H. Koester, and Thomas Lambdin (translators), (1996). “The Gospel of Thomas” in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Revised ed.) (Leiden, New York, Cologne: E. J. Brill 1996), p. 125; Hoffmann, Jesus Outside the Gospels (New York: Prometheus, 1987), p, 86-88.
[113] Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.11.1; 3.3.4
[114]It is notable that Eusebius, in spite of his desire to discredit Papias, still places him as early as the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117). See W. Schoedel, Anchor-Yale Bible, vol, 5 (Doubleday-Anchor, 1992), 140-143.
[115]1 Tim. 1.4
[116] John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library, 1991-2001, volume 3 (2001). The studies of the social matrix of radical opposition to Roman rule and such topics as banditry and religious radicalism are numerous; see among others J. Massyngbaerde Ford, My Enemy Is My Guest: Jesus and Violence in Luke (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1984); Walter Grundmann, “Kakos, akakos, kakia, … .” TDNT 3:469–487; E J Hobsbawm, Bandits (New York: Dell, 1969) and Primitive Rebels (New York: Norton, 1965); William Horbury, “Ancient Jewish Banditry and the Revolt Against Rome, AD 66–70,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 43 (1981), 409–432 and “Bandits, Messiahs and Longshoremen: Popular Unrest in Galilee Around the Time of Jesus.” Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism. Edited by J. Neusner. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 1988, 50–68; “Christ as Brigand in Anti–Christian Polemic.” Jesus and the Politics of His Day, ed. by Ernst Bammel and C.F.D. Moule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 183–196;“The Zealots: Their Origin, Relationships and Importance in the Jewish Revolt.” Novum Testamentum 28, no. 2 (1986): 159–192; William Horbury, and John S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus (New York: Winston Press, 1985); Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
[117] The difficulty of establishing an archaeological record for “Nazareth” has been noted since the time of Guignebert (Jesus, 1933/ET 1956, p. 76f.).
[118] Shawn Carruth, James M. Robinson,“Q 4:1-13,16: The Temptations of Jesus : Nazara,” ed. Chris Heil (Peeters Publishers, 1966), p. 415.
[119] Y. Alexandre, “Archaeological Excavations at Mary’s Well, Nazareth,” Israel Antiquities Authority bulletin, May 1, 2006
[120] The Archaeology of the New Testament, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1992: pages 44-46. Attempts of controversialists like Rene Salm to suggest that Nazareth was not an occupied location in the time of Jesus have now been persuasively discredited by recent excavations of Israeli archaeologists led by Yardena Alexandre. The dwellings and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. See further, Ken Dark, “Review of The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus“, STRATA: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, vol. 26 (2008), pp. 140–146; cf. Stephen J. Pfann & Yehudah Rapuano, “On the Nazareth Village Farm Report: A Reply to Salm”, STRATA: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, vol. 26 (2008), pp. 105–112.
[121] ?a?a???e (“Nazarene”) and its variants are at Mk. 1:24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6; Lk 4:34 and 24:19. ?a???a??c (“Nazoraean”) and its permutations are at Mt 2:23; 26:71; Lk 18:37; Jn 18:5, 7; 19:19; and six times in the Acts of the Apostles. “Q certainly contained reference to Nazara,” cited in J. M. Robinson et al, The Critical Edition of Q. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000), pp. 42-43; F. C. Burkitt, “The Syriac forms of New Testament names,” in Proceedings of the British Academy, (Oxford, 1911), p. 392.
[122] See Thedor Mommsen’s edition, Res gestae Divi Augusti ex monumentis Ancyrano et Apolloniensi. Berlin: Weidmann, 1865)
[123] W.K.C. Guthrie’s survey History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 74-77. The scene is properly a foundation myth for Plato’s academic cult and functions in approximately the same way as the crucifixion scenario in the gospels; see J. Barret “Plato’s Apology: Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the World of Myth,” The Classical World, 95:1 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 3-30
[124] See my discussion in the reprint of K. Jaspers and R. Bultmann, Myth and Christianity: An Inquiry into the Possibility of Religion without Myth (Amherst, 2005), 9-22, which also provides a summary of major trajectories in the myth theory.
[125] A still fascinating look at the early twentieth century reaction to mythicism is Maurice Goguel’s essay, “Recent French Discussion of the Historical Existence of Jesus Christ,” Harvard Theological Review, 19.2 (1926), 115-142.
[126] Carlo Ginzberg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures; Brandeis, 1999), pp. 54-71.
[127]The image is Harnack’s favourite: What is Christianity? (rpt of 1901 edition; Martino, 2011), pp. 12, 15, 55, 179, 217.
[128]See the discussion by W. Wildmann, Boston University Collaborative Encyclopedia, “Alfred Losiy and Adolph von Harnack” http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/loisy.htm retrieved 15 April 2012.
[129] Tertullian de carne Christi (Trans. Evans, Oxford, 1956), 9.39.
[130] Hermann Detering, The Falsified Paul, Early Christianity in the Twilight (Journal of Higher Criticism, 2003); and see J. Murphy O’Connor, Paul, A Critical Life (Clarendon, 1996).
[131] “Book Editing: Killing Characters With Mark Twain’s Deadly Well”(12 January 2102); http://www.deborahteramischristian.com/writing/mark-twain-editing-books/ retrieved 5 May 2012.
[132] I do not deal in this essay with the conundrum of multiple Jameses and the redactional gymnastics that have brought them into existence. Dealing only with Paul’s letter to Galatia, it is my view that the James referred to in Galatians 1.18 and the brother referred to in Mark 6.3 represent the earliest strand in the literary tradition. The allusion in 1 Corinthians 15.7 (cf. 5) is a doublet, perhaps representing two different versions of the letter, or two different resurrection traditions, one associated with Peter and the twelve, the other attached to James and the apostles.
[133] See my extensive discussion in Marcion, 101-133,
[134] See note 2, above.
[135] See J. K Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford 2005) and introduction to The Secret Gospels, ed. R. J. Hoffmann (Amherst, 1996).
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Published: May 22, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Biblical studies : early Christianity : historical jesus : incompetence : internet scholars : Jesus myth : myth theory : mythicism : New Testament ..
64 Responses to “The Jesus Process: A Consultation on the Historical Jesus”
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THE JESUS PROCESS (c) « The New Oxonian says:
May 22, 2012 at 7:32 am
[...] R. Joseph Hoffmann, “Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus” [...]
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The Jesus Process on The New Oxonian | Ge??aµµ??a says:
May 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm
[...] R. Joseph Hoffmann, “Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus.” [...]
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Antonio Jerez
May 22, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Excellent essay, Joseph! Yes, the mythicists still have a lot of explaining to do as to why the traditions in the canonical gospels didn´t fly around wildly. And Goguels´s argument against the mythicists of his day is just as valid against modern charlatans like Carrier.
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chazpres
May 22, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Wow! This is really outstanding. Thoughtful, well written and attested. Thank you.
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neodecaussade
May 22, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Reblogged this on Neodecaussade’s Weblog and commented:
Happy to pass along this information.
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alnitak
May 23, 2012 at 12:25 am
I must say that this essay is a pleasant contrast to the other two essays; by all means let us reason together about the issue, rather than casting aspersion on those who disagree-and that goes for everyone involved.
It does seem difficult to create the Jesus of theology from the record described here. To say that an “ordinary” prophet passed through Galilee and died in Jerusalem hardly seems like the story that the church put forward about the very son of the very god. If this is the Jesus who existed, is he enough to fill the role of the Jesus expected by the Christian churches?
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rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 9:34 am
@Jim: But Jim I think we need to distinguish what the church writers did with the gospels and the gospels; the mythicizers actually are the first to fail in making this distinction by bundling later doctrine together with earliest story.
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Grog
May 24, 2012 at 1:56 am
What is “earliest story”?
rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 7:26 am
It is a phrase. You can call it kerygma if you want. I don’t much like the term. Do you need kerygma defined or can you work it out in relation to the phrase?
Blood
May 23, 2012 at 12:43 am
Dr. Hoffmann, thank you for this well reasoned piece. I did disagree with this part: “For the most part, the gospels (unlike the Book of Genesis) fail as myth because they fail to explain anything.” It seems to me that the gospel myth was conceived as a method of trying to explain or justify why Gentiles were using Hebrew Scriptures sans Jewish authority. It unfolded against a backdrop of generations of Greek-speaking Gentiles embracing monotheism and using the Septuagint, in churches that probably included ex-converts and ex-God-fearers leading the ekklesia. The gospels are preoccupied with dehumanizing Jews, whose leaders’ main function in the story is plotting to kill “The Son of God” from a very young age. Mark is certainly a Gentile writer with an axe to grind, as I suspect are all of the other gospel writers as well, including the supposedly Jewish Matthew. So while Jesus may have been a historical figure, I have no faith that the evangelists had any interest in preserving authentic traditions that might have existed about him. Rather, they seem to have exploited them for purposes completely antithetical to what a Galilean apocalypticist said or stood for, namely, a Jewish religion without any ethnic Jews.
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Ben Schuldt
May 23, 2012 at 2:34 am
Subscribing.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Ethical Society? Responsible public debate. I think that’s quite ironic don’t you? And hypocritical too, when you have accused the author repeatedly of being a “fucking liar” on Carrier’s posts. Do you ever look in the moirror? I’m sure you do Benzie….
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Manoj Joseph
May 23, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Hoffmann says:
“Book I of Livy’s History[30] does not prove the story of Romulus, or
the ruse used against the Sabines, even though he believes it to be
factually solid; yet no one doubts the existence of Rome or Augustus,”
…
If the very existence of ancient Rome or Augustus is known to us
through “Book I of Livy’s History” and very little else, then the
comparison with the historical Jesus scenario might have been apt. But
that isn’t the case, is it?
Perhaps a better comparison would have been to say “Book I of Livy’s
History[30] does not prove the story of Romulus even though he
believes it to be factually solid; yet no one doubts the existence of
Romulus.” Oh wait, that doesn’t sound right!
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rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 5:30 pm
No: I said what I meant: Livy’s credulity is typical of much ancient history writing. I think I know what you were going for but your sentence doesn’t get you there.
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Samuel
May 24, 2012 at 1:46 am
Absolutely amazing. Thank you for writing this Mr.Hoffmann
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Ananda
May 24, 2012 at 9:14 am
Greetings Joseph,
How is your historical Jesus similar and different from Bart’s?
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rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 9:25 am
Ehrman’s book is for popular consumption. I’ll eventually review it in N.O.; but it should be clear from my not even alluding to it that the Jesus Process is not about Bart Ehrman. But to tantalize you: we would not see eye to eye either about how one can derive the evidence for HJ nor about what, of substance, we can know about him.
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brettongarcia
May 26, 2012 at 11:16 am
Hoffmann:
Do you feel that your essay goes beyond mere erudite speculation, to finally describe the exact facts of the case?
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rjosephhoffmann
May 26, 2012 at 12:01 pm
@ Garcia: Garcia: If I knew what “the exact facts of the case were” speculation erudite or other would not be needed.
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Brettongarcia
May 26, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Isn’t there a kind of logical circularity in arguing (in spite of occasional objections and caveats) that the “Jesus” of the Bible, more or less, is true – while allowing/ primarily presenting only Bible quotes, as the only acceptable evidence for or against this? (While at times ignoring “external” scientific evidence against miracles, and so forth?).
Isn’t a “Biblical” approach to historical Jesus, really begging the question? Which is … does the Bible itself (and its view of God) have any validity?
If there is no Jesus, then the Bible that presents Him, has no validity in an argument for or against him. Or if the Bible itself is largely unreliable, then citing it as evidence for much anything at all, seems like a flawed methodology.
So that? The real argument should be: is the Bible absolutely true, or not? And if not? Then why continue to use it as your primary source for evidence for or against Jesus?
This is no doubt one of the reasons that Historians like Carrier, would like to develop a still more critical approach to the Bible itself; including a probabilistic approach to it, and to religious assertions in general. While finally stressing other authorities entirely, than the Bible.
Of course, I’m aware of several possible standard Historicist responses to this objection. That say, PARTS of the Bible might seem to correlate to History; so that at last a part of Jesus can be said to be “historical.” But considering the masses of evidence of inconsistency, textual invention and alteration and simple fraud in so much of the Bible, isn’t the Biblical approach to Jesus, inevitably fated? Doesn’t it rest far too much, on quoting a highly unreliable source?
So that? If Mythicists are lacking some scholarly knowledge of the Bible itself? That in itself, would not be such a serious flaw, as more traditional bibliocentric or religious scholars might think. Perhaps they have other, more relevant knowledge; of mythic systems in general, for instance. Or a fuller knowledge say, of statistics, and so forth.
To ignore other relevant fields of study, and to insist that the battle must be fought entirely on the traditional turf of Biblical criticism and belief – by way of primarily, Biblical quotes – is finally, circular. And is logically a form of begging the question.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 10:44 am
@Garcia: “That say, PARTS of the Bible might seem to correlate to History…” This is the central fallible issue with your argument: Do you mean that some things in the Bible happened and some things in the Bible didn’t and others didn’t happen as described–and the things that didn’t nullify the whole? Is this not the same thing as reifying history as the domain of objective fact, and then expecting the Bible to “correlate to it”–as one domain to another. The reason it cannot work that way is that the “domain” we call history (if you use a standard definition of that domain to mean What really happened in the past?) is constructed from all kinds of pieces; in the case of ancient Near Eastern history, for example, is partly constructed from the Bible and partly from what is learned outside it from other sources, e.g, the story of the Exodus gives us one view of the Hebrew experience in Egypt, the 3rd century BCE writer Manetho gives us a very different view. Neither source is perfectly “reliable” in the way sources of later periods might b—e..g, if the “plagues” or the Exodus hd been recorded by Pathe films. To use a slightly later example: Some people who called themselves or were called son of God in antiquity were historical figures, and some weren’t: What form of the “title” is being applied to Jesus? What permits us to say so? Neither the mythicist nor the fundamentalist Xn position adequately accounts for the complexity of the task of interpreting a positive welter of complex information–and slapping probability on the unsorted mess, working from premises that range–as far as I can judge– from feeble to absurd, is not the way to do business. Let me change your last sentence: So that? If young earth theorists are lacking some scholarly knowledge of geology… That in itself, would not be such a serious flaw, …Perhaps they have other, more relevant knowledge in general, for instance. Or a fuller knowledge say, of statistics, and so forth…” I know it is difficult for you to accept that not anyone with half a brain can do the kind of technical history I am talking about, but day by day and comment by comment the mythicists lining up on the Jesus-denial side of this discussion are proving their incompetence–even to accept minor correction. I said in my own article that mythicism is not a scholarly position worth taking seriously any longer but a dogma in search of footnotes. One final comment: Do you really think that Biblical scholars don’t know the “myths” you claim other have more knowledge of? For the most part, it was early 19th century bibclal scholars and archaeologists who discovered them!
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brettongarcia
May 27, 2012 at 12:48 pm
It is true that there are many different perspectives on “reality,” including especially historical reality: 1) the Bible, the 2) Greek and Roman writings, the 3) findings of Science, 4) the perspectives of secular History, all offer useful information here, But if so, then why favor the Bible itself, so heavily? Suppose we try to keep ALL the major perspectives on ancient reality open; to see if the different perspectives correspond at any points, and in effect triangulate certain items.
Keeping this interdisciplinary method in mind, suppose we recall especially the great accomplishments/fruitfulness of, say, science. And say favor the fingings of science, against say, the Biblical assertion of miracles. Or suppose we consider secular History as another perspective. In that case, using these two perspectives, it seems to many that a major portion of the Bible – its promises of miracles – collapses.
If major portions of the Bible begin to collapse, does that mean we should entirely abandon the Bible as a useful perspective on the past, and on the nature of say, Jesus? It does suggest at the very, very least, that we should not regard the “authority” of the Bible as being sufficiently great, to generally, outweigh other perspectives on History.
Does the Bible still have SOME value in determining the nature of the past? Yes it has some. But? Other perspectives have proved to be so good – like Science – that increasingly, many feel that internally-situated studies of Christianity, the Bible, should no longer be the very centre of historical studies, even regarding the early days of Christianity itself.
To be sure? To the extent that the BIblical documents retain any value at all … we should thank specialists who know a great deal about it. At the same time however? If nonbelievers treat this document more and more casually – or even bypass it entirely? Possibly we should not be so impatient with that. Since many other disciplinary perspectives are equally – and even more – valuable.
Am I consistent in this? Would I forgive a young-earth advocate, for refusing to look at Geology? No I would not … because he has neglected a very major criterion; the criterion of the full spectrum of what the sciences say.
Am I privileging Science? I am favoring it … because it has been so so successful. Or “fruitful” in Biblical terms. (So that, oddly enough, the scientific approach is, in its way, Biblical; by their “fruits,” it judges the prophets).
To be sure? Study situated within the Bible itself, and immediate environs, retains some value. Of particular interest to me for example, is the matter of the various names of God/Christ, the “lord.” Likely, the term did not necessarily connote godhood, though other times it did. And? Admittedly, mythicists should be more receptive here, to correction by specialists in this area. But also … vice versa.
My own view is that the Historical Jesus might have existed, as according to one of the more minimal models, as a rather nonsupernatural man. But in any case, certainly the “Jesus” of most churches, and perhaps even the Historical Jesus, was formed by, “written” by, programmed by, the prevailing cultural beliefs. Which included many Greco-Roman cultural opinions … or myths. So that ironically? I suggest that even a “real” Humanistic Jesus, would have had his mind, teachings, formed by … local myths.
So that even if he “really” historically existed? Jesus would still be essentially, a walking, talking … myth. That is, he would be phsyically real … but his ideas would be composed of cultural beliefs, or myths. So that therefore? Just as useful as traditional Bible-centered studies, would be …. Comparative Mythology.
To be sure, traditional studies centered on the Bible itself retain some value. And it is regretable, when Mythicists attempt to use some of that material … but don’t get it right. Though? Mythicists are perhaps suspicious of too much use of Biblical material; worried that perhaps those who rely so much on it, are after all not entirely objective. But are retaining some emotional attachment to the old beliefs. While remaining resistant to … really objective research. Culling their countless “facts,” in such a way as to serve their opinions, rather than vice-versa.
Both sides in the Mythicist/Historicist argument are probably guilty of some oversights to be sure. And so? Possibly rather than just publically reviling one side or the other? We should humbly and sympathetically offer whatever additional information and clarification we can. To help resolve our fuzzy images of this remote historical era. And even the image of Jesus.
Some scholars like Dr. Woodbridge Goodman argue in fact, that the new “appearance” (“parousia,” etc.) of Christ, that is cumulatively offered by assembling all the work of serious scholars of every relevant discipline, is arguably the foretold “second appearance” of Christ. Goodman argues that this is perahps the fuller and more accurate view, the “full”er “appearance” of “Christ,” that finally leads us to a better kingdom after all. Though the Jesus we finally see, by triangulating the different disciplines, may be more human, less supernatural, than many thought.
Feel free to offer corrections…. Since all scholars of all disciplines – including Historicist studies and Mythology too – offer another piece of the larger elephant; and help realize the “full”er outline of Christ, after all. Humble, human, as it might be.
Hope I am not talking past too many of your own useful statements? I’ve tried to address a least a half dozen or so….
brettongarcia
May 27, 2012 at 3:06 am
Simply put, in the language of Logic: if there is no Jesus, then the Bible is false. Therefore? Logically, quotes from the Bible should not be allowed to have any force, in any inquiry into the question of whether Jesus exists.
In more complicated language? The New Testament and the assertion of the existence of Jesus, are inextricably linked. The New Testament is the chief (and almost only) early document that says that Jesus exists; and the assertion of the existence of Jesus is its main point. We only think Jesus exists, because the Bible says so. So? If we are questioning whether Jesus exists, we are also questioning, in effect, the verity of the New Testament itself. And vice-versa: if we question the validity of the Bible, then we question the existence of Jesus, at the same time.
The existence of Jesus, and the question of the validity of the Bible, are inextricably interrelated, interdependent hypotheses. If one is overall, mostly false, then the other is mostly false as well.
Therefore? Quotes, evidence from the Bible, should have little bearing in any discussion on the question of the historical existence of Jesus. Such quotes are highly prejudicial. Taking them as authoritative commits the basic Logic error, of “begging the question”: taking the Bible as authoritative assumes the very question, that needs to be proved.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 4:07 am
@Garcia: A total solipsism. In logic, propositions are true or false, not Bibles. I have liked some of what you have said here but this is web of confusion and false assumptions, beginning with sentence one and moving on to “The New Testament and the assertion of the existence of Jesus, are inextricably linked.” The NT does not assert Jesus exists. It asserts that Jesus is the son of God. “Sons of god” as we all know don’t need to exist historically, though we’re pretty sure Augustus did and he was proclaimed one even on his coins. (I can send you a picture if you like or you can see one here: http://ejc-nexus.net/AMBS-Handouts/Jn1.1-18-SonofGodandAncientCoins.pdf ) You can frame the entirety of what follows in your solipsism by saying if sons of God do not exist, then Jesus did not exist either and as the Bible has something to say about that (actually only a very small part does) it is false. You them proceed to chase your tail by asking why we would use a source demonstrated to be false to prove the existence of Jesus. Is that about it? That is as far as a solipsism can take you in this and that is the simplest formulation of what you say here.
Your last sentence is the most tendentious and reveals perhaps too much of your skewed thinking on the topic: (a) “Therefore? Quotes, evidence from the Bible, should have little bearing in any discussion on the question of the historical existence of Jesus.” and (b) “Taking them as authoritative commits the basic Logic error, of ‘begging the question’: taking the Bible as authoritative assumes the very question, that needs to be proved.” But what do you mean by “authoritative,” –inspired”? Useless as evidence? Why, since we know many things both true and false including a sizeable chunk of ancient Near Eastern history from it. If Abraham is “false” on your calculation is no part of the Hebrew Bible “true” because the books are not “authoritative.” No scholar I have lunch with takes them that way. It is a mark of naivete bordering on the absurd that so many mythtic fans and Jesus-deniers seem honestly to believe that they need to educate biblical historians on the integrity of historical inquiry; colloquially put “We’re good.” But your QED (b)doesn’t even flow logically from (a) since without the evidence you disclaim as having a bearing on the case is the only evidence that can settle it. If I were a praying man, I would pray for you to catch your tail so that at least you would ave something to cling to.
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brettongarcia
May 27, 2012 at 6:30 am
Thank you for your positive remarks on some of my prior comments. But I’d like to stick to my defense of Mythicism, over and above say, specifically, HJ, or Historical Jesus studies. To be sure, I’m familiar with the methodology of this subfield of study, and see good reasons for some of its methods; sticking mainly to the Bible itself as the major object of study, seems necessary, given the lack of any other external early evidence for the existence of either a godlike, or manlike/Humanitistic or historical, Jesus. But to be sure, Historical Jesus studies are not quite an entire, permanently secure field, but are rather a tiny and somewhat new subfield of study (within say History? Or Religious Studies?). And as a relatively new and small subfield, many of us feel that it often becomes a bit provincial. And locked into its own varieties of solipcism, or circularity.
I am aware that many scholars in this field are not necessarily “believers.” But at the same time, many entered the field of religious study originally became of an emotional attachment to it/belief. And many retain some of the old habits of believers. Including a kind of formal, logical circularily found in believers for example. That for example, they believe that the Bible is true – because it said it is true. But that common belief, is circular: if the Bible was not true, then we should not believe its assertion of accuracy. It is rather like asking a liar, if he is lying, and then simply believing the answer. Never mind that of course, a liar will usually lie about … lying. These things can be spotted by Formal Logic.
So there is a kind of solipcistic circularity, I believe, not in my own thought, as much as in the field of religion: in believing in the authority of the Bible, just because it tells us it is an authority. And though, to be sure, many more critical readers, scholars, have perhaps gone beyond that? At times I feel that the mere fact that they continue to focus mainly on the Bible itself, as their main source? Even on a now more critical view of it? They still, ironically, share some of the old circularity. They are still focused, rather too narrowly (and sometimes almost exlusively) on an overwhelmingly unreliable document. And still believing they can get at least some good historical information out of it. Enough to confirm at least, say, a Jesus who was merely or at least a man, probably Jewish, and not necessarily godlike: an “Historical Jesus.” But perhaps even this vestigal confidence in the old document, is too much; mythicists therefore suggest seeing Jesus more in the larger cultural context of general history/classicism/ Platonistic idealism, and especially the history of mythic beliefs.
On random related questions: does the Bible “assert” the physical existence and reality of Jesus? At times it seems to, in its assertion of the “flesh” of Jesus. While it seems to elsewhere, if not assert it, assume it. Scenes which picture Jesus as a physical person, walking and talking, seem to clearly assume that. But is even that very modest assumption reliable?
Is the Bible an absolute “authority” for serious scholars? Probably not. But the Mythicist point would be that it is still, even among many critical scholars, taken far too seriously and exclusively.
Is the Bible ENTIRELY useless as a source of historical information? Of course it is not entirely, absolutely useless. But? Most critical scholars like yourself well know that huge masses of material in it, are probably useless. So that finally, many of us outside the subfield, feel that the field might benefit, from giving up a bit of its obsession with the Bible itself as its primary source.
Can persons from outside a given field of specialization, offer anything helpful to those inside of it? In fact, this often happens: findings in the field of biology, greatly helped other fields, like Anthropology, and Psychology, for example. As we know in Interdisciplinary Studies.
And in fact, as you yourself well know, more often than not.
Probably mythicists are just asking here for a shift of emphasis; from the Biblical text “itself,” to far more, say, the Anthropology of myth systems. And if their own methodology has its own limitations? Still, what it does know and see, should offer some valuable input into the larger, bigger picture.
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 11:11 am
BGarcia’s caricature of scholarship is a muddled and spiralling projection of wilfully irrelevant assumptions. Biblical scholarship does not ignore relevant fields of study. Methodology and application are discussed and debated carefully and interdisciplinary approaches (anthropological, sociological, archaeological, historical) incorporated in order to make progress in research and historical enquiry.
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Eh?!!! You’ve just made all this up.
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 4:04 pm
My ‘what on earth’ comment was directed at BG. Reflecting on Joe’s wisdom I reckon BG has been to a ‘Summer Bible Camp’.
steph
May 29, 2012 at 7:11 pm
Speaking of hats on previous thread, there is another expression. I think it refers to one talking through his hat.
brettongarcia
May 30, 2012 at 2:48 am
Steph:
I agree that there are many good interdisciplinary efforts out there, in religious study, that are now helping us to more accurately assess even say, 1st century Christianity. The application by Dr. Carrier, of Bayes’ theory of probability, might be one of them. But? The very resistence to Bayes, here, is one example that shows that such interdisciplinary efforts are still resisted in many conservative circles, within religious studies.
In the field of religious studies, there is still in fact an obstinate core of conservatism and neo-fundamentalism. One that wants to say, to “prove,” that Jesus was really, literally, physically real, at least to one degree or another. But to get to this sought-for conclusion, our new literalists, our new fundamentalists, the Historical Jesus crowd, committs many methodological sins. First of all, it allows ignoring or writing off huge portions of the Bible (like the writings of Paul, say) – while continuing to defend an increasingly tiny percentage of the text, that seems to partially support traditional religion.
Part of mjy point here, would be: what entitles defenders of Historical Jesus, to write off huge tracts of the Bible. (Like perhaps, the entire OT; then the half of the NT written by Paul, for example; then the parts of the NT picturing miracles, say). And then claim total validity, for their observations of an extremely cherry-picked remainder?
Specifically here: are we really entitled to simply focus just on the very vivid, even lurid, miraculous narratives of the gospels, as “true” … while ignoring all the warnings in Paul, especially, about other “apostles,” and their, “another Jesus” than the one he preaches; his own rather spiritual (and in effect proto-gnostic) Christ?
steph
May 30, 2012 at 12:34 pm
This has completely missed all the main points in recent critical scholarship and ignores the central issue of the essay above. The defence of the existence of the historical Jesus in such historical work has nothing to do with ‘obstinate conservatism and neo-fundamentalism’, as is obvious to everyone who is properly familiar with it all. It does not mean ignoring what Paul says at all, either. Your comments are enough to make one wonder whether you have read any recent critical scholarship at all and its hard to believe you have comprehended the essay above. Your caricature of scholarship, full of generalisations and assumptions, belongs to another world.
brettongarcia
May 30, 2012 at 3:35 pm
See my misplaced reply, above? Or repeated, here:Steph:
1) I am well aware that Historical Jesus scholarship, believes itself to have attempted to find a plausible Jesus, beyond the jesus of miracles, for example. But? How valid is that methodology? No doubt it considers Paul; but what if we consider what I am here calling his warning about … historicity itself? Should we just write that off?
2) I am aware of recent trends that suggest the “real” Jesus was primarily a loyal Jew; while any relaxation of circumcision, food restrictions, and a spiritualzation of the “kingdom,” are thought to be later additions by Paul and other Hellenized successors. But? I find Hellenism deep in jesus “himself.” And if Jesus himself is full of Greco-Roman culture – or myths? Then even a Real Historical jesus would be largely … mythic. His head or spirit, would be full of Hellenistic myths.
3) HJ scholars pride themselves on being unsentimental and realistic; locating a mere simple, quite human, unsupernatural, loyal Jew, as the historical Jesus. But? After all, I submit, even the most “hardheaded” HJ position, is a compromise with Fundamentalism: in that it after all, can say that it “believes in” a “real, historical Jesus.” (Never mind, in very much reduced circumstances).
4) Could all the gospels, in all their apparent agreement (ignoring their differences, and the non-synoptic gospels, and apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha?), have come to such agreement, without having a single real historical individual as their origin? Of course they could. If a) as Bruno Bauer suggested long ago, they had a single fictional work as their origin. And/or if b) the gospels were interdependent (having one or two common or related, grouped sources, like Q1, Q2, Q3, and/or Mark). And especially if c) the new Churches had time to edit these books for continuity, before say, 120 AD.
5) Considering too, huge methodological problems with HJ criteria?
6) Finally, Mythicism is more probable, than the “Real Historical Jesus.” Which begins to look all too simple, all too Apologetic, all too simply Fundamentalist, in essence.
7) Feel free to note more recent developments? That would address these specific problems.
Maurice Casey
May 30, 2012 at 10:36 pm
I think you’ve just demonstrated my point above with yet another caricature of scholarship. You have also demonstrated your confidence in the certainty of your own assumptions. In fact you have made a series of erroneous and flawed assumptions which have led you to your unarguable conclusion, that is, mythicism ‘is more probable’.
steph
May 31, 2012 at 9:00 am
that was steph to Garcia.
steph
May 31, 2012 at 6:46 pm
Of what?!!
steph
May 31, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Of what. You are a specific example of someone making up silly caricatures of “biblical scholarship” to give an impression of a discipline that does not exist in reality.
rjosephhoffmann
May 31, 2012 at 6:16 am
Tell me what you mean by Historical Jesus scholarship. I am not being facetious when I say that I know of no such discipline. Is this some “movement” mythtics have devised to make it seem that there are two sides engaged in a debate or battle royal. There are biblical scholars in the field of Christian origins who do, in fact, look at the so called “quests” of the historical Jesus. But the historical Jesus remains a fundamental postulate–not a “theory”–that requires defending. I need therefore to confront you with the sad news that mythicism has made absolutely no dent against this postulate and until it does it makes no sense to put what is clearly a weak thesis up against the consensus of scholarship as if the evidence is compromised by it. Your consistent attempts to equate anyone who believes Jesus existed with some sort of fundamentalism is simply berserk and continually show lapses in knowledge: Your number 4 is swimming in unlikely splices (Bruno Bauer was about as far removed from Q as you could possibly get) and canonically there is only ONE non-synoptic gospel(s) [sic]. Who/what are these churches that would be doing the editing? Where did they exist? From what literary circle would communities full of illiterate believers–as we know from the derision heaped upon Christian in the second century by pagan critics like Celsus–have hired their editors? Your confusion could be remedied by a few courses in the field; but it will not be helped by piling wrong assumption upon wrong assumption and then plunking down random conclusions. As I said before, your reasoning process becomes a model for the uselessness of Bayes. “Huge methodological problems with HJ criteria.” What are these precisely–that scholars get different answers? Hmmm. It seems to me that you should take a look as cancer research or whether caffeine is good for you or bad for you, or red wine, or…. You have deep respect for science. So do I. But you wouldn’t want to say, because research progresses and answers to questions change, that the whole process is fucked, now would you?
rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 3:44 pm
@Steph: It would be useful to know who has actually taken a course in the history, philosophy or anthropology of religion. This looks suspiciously like people who can’t make rather crucial distinctions between what happens at Summer Bible Camp and what happens in a Harvard classroom but speak as though the (magically?) know.. Sorry to be blunt.
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brettongarcia
May 27, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Religious studies are nominally interdisciplinary. However, it is my contention that specific elements of mainstream religious studies – or specifically HJ (Historical Jesus) studies – have neglected or underestimated the larger ANE and especially Greco-Roman context of early Christianity, and the influence of their myths, on its formation. In part because of their attacks on “Mythicism,” and in the attempt to establish the historical/physical reality of Jesus, they find it all-too-convenient to simply follow the Bible, and the apparently very physical narrative of the NT, as adequate proof of a physical, walking/talking, historical Jesus. And to ignore or denigrate the full extent of links between Jesus and various ANE myths; especially Greco-Roman Platonistic dualism/Idealism. (With its obvious ties to say, Gnosticism).
In contrast to the new fundamentalism of HJ studies, and its attempt to find a “real” material/historical Jesus? A more careful look at ANE cultural context, and especially myths … finds so many correlations between “Jesus” and ANE myths, that i suggest that we should find “Jesus” to be more mythic, than historical.
(As I noted earlier in an apparently lost post?).
Indeed, I would submit that there are SO many links between ANE myth and the character “Jesus,” that Jesus can be described as simply the intersection of a few dozen ANE myths. Even if there was ever a real character named Jesus, his mind and theology were so dominated by the culture of his time and place, that Jesus is best described as a composite of ANE myths.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 6:33 pm
You may submit this! It has already been litigated by perfectly intelligent, non fundamentalist scholars. If you cannot name them, that is not a problem for modern scholarship. MOST of what the mythtics claim is actually derived from NT scholarship; you don’t imagine they produce their own, do you: “HJ (Historical Jesus) studies – have neglected or underestimated the larger ANE and especially Greco-Roman context of early Christianity, and the influence of their myths, on its formation.” Please tell me what you mean, and do not cite the crazy Evangelical sources that biblical scholarship does not use. WHERE do you think these conclusions came from? A renegade band of independent mythtics above the hills of Rome? They came from perfectly sane, responsible, fastidious scholars who did not jump to conclusions or probability games. I think that the only reason for your tenacity against what I am saying is that you don’t know any of the literature I am discussing. That leaves open the possibility that you and a number of other commenters–Tanya rings a bell–are little better than members of a cult, and unwilling to entertain evidence at all. If arguments from silence and analogy are the best you’ve got, by all means use them. But don’t expect to answer the hard questions that way.
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 7:34 pm
You hold an extraordinarily out of date dinosaur conviction that Hellenisation and Graeco myth are of central importance to biblical studies. This idea is sperm to the rampant parallelomania virus to which mythtics are so easily seduced. There is a perception among mythtics that anything said once cannot be said again independently, despite the old true proverb ‘there is nothing new under the sun’. Mythtics also have a driving urge to draw parallels where there are none by manipulation, misinterpretation and disturbance of ancient sources. In any case the old mistake has been successfully refuted by Mark A Chancey:
Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 134, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 118, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
As to your equally extraordinary conviction that Religious studies are ‘nominally interdisciplinary’, what on earth are you basing that pronouncement on? The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary? Asbury Theological Seminary? Princeton Theological Seminary? All of the above? Most European (which includes the UK) and Antipodean biblical scholars have first degrees in classics or broad first degrees in multiple disciplines from classics to anthropology, history and other things including religion. As graduates they specialise. Independent university religion departments offer papers on anthropology of religion, philosophy, sociology and a wealth of diverse topics approaching religion. Ironically one commenter over at the Drivel I mean Vridar, derided me for studying too broadly as if New Testament specialists being broadly trained wasn’t to their advantage. As to interdisciplinary method applied to texts, you could start with one of the essay authors and his latest book written for a wider audience which should therefore be within your grasp: Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, (T&T Clark, 2010). Read our colleague and member of the Jesus Process, James Crossley, Why Christianity Happened: a Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (WJK, 2006) and James G. Crossley and Christian Karner, Writing History, Constructing Religion (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005). Then check their bibliographies and read further. Check out courses offered at independent universities in religion and have a look at the way some universities are amalgamating religion departments with other disciplines. And hopefully you might become more self critical and swallow those unqualified pronouncements.
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brettongarcia
May 28, 2012 at 1:31 am
The idea that Greco-Roman and ANE myth are central to Christianity, has been held in the field of biblical studies, since at least the days of the apostate Tertullian (who to be sure spoke against it; arguing that there is nothing in common between “Jerusalem and Athens.”) But looking at the New Testament itself, a compromise between liberal elements of Judaism and various ANE conquerors of Jerusalem, was continuous in the history of Chrfistianity. INcluding say Paul’s embrace of “Greeks,” and his use of the complete vocabulary of Plato’s Theory of Forms. (Things here on earth, being mere inferior “copies” of the ideal forms or “models” in “heaven”). Through to our own time. And though it has been rejected by a neo-fundamentalist Evangelical “scholarship” recently? It is in fact an idea in desperate need of revival, and re-definition.
The massive importance of Greco-Roman influence was temporarily rejected in the 1980's especially, by the new right, “evangelical scholarship” movement. ( Though Evangelical Scholarship is, I would suggest, a contradiction in terms.) The theory developed, from a longstanding strain of thought, of the Wholly Jewish Jesus” that Jesus was (paraphrasing) “Not Christian. JEsus was not conscious of himself as being anything other than a wholly loyal Jew.” Thus rejecting non-Jewish – Hellenistic – elements of Christianity.
This “wholly Jewish Jesus” thesis is neo-fundamentalist, in that it attempts to apologetically defend Jesus, by asserting that he dutifully followed the Old Testament god and Torah, and did not depart from them by adding in any new (probably Hellenistic) ideas; like changing the law forbidding the gathering of food on the Sabbath for example. Yet clearly, Jesus DID change more than an “iota” of OT law, with what came to be called a “new covenant.” And he changed in in a direction, that would modify traditional conservative jewish thought, in the direction of “Greeks,” “Samaritans,” “Roman”s like Paul and so forth; changing especially the Jewish food prohibitions that forbid preparing food on a Sabbath, (or even eating pork?).
Examples of the neo-fundamentalist/evangelical literature would include “Steph”s approving citation, above, of the “refutation” of the “dinosaur” theory of Hellenization, by Chancey, Casey, et alia..
But in fact, as Hoffmann rightly notes, classic and longstanding religious scholarship has always been aware of Hellenistic influences on even the very earliest Christianity. And I would add? Mythicism is right to bring them up again, and even (over?) emphasize them; in order to counter the exaggerated suppression of this information, by … Steph and her friend: the now-fashionable, hypothesized, Wholly Jewish Jesus.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 28, 2012 at 3:31 am
@Garcia: “This “wholly Jewish Jesus” thesis is neo-fundamentalist, in that it attempts to apologetically defend Jesus, by asserting that he dutifully followed the Old Testament god and Torah, etc.” Even a little reading on the subject might have spared you these errors. I suggest you start with Martin Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism to find out what the interface between the two cultures was in first century Palestine. As to the rest, perhaps the author can sort you out.
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steph
May 28, 2012 at 2:44 pm
You hold an extraordinarily out of date dinosaur conviction that Hellenisation and Graeco myth are of central importance to biblical studies. This is not the same thing as saying there is no influence on Christian origins. “Mythicism is right to bring them up again”. They were never out. Most European and Antipodean biblical scholars have first degrees in classics and are equipped to reflect on influence reasonably. What mythicists do is make them of central importance and I discussed the reasons and consequence of that above. Hengel RIP should sort you out to begin with. Please stop making things up.
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brettongarcia
May 28, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Hoffmann:
Suppose we address one of your own points: Paul (rather Gnostically) sneering at other (earlier?) apostles, and the “flesh.”
Doesn’t Paul’s rather gnostic disregard for, even disdain for, the real, physical existence things, suggest that Paul thought little about say, any earlier possibly real, physical apostles? Or even a physical Jesus? Paul was interestested more in the spirit, than in physical, historical realities. He in fact seems quite gnostic,in his aggressive lack of concern for the physical, material side of life; and what interested him about Jesus for example, was that Jesus gave up his physical life. For a spiritual one, in effect. The physical, historical existence of Jesus therefore, did not concern Paul so much it seems.
So possible real, physical prececessors, their physicality especially, were of little concern to Paul. And the suggestion we might get from Paul is? That therefore, we ourselves should not bother too much establishing the existence of a real physical – or “historical” – Jesus. What is important, Paul suggests is the “spirit.” Which manifests itself all around us at all times; while the apostles and even the physical Jesus, should be of less concern.
In that sense? The core message of Paul is quite anti- Historical Jesus. Indeed, as Doherty might seem to suggest, Paul is so unconcerned with a phsyical Jesus, that … it is for all the world as if such an historical creature never existed.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 28, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Dr Garcia: Every point raised in this comment is addressed in the article. –Which says, in fact, that Paul says nothing of any substance that contributes to our knowledge of an historical Jesus. The article then goes on to explain the reasons for this, in some detail. Paul however is not “gnostic” because he depends for his theology on Jewish atonement and sacrifical thought, which requires a physical victim. He is certainly not anti-Historical Jesus unless you impute that to him by silecne, which si the standard recourse of mythicists. Good luck finding the answers to your queries in the article; they really are not hidden like words in the Wordsearch Game on a Denny’s napkin.
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brettongarcia
May 28, 2012 at 1:02 pm
But perhaps you would enjoy fleshing out your position? For example? Paul’s argument is more than an “argument from silence.” It is not JUST that he is neglecting to note, to voice, the physical details of Jesus’ historical life; he is actually, actively, opposed to attaching much importance to the “flesh,” and physical, material, worldly life. Which might seem to imply? Lack of concern for the physical, material existence of Jesus.
To be sure, it might be said that Jewish atonement calls for a physical sacrifice. But? The whole theology of “atonement” is much debated. What seems more central for Paul, is the simple (if temporary) denial of the importance of material, fleshly things. Including perhaps, even a physical Jesus. Indeed, the whole core of atonement – sacrificing something phsyical – easily becomes a metaphor, for the process of becoming more spiritual: the sacrifice of our physical life, is part of learning to emphasize the other side of life: the spirit.
Corroborating the de-emphasis on material reality, the increasingly (proto?) Gnostic interest in “spirit” instead? Is Paul’s increasing emphasis not on the physical Jesus. But on … his two major concerns, both spiritual: 1) the spiritual quality of “faith,” believing even without seeing physical evidence. And 2) the very, very spiritual emphasis, in Paul, on The Holy “Spirit.”
So that? Paul is rather consistent, in rejecting almost any and all physical, material – and I would add, to that degree, Historical – realities. All physical things must be rejected; in order to foreground the spirit.
So Paul is not just ignoring, with his “silence,” any possible physical, historical realities to Jesus (and any possible biological, phsyical “brothers” of Jesus, say); he is actively (if implicitly) opposing them. As part of his (proto-Gnostic?) emphasis not on material, historical realities; but on “spirit.”
rjosephhoffmann
May 29, 2012 at 6:55 am
Garcia Says: “So Paul is not just ignoring, with his “silence,” any possible physical, historical realities to Jesus (and any possible biological, phsyical “brothers” of Jesus, say); he is actively (if implicitly) opposing them.” Yes that is in outline what I mean. But you then want to suggest that Paul is thus “gnostic”–and you need to be careful using that at a descriptor for all kinds of reasons. Gnosticism is a grab bag of different ideas, different from place to place and region to region. It thus makes no sense to say that Paul is purposelessly silent about historical realities if he knew historical realities in the form of Jesus and the brothers of Jesus, e.g., to exist, which I am convinced he did. What he does say, not by implication but directly, is that their physical existence is not what mattered to him. Unless you want to do what mythtics often do and say 2 Cor is full of spurious verses or that Paul didn’t write it or that Paul didn’t exist–you have to deal with what is actually THERE. You don’t seem to quote relevant texts in support of these every broad views: But here is one you need to deal with. 2 Corinthians is usually considered the core of the Opponent’s Controversy. It is in 2 Corinthians 5.16 that Paul becomes dismissive of the physical Jesus. Why do you think this is the case? —–because he is a gnostic, or because he is jealous of the men who knew Jesus personally? What would be the most obvious and rational explanation — that is, if you were not already married to the idea that there was no Jesus to get to know>
brettongarcia
May 29, 2012 at 1:11 pm
I think we are agreeing on many key points, if not all. We seem to agree for instance that Paul is deliberately “dissing” physical reality; and perhaps the idea of a Physical Jesus. In this I am for the moment also willing to call him say, merely “proto” Gnostic; in recognition of the the manifold and problematic nature of Gnosticism proper.
But perhaps I could persuade you that Paul, in seeming to reject a physical Jesus, is not necessarily – by the very act of rejecting apparently, something – accepting, implicitly, that there ever WAS such a physical existence. For example? 1) Logically, to say in 2 Corin. 5.16, that the new Christians no longer see Jesus from the human point of view, does not imply (in accepted translations like the RSV) that Jesus was ever physical, historical. It just says that, whatever Jesus was – physical, or spiritual, or whatever – we ourselves now see him as … or in terms of, spiritual things.
Here, Paul is not necessarily indirectly acknowledging the real physical existence of Jesus, even in the act of denying its importance. he might be denying the COMMON PERCEPTION of Jesus as physical, say. In the same way that I might say that “the recent panic caused by fear of Alpha Centuri aliens, can be ignored,” does not imply the actual existence of Alpha Centuri aliens. Likewise, the denial of the importance of the physical jesus, does not imply that Pau thought that Jesus had actually, physically existed.
2) And so, in my reading of Paul, in 2 Corin. 5.16? That is properly sometimes understood not as really addressing the physical existence of Jesus at all, directly. But is merely celebrating the spiritual persons’ triumph over crass materialism, the traditional “human” view of things, of jesus. Of specifically THE PERCEPTION OF Jesus, seen from the all too common, phsyical, “human point of view.”
Paul in 2 Corin. 5.16 was seeing and celebrating not the rejection of a real physical existence of Jesus; but the disappearance of a false perception. Celebrating a transformation in those of us who have become spiritual. A transformation of this nature: we now see or value any crass materialism, the physical side of things or of JEsus; but instead see and value, only the real spiritual essence.
Paul’s motives for rejecting the physical Jesus? Motives are hard to read. In this case, it Might be 1) as you suggest, jealousy for those who did know Jesus more directly; 2) or might be Paul’s conviction that the “real physical” Jesus did not quite succeed in delivering the promised physical kingdom; or 3) that indeed, as a proto-gnostic, Paul simply did not value the physical side of life, or of jesus, often. whether or not he actually existed.
Or indeed? Paul 4) might even have been warning, in his own way, the Jesus was a fictional invention; and had never been a physical person at all. He might have been an arbitrary invention, invented for an illustrative moral fable or parable, or midrash.
In any case, 5) Paul’s insistence – Paul, the apostle and saint, who wrote more than half the books of the New Testament; who wrote the first major corpus on Jesus – on the unimportance of the physicality of Jesus, certainly must be paid attention to. By all those who insist, against Paul and half the New Testament (and more), that Jesus should be regarded not just as spiritual metaphor, but as a real, historical, physical being. Paul apparently… disagreeing with them.
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brettongarcia
May 30, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Steph:
1) I am well aware that Historical Jesus scholarship, believes itself to have attempted to find a plausible Jesus, beyond the jesus of miracles, for example. But? How valid is that methodology? No doubt it considers Paul; but what if we consider what I am here calling his warning about … historicity itself? Should we just write that off?
2) I am aware of recent trends that suggest the “real” Jesus was primarily a loyal Jew; while any relaxation of circumcision, food restrictions, and a spiritualzation of the “kingdom,” are thought to be later additions by Paul and other Hellenized successors. But? I find Hellenism deep in jesus “himself.” And if Jesus himself is full of Greco-Roman culture – or myths? Then even a Real Historical jesus would be largely … mythic. His head or spirit, would be full of Hellenistic myths.
3) HJ scholars pride themselves on being unsentimental and realistic; locating a mere simple, quite human, unsupernatural, loyal Jew, as the historical Jesus. But? After all, I submit, even the most “hardheaded” HJ position, is a compromise with Fundamentalism: in that it after all, can say that it “believes in” a “real, historical Jesus.” (Never mind, in very much reduced circumstances).
4) Could all the gospels, in all their apparent agreement (ignoring their differences, and the non-synoptic gospels, and apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha?), have come to such agreement, without having a single real historical individual as their origin? Of course they could. If a) as Bruno Bauer suggested long ago, they had a single fictional work as their origin. And/or if b) the gospels were interdependent (having one or two common sources, like Q and/or Mark). And especially if c) the new Churches had time to edit these books for continuity, before say, 120 AD.
5) Considering too, huge methodological problems with HJ criteria?
6) Finally, Mythicism is more probable, than the “Real Historical Jesus.” Which begins to look all too simple, all too Apologetic, all too simply Fundamentalist, in essence.
7) Feel free to note more recent developments?
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Brettongarcia
June 1, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Steph and Joe:
You two seem strangely unaware of key developments in (your own?) discipline, and even on these very pages. Perhaps the problems is that there has always been a very, openly critical element in religious studies that has been too embarassing or controversial for scholars to acknowledge … at least publically. Which is of course the problem; not implicit understandings, but what is said to the Public.
No doubt it would be awkward to acknowledge Mythicism as a viable theory within the field. But? Of course, Historical Jesus studies exists as a very real subfield of concentration;, and so does its opposition to Mythicism, exists as a very real field of concentration.
1) First, historically? Remember all the controversy about Bruno Bauer, the theology professor who was fired in the mid 19th century, for supporting Mythicism, in effect.
2) Then? Further, similar researches, carried out by Bultmann.
3) These ideas did not die out in the 20th century, but after being forwarded by Bultmann, were carried out by many scholars. One simple, introductory source acknowledging the HJ thesis, vs. mythicism, that might be useful to non-scholars, would be say, at random, Dr. John F. O’Grady’s “Models of Jesus,” Doubleday, NY, 1981; Chapter 3: “The Mythological Christ,” pp. 58-73.
4) Was this issue “controversial”? At the time the above, simple general intro was published, the author was Assoc. Prof. of New Testament, at St. Bernard’s Seminary. And he ends his Chapter 3 on Mythicism, by explicitly noting a “controversy” on this subject.
5) And? That controversy, between Historical Jesus and Mythicism, has continued to this very day. As witnessed by … this very blog. And the response from the Internet. A quick survey of the Internet referneces to “HJ” will show that this is a discrete and flourishing subfield.
6) And so indeed, and contrary to both Steph and Hoffmann? There has long been an active study of “Historical jesus,” and it has often explicitly confronted a long tradition of Mythicists; it is not true that scholars have universally or even largely, “simply assumed” that Jesus simply existed.
How could anyone work in the field of religion for so long, and not know this? Perhaps the problem is that the field of religious studies has long been split between Believers, and Critics. And (until recently) it is been all too easy for some, to even go all the way through to the PHD and beyond, without seriously considering , knowing much about, the critical side of the discipline.
I am surprised that the two of you however, seem unaware of that side; or have chosen to emphasize a part of the discipline that, whatever is said privately, in public has the effect, the appearance, of being an Apologetic: of appearing to assure the PUBLIC at least, of “proving” that their Jesus was a real, physical, historical being.
No doubt, that impression would be dissolved by closer reading of the scholarship on the subject? But most people in the field remain very, very nonconfrontational, regarding the public.
Is that the reason that even a nonspecialist in your own field, has to point out major developments in it, that you seem unaware of?
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rjosephhoffmann
June 1, 2012 at 1:05 pm
@Garcia: Yup. We are abysmally ignorant; my apologies. My point which stands is that there is no field called as an aggregate “Historical Jesus Studies,” there is a field called New Testament, Christian origins, and Early Church studies that deals with the historical Jesus. Some scholars more than others like to focus on this and produce books on the topic. If you had bothered to pay attention to the beginning of this discussion, you would know that it was prompted by Bart Ehrman’s suggestion that until his book, Did Jesus Exist? appeared, NT scholars have not tended to take up the mythtic position. That is partly true, but not entirely so. FEW have bothered, because the theory has been so poorly framed, argued, and defended that almost no one takes it seriously. In fact, I have taken it seriously and have rejected it.
But what you are trying to do is to juxtapose “Historical Jesus Studies” and “Mythicism” as if they were two equally viable theories–probably in order to legitimize the mythtic position. And honestly, if you had bothered to read my article, you could not possibly say anything as boneheaded as “And so indeed, and contrary to both Steph and Hoffmann? There has long been an active study of “Historical jesus,” and it has often explicitly confronted a long tradition of Mythicists; it is not true that scholars have universally or even largely, “simply assumed” that Jesus simply existed.How could anyone work in the field of religion for so long, and not know this? Perhaps the problem is that the field of religious studies has long been split between Believers, and Critics. And (until recently) it is been all too easy for some, to even go all the way through to the PHD and beyond, without seriously considering , knowing much about, the critical side of the discipline.” Honestly what crack in the earth did you pull that from? I wrote my first book on the subject in 1986; do your homework and find it; and two years later Jesus in History and Myth explored the state of the question in 1988. I promise, I haven’t been sleeping or in a coma since then. You persist in wanting to “fundamentalise” all scholarship that relies on the postulate of a historical Jesus, and since that is by far the bulk of NT scholarship you have your work cut out for you. Right now, the mythicist position being argued by Doherty and the non-existence idea being pushed by Carrier with his BT is about as ridiculous as the Birther controversy. You are asking for Jesus’ birth certificate, and we won’t cough it up. And you are totally incapable of seeing the weight the gospels and letters of the New Testament present as an historical problem, because in your head you think scholars who take them seriously “believe” in them. And that, my friend, is nonsense. –PS: Please feel free to reply, but unless you can add anything further to the discussion please don’t be surprised if it doesn’t escape the seventh circle of moderation until the Judgement.
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Where to restart blogging? « Vridar says:
June 6, 2012 at 8:35 pm
[...] of Jesus, Joe Hoffmann profoundly disagrees. Hoffmann reminds us that Ehrman was merely writing for “popular consumption” and there is apparently very little in Ehrman’s book that Hoffmann sees eye to eye with. So [...]
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Blogger Godfrey’s Reply (1) to Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey of the The Jesus Process ©®™ « Vridar says:
June 8, 2012 at 11:55 am
[...] Its intellectual pillars make no secret of their fear: The failure of scholars to take “the question of Jesus” seriously has resulted in a slight increase in the popularity of the non-historicity thesis, a popularity that — in my view — now threatens to distract biblical studies from the serious business of illuminating the causes, context and development of early Christianity. (Hoffmann, Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus) [...]
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The Jesus Process « The New Oxonian says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:47 pm
[...] a previous and more formal contribution to the Jesus Process, I gave what I consider to be the strongest reason for Paul’s imputed [...]
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Biblioblog Carnival “according to Mark” « Euangelion Kata Markon says:
July 3, 2012 at 8:15 pm
[...] After May’s launch of the Jesus Project (courtesy of Maurice Casey, Steph Fisher and R. Joseph Hoffman), Hoffman continued with posts about the arguments of Shirley Jackson Case and a post providing [...]
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A Farewell to Vridar and the Gang of Four « The New Oxonian says:
July 12, 2012 at 7:00 pm
[...] Paul’s reputed “silence” about the historical Jesus, for anyone interested to read it, in my contribution to the Jesus process. Essentially, the mythtics have shown gross ignorance of one of the central [...]
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Roger Parvus
July 18, 2012 at 10:40 am
You quoted from Tertullian’s De Carne Christi and observed:
The language is odd to us, because Tertullian is arguing against a renegade disciple of Marcion named Apelles. But the message is plain: Jesus was real.
But, for the benefit of any readers unfamiliar with Apelles, I would like to add that Jesus was real for Apelles too. Even though Apelles had his own peculiar twist for explaining the origin of the body of Jesus, he was definitely anti-docetic and this was one of the several ways he distanced himself from his erstwhile teacher Marcion.
Here is how Epiphanius describes Apelle’s teaching on the flesh of Jesus:
He (Christ) has not appeared in semblance at his coming, but has really taken flesh; not from Mary the virgin, but he has real flesh and a body, though not from a man’s seed or a virgin woman… He did get real flesh, but in the following way. On his way from heaven he came to earth, says Apelles, and assembled his own body from the four elements. (Panarion, 44,2,2 and 3)
And this is clear likewise from an earlier passage in De Carne Christi:
This man (Apelles) having first fallen in the flesh from the principles of Marcion into the company of women, and afterwards shipwrecked himself in the spirit on the virgin Philumena, proceeded from that time to preach that the body of Christ was of solid flesh, but without having been born… He borrowed … his flesh from the stars, and from the substances of the higher world. (On the Flesh of Christ, 6)
To Tertullian, of course, the idea that Jesus had real human flesh but made from the four elements was still unacceptable. Tertullian was willing to concede that method of obtaining flesh for the angels who, according to various episodes in the Old Testament, visited this world. But he would not concede it for Jesus.
I would also like to comment on another verse from the passage you cited. Tertullian addresses these words to Apelles: “You take these, I suppose, for celestial signs” (referring to the hunger, thirst, weeping, trembling, and bleeding of Jesus). I am of the opinion that the Gospel of Apelles is the gospel that underlies the canonical Gospel of John. It would be what many scholars refer to as “the Signs Source.” Tertullian, who wrote a treatise (no longer extant) against the Apelleans, was familiar with the teaching of Apelles. And I think it is that familiarity that is the background for his bringing up “celestial signs” here. Apelles called his Gospel the “Manifestations” (Phaneroseis). And, as you know, the connection between signs and manifestations in the Fourth Gospel is established early on, as in: “This the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him. (Jn. 2:11, my emphases).
I think that before accepting Apelles’ Gospel the proto-orthodox subjected it to considerable reworking. Its Apellean origin, however, still protrudes in many ways. For instance, in the mildly gnostic dualism that is still present. And in the absence of any nativity for Jesus. And in the strongly negative stance toward Judaism (to include making sure that Jesus did not eat a Passover meal with his disciples). And in the suppression of its Ascension scene (Jn. 6.62; Epiphanius, in his Panarion, castigates the doctrine of Apelles regarding the Ascension).
On the plus side, the proto-orthodox did appreciate and keep Apelles’ strong anti-docetism. Apelles, says Hippolytus, taught that Jesus “showed them (his disciples) the prints of the nails and the wound in his side, desirous of persuading them that he was in truth no phantom, but was present in the flesh” (The Refutation of All Heresies, 7,26). A variation of this was allowed to remain in chapter 20 of the gospel.
Apelles is the most famous deserter of Marcion we know, and the only one whose name is present in the early record. My suspicion is that he was one of the deserters spoken of by Irenaeus: “He (Polycarp) it was who, coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus, caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics (Valentinus and Marcion) to the church of God…” (Against Heresies, 3.3.4). Although Irenaeus was not one to avoid naming names, he prudently omitted any mention of Apelles and his errors from his opus against heresies.
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Obsessing about History and Jesus « Choice in Dying says:
July 27, 2012 at 1:43 pm
[...] me take an example. I am reading R.Joseph Hoffman’s piece “Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus,” which he has put up at on his blog. It is his contribution to a consultation on the [...]
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rjosephhoffmann
July 27, 2012 at 6:06 pm
You would think a man of this accomplishment could spell a relatively simple German surname like Hoffmann. I wonder, were his teachers so sloppy in checking his bibliography and references in school? I have often found it amusing that people who purport to be interested in science and precision seem to think that details don’t matter. In biblical studies we learn early that but for a single stroke a word could be molasses and not Moses.
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steph
July 27, 2012 at 9:04 pm
He failed abysmally at comprehension but makes alot of waffles.
rjosephhoffmann
July 27, 2012 at 9:10 pm
And what goes best with waffles? Syrup.
James Lynn Paaage
August 21, 2012 at 5:54 am
Dear Professor Hoffmann,
I read your well reasoned essay, ‘The Jesus Process’ with interest, but can you enlighten me on the source for ‘Jesus Barabbas’ being a historical figure? As far as I am aware, there is no other evidence beyond the NT for this person.
James Lynn Page
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Prove the Bible in One Paragraph | The Great Christian Debate says:
March 5, 2013 at 6:45 pm
[...] Jesus had to be real and he is his own person. Some great articles I’ve been led to are here, here, and here. There are no sufficient arguments detailing that Jesus was mythical. The greatest [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Jesus Process: Stephanie Louise Fisher
by rjosephhoffmann
AN EXHIBITION OF INCOMPETENCE: TRICKERY DICKERY BAYES
(c) 2012 by Stephanie Fisher, University of Nottingham
Introduction.
The purpose of this essay is to make a further contribution to refuting the methods of recent mythicists and drawing attention to their unprofessional attitudes and prejudices. It also exposes their lack of discernment and inability to engage with critical scholarship. Scholarship is compromised by these evangelising, self-promoting pedlars of incompetence. I discuss especially the recent attempt of atheist blogger, Richard Carrier to replace historical method with Bayes’ theorem, followed by scholars of whom he makes use. I go on to refute some criticisms of my previous comments, and finally put Albert Schweitzer, some of whose comments are routinely misinterpreted, in his historical context.
Carrier and Bayes’ Theorem.
Atheist blogger Richard Carrier, has now added to his passionate flushings of incompetence with another book, for which he has eventually found a publisher other than himself. See Richard C. Carrier, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2012).
Bayes’ theorem can be traced back to Thomas Bayes (1702-64), in whose name it was first published in 1764. It was generally used, however, only after it was reworked by the mathematician P-S. Laplace (1749-1827), who was not initially aware of Bayes’ work. It has been used much more in recent years, during which it has been applied to all kinds of things, though not without criticism. It was, for example, successfully used by Alan Turing in deciphering the German Enigma code. It is basically at home in aspects of Maths and the Natural Sciences, where abstract measures of probability are needed.
The centre of Bayes’ theorem is the following:
P(A|B) = \frac{P(B | A)\, P(A)}{P(B)}. \,
Here P stands for ‘Probability’, and A and B are two different sets being assessed. Carrier has this slightly more complex version necessitated by the consideration of the relative probability of different hypotheses:
P(h|b) x P(e|h.b)
P(h|e.b)=??—-----??—-----??—-----
[P(h|b) x P(e|h.b] + [P(~h|b) x P(e|~h.b]
Carrier explains briefly, ‘P = probability, h = hypothesis, e = evidence, and b = background knowledge.’[1]
Carrier uses this in a discussion which he calls ‘A Bayesian Analysis of the Disappearing Sun.’[2] This is the story that ‘there was darkness all over the land from the sixth hour until the ninth hour’ (Mk 15.33//Matt. 27.45//Lk 23.44-5). Critical biblical scholars have known for a long time that this story is not literally true.[3] Carrier’s discussion adds nothing significant to this discussion. Carrier includes the completely irrelevant notion that there might have been similar three-hour darkness in 1983, which we all know is false too. Carrier concludes that ‘Instead of letting us get away with vague verbiage about how likely or unlikely things are, Bayes’ theorem forces us to identify exactly what we mean. It thus forces us to identify whether our reasoning is even sound.’[4] Carrier’s discussion shows that this is not what happens. He tries to make it seem plausible by ignoring all the best critical scholarship, and discussing methodologically inadequate, ideologically-motivated pseudo-scholarship instead.
Most analysts would say that Bayes’ theorem is not in the least amenable to complex and composite historical texts. Carrier has too much misplaced faith in the value of his own assumptions. He claims, “[Bayes'] conclusions are always necessarily true — if its premises are true. By ‘premises’ here I mean the probabilities we enter into the equation, which are essentially the premises in a logical argument.”[5] Bayes theorem was devised to ascertain mathematical probability. It is completely inappropriate for, and unrelated to historical occurrence and therefore irrelevant for application to historical texts. Carrier doesn’t have a structured method of application, but worse, he is dealing with mixed material, some of which is primary, much of which is secondary, legendary, myth mixed accretion. He has no method, and offers none, of distinguishing the difference and this renders his argument a complete muddle. Effectively in the end, he can conveniently dispose of inconvenient tradition, with a regrettable illusion that Bayes provides a veneer of scientific certainty to prior conclusions he is determined to ‘prove unarguable’.
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: Supercilious Pseudo-Scholars, and the Omission of Inconvenient Critical Scholars.
Carrier begins his book by arguing that the Quest for a historical Jesus has been a failure because it has reached no consensus on criteria or results.[6] He does not seem to realise that this is partly because he has included under the general umbrella of ‘Jesus scholars’ virtually anyone who has written about him, regardless of competence or bias. If he had included only recognised academics in top tier universities with qualifications in ancient history and New Testament Studies, he would have got a different result. As it is, he includes ‘scholars’ such as Burton Mack, who left the Church of the Nazarene to became a methodologically incompetent radical, and Stanley Porter, who is an equally incompetent Christian fundamentalist. Of course they don’t end up with the same picture of Jesus, and this is partly because both of them are totally incompetent in method. It does not follow that we should all drop reasonable historical criteria and use Bayes’ theorem instead, as Carrier has unwittingly demonstrated by means of his own extensive incompetence.
Notably incompetent are his discussions the “Criterion of Embarrassment.”[7] Carrier begins with a blunt declaration of a typical mythicist view: ‘The assumption is that embarrassing material “would naturally be either suppressed or softened in the later stages of the tradition.” But all extant Gospels are already very late stages of the “Gospel tradition”, the Gospel having already been preached for nearly an entire lifetime across three continents before any Gospel was written’.[8] There are two serious things wrong with this. The first is the description of Meier’s view as an ‘assumption’. No-one reading this without checking Meier’s enormous book would imagine that Meier’s comment is the beginning of a coherent argument of some length, not an ‘assumption’ at all. The second problem is the very late date assumed for all the Gospels. As early as 1998, Casey proposed Aramaic reconstructions of a small number of passages of Mark’s Gospel, and on that basis he rather tentatively proposed a date c. 40 CE for this Gospel. This was worked through in detail and reinforced with considerable evidence and argument by James Crossley in a doctoral thesis published in 2004.[9] Carrier knows just what to do with such learned arguments leading to results which he does not wish to believe in: he leaves them all out. What defence does Bayes’ theorem offer against this? It cannot provide any defence against such professional incompetence and methodological bias.
Among many details which illustrate Carrier’s total inability to understand Jesus’ culture is the story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest and execution. He declares,
‘The authorities did not need Judas… to find or identify Jesus. Given what Mark has Jesus say in 14:49 (and what Jesus had been doing in Jerusalem only days before), the authorities knew what he looked like, and they could have seized him any time he appeared in public.’
It was fortunate for the Jewish people of the time that the Sagan, the chief priest in charge of security in the Temple, was wiser than Carrier. He will not have forgotten what happened in 4 BCE, when Herod Archelaus was faced with a serious protest in the Temple. Archelaus sent people to talk to the protesters, but when Passover came round and support for them increased, he sent in a cohort led by a tribune, so some 500 soldiers led by an officer: the crowd stoned them with such violence that most of the cohort were killed. Archelaus then sent in his army in force: the result was 3,000 dead Jews and the wreckage of a major festival (Jos. War II, 5-13: Ant XVII, 206-8). This is arguably what the chief priests were avoiding by not arresting Jesus in public in the Temple, yet Carrier shows not a glimmer of awareness of the event in the time of Archelaus ever happening..
Mark reports the possible mob scenario events with precision, but Carrier, despite presenting himself as a competent historian of the ancient world, seems to have depended on a traditional English translation. He announces that for the authorities to have arrested Jesus would not only be ‘politically suicidal’, but also that the idea that the ‘Jewish elite would be that stupid is vanishingly small (a fact fully admitted by Mark, cf. 14.1-2, who nevertheless has them stupidly contradict themselves in the very next chapter…’).[10] This supposed contradiction depends on a traditional translation of µ? ?? t? ???t?, (Mk 14.2) as, e.g., ‘Not during the festival’ (NRSV). Jeremias long ago pointed out that the Greek heorte also means ‘festival crowd’, as standard secondary literature intermittently repeats.[11] Moreover, Mark’s Greek will represent the chief priests saying in Aramaic al beh?agga, which also means ‘not in the festival crowd’.[12] This is why Judah of Kerioth led a party to arrest Jesus in a garden at night. They were then able to hand him over to Pilate, the Roman governor, early the following morning, so that he could be crucified outside the city walls at about 9 a.m., when his disciples had fled and there were no crowds about.
As support for not believing the story of the betrayal and arrest at all, Carrier calls on part of the work of the Jewish scholar Haim Cohn.[13] Cohn was a German Jew who emigrated to Israel, where he became Attorney General of Israel, and Minister of Justice, as well as a member of the Supreme Court of Israel and the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He was a member of the “T’hila” Movement for Israeli Jewish secularism. It is culturally ludicrous to expect anyone like Cohn to give a fair account of a New Testament narrative, especially one which has played such an appalling role in the history of Christian anti-Semitism.
Cohn’s total ineptitude in historical research runs through his whole book. For example, at the beginning of his chapter on Jesus, he declares ‘Our purpose is to show that neither Pharisees nor Sadducees, neither priests nor elders, neither scribes nor any Jews, had any reasonable cause to seek the death of Jesus or his removal. Without such, it will be submitted, the reports that they sought to destroy him (Matt. 12:14; Luke 19:47) or that they counseled together “for to put him to death” (John 11:53; Luke 22:2; Mark 14:1) are stripped of all plausibility’.[14] This illustrates the way that Cohn ignores all historical evidence in favour of his own ideologically orientated fantasies, much as Carrier and other mythicists do.
Carrier follows the religious bias of amateurs as greedily as he does his own mistaken prejudices, rather than relying on competent Jewish scholars such as Amy-Jill Levine, Paula Fredriksen and Geza Vermes, when he opines that ‘The fact that Jesus’ betrayer’s name means “Jew” should already make us suspicious’.[15] It should not. Juda(s) (?????: Yehuda, God is praised) was believed to have been the fourth son of the Biblical patriarch Jacob, and hence regarded as the eponymous ancestor of the tribe of Judah; it is a well attested and popular Jewish name of the period. Famous examples included Judah ‘the hammer’, better known in English as Judas Maccabaeus, leader of the Maccabean revolt in the second century BCE: and Rabbi Judah the Prince. Another example is one of Jesus’ brothers (Mk 6.3). Many real people have been called ‘Judah’ ever since: one of the most famous recent examples is the musician, Yehudi Menuhin.
Carrier then suggests that ‘Iscariot’ is ‘an Aramaicism for the Latin “Sicarius”’. This etymology however is barely coherent. The Latin ‘Sicarius’ is not otherwise used for Jewish insurgents until much later, and no-one had any good reason to put the Hebrew Ish and the Latin Sicarius into a single name at any time. The Hebrew Ish was however sometimes used in names, and the very varied forms of Iscariot, including for example Iskarioth (e.g. Mk 3.19) and apo Karyotou (D at Jn 12.4) make perfect sense if his designation was originally ‘man of Kerioth’, a village right in the south of Judaea, and this also makes good sense of him.[16]
How much help is Bayes’ theorem in understanding all this? It is of no help whatever. It can do nothing to prevent Carrier from being totally incompetent in doing the meticulous business of historical research, torturing false assumptions into premises, and using equally incompetent pseudo-scholars such as the hopelessly radical Mack, the Christian fundamentalist Porter, and the equally bigoted Cohn as pillars in his argumentative travesty. Mack and Porter have in common with Carrier that they cannot read Aramaic, and consequently cannot understand any arguments based on features in the text of the synoptic Gospels, especially Mark, which have often been thought to reflect Aramaic sources. Cohn simply seems not to have done so, and wrote too early to have read recent work written in the light of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Caeci caecos decentes: An ambitious blogger on New Testament subjects with no formal training in the field at all, Tom Verenna, who often makes unqualified pronouncements, has praised Richard Carrier’s piece on the ‘Bible and Interpretation’ on-line journal as an ‘Exceptional article’.[17] And it is indeed exceptional: an exceptionally flawed and overblown piece, Bayes’ Theorem and the Modern Historian: Proving History Requires Improving Methods,[18] in which he is typically misleading and characteristically over confident about his convictions. Especially in evidence in this article is his inability to provide sufficient or adequate references.
In an earlier blog post in which Carrier attempted to promote himself and his book Proving History, he made the most extraordinary and unqualified claim that ‘every expert who is a specialist in methodology has concluded, one and all, that the methods now used in Jesus studies are also totally fucked’.
Whom Carrier considers to be expert, and what criteria he assumes qualifies one as an expert are unclear, especially as Carrier considers himself to be an expert in fields in which he has no qualifications. All competent and critical New Testament scholars investigating the history of early Christianity, should be competent in methodology in order to pursue academic enquiry. Carrier’s claim is ludicrous. In this so-called ‘exceptional’ article, Carrier is still unclear and seems completely disconnected from the reality of the academic process of critical enquiry, debate and progress. He would like us to believe that a collection of essays will be featuring
‘such luminaries as Mark Goodacre and Morna Hooker, all coming to the same conclusion: the method of criteria is simply not logically viable. This leaves the field of Jesus studies with no valid method, and puts into question all consensus positions in the field, insofar as they have all been based, to one extent or another, on these logically invalid methods.’
We cannot assess essays which have not been published. Nevertheless Mark Goodacre has generously sent me his contribution prior to publication. Carrier then goes on to include several other people, including Tom Verenna who has no qualifications and Thomas Thompson who is not a New Testament scholar, suggesting they all reject historical method as leading to confusing results. This is a grotesque caricature of scholarship, and Carrier’s expectation that consensus should be reached by people of such different ideological perspectives is fantasy.
Premised on his assumption that methods in historical studies must be non-duplicative, non-competitive and homogenous, Carrier claims
‘When everyone picks up the same method, applies it to the same facts, and gets a different result, we can be certain that that method is invalid and should be abandoned. Yet historians in Jesus studies don’t abandon the demonstrably failed methods they purport to employ.’
He concludes after accepting his own verdict that ‘This has to end’.
It’s a shame Carrier has collected such a disparate group of people and selected helpful words out of context in order to argue his own conviction that New Testament studies is ‘fucked’. It’s also regrettable that Carrier avoids discussion of crucial historical Jesus scholars such as Roger Aus, Maurice Casey (whose work on Aramaic Carrier routinely omits because it is inconvenient and he cannot understand it) Martin Hengel, William Horbury, who discuss method, evaluate it and constantly seek to improve it.
Method evolves with advances in knowledge and technical expertise; it cannot be shortcut by bogus and inapplicable mathematical formulas. Indeed, the nature of critical scholarship is to provide a continuing critique of the historical methods of previous generations and their application; to evaluate and revise them, and to help them to evolve and to improve. At no point in such a process does a critical scholar throw his or her hands in the air and pronounce a fatwah on all preceding efforts. Discussing and debating application and constantly evaluating method, Mark Goodacre whom Carrier cites out of context, writes,
‘This is not to argue for the replacement of one criterion (multiple attestation) for another (accidental information), but to suggest, rather, that crude, ham-fisted application of criteria was never likely to yield reliable historical results in the quest of the historical Jesus.[19]
Goodacre’s incisive comments are entirely correct and illustrate the sort of academic discussion critical scholars are engaged in.
It is presently too early to expect a consensus, even on methods, among all critical scholars, in view of new evidence and new argument especially since the 1970s and in view of more recent developments in Aramaic scholarship. Consensus involving ideological extremes is impossible and this has a regrettable effect on the most critical scholarship because all critical scholars are human beings who necessarily begin and continue their lives within some kind of social framework.
Aramaic, Greek and Porter.
Carrier’s section on ‘Aramaic Context’ moves beyond the incompetent to the barely comprehensible.[20] Astonishingly he once again relies on the Christian fundamentalist Stanley Porter, forcing even an inattentive reader to ask whether he cannot read any reputable critical scholars? Porter needs to believe that Jesus taught in Greek. He put this clearly on the Website of McMaster Divinity College, the theological seminary where he works. Here Porter comments on New Testament Greek: ‘I love the challenge of developing students who are passionate about learning New Testament Greek, the language that God used when he wished to communicate with us directly about his Son, and in which the New Testament is written.’[21]
So that’s it, then. Jesus must have spoken Greek because it is God’s language. It follows that Porter’s scholarship is a sham, and this is why it contains so many predicable mistakes. One mistake is to downplay or even omit the evidence that Jesus spoke and consequently taught in Aramaic. Noting quotations in Aramaic in the synoptic Gospels, Porter comments, ‘By this reasoning it is more plausible to argue that Jesus did most of his teaching in Greek, since the Gospels are all Greek documents.’[22]
This misrepresents the nature of the Gospels themselves. They were written in Greek to communicate the ‘good news’ to Greek-speaking Christians. This mere fact does not tell us in which language Jesus taught, whereas the Aramaic words and idioms in the synoptic Gospels cannot be explained unless the Gospel writers could expect their audiences to know or be told that the ministry took place in an Aramaic-speaking environment, and this is part of the evidence that Jesus must have taught in Aramaic. This is supported by peculiarities such as ? ???? t?? ?????p??, which is not normal monoglot Greek, and which makes excellent sense as a translation of br ’nash(a)’. Porter’s second major mistake is to exaggerate the use of Greek in Israel. For example, Porter has Galilee ‘completely surrounded by Hellenistic culture’.[23] This Hellenistic culture was however Gentile, and its presence in cities such as Tyre and Scythopolis is entirely consistent with its rejection by Aramaic-speaking Jews. Again, Porter refers to the Greek names of the musical instruments at Daniel 3.5.[24] These are however the instruments of Nebuchadnezzar, and represent in real life the favourite instruments of the Hellenistic persecutor, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. They are the only Greek words in the text of Daniel precisely because they represent Hellenistic persecution, so they reveal very little knowledge of Greek and absolute rejection of it.
Moreover, it is notorious that this is the limit of Greek words in Biblical Aramaic. Qumran Aramaic has no Greek loanwords,[25] an there were very few Greek loanwords in Aramaic until after the time of Jesus. Fundamentalist Christians, however, believe in the traditions of their elders, according to which the book of Daniel, iconic in conservative circles for its providential significance to Christianity, is indisputable scriptural evidence of the use of Greek words in Aramaic in the sixth century BCE, a view which on scholarly grounds must be regarded as completely wrong.
Among genuine evidence of Jews using Greek, Porter cites the funerary inscriptions from Beth She‘arim, noting that they date from the first to the sixth centuries CE, and subsequently responding to criticism by continuing to maintain them as evidence that ‘some from that area, including possibly Jesus, used Greek’.[26] But ‘only a few of the village’s tombs date to the first century CE, and these do not contain inscriptions’.[27] Thus all the tomb inscriptions from Beth She‘arim are too late in date to affect the question of which language(s) Jesus is likely to have spoken in order to communicate with audiences in first century rural Galilee.
So much of Porter’s evidence is from a later time or the wrong place that it should not be used to support the notion of Jesus conducting a Greek-speaking ministry in the Galilean countryside or in relatively small towns such as Capernaum. Porter also drew on what was then recent research to support his view, including the blunt declaration that Sepphoris, where Jesus’ ministry conspicuously did not take place, was a ‘thoroughly Hellenized city.’ This has now been exposed as a temporary American trend, and the Jewishness of the area of the historic ministry has been recognised.[28]
Yet fundamentalist Christian Porter is a ‘scholar’ on whom Carrier relies.
Carrier also dismisses all proposed evidence of Aramaisms in the Gospels with ludicrous comments which show that he has not read relevant primary sources nor any significant secondary literature upon which it is based. He comments, ‘If every instance is a Semitism, then it is not evidence of an Aramaic source’,[29] and then assumes that every instance is a general Semitism (although he doesn’t distinguish the difference) and dismisses Casey’s evidence and entire argument of cumulative weight.[30]
Indeed Carrier has assumed it’s sufficient not to read Casey’s meticulous works because he can dismiss them on a prior assumption, but won’t read his academic arguments to see why Casey believes in written Aramaic sources underlying parts of the synoptic Gospels, not just ‘general Semitisms’. Casey does address the possibility of general Semitisms and has demonstrated in his arguments precisely why and where they are invalid. Carrier for his part repeatedly claims to have referred to ‘experts’, but he does not give proper references, and much scholarship precedes the discovery of Aramaic documents in the Dead Sea Scrolls and is consequently out of date. When he says that experts he knows reject Casey’s work on the ‘son of man’ he is oblivious to the difference between critical reviews and those clouded by hopeless bias.[31] Needless to say, Casey’s work is rejected by all fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, who are determined to believe that ‘Son of man’ in the Gospels is derived from Daniel 7, a view which is still attractive to more liberal Christians because it derives what they think of as a Christological title from Scripture. The unfortunate fact is that most New Testament scholars are not competent Aramaists and Casey’s work has to be interpreted and interpreters trusted for critical interpretation. How many of these ‘scholars’ read more than 3,500 examples of the Aramaic term br ’nash(a)’ when they were deciding what it meant? Casey is the only such scholar known to me!
The Family of the Historical Jesus
Another significant point of contention is Jesus’ family, whose existence is one of the arguments in favour of his existence. Mythicists pour scorn on this, and especially on Gal. 1.19. At Gal. 1.18, Paul says that after his conversion he went to Arabia, then after three years he went up to Jerusalem to question Cephas, and stayed with him for 15 days: ‘but I did not see any other of the apostles except Jacob the brother of the Lord.’ Of course the Greek word ‘adelphos’ does not necessarily denote a sibling, because it is also used to denote members of a community. Doherty cites 1 Cor 15.6, according to which the risen Jesus appeared to ‘over 500 brethren at once’.[32] These were obviously members of the Christian community, not siblings of the historical Jesus. Noting however not very accurately Phil. 1.14, where members of the community are described by Paul in prison as ‘most of the brethren who have been made confident in the Lord because of my chains’, he declares that ‘James seems to have been head of a community in Jerusalem which bore witness to the spiritual Christ, a group apparently calling itself “brethren in/of the Lord”; the two versions were probably interchangeable.’[33] This is completely spurious: Jacob, and anyone else who might have been a sibling of Jesus, is never called ‘brother in the Lord’, and members of the community in general are never called ‘brethren of the Lord’.
Doherty then seeks to sidestep 1 Cor. 9.5, which has a long tradition of being misinterpreted, going back at least to Drews and others in the late nineteenth century. Here Paul clearly distinguishes a group and a person, ‘the brothers of the Lord and Cephas’. It is obvious that the term ‘brother(s) of the Lord’ is not applied to all members of the community, but Doherty suggests that this ‘may be due to a certain looseness of language’, and that Peter’s separate mention in this text ‘may be for emphasis and need not mean that he is not one of the “brothers”.[34] This suggestion is completely arbitrary. Paul’s language is mundanely precise. ‘The brothers of the Lord’ are Jesus’ brothers enumerated at Mark 6.3f., and Cephas was not one of them. Doherty then expounds his fantasy world to replace this;
‘…other explanations are possible. My own would be that the Jerusalem sect known to Paul began a number of years earlier as a monastic group calling itself “brothers of the Lord” (possibly meaning God) and after those initial visions revealing the existence of the dying and rising Son as recounted in 1 Corinthians 15:5-7, this group expanded its “mandate” to encompass apostolic work and attracted satellite members who, while being referred to as “brothers,” were thought of as distinctive from the original core group.’[35]
This is creative fiction, not scholarship, assumptions supported by guesses and distortion, by Doherty alone, not historical research at all, and it is regrettable that anyone should take it seriously.
Doherty then makes the convenient suggestion that the word ‘the (ton)’ might not have been in the earliest mss., though there is no evidence of its omission. He then declares, ‘I once asked if Paul had the word ton written in big caps’, because Doherty is too ignorant to know that all mss at this date were written in large capital letters – small letters or miniscules having not yet come into use.[36] This illustrates very well that, years after fundamentalist treatment of the text of the New Testament as inerrant, mythicists treat it as something they can always alter when they feel like it, in accordance with their predilections and in total contempt for anything recognisable as principles of reasonable textual criticism.
Doherty includes a very confused and ignorant discussion of what was possible in Greek, and of what we should call the generic use of the Greek article. First of all he declares that ‘there was no way to specify “a brother of the Lord” except by simply leaving out the definite article.[37] Paul could however have done this. Secondly, he could have written adelphos tis tou kuriou, ‘a brother of the Lord’. Thirdly, he could have written heis ton adelphon tou kuriou, ‘one of the brothers of the Lord’. Paul had however no reason to write any of these things. Jacob was a common name in a culture which had no equivalent of our surnames, and Paul had this very simple way of saying which Jacob he met, in a high context culture in which further explanation was not necessary. After his inadequate discussion of the Greek article, which should have said simply that it is generic more often than e.g. the English definite article ‘the’, Doherty is left without a reason for Paul’s description of Jacob as ‘the brother of the Lord’. He ends up suggesting that it may have originated ‘as an interpolation or a marginal gloss’. All this is caused by anti-historical convictions that Paul could not have referred to Jesus’ brother Jacob, as he did. It is also based on an arbitrary view of New Testament textual criticism, which is hopelessly out of date.
The rest of Jesus’ family also had names drawn from major figures of Jewish history and culture. His father was called ‘Joseph’, after a major patriarch who ruled over Egypt under the Pharaoh. His mother was called ‘Miriam’, after Moses’ sister. ‘Jesus’ is derived from the Greek form of Yeshua‘¸ whom we usually call ‘Joshua’, the major figure of Jewish history who was believed to have succeeded Moses and led Israel across the Jordan into the promised land. At the time of Jesus this name was believed to mean YHWH saves, or the like, so in effect ‘God saves’ (cf. Matt. 1.21). His brother ‘Jacob’ was of course called after the eponymous patriarch of the whole nation, ‘Jacob’ who was also called ‘Israel’. The other brothers were called ‘Judah’, after the fourth son of the Biblical patriarch Jacob, who was regarded as the eponymous ancestor of the tribe of Judah: ‘Joseph’ again: and ‘Simeon’, who was believed to have been the second son of Jacob and Leah, and thus the eponymous ancestor of the tribe of Simeon.
This family background locates Jesus right inside traditional Judaism. Trying to explain this to contemporary English speaking readers, Fredriksen drew a regrettable analogy with famous Americans’ names, regrettable because the result is not what one expects. Atheist blogger Neil Godfrey, an Australian ‘meta-data’ librarian, thus plucked her brief comments completely out of context, and cited her in favour of the opposite interpretation. While she correctly said, ‘the names themselves convey a close identification with the nation’s foundational past’, Godfrey declared,
‘Add to this the fact that the names are introduced within a narrative that serves the purpose of likening Jesus’ family situation to that of other biblical heroes, like Joseph and David to name only the most prominent ones, and thus conforms to the biblical pattern of being rejected by his own family, and we are entitled to hold some reservations about the authenticity of the list.’[38]
This means nothing more significant than that Godfrey proposes not to believe what he does not fancy. As a member of the Worldwide Church of God he could not cope with the Jewishness of Jesus, and when he converted to atheism this did not change. As N.T. Wrong astutely observed, ‘Once a fundie always a fundie. He’s just batting for the other side, now.’ [39]
Still More Incompetence.
The undergraduate student Tom Verenna has recently attempted to contribute a piece, ‘Did Jesus Exist? The Trouble with Certainty in Historical Jesus Scholarship’, in Bible and Interpretation May, 2012.[40] This is yet another scandalously ignorant outpouring written in the form of (yet another) attack on New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman. I do not wish to defend Ehrman’s book but Verenna’s ignorance of New Testament scholarship is indicated by his declaration that the whole idea that Jesus existed is contrary to recent scholarship. In particular, his reference to ‘credible scholars like Thomas Thompson, Bob Price or Carrier’ has two people (Thompson and Carrier) who have never been properly qualified in New Testament Studies, and one (Price) who was a fundamentalist and who was converted to atheism without ever progressing through the rites of academic passage that would make him a critical scholar as opposed to a populariser of radical and unsupportable ideas.[41] Verenna ought to learn more before he pronounces, but his enthusiastic outpourings show no signs of a desire to learn.
Carrier’s over-long blog post[42] reviewing a very very brief piece by Ehrman in the Huffington Post (whenever was a book review ten times longer than the thing reviewed?), misrepresents several things. For example, he cites Philo, De Prov. II, 64, to show that Philo ‘made regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem’. This passage survives only in Armenian, which in general does not provide reliable tradition. Moreover, the passage does not say that he ‘made regular pilgrimages’ at all. It only says that he went via Ascalon, and it is perfectly consistent with the common view that he went only once.
Both Carrier and Verenna claim that Ehrman implies one’s career will be ruined if a scholars challenges the historical existence of Jesus. Ehrman, of course, does not, and Verenna and Carrier, who have never held academic positions, can point to no case since the nineteenth century in German protestant faculties where a career has been jeopardized by holding radical views, competently argued, vetted and defended. This is because there is no evidence and they assume a conspicuous falsehood. The modern university in most parts of the developed world prizes academic freedom as an unalienable right to profess what you have learned without restriction: that is why the convention called academic tenure exists. Indeed, even untenured lecturers, especially in the United Kingdom and the Antipodes, are appointed to permanent positions where they suffer no fear for voicing inconvenient positions. One stands aghast not only that people like Carrier, Godfrey and Verenna subscribe to such opinions but that they feel free to broadcast their ignorance in writing.
Atheist blogger Neil Godfrey defends himself for his misleading comments on the work of Casey, Crossley and other scholars whom he has criticised for ‘circular reasoning, begging the question and special pleading’ after conveniently replacing their learned arguments (which he did not understand) with simplistic and misleading summaries which is all he can understand. It is also apparent he does not read whole books, once claiming on his blog ‘I’m a librarian, but I never see or touch a book.’[43]
This is perhaps the one credible statement in Godfrey’s expanding dabble into the field of biblical studies: if one does not read entire books from beginning to end as a matter of habit before commenting on or attempting to critique them, what chance is there for scholarship to be fairly represented, and what confidence can a reader have in the validity of such critiques? Much scholarship is incompletely available on line which could lead to the sort of hopeless misrepresentations, misinterpretations and muddles, by the likes of these atheist bloggers. A recent example of internet noise passing for information was a post by Godfrey defending Steven Carr who had complained that Casey’s recent book Jesus of Nazareth was not given on a Nottingham university reading list. When I pointed out that there had not been time to put it there, given its recent publication date, Godfrey announced that to list it ’needs nothing more than that the book is available and in print.’[44] This is completely untrue, and shows no grasp of what is involved in running a major university library. This illustrates as well the recurrent petulance of the comments by Godfrey and Carr, to which I have frequently drawn attention–and atheist blogger Neil Godfrey, who is a librarian, ought to know better.
Albert Schweitzer in his Historical Context
Martin Luther, condemning the selection of words out of context and misrepresentation, says, ‘He does nothing more than latch on to a small word and smear over with his spittle as he pleases, but meanwhile he does not take into account other texts which overthrow he who smear and spits, so that he is up-ended with all four limbs in the air. So here, after he has raved and smeared for a long time … [he] is like the ostrich, the foolish bird which thinks it is wholly concealed when it gets its neck under a branch.’[45]
Mythicists also love to quote old scholarship out of its historical context. Schweitzer is one of their favourites for this. For example, atheist blogger Godfrey comments, apparently trying to demonstrate mythicists don’t use Schweitzer to support their claims, but his comment merely demonstrates that they do. He is oblivious to the fact that nobody suggests that mythicists pretend Schweitzer was a mythicist. This is further demonstration that Godfrey shows utter ignorance of what misrepresentation of scholarship is. Mythicists misinterpret Schweitzer to claim there is no historically valid evidence for historicity of Jesus. On his blog Godrey writes:[46]
‘Schweitzer understood the limitations of what generally passes for historical method far better than nearly every contemporary historical Jesus scholar I have read: “In reality, however, these writers [those arguing for the historicity of Jesus against mythicists] are faced with the enormous problem that strictly speaking absolutely nothing can be proved by evidence from the past, but can only be shown to be more or less probable. Moreover, in the case of Jesus, the theoretical reservations are even greater because all the reports about him go back to the one source of tradition, early Christianity itself, and there are no data available in Jewish or Gentile secular history which could be used as controls. Thus the degree of certainty cannot even by raised so high as positive probability.” (From page 402 of The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 2001, by Albert Schweitzer.)
Little wonder that Schweitzer called upon Christians to let go of their faith in an unknowable historical Jesus (whose very existence could not even pass the theoretical norms of positive probability) and ‘turn to a new metaphysic.’
This ignores the fact that, like von Ranke, whom Godfrey also loves to quote , Schweitzer was a committed German Christian and was not inveighing against the historicity of Jesus or advocating an end of the search to establish his actual historical coordinates. As such, Schweitzer believed that salvation was by faith, not by works, and historical research was merely a ‘work’. This is what he considered ‘uncertain’ about all historical research. It has nothing to do with what present-day historians or incompetent bloggers mean when they think that something is ‘historically uncertain’, which normally indicates that it may or may not have happened. It is well known that Schweitzer followed Weiss in supposing that Jesus expected the kingdom of God to come in his own time–and was mistaken. Schweitzer deserves to be quoted at length, since his memorable statement of the status quaestiones has dominated serious historical research for a century:
His [Weiss's] Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, published in 1892, is in its own way as important as Strauss’s first Life of Jesus. He lays down the third great alternative which the study of the life of Jesus had to meet….either eschatological or non-eschatological!….The general conception of the kingdom was first grasped by Johannes Weiss. All modern ideas, he insists…must be eliminated from it; when this is done, we arrive at a kingdom of God which is wholly future….He exercises no ‘messianic functions’, but waits, like others, for God to bring about the coming of the kingdom by supernatural means…. But it was not as near as Jesus thought. The impenitence and hardness of heart of a great part of the people, and the implacable enmity of his opponents, at length convinced him that the establishment of the kingdom of God could not yet take place….It becomes clear to him that his own death must be the ransom price….
The setting up of the kingdom was to be preceded by the day of judgement. In describing the messianic glory Jesus makes use of the traditional picture, but he does so with modesty, restraint and sobriety. Therein consists his greatness….
The ministry of Jesus is therefore not in principle different from that of John the Baptist….What distinguishes the work of Jesus from that of the Baptist is only his consciousness of being the Messiah. He awoke to this consciousness at his baptism. But the messiahship which he claims is not a present office; its exercise belongs to the future….
…Reimarus…was the first, and indeed before Johannes Weiss, the only writer to recognise and point out that the teaching of Jesus was purely eschatological….But Weiss places the assertion on an unassailable scholarly basis.”[47]
Now where has all the supposedly historical uncertainty gone? It was never there! In this second passage, Schweitzer was discussing what really happened, and he had no doubts about that at all. His apparent doubts in the much quoted passage above are not historical doubts. They are entirely due to his conviction, which comes indirectly from his Lutheran beginnings, that salvation is by faith, not works, and historical research is a ‘work’ which does not bring salvation.
Genuine historical knowledge, however, restores to theology full freedom of movement! It presents to it the person of Jesus in an eschatological world-view, yet one which is modern through and through because His mighty spirit pervades it.
This Jesus is far greater than the one conceived in modern terms: he is really a superhuman personality. With his death he destroyed the form of his Weltanschauung, rendering his own eschatology impossible. Thereby he gives to all peoples and to all times the right to apprehend him in terms of their thoughts and conceptions, in order that his spirit may pervade their ‘Weltanschauung’ as it quickened and transfigured the Jewish eschatology.”[48]
Future
Successus improborum plures allicit.[50] Carrier slanders scholars with spurious and unqualified accusations such as being ‘insane’ and a ‘liar’ which is merely a reflection of his own n0n-professionalism and inability to engage in critical academic debate. He has no evidence that his claims are accurate. His attacks are entirely personal and usually conducted in the kind of language we would expect after a few rounds at the local. They merely appear to be defensive emotional outursts.
Carrier holds no academic post and the prospect for such is unlikely, a prophecy he would no doubt find preordained in the conspiracy of ’mainstream’ biblical scholarship against the truth of his conclusions. In any case his field is not New Testament or the History of Religion. To date, his doctoral thesis has not been published. How does an author of self published books, which have never been peer reviewed, become renowned? His atheist blog boasts “Richard Carrier is the renowned author of Sense and Goodness without God, Proving History, and Not the Impossible Faith, as well as numerous articles online and in print. His avid fans span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism, the origins of Christianity, and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He has also become a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and the epistemology of history.” One does not generally assume to have ‘expertise’ in areas one is self taught. Carrier does and his egotistical pretences of learning, compromise his claim to credibility further. As Frank Leahy apparently said ‘Egotism is the anaesthetic that dulls the pains of stupidity’.[51]
His self published books follow here:
http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Goodness-Without-God-Metaphysical/dp/1420802933
self published: AuthorHouse
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Am-Not-Christian-Conclusive/dp/1456588850/ref=pd_sim_b_1
self published: CreateSpace
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Impossible-Faith-Richard-Carrier/dp/0557044642/ref=pd_sim_b_5
self published: Lulu
Doctoral Thesis?? not published.
‘Renowned’? If Richard Carrier had been Jesus at least we’d know how the gospels got published. He has claimed on facebook to have covered “the whole issue [of historical criteria, citing] all the relevant scholarship on why those criteria are all flawed.” He has done neither of these things. His forthcoming volume is called On the Historicity of Jesus Christ. The title alone in fact demonstrates how out of touch with critical scholarship Carrier is. “Christ”?
It was unfortunate that Carrier managed to be invited by Robert M Price onto the Jesus Project. As Bruce Chilton wrote in January 2009
“the Project has focused on an incoherent set of some of the least important questions in scholarship. For example, it keeps asking “Did Jesus exist?” as if that issue had not been raised repeatedly during the past two centuries… the Project has attempted to address questions of critical approach without a thorough grounding in academic study since the eighteenth century. The result is that some of the assertions made by contributors to the Project are not well informed and invoke quests for “objectivity” that seem more at home in nineteenth-century Europe than in twenty-first century America. What is more worrying, actual knowledge of primary sources (and of their languages) does not seem as great among participants in the Project as among Fellows of the Seminar… Fundamentalists are not the only partisans who permit their wishes to cloud what they see and that it takes more than a declaration of “objectivity” to acquire the discipline of reasoning from evidence, both textual and archaeological”.[52]
Chilton accurately identifies flaws which are so deplorably typical of the mythicist approaches to religious texts today.
Delusion is defined according to Carrier by three criteria: certainty (held with absolute conviction), incorrigibilty (not changeable by compelling counter argument or proof to the contrary), and impossibility or falsity of content. These criteria are as characteristic of fundamentalist belief, as they are of atheistic Jesus denial, and Carrier’s atheistic convictions, and self image. It is slightly ironic therefore that he announces during this same talk on Christian Delusion, “I don’t think there’s a problem with being a dick”.[53] If that clownish attitude existed in critical scholarship, academia would be a circus.[54]
In order to continue to advance knowledge and make progress in historical enquiry, we need to extinguish the maladroit methods and bumbling amateurism from scholarship. From the muddled and ignorant delusions of Richard Carrier to the ideological extremes which have lingered too long and still creep into scholarship through the theological seminary corridor.
To ensure the healthy future of critical historical enquiry and continue to inspire the process of constructive debate and analysis, the continued development of new argument and evidence, and encourage the evolution of improved methodological approaches and application through precision and fine tuning, we need to start taking responsibility for maintaining high standards in scholarship.
This will be ensured with expertise brought about by specific specialist training in all aspects of New Testament and religion, including ancient languages and history, accompanied with sophisticated interdisciplinary knowledge.
It seems fitting to return to Albert Schweitzer. Although he is renowned as marking the end of the first Quest for a historical Jesus, it could be argued that he inspired future historians with his insight and attitude, and also with his passion for life, his empathy and dedication to clarity: ”What has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus… To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.”[55]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Richard C. Carrier, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2012) p.50, with p.301 n.10.
[2] Carrier, Proving History, pp.54-60.
[3] See especially R.D. Aus, Samuel, Saul and Jesus: Three Early Palestinian Jewish Christian Gospel Haggadoth, (Scholar’s Press, 1994) ch. 3, esp. pp. 134-57, with a summary for the general reader at Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching, (T&T Clarke, 2010) pp. 447-8.
[4] Carrier, Proving History, p. 60.
[5] Carrier, Proving History, p. 45.
[6] Carrier, Proving History, pp. 11-14.
[7] Carrier, Proving History, pp. 126-69.
[8] Carrier, Proving History, p. 126, quoting J.P. Meier, Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, ABRL), vol I p.168.
[9] Maurice Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (Society for New Testament Studies, Monograph Series 102; Cambridge: University Press, 1998); J. G. Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (JSNTSup 266. London: T&T Clark International, 2004).
[10] Carrier, Proving History, p. 317 n. 68.
[11] Joachim Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, translated by Norman Perrin, (S.C.M. Press, 1966) pp. 71-3, utilising older secondary literature in German.
[12] For a fully explanatory summary, see now Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teachings (T&T Clarke, 2010) pp. 415-7, 425-8, 438-47.
[13] Carrier, Proving History, pp. 153-5, with p. 317 n. 68, citing Haim Cohn, The Trial and Death of Jesus (NY: Harper & Row, 1971).
[14] Cohn, Trial, p. 38.
[15] Carrier, Proving History, p. 154.
[16] cf. Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching, (T&T Clark, 2010) pp. 191-2, 425-8, 439.
[17] http://tomverenna.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/richard-carrier-bayess-theorem-and-historical-jesus-criteria/
[18] http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Bayes.pdf
[19] Mark Goodacre, “Criticizing the Criterion of Multiple Attestation: The Historical Jesus and the Question of Sources” in Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne (eds), Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (T & T Clark, 2012) forthcoming.
[20] Carrier, Proving History, pp. 185-6.
[21] http://www.macdiv.ca/faculty/stanleyporter.html
[22] Stanley Porter, “Jesus and the Use of Greek”, 125 n. 9, repeated in Porter, “EXCURSUS”, 171.
[23] Porter, ‘Jesus and the Use of Greek’, p. 135.
[24] Porter, ‘Jesus and the Use of Greek’, p. 139.
[25] F. García Martínez, ‘Greek Loanwords in the Copper Scroll’, in F. García Martínez & G.P. Luttikhuizen, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome: Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A.Hilhorst (JSJSup 82. Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 119-45 (121), noting also the absence of Greek loanwords from Qumran Hebrew, other than in the Copper Scroll.
[26] Porter, ‘Jesus and the Use of Greek’, 146-7; ‘EXCURSUS’, 172-3, responding to Casey, ‘In Which Language’, p. 327, and Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (Society for New Testament Studies, Monograph Series 102; Cambridge: University Press, 1998) p. 66.
[27] M. Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (SNTSMS 118. Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 108-9, citing N. Avigad, Beth She‘arim. Report on the Excavations during 1953-1958. Vol. III: Catacombs 12-23 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976): 260-1. Avigad (pp. 124-5, 261) has catacomb 21 as the earliest, dating perhaps from the Herodian period, but perhaps later, and with no inscriptions.
[28] Porter, ‘EXCURSUS’, p. 176: see now especially M. Chancey, ‘The Cultural Milieu of Ancient Sepphoris’, NTS 47 (2001): 127-45; id., Myth of a Gentile Galilee; id., Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (SNTSMS 134. Cambridge: CUP, 2005).
[29] http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/667/comment-page-1#comment-6583
[30] Carrier, Proving History, pp. 185-6.
[31] http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/667/comment-page-1#comment-6839
[32] E. Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Jesus (Ottawa: Age of Reason, 2009), pp. 60-61.
[33] Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, p. 60.
[34] Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, p. 61.
[35] Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, p. 61.
[36] Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, p. 62.
[37] Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, p. 62.
[38] P. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 240; quoted out of context by atheist blogger Neil Godfrey: http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/applying-sound-historical-methodology-to-james-the-brother-of-the-lord/#comments
[39] http://ntwrong.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/hector-avalos-blogs/#comment-632
[40] http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/ver368004.shtml
[41] See Casey’s essay in this series: and further on Joel Watts’ blog, with comments by Casey and myself, http://unsettledchristianity.com/2012/04/the-seven-fungusmentals-of-mythticism/. Casey’s comments include a refutation of Verenna.
[42] http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/667/
[43] http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/oh-dear-what-half-a-million-books-thrown-on-the-floor-by-a-earthquake-look-like/
[44] http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/reasons-not-to-doubt-the-historicity-of-jesus-raising-the-daughter-of-jairus/#comment-17674
[45] Against the Heavenly Prophets: In the Matter of Images and Sacrament, (1525) Vol. 40, Martin Luther’s Works: Church and Ministry II (Translated by Conrad Bergendof) p. 185.
[46] http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/fight-club-historical-jesus-scholars-take-on-the-christ-mythicists/
[47] Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (First Complete Edition. Translated by W. Montgomery, J.R.Coates, Susan Cupitt and John Bowden from the German Geschichte der Leben-Jesus-Forschung, published 1913 by J.C.B.Mohr, Tübingen. Ed. John Bowden. London: SCM, 2000), pp. 198-201.
[48] Albert Schweitzer: The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, translated by Walter Lowrie (Dodd Mead and Co, New York, 1914) p. 251.
[49] Albert Schweitzer, Ehrfurcht vor den Tieren: Ein Lesebuch, (München, Beck, 2011) p. 22.
[50] The success of the wicked encourages more: Phaedrus, Fables, II. 3. 7.
[51] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Leahy appropriately Wikipedia for stupid people.
[52] http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/chilton1.shtml
[53] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28PjVaW4kKI (50.47).
[54] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28PjVaW4kKI
[55] Albert Schweitzer: Out of my Life and Thought, (John Hopkins University Press, 1998) pp 241-2.
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Published: May 22, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: amateurism in biblical studies : atheism : Bayes theorem : Bible : historical jesus : internet scholars : Myth theiry : religion : Richard Carrier ..
218 Responses to “The Jesus Process: Stephanie Louise Fisher”
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THE JESUS PROCESS (c) « The New Oxonian says:
May 22, 2012 at 7:32 am
[...] Stephanie Louise Fisher, “An Exhibition of Incompetence: Trickery, Dickery, Bayes” [...]
Reply
ROO BOOKAROO
May 22, 2012 at 10:08 am
Absolutely disappointed by the space devoted to acrimonious vituperations and empty admonitions. A lot of empty language (which she may feel loaded with “meaning”), as in:
“To ensure the healthy future of critical historical enquiry and continue to inspire the process of constructive debate and analysis, the continued development of new argument and evidence, and encourage the evolution of improved methodological approaches and application through precision and fine tuning, we need to start taking responsibility for maintaining high standards in scholarship.”
Superficial demolition job on Richard Carrier. Her message: If you don’t know Aramaic, don’t pretend to understand anything about the Gospels. Leave it to the only few experts who do.
Maurice Casey’s article had much more meat and less fluff. Even if his background research on those infamous mythicists was carried by this lady. LIke Ehrman’s own background research must probably have been provided by his cohort of graduate students.
This lady knows nothing of the misery of PhDs in America: “Why So Many Ph.D.s Are On Food Stamps”. Most PhDs will never get a real teaching career.
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/15/152751116/why-so-many-ph-d-s-are-on-food-stamps?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20120520
In addition, she could have found out that Carrier’s PhD was in History of Philosophy, making his prospects for an academic career doubly problematic. So he may have made a smart survival choice by trying to carve himself a place in the fuzzy, but public, field of Christianity origins.
Reply
stephanie louise fisher
May 22, 2012 at 12:50 pm
“This lady”? :-) ha.
Reply
stephanie louise fisher
May 22, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Roo Buckaroo, thank you for drawing attention to the fact that Carrier’s unpublished doctoral thesis is in Ancient History. It is quoted above in the last section of my brief essay, within his blog self promotion: “His avid fans span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University…” followed by all the areas he fancies himself as a self taught specialist. I also expressed the fact that he is not qualified in New Testament studies earlier in the essay.
Reply
Mike Wilson
May 22, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Great work one and all. I’m getting to like Casey the more I read of his ideas. When time allows I hope to read his book on the historical Jesus. I agree with his position that just because Luke doesn’t use Matthew doesn’t mean he was unaware of it, he very well could have thought it to be spurious. I also agree that the popular post 70 date of Mark based on the prophecy is not iron clad. Given the temperament of the time lots of people may have been expecting a Jewish war with Rome, and it is true that Mark’s prophecy is hardly specific enough for anyone to conclude that it was made in hind sight. Also, the fact that people took the pseudo-graphical Apocalypses to be genuine no doubt means that contemporary would be prophets would have also made their own apocalypses.
Regarding Buckaroo, is he suggesting that you ought not to criticize Carrier because he needs to whore out his PhD to buy bread? Fuck him, if he can’t get honest university work the Army is still hiring.
rjosephhoffmann
May 22, 2012 at 4:04 pm
Not to intervene and certainly not to correct my colleague Steph but I believe Roo (is there a Big Roo and Little Roo, or is mum’s name Kanga?), I think his point was that in fact Carrier can be absolved of knowing anything about history because his PhD was in the history pf philosophy rather than that dreary stuff about dates, names, places, and events, and the like. Somehow, this came as a relief to me. On the other hand, per above: this is not what he says about himself. So which is it?
ROO BOOKAROO
May 23, 2012 at 5:05 am
I’m even disappointed by the quality of your ballyhooed “research”. What you call research is a compilation of quick pickings from the Web, without any additional outside checking.
Real definitive research would have involved an email to the Registry of the graduate School at Columbia, or the chairman of the History Department, just to ask for the title of Carrier’s thesis for instance. But you never went to any such trouble, for sure. You’re happy with your blank condemnation statements as if they expressed some truths that we had never suspected.
You could also have sent an email directly to Carrier asking for information or confirmation. That too, you never did.
I think that Carrier’s Ph.D. thesis was in history of philosophy, probably on a subject of ancient Greek philosophy (my guess), which is intimately connected with the field of ancient Greek literature and religion. Carrier’s final degree was a History Ph.D from the History Dep’t of Columbia.
This is a field infinitely more complex and vast than the field of Christian origins, with has only a pretty limited stock of primary sources, a limited gallery of original characters, and only an immensity of subjective interpretations.
Christianity scholars have a relatively easy life compared to any research in ancient Greek civilization. My own favorite author in this field remains Gilbert Murray.
Similarly, in 1930, Alvin Boyd Kuhn had obtained his Ph.D. in History from Columbia with a thesis on “Theosophy: A Modern Revival of the Ancient Wisdom” (at the remarkable age of 50!)
The Columbia Dep’t of History must have granted quite a few similar Ph.Ds. But only an inquiry with the right office at Columbia could provide data and statistics.
What you present as “research” is, I suspect, superficial culling on the Internet, which certainly is valuable, but remains only the first step of the effort, and not much more. It is too simplistic and secondary to have final scholarly value without verification and authentification from original sources.
rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Roo writes: “This [ancient history?] is a field infinitely more complex and vast than the field of Christian origins, with has only a pretty limited stock of primary sources, a limited gallery of original characters, and only an immensity of subjective interpretations. Christianity scholars have a relatively easy life compared to any research in ancient Greek civilization.”
This is absolute nonsense. A field whose members have to study everything from the Qumran scrolls to the Nag Hammadi papyri in Coptic and a thousand years of patristic literature in about five languages? I am embarrassed for you.
The Jesus Process on The New Oxonian | Ge??aµµ??a says:
May 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm
[...] Louise Fischer, “An Exhibition of Incompetence: Trickery, Dickery, Bayes.” Share this:FacebookTwitterE-mail Dit bericht werd geplaatst in Bijbel, English, [...]
Reply
Jeffery Jay Lowder
May 22, 2012 at 12:59 pm
I’ve posted a brief defense of the applicability of Bayes’ theorem to historical claims here:
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/05/is-bayess-theorem-irrelevant-to-history.html
Reply
stephanie louise fisher
May 22, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Interesting “defence” but it does not contribute anything new or demonstrate how a mathematical theorem is relevant the complex historical data. You make a claim and contradict the conclusions here, without providing evidence and argument.
Reply
Jeffery Jay Lowder
May 23, 2012 at 3:30 am
(1) Inferences based upon historical data, including complex historical data, involve uncertainty. (This is the essence of the first paragraph, where I said that T’s report is at best evidence that E occurred.)
(2) Uncertain inferences are by nature probabilistic, i.e., the strength of the evidence for a conclusion can be measured as the probability of the conclusion conditional upon the evidence. (This was the first 3 sentences of the 2nd paragraph.)
(3) Therefore, conditional probability is relevant to inferences based upon historical data, including complex historical data. (3rd sentence of 2nd paragraph)
(4) Bayes’ Theorem can be derived from the axioms of the probability calculus and the definition of conditional probability. (last sentence of 2nd paragraph)
(5) Therefore, Bayes’ Theorem is relevant to inferences based upon historical data, including complex historical data. (last sentence of 2nd paragraph)
To expand on (5), logically (inductively) correct inferences based upon historical data, including complex historical data, must conform to the pattern of probability relations expressed by Bayes’ Theorem. I freely grant that one can “do history” without having ever heard of Bayes’ Theorem, much less use it. But that doesn’t deny the point that Bayes’s Theorem is *relevant*, since any logically (inductively) correct inferences will conform to the pattern of probability relations expressed by Bayes’ Theorem.
rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 10:35 am
JJL:
You begin with the “necessarily true” tautology that ” Inferences based upon historical data, including complex historical data, involve uncertainty.” I understand how probabilism works.
1. Neither historical data nor especially complex historical data is quantifed in this assertion [I won't argue differences between assumptions, assertions, prior assumptions and premises here, but they are often tossed around interchangeably]. What counts as complex historical data?
2. To arrive at the point where Bayes might be applicable, there are technical preconditions: To educe such data, even if it assumed that documents like gospels contain complex historical data, linguistic, textual, provenantial and chronological conditions apply. These are lower order conditions involving the nature and state of the evidence itself; higher order conditions involve the training and skills of the interpreter or analyst, just as in the sciences. These are hermeneutical and “skill” sets that affect the epistemic conditions under which basic assumptions are formed. In Bayes, these assumptions should become part of the calculus, although they are mot made explicit at any stage.
3. Bayes attempts to compensate for this by frontloading (your contention) that “Uncertain inferences are by nature probabilistic, i.e., the strength of the evidence for a conclusion can be measured as the probability of the conclusion conditional upon the evidence.” This of course is also true because it is tautological: something is true (or probably true) if the evidence adduced in its favor shows it to be true, allowing for the nature/quality of the evidence. This sounds good–especially a word like probabilistic–but it is simply the philosopher’s way of saying that every inference is defeasible based upon the conditions that apply in forming assumptions. (Every student in basic logic knows that a conclusion is valid (argumentatively sound) no matter how false as long as the terms are distributed correctly in the two premises.).Bayes turns this into values for probability of occurrence and based on the (often fatally flawed) assumptions that have been frontloaded into the equation can then declare the game over and the conclusion unarguable. But this isn’t history; it’s a parlor game.
4. Another, crueler way of saying this would be to say that Bayes fails because the way it will work for Richard Carrier, lacking as he does the technical skills to form the assumptions that would lead to greater or lesser confidence in the probability of a conclusion, is very different from the way it would work for a Maurice Casey, who can bring with him a greater degree of sophistication in satisfying the technical requirements under which such premises can be formed. Bayes may be an atttempt to level the methodological playing field to permit Carrier to play ball, but in fact, rightly deconstructed, it simply calls attention to how uneven the field is and how difficult it is to achieve certainty.
J. Quinton
May 23, 2012 at 1:01 pm
If you are dealing with uncertainty, and building arguments that depend on those uncertainties, then you have to follow the laws of probability. Even if you make educated guesses on “complex historical data”, the rules of probability still apply.
Case in point: The princieple of falsifiability follows necessarily from Bayes’ Theorem. It’s not just a handy demarcation between science and non-science, but a way of separating a more probable hypothesis from a less probable hypothesis (wouldn’t it be nice to know if mythicists were positing unfalsifiable interpretations of evidence…).
Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence? That is Bayes’ Theorem; the Humean principle that Dr. Hoffmann alluded to in his essay ([a story] even more incredible than the story they are trying to debunk) itself follows necessarily from Bayes’ Theorem.
Rejecting such a ubituitous and powerful tool just because someone you don’t like (or whose conclusions you disagree with) is using it is likely to do yourself a disservice. Just like you implicitly use formal logic correctly when you reason and argue correctly, you also implicitly use Bayesian epistemology correctly when you reason and argue correctly. It can only help if you become consciously aware of these tools.
Jeffery Jay Lowder
May 23, 2012 at 1:25 pm
RJH:
You wrote:
“1. Neither historical data nor especially complex historical data is quantifed in this assertion [I won't argue differences between assumptions, assertions, prior assumptions and premises here, but they are often tossed around interchangeably].”
What does “this” refer to in your first sentence?
“What counts as complex historical data?”
I was re-using Fisher’s wording, so I’ll defer to her to define it. My point is that data is data: it makes no difference to BT whether the data is “simple” or “complex.”
“2. To arrive at the point where Bayes might be applicable, there are technical preconditions: To educe such data, even if it assumed that documents like gospels contain complex historical data, linguistic, textual, provenantial and chronological conditions apply. ”
I am happy to agree with you that “linguistic, textual, provenantial and chronological conditions apply.” In fact, nothing I’ve written contradicts this. In fact, I would think that all of the conditions would need to be included in the background information (B), the evidence to be explained (E), or both, in a proper application of BT to a historical issue.
“These are lower order conditions involving the nature and state of the evidence itself; higher order conditions involve the training and skills of the interpreter or analyst, just as in the sciences. These are hermeneutical and “skill” sets that affect the epistemic conditions under which basic assumptions are formed. In Bayes, these assumptions should become part of the calculus, although they are mot made explicit at any stage.”
I see your point. In that sense, I guess you could describe BT as a sort of “high-level” methodology which specifies the questions that need to be asked without telling you how to get the answers. That doesn’t invalidate the relevance of BT to history, but it does show that BT, by itself, is insufficient to address historical questions. Again, I am happy to agree and nothing I’ve written contradicts that.
“3. Bayes attempts to compensate for this by frontloading (your contention) that “Uncertain inferences are by nature probabilistic, i.e., the strength of the evidence for a conclusion can be measured as the probability of the conclusion conditional upon the evidence.” This of course is also true because it is tautological: something is true (or probably true) if the evidence adduced in its favor shows it to be true, allowing for the nature/quality of the evidence. This sounds good–especially a word like probabilistic–but it is simply the philosopher’s way of saying that every inference is defeasible based upon the conditions that apply in forming assumptions. (Every student in basic logic knows that a conclusion is valid (argumentatively sound) no matter how false as long as the terms are distributed correctly in the two premises.).Bayes turns this into values for probability of occurrence and based on the (often fatally flawed) assumptions that have been frontloaded into the equation can then declare the game over and the conclusion unarguable. But this isn’t history; it’s a parlor game.”
I agree there is a sort of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ risk with BT. The fact that BT can be abused by “frontloading” “(often fatally flawed) assumptions” is not of obvious relevance to the fact that uncertain inferences based upon evidence must conform to the pattern of probability relations specified by BT.
“Bayes may be an atttempt to level the methodological playing field to permit Carrier to play ball,”
My defense of the relevance of BT to history has nothing to do with Carrier. Attributing motives like this–either to Carrier or to others (?)–is not helpful.
“but in fact, rightly deconstructed,it simply calls attention to how uneven the field is and how difficult it is to achieve certainty.”
I agree that BT can show how difficult it is to achieve certainty. It can also do more than that. Again, it can be used to specify the pattern of probability relations that must exist for logically (inductively) correct inferences to be made.
Regards,
Jeff
Soloview
May 22, 2012 at 2:52 pm
It seems there are only two kinds of students of the NT texts in Ms Fisher’s world: unassailable scholarly sages and ‘self-promoting pedlars of incompetence’ with ‘total inability to understand’. Some of her deep thoughts and sommersaults in logic are truly a thing to behold:
“Cohn was a German Jew who emigrated to Israel, where he
became Attorney General of Israel, and Minister of Justice,….
He was a member of the “T’hila” Movement for Israeli Jewish
secularism. It is culturally ludicrous to expect anyone like Cohn to
give a fair account of a New Testament narrative, especially one
which has played such an appalling role in the history of Christian
anti-Semitism. ”
It is not at all clear what Ms. Fisher finds in Mr Cohn credentials that makes it “culturally ludicrous” to expect an intelligent – independent – view of NT from him. Lost a connecting thread perhaps ? Another triple salto with sure-footed landing:
“Are [the synoptics] pristine, objective, verbatim accounts of the life
of Jesus? Hardly. Are they infused with assumptions about who
Jesus is and approximations of what he said? Yes. Can we
find “heresiological”, or more properly controversial material in
them—material intended to defend a sketchy proto-orthodox
teaching about Jesus against less acceptable beliefs?
Of course—as John Fenton showed,especially in relation to
Matthew’s gospel. These considerations, however, are the
surest proof that Jesus really lived and that the
preservers of the Jesus-tradition knew what they were
defending: they were squeamish about the divine man
Christology [sic] that dominated in much of the church, and
is at least “available” in the gospel of John. ”
This is precisely this type of vacuous rhetoric that invites deep skepticism if not outright scorn. Why should this kind of “surest proof” sway me one inch from believing the gospels to be allegorical narratives, or as Jan Wojcik called them, samples of “narrative gnosticism” ? Why should I not read Ms. Fisher’s method of reading the texts, an excellent illustration of what A.N. Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”? Why was Jesus first not an agreed- on form of personifying what the early Christ visionaries believed was the holy spirit of God that was abroad announcing the end of times ? Is it because Steph Fisher’s mentor invented yet another form of a (not yet) academically vetted testimonial that Jesus walked on earth and was recorded early in yet another non-existent, unprovable screed, tablet or plurality thereof ? Why should I take them seriously when the best they can do is self-serving pap like :
Casey: ” I hope…that the forthcoming book by Stephanie Fisher will
establish it (a new theory of gospel sourcing) beyond
reasonable doubt as the normative view of New Testament
scholars. ” (Jesus, p. 80)
“A normative view of NT scholars” ? This statement best testifies of a seriously impaired sense of not just academic standards (since when one comments on as-yet unpublished work ?) but an elementary struggle with reality. Ms Fisher so far overwhelms only the intellectually destitute with her wayward Jesus Process of thinking, to wit:
“All competent and critical New Testament scholars investigating the history of early Christianity, should be competent in methodology in order to pursue academic enquiry.”
Mind-boggling.
Best,
Jiri
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rjosephhoffmann
May 22, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Jiri retorts: “Why should this kind of “surest proof” sway me one inch from believing the gospels to be allegorical narratives, or as Jan Wojcik called them, samples of “narrative gnosticism” ?
I suspect nothing will sway you as you are determined not to be swayed. But commenting only on Wojick’s illiterate view of the gospels as “narrative gnosticism” I suggest that you prefer reading fairy tales to real history. Wojcik knew zilch about the modern study of gnosticism and would have called breakfast a myth if it was lunchtime. Try to do better and read more carefully. The very fact that you cite Wojcik as a reliable standard authority is embarrassing enough, were it not for the fact that this is exactly the kind of silliness that all mythicists do, stretching for supporting footnotes into the land of non-specialists. If you want (to repeat) the best proof that the gospels are not allegories, get a cheap copy of the Nag Hammadi Library in English (no Coptic needed) and read through it. Then after a breath of fresh air, sit down and read the gospel of Mark. If that doesn’t cure you, nothing will.
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Soloview
May 22, 2012 at 6:19 pm
The thing is this: There is this bright guy, Mark Vonnegut, the son of a famous American writer, who is an MD and who like myself has a challenge called “bi-polar disorder”. (I am a retired computer engineer). He wrote a memoir called “Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So” asking why there are not more questions about Early Christianity. Do you understand what he is saying ? I bet you haven’t a clue.
Not because you have no personal familiarity with the phenomena which the texts advertize and seek to interpret, but because you don’t even know that should know something about that. You will read in Mark 10:46 that Jesus and Co went in and out of Jericho without incident, and you have no way to interpret that. (It’s not because of Secret Mark I pray you; Mark waves the same flag with Bethany 11:11-12). You have no idea why the trip to Bethsaida in 6:45 – with Jesus in the boat ends – in Gennesaret. You are at a loss to explain the defiance of the ‘multitude’ in 7:36 : ‘he charged them to tell no one; but the more he charged them the more they proclaimed (him)’. You probably even think there was a multitude. How about Jesus curing Jarius daughter and people laughing when he says she is only sleeping. Why would they do that ? Would that be the expected human reaction in the context for which it is suggested ? Ie, human life believed lost and a hope for it is rekindled by the expert brought into the house for that very purpose. Ha, ha, ha ! That’s funny ! How about people so busy when they have Jesus around they cannot even eat ? Hello ? Any idea what this alludes to ? I bet not ! Bartimaeus throwing off his cloak when asked to join ? Not either, good. Jesus tells his apostolic angels to go by themselves to a secluded place, but everyone knows where they are going and arrive there before them. No problem: true story ! And then the Lord shortening the days of the elect (it appears it already happened) as a way to save them through the future tribulations ? Makes perfect sense in Aramaic, I bet !
Now all of this – and there is more, trust me – argues vigorously against Mark writing actual events. It looks rather obvious he was writing for his friends, potential converts and pulling the leg of accredited scholars of his time who were wont to swoop on the Jesus apparitions from Jerusalem and declare his (!) cures the work of the prince of devils.
Yep, I have read Mark and made my independent assessment of him. Over twenty four years. Final verdict: He is a Pauline allegorist. The women running away from the tomb without telling anyone anything is a way to assert the primacy of the Paul’s gospel over the claims of the traditions associated with the disciples. The missing body in the tomb is a pun carried over from 4:10, ‘those around Jesus’ (hoi peri Iesou) when he is alone (kata monas) are the ‘body of Christ’ as per 1 Cor 12:27. They are in the mythical Galilee. The disciples, or rather their followers, are asked to accept the cross and join !
Don’t believe it ! Gnostic black magic ! Sure, sure ! Except you see, there are the statistical odds against finding the second half of the hidden Malachi 3:1 reference (from Mk 1:2) in the messenger’s reporting in the tomb. What would they be, I wonder, if Mark was reporting and not composing : one in a million, two in ten million ? Oh, you have not found the reference was explicit enough ? What a pity ! We could have had a reasoned conversation.
Best,
Jiri
ETA: ok, I give you the solution for 7:36. The ‘disobedience’ relates to glossolalia. The multitude cannot stop the praise of Jesus, because the visions of him themselves are ‘apo kyriou pneumatos’ (2 Cor 3:2). Typical ecstatic humour of Mark !
Rabbie
June 4, 2012 at 12:03 pm
You might demonstrate your faith in the non-allegorical nature of Mark by adopting several pet rattlesnakes, allowing them to slither freely around you as you write your posts. Things might have gone better for a recently deceased charismatic preacher had he not taken Mark “au pied de la lettre”.
rjosephhoffmann
June 4, 2012 at 12:17 pm
@Rabbie: yes, of course: we were all taught in our graduate classes to take Mark literally. I regularly let my children play with black mambas while they were growing up just to test the word of God. In fact, I used Bayes’s Theorem to decide the probability of their getting bit, and then, of course, of their dying should they get bit. I kept getting .50 because the verses occur in the longer ending of Mark and there is a 50% chance it was added after Mark, and then of course only a 50% chance that Mark had ever seen a snake. Taking account of this, the solar eclipse, and the fact that I had had tacos for dinner and rushed through the equation, I finally was able to push the envelope to get 75% prob. that they would survive a venomous attack. God rest their souls.
stephanie louise fisher
May 22, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Repeat and contradict. Your comment is indeed mind boggling Jiri. It fails to have apprehended the main points outlined above. It fails to contribute anything helpful to the conversation. And Jiri, I’m an Antipodean and we don’t believe in ‘mentors’ – they’re dangerously close to tall poppies. The little idea that I have a ‘mentor’ is constructed in your own imagination to satisfy your own beliefs. Your inability to perceive bias is probably a reflection of your own
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Soloview
May 23, 2012 at 8:53 pm
Steph,
do you really, truly, believe that when people see a quickie off-the-cuff essay titled ‘An Exhibition of Incopetence: Trickery Dickery Bayes’ they’ll figure, ‘Aha, Steph wants to stimulate a rational conversation’ ? Really, truly ? Because you see, it looks to this former dummy-half more like a regular ‘haka’.
stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 12:27 am
and what do you mean by a ‘regular haka’? It sounds not just culturally insensitive but a massively ignorant racist slur.
stephanie louise fisher
May 22, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Jiri, you repeat and contradict. Your comment is indeed mind boggling. It fails to apprehend any main points outlined above or contribute anything relevant of helpful to the conversion. Indeed, it seems to reflect a lack of elementary skills of reading comprehension. And Jiri, I am an Antipodean and I don’t believe in ‘mentors’ or titles. The idea of ‘mentor’ creeps dangerously close to the idea of tall poppies. Your failure to recognise bias where it exists probably reflects your own.
stephanie
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Grog
May 23, 2012 at 12:22 am
I’m really glad you said this twice, because I didn’t get it the first time.
stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Not surprising.
brettongarcia
May 26, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Is the “debate” between Historicists and Mythicists, really an objective debate?
The language, the emotional tone and axis of blogs, is not really objective scholarly debate; though ideas are often advanced, deeper underneath it is all to often, normally, a simple contest of adolescent egos, rivals. One in which the players all see themselves in terms that are finally, rather too much like cartoon superheroes: heros vanquishing evil villains. “Brilliant” heroes vanquishing “fools” and so forth. But of course? Tthere is something far from scholarship in the prevailing ego contest, fo the internet,
And in fact, there is something even psychologially dangerous, in this self-vs.-others agonism of Internet blogs: there is something that feeds into/creates more serious disorders. My own theory of one “antipodean” mode for example – Manic Depressive disorder – sees it as stemming from an exaggerated sense of self. And for that matter, sees it in nearly biblical or ethical terms: as beginning with 1) simple Vanity. With an exaggerated sense of self, of the self as powerful hero, in the manic phase. But 2) then, after having committed excesses of Vanity, and errors of overselfconfidence in that phase? Next comes the depressive phase. Which need not be seen as hopelessly inexplicable or arcane. But which I see as … simply natural sense of Remorse; or contrition. Which is called “depression.” But is more properly, simply? Remorse.
In the lower realms of academe there is a sense especially, that the most erudite voice is the superhero, that is always right. And that always wins; since the erudite voice knows the rules of The Game better than anyone, and plays by them better than the untutored. And yet however? There are so many cases where the best knowledge base that we have is by no means enough. So that the most academic and erudite discussion, amounts to mere wheel-spinning. And the showest exihibitions? Failing, soon lead to simple … Remorse.
The task of vanquishing “fools,” and “miscreants,” and evil mythicists … interfaces all too completely, with the basic character of the Internet. Or for that matter, with a moral, CHristian evil: Vanity. One hopes that this character is presented in so obvious a way on blogs, exaggerated, in order to be obviously, self-parodying.
Though if the perpetrator is experiencing Remorse later on? Undoubtedly it was all too real, for all too many participants.
rjosephhoffmann
May 26, 2012 at 4:26 pm
@Garcia: This is thoughtful. I can assure you that what precipitates this discussion–which is not a debate because the sides are not matched as they would be in serious academic interchange–is the increasing adventurism of the mythtics and their repeated sniping at scholarship. Many of us on what is being called the “historicist” side of the discussion are concerned that left unchallenged, a whole generation of people who get most of their information from the internet will simply assume that the idea of the historical Jesus is equivalent to belief in a divine savior. The propositions are entirely different and openly acknowledged by members of the profession–many of whom–myself included–do not mind being called unbelievers. But “belief” is not the issue here: it is how historical sources are handled. Is the internet the best place for serious discussion–of course not, and Professor Casey has said as much in his opening remarks. Should scholars respond to suggestions that a profession–to quote Mr Carrier-is “fucked up”– when, as far as anyone can determine, the religious studies and cognate departments at Chicago, Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Nottingham and Stanford are chugging along just fine and turning out methodologically sophisticated scholars. Of course. There is no reason to be moralistic about this and to accuse people who are stating confidently the facts as they know them of ‘acting superior.” Scholarship is not an internet debate: you are right about that. But ideas that can be substantiated are superior ideas. What I am discovering is that this discussion is long overdue, and if it prevents even five people from accepting the appeals to unreason and superstitious reading of texts using discredited “authorities” a century old, it will have been worth the trouble. Let me say also for the benefits of those who are just looking in on tis discussion and may surprised at its tone: atheist like to say that the belief in God is irrational and that atheism is therefore a reasonable position. I’ve often said, that is a perfectly valid position to take and has to be argued philosophically. There is NOTHING remotely similar between that position and the “belief” that Jesus of Nazareth was an historical individual. Philosophy and especially logic play implicit roles in this discussion, but they are not the primary tools for deciding the question. The fact is, we need the most efficient, simplest, and most plausible explanation for the beginning of the Christian movement which developed not in a haze but in the full glare of antiquity. Our primary sources offer a sufficient if loaded explanation for that event. The mythtics offer us jello.
Ananda
May 22, 2012 at 9:49 pm
“At no point in such a process does a critical scholar throw his or her hands in the air and pronounce a fatwah on all preceding efforts”
Well Stephanie that was so funny and so true for not until we let go of the literal letter can we begin to appreciate the life of the spirit.
Now this matter of Joseph’s breakfast might just take on a new light if one were performing deep self inquiry , “Is the self that had breakfast the same as the self now eating lunch” Yep a brand new critter is having lunch and we can take Paul literally here……2 Cor. 5:17; Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. You can be very thankful we are not in a historical Christ……lol….. It’s the Magic of ordinary life ! We are all mythical creatures for nobody is who they “THINK” they are.
Actually it’s the NHC which may actually assist in opening the understanding of the spiritual allegories in the canon.
Stephanie says;
“But all extant Gospels are already very late stages of the “Gospel tradition”, the Gospel having already been preached for nearly an entire lifetime across three continents before any Gospel was written”
I wonder who‘s gospel’s you are thinking about, maybe Maricon or Valentinus , Cerinthus, or perhaps even Philo and Basilides. Bet ya Simon Magus, Apollos and Cephas had mighty gospels as well. I would even contend that Ecsebius merged four entirely different traditions into one universal ring to rule them all. Perhaps you consider Paul the end all which could live and guide a community entirely without the gospels as Maricon did without the OT. How many pagan oral traditions were whirling around in the soup as well?
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Ananda
May 29, 2012 at 9:47 am
Much Expanded……………
.Alogi
Apellianists
Artemonites
Basilidians
> Cainites
Capocratians
Cerdonians
Cerinthians
Cleobians
Dosithereans
Ebionites
Elchasaites
Encrites
Manicheans
Marcelinians
Marcionites
Menandrians
Montanists
> Nazarenes
Nicolatians
> Noetians
Novatians
Ophites
Praxeans
Proto-Orthodox
Saturninians
Sethians
Simonians
Theodotians
Valentinians
Thanks to Jake Jones IV at Jesus Mysteries
http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/messages/62654?threaded=1&m=e&var=1&tidx=1
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rjosephhoffmann
May 29, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Nice list; what’s it for? Is the girlfriend a myth, too? Darn
Ananda
May 29, 2012 at 2:03 pm
“Nice list; what’s it for? Is the girlfriend a myth, too? Darn”
Well,I was thinking again, of that old Latin saying; “Never less alone than when alone”
The proto-orthodox were not alone………………lol
neodecaussade
May 22, 2012 at 10:19 pm
Reblogged this on Neodecaussade’s Weblog and commented:
Excellent read.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 12:27 am
Thank you. :)
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alnitak
May 23, 2012 at 2:00 am
“Atheist blogger Richard Carrier, has now added to his passionate flushings of incompetence with another book,…”
I’m afraid you lost me at that early point. If you are a reputable academic (sorry, I don’t know -your- credentials, for all your shaming of his) then you have not only the weight of an in-depth formal education in this or related subjects coupled to years of thought, discussion, and analysis, but you are also trained to communicate your ideas effectively. Surely you are prepared to deal concisely with the facts of Carrier’s presentation, firmly but without rancor. It should be easy if he is as inept as you imply. I gather that he used has used intemperate language in the past; perhaps that fault of his is worth a footnote, perhaps not.
I am perhaps overly affected by my own field, biology, where ideas are dealt with in egalitarian fashion, and even the most rank amateur can present an idea or ask a question that provokes discussion, sometimes among the most learned in their field. In a field like mine, “having written several books” often equates to “being learned about -past- research.”
I will try to more than scan your essay, but it is made difficult by the hyperbolic tone, which has been used by authors less knowledgeable than yourself to hide insufficiency of thought or fact.
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ROO BOOKAROO
May 23, 2012 at 9:59 am
Alnitak, that is a great point.
This lady Fisher does not realize that she undermines her own message (assuming there’s one) with her abundance of vitriol, because there’s so much of it that it’s hard to see what else is there she wants to communicate.
It often seems that her only satisfaction is to throw aspersions on the victims of her anger. Even after having read her stuff completely, I have a hard time remembering the points she is trying to make, whereas I remember more distinctly what Casey is trying to prove.
For your amusement, and possible use in the future, note that scholars and debaters of the 19th century had some cute, Latin expressions to express those two aspects inherent in most debates on religion: If your opponent criticized you without even having read or understood your stuff, you would say that he/she attacked you “sine studio” (without any examination), which you would answer, in your high-minded nobility of mind, “sine ira” (without anger, or resentment).
This lady Fisher could try to use this “sine ira” mode of response. But it goes against her grain and freedom of expression. It is not possible to switch centuries so easily.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Roo: It is astonishing that you seem not to have evolved since the nineteenth century, and joined the modern convention of addressing human beings equally without being sexually discriminating and derogatory to boot.
stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Carrier makes unqualified pronouncements without sound argument or evidence and accompanies it with plenty of vitriol against New Testament scholars and their work. I am in favour of discussion and debate and interested people being involved. However this is not how Carrier approaches the study of history. I am glad you appreciated Professor Hoffmann’s essay so much. I did too.
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ROO BOOKAROO
May 23, 2012 at 2:58 pm
Alnitak:
You were hoping for fair dealings “without rancor”, that is “sine ira.” However, the opposite, “cum ira” is this lady Fisher’s modus vivendi. She seems to thrive only when venting out invectives, derogations and deprecations.
Coming from we don’t know where, she suddenly arrogates to herself the right to “express the fact that [Carrier] is not qualified in New Testament studies”, that’s right, as if she’s been designated by the Holy Spirit to declare incompetences and adjudicate qualifications about who can do what.
After 15 years of studies, he’d been waiting for her kind of final endorsement, and, surprise, he’s finally been given his pink slip from the profession. How is he going to make a living and support his wife and children?
That this is promoted as a site for learned discussions of Christian interpretations, when it is in fact a site for pouring out hostility on certain visitors and scholars she despises like Richard Carrier or Earl Doherty (a harmless, aging man who’s not even given a modicum of respect for his silver hair) is discouraging. I was naively expecting quality of tone, and some depth of insight, but nothing like this no-holds-barred mano a mano. Even Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, was more gracious in style than this modern Fury.
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Neil Godfrey’s response 1 to Maurice Casey and Stephanie Fisher « Vridar says:
May 23, 2012 at 2:06 am
[...] on his blog ‘I’m a librarian, but I never see or touch a book.’[43] (Stephanie Fisher, An Exhibitions of Incompetence . . . accessed [...]
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 11:45 am
Our comments Neil, were slightly tongue and cheek. I didn’t find it the post accidentally. I noted it at the time. Yes I commented at the time about the benefits outweighing the risks of living on a faultline but could hardly forget your light hearted post which was a consequence of an earthquake that subsequently devastated the lives of many people, some of whom I know. I also took note of that particular post because it was ironic considering the fact that you constantly misrepresent scholarship you claim to have thoroughly read. Hence literal interpretation: tongue and cheek to ‘explain’ your misrepresentation of scholarship conveniently.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 11:40 am
Poor Neil – he goes on, really scraping the barrel.
stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 11:41 am
… reflecting more about themselves than anyone else.
Ben Schuldt
May 23, 2012 at 2:34 am
Subscribing.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Be happy and smile.
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steph
May 25, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Aw isn’t this sweet Ben Schuldt, all this effort for your mate Dick Carrier. And all this effort in addition to all the foul language you direct at us. “War on Error” – but that’s so characteristic, isn’t it. You have alot of “courage” coming here don’t you. http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/268
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David Mills
May 23, 2012 at 4:18 am
Stephanie,
‘Speaking’ as an agnostic on the issue of Jesus’ historicity, my uncertainty about ‘Brothers of the Lord’ in 1 Cor 9.5 is that if this is siblings, then it it eminent/privileged members of the upper end of the church, indeed arguably travelling missionaries.
Given what I think is a complete absence of any tradition in which siblings had such roles or held such positions, I feel that the suggestion that this is a clear reference to siblings is unwarranted. They do not even, for example, appear on the list of witnesses later in the same book. As far as I know, they do not appear anywhere.
As for looking for a distinct group, why not just those brothers who are far enough up the pecking order to qualify for privileges? Does it have to be a clear and distinct group, in those very early days in which we might reasonably expect a degree of flux? One word which springs to mind is ‘elders’.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 1:18 pm
David: The tradition in Mark 6.3 points to Jesus having siblings. There does not seem to be any reasonable argument to doubt that this tradition is true. Interpreting Paul, he refers to brothers in the Lord as plural suggesting close followers, which is distinguished from brothers ‘of’ the Lord in 1 Cor 9.5 which suggests siblings. For example when Paul refers to a brother of the Lord, ?de?f?s t?? ??????, in Gal 1.19, it is reasonable to interpret a sibling. The assumption that traditions must be repeated and repeated if they are true is not reasonable considering the limited writings preserved of Paul, the expectations of his audience who didn’t need to be constantly reminded, and ultimately the limited evidence from early Christianity.
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David Mills
May 23, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Thanks Stephanie.
Regarding Mark, didnt Paula Fredriksen once offer the observaton that the names of Jesus’ brothers were, er, notably symbolic. I believe the analogy she used was that it was a bit like describing a significant American as having brothers named Washington, Lincoln and Truman. I may not have recalled the correct prsidents there. :)
My problem with Mark is that a lot of it seems as if it might be allegory, not history, and I don’t know how one can reliably tell the difference.
I take your points about 1 Cor 9.5, but I can’t honestly say I can agree with them. To me, 1 Cor 9.5 is pretty ambiguous, if not in fact accessible to a more coherent explanation as non-siblings, in my humble opinion, for a variety of reasons, including the ones I mentioned.
I do accept that Gal 1.19 seems more like sibling, but, rational sceptic that I am, I find it hard to justify any certainty, or even decisive likliehood. And Gal 1.19 depends on 1 Cor 9.5.
As an agnostic, I can agree with a lot of what is said about mythicists, including a number of your points. I do wish there was more agnosticism though, since I feel it is the most warranted position.
David
stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 2:39 pm
We all evolve in thinking as critical and self critical human beings. I began as a complete agnostic two decades ago, when I first specifically approached the history of religions, as to the historicity of a Jewish Jesus. I had never believed in any religion and had no crosses to burn, but alot of burning questions about the origins of religions, why they came to be, why humanity needed them and how they developed and who developed them and other things. I have since studied and learned and read broadly and specialised in early Christian origins. I have researched and enquired and questioned and contradicted and changed my mind a million times. However gradually over the last six years cumulative weight of argument and evidence has led me to conclude that I think I have moved beyond the question of actual existence to questions of what to do with the evidence and argument. Despite this, evidence will always be debatable and precision is unattainable… and new evidence could change my mind. However not everyone has the luxury of time and training to read or know what to read so the most honest non specialist critic may always hold an agnostic view. There will always probably be those who for various reasons will create myths out of their agnosticism to deny any historical figure at all, behind a religion they might want to dismiss. I am still agnostic about most things to degrees and rely on specialists in other fields to help me reach tentative conclusions.
samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 1:25 pm
“….that if this is siblings, then it it (sic, presumably “they were”) eminent/privileged members of the upper end of the church, indeed arguably travelling missionaries.”
It is a pity none of them could write or even dictate then we wouldn’t have had 2,000 years of non-stop argumentation. Could it have been so difficult for a real person or his brothers to have set down his ideas in a clear and concise manner in a form which would have survived until the present day? Given that Matthew, Mark etc managed it then why not Jesus? Perhaps the problem is that he was born just 40 years too early. What a convenient cock-up.
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Dustin Cooper
May 23, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Given the apocalyptic nature of much of Jesus’ teaching, are you really surprised that neither he nor his earliest followers didn’t see an immediate need to preserve Jesus’s words and deeds for posterity?
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Thom Stark
May 24, 2012 at 12:40 am
Exactly right, Dustin.
samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Stephanie,
“the crowd stoned them with such violence that most of the cohort were killed. Archelaus then sent in his army in force: the result was 3,000 dead Jews and the wreckage of a major festival (Jos. War II, 5-13: Ant XVII, 206-8). This is arguably what the chief priests were avoiding by not arresting Jesus in public in the Temple, yet Carrier shows not a glimmer of awareness of the event in the time of Archelaus ever happening..”
Good point. So Jesus having been arrested secretly to avoid a riot is then just a few hours later put in front of a baying mob who, presumably, had been first checked out by the new stone-detector machines just introduced by the Romans.
I also like another point you make that Luke thought Matthew a complete liar on the matter of the nativity. In that, I agree with Luke. But I go one step further and think Luke was a liar too in his claim to be writing history. Clearly, he was writing theology.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Hi Sam, Thank you for your comments. I think Maurice discusses this, but I say too, that the nativity stories are far from historical truth! I hope it is implicit that storytelling in ‘Matthew’ is replaced by storytelling of ‘Luke’. However I wouldn’t call Matthew or Luke ‘liars’. I think that’s anachronistic. It was storytelling, and ‘Luke’ was replacing the mess in ‘Matthew’ with something ‘better’ and more fitting. The author of Matthew was also a horrendous misogynist and ‘Luke’ wasn’t. The late great Michael Goulder pointed that out. Goulder wrote: “Matthew, as is evident from his recasting of Mark’s divorce ruling, was a conventional Jewish male chauvinist, to whom it was natural to think of Jesus’ birth from the angle of the putative father. But Luke was of a more liberal cast of mind, for which women were in many ways the spiritual equals of men” (LNP 221). If only Roo Bookaroo (thread above), was a little more like ‘Luke’. :-)
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samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“….that if this is siblings, then it it (sic, presumably “they were”?) eminent/privileged members of the upper end of the church, indeed arguably travelling missionaries.”
It is a pity none of Jesus’ siblings could write or even dictate then we wouldn’t have had 2,000 years of non-stop argumentation. Could it have been so difficult for a real person or his real brothers to have set down their ideas and histories in a clear and concise manner and in a form which would have survived until the present day? Given that Matthew, Mark etc managed it then why not Jesus or Jacob? What an incompetent way to run an apostolic church.
Perhaps the problem is that Jesus was born just 40 years too early. What a convenient cock-up.
P.S. I love it when Stephanie quotes dirty.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 2:17 pm
The problem with amateur detectives applying their “skill set” to the gospels is that they ask questions like the following without realizing how obtuse they are:
Could it have been so difficult for a real person or his real brothers to have set down their ideas and histories in a clear and concise manner and in a form which would have survived until the present day?
The answer is, yes. Probably impossible. And why would they? Have you read the autobiography of Alexander the Great? Do you know why?
Augustine did leave us one, in the 5th century–sort of–and good luck sorting out fact and fiction in that.
My non-sarcastic point is that the road back through time is riddled with potholes and sinkholes and the farther back you go the more treacherous they become. The argument against the mythicists isn’t about authority and credentials–except when a surprising number show that they believe they can fly over these anachronisms (like angels?) without ever learning how to drive.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 2:48 pm
A couple of useful references on the realities and difficulties of reading and writing in antiquity might be found with:
Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000).
R. A. Derrenbacker Jr., Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 186; Leuven: Peeters, 2006).
and a brief article for luck (very good)
R. A. Derrenbacker, “Greco-Roman Writing Practices and Luke’s Gospel” in Christopher A. Rollston, The Gospels According to Michael Goulder: A North American Response (Harrisburg: PA; Trinity Press, 2004).
samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 6:23 pm
“The answer is, yes. Probably impossible. And why would they? Have you read the autobiography of Alexander the Great?”
Not yet. The 40-ton 32 wheeler lorry with the tablets containing Chapter 1 arrives tomorrow.
“Do you know why?”
Yes – but Alexander wasn’t the Son of God. It doesn’t matter to me or the rest of mankind whether Alexander existed or not any more than it matters to me and my fellow English whether or not King Arthur was real or mythical.
I’m told that the entire and perfectly-preserved New Testament was completed within 100 years of the date a resurrected body (in a form St Paul and William Lane Craig cannot agree on) disappeared upwards into a conveniently placed white cloud.
This is my eternal soul and those of another 100 billion people I’m talking about here. Why couldn’t Jesus or his brothers do what St Paul did? Nothing startling in data recording and transmission was invented in between the supposed crucifixion and the date “St Paul” allegedly started writing to his flock so what’s your objection to Jesus and/or his brothers jotting down a few notes to convince me and my fellow 100 billion of the reality of his historical existence?
Let me spell it out. Jesus could have written or dictated stuff to Cephas and/or James. Cephas and James could have had the memoir copied and they could have given one of the copies to Paul when he visited them in Jerusalem. Paul could have then copied the copy and stapled a copy to each of his letters etc etc. But this perfectly technically-acheivable process did not happen. Why not? Because faith is more important than truth?
In view of the fact that the whole purported point of christianity is that it achieves the reconnection of mankind to God for all time are you suggesting that, unlike Mohamed, the Son of the genuine God couldn’t afford the cost of a few leaves of papyrus and half a pint of squid ink to ensure that his message was transmitted down the centuries?
Why couldn’t God achieve what Paul is supposed to have managed time after time?
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David Hillman
May 23, 2012 at 6:30 pm
I can not get to the arguments through all the ad hominem attacks, name dropping. snobbery, and abuse. When I argue with Physicists about quantum theory I get to grips with their ideas and their arguments and facts, not with what degree they got or whether they once believed in the Copenhagen interpretation. Does it matter, really, if someone was once a fundamentalist? This supercilious attitude makes getting to any real contribution to history like treading through treacle – and after several tries I give up.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 7:10 pm
I can not get to the arguments through all the ad hominem attacks, name dropping. snobbery, and abuse. When I argue with Physicists about quantum theory I get to grips with their ideas and their arguments and facts
Good for you. And your qualifications in Biblical studies are….what? I’d be very happy to argue with you.
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David Hillman
May 24, 2012 at 5:05 am
Yeah, O.K., I have a B.A. and M.A. in History from Oxford and also first class honours in Physics and Maths. But these mean less than my own studies over 50 years, including many visits to the holy land. I am not interested in peoples’ qualifications, rather in the quality of their arguments. Thank God people love my poetry without asking if I’ve done a course in creative writing.Long live Faraday and William Blake who spoke with authority but not as the scribes.
stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Sounds like it’s long past time for you to give up David. Yes it does matter if someone has deconverted from some form of fundamentalist belief in which they held convictions without argument or evidence. Nobody can approach problems in life with pure objectivity. We are human beings who necessarily begin and continue our lives within some kind of social framework and we are shaped by our environments life experiences.
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David Mills
May 24, 2012 at 10:11 am
I could not agree more, David. Though you forgot arguments from authority.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Eh – talking to yourself? See comment currently at bottom of entire comment thread by rjosephhhoffmann on authority.
samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Stephanie,
“A couple of useful references on the realities and difficulties of reading and writing in antiquity might be found with:…”
I’m not naive. I understand the difficulties in the writing and transmission of delicate documents down the ages but fundamentalists tell me that the New Testament (and, indeed, the OT) have indeed arrived on our doorstep pretty much in the same form as in the original autographs all of which proves, despite the extreme difficulties and Mr Hoffman’s opinion, that such transmission is possible. But, Mr Hoffman tells me, that in the case of Jesus and his brothers such transmission is “probably impossible”. Even for the Son of God?
So please tell me why Jesus couldn’t do what Paul and the evangelists seemingly did without difficulty.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Oh Gish Samphire : Do you really want me to respond to this?
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samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Yes, please. Please explain why the historical Jesus Christ and/or his brothers couldn’t do what Paul manage to do many times? Well, seven times, maybe.
And don’t gallop through it.
rjosephhoffmann
May 23, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Let me spell it out. Jesus could have written or dictated stuff to Cephas and/or James. Cephas and James could have had the memoir copied and they could have given one of the copies to Paul when he visited them in Jerusalem. Paul could have then copied the copy and stapled a copy to each of his letters etc etc. But this perfectly technically-acheivable process did not happen. Why not? Because faith is more important than truth?
I am sure this sounds reasonable to you. That is sad. Because it is unreasonable to not just me but to anyone in ancient history or classical studies. Are you for example saying that if there had been a historical Jesus who knew he was the son of God he should have … x,y, z? Fascinating thought. But that is not what scholars are saying or thinking. Except perhaps the mythicists like Carrier. The fact that you do not know why it is ludicrous is why we need the Jesus Process. But in language I think you will understand, your question is an inductive fallacy: hypothesis contrary to fact.
Grog
May 24, 2012 at 1:44 am
RJH
“Are you for example saying that if there had been a historical Jesus who knew he was the son of God he should have … x,y, z? Fascinating thought. But that is not what scholars are saying or thinking. Except perhaps the mythicists like Carrier.”
Hmmm…This strikes me as a mischaracterization of Carrier’s views. Care to defend?
stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 10:57 am
Well ‘grog’ – why for example, does Carrion struggle so desparately, contrary to critical argument and evidence, to deny that Jesus had siblings? Without x=siblings Jesus has less historical verisimilitude and the mythtic illusion is perceived by themselves as necessarily ‘unarguable’.
David Mills
May 24, 2012 at 10:43 am
Samphire53,
He/they could have done, but apparently he/they didn’t. It doesn’t seem unusual to me. I don’t think we should infer anything from it.
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Dustin Cooper
May 24, 2012 at 10:53 am
Samphire, I think you (and really most mythicists) should read up on the Positivist Fallacy:
http://www.livius.org/th/theory/theory-positivist.html
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samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Hi Steph
“I think Maurice discusses this, but I say too, that the nativity stories are far from historical truth! I hope it is implicit that storytelling in ‘Matthew’ is replaced by storytelling of ‘Luke’. However I wouldn’t call Matthew or Luke ‘liars’.”
I agree. As I wrote above, the gospels are theology and not history (IMAO).
I was taught never to call anybody a “liar” – a very nasty word – so, when we were caught lying, we were told “not to tell stories”. This could mean not gossiping or sneaking but it also had this second meaning of not lying. In an historical setting telling stories not based upon historical actuality is telling untruths or lying. In a theological setting one can say what one likes because some-one will always find theological truth within the historical falsity.
“I think that’s anachronistic.”
As in “thou shall not bear false witness”? Or is the admonishment against bearing false witness purely relevant solely in a legalistic setting?
“It was storytelling, and ‘Luke’ was replacing the mess in ‘Matthew’ with something ‘better’ and more fitting.”
And inspired?
“The author of Matthew was also a horrendous misogynist …….”
So not inspired?
“If only Roo Bookaroo (thread above), was a little more like ‘Luke’. ”
Beardwise, they are very similar. But Luke never wore white socks with sandals, I bet.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 7:56 pm
Ancient storytelling is not synonymous with 21st century lying to deceive. The gospel authors were following cultural conventions and norms in an historical context far removed from our own where we have the post enlightenment clear distinction between myth and reality.
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samphire53
May 24, 2012 at 5:08 am
These things I’m aware of. But it is this colloidal mix of fact and myth which makes Mr.Casey’s apologetics of why Paul failed to provide any history of or reference to a recently living man so risibly incongruous as, indeed, is Paul’s claim that he failed to meet the other apostles on his visit to Jerusalem, a city of 60,000 and which any healed cripple could limp across in half an hour.
Is it likely a real Paul who had walked hundreds of tough miles along rough stoney tracks to a far off city to meet his co-religionists would fail to seek the company of most if not all of Jesus’ death-defying proselytising and closest mates? Would anybody fly across the Atlantic in relative comfort to stay a fortnight with Billy Graham and not seek out an evening’s entertainment with George Beverley Shea? But when it comes to discussing the mythic virginity of Mary it isn’t necessary to talk to the entire College of Cardinals to discover what the Catholic church’s teaching is on the matter; one man in a red hat and red shoes will do. In Paul’s story, only if Jesus was a mythic Son of God character who none of the lads had actually ever physically met would this tale make any sense.
Or, perhaps, if Paul himself was mythic.
rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 7:18 am
“Paul himself was mythic.” You really are reading selectively aren’t you mate?
rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 9:10 am
http://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/hoffmann-cold-cocks-mythers/
David Mills
May 24, 2012 at 10:27 am
Joseph,
How has it come to this? Only a few years ago you were describing the historicity question as open and unanswerable. At that point, I admired you for saying what I personally thought was the most reasonable, rational thing I believed I had ever heard from an NT scholar. Now it’s derision and not much else.
I can understand exasperation with mythicists, really I can, but what about a return to a healthy dash of uncertainty? :)
rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 11:02 am
@David: It is clear alas! David that you have not read my essay at all; you are not even posting this comment on it. There is nothing derisive in it except derision of some bad ideas. I say repeatedly ” I have come to the conclusion.” That is a process, not a fixed position. Some of us see that process as reasonable as we learn more and investigate more. At this moment, the cumulative weight of what I know makes the existence of Jesus the reasonable position. Of course, that could change, but it will not change without substantial additional evidence to the contrary: that is to say, not on the basis of a contrived method that turns analogies and bad assumptions into premises at the touch of Midas’s finger.
rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Samphire: “Is it likely a real Paul who had walked hundreds of tough miles along rough stoney tracks to a far off city to meet his co-religionists would fail to seek the company of most if not all of Jesus’ death-defying proselytising and closest mates? Would anybody fly across the Atlantic in relative comfort to stay a fortnight with Billy Graham and not seek out an evening’s entertainment with George Beverley Shea?” It is always difficult to have to invent an imaginary and anachronistic scenario to get to a “probability” as you have done here. This is a good example of why the Bayes Machine produces sausage rather than conclusions.
stephanie louise fisher
May 24, 2012 at 10:49 am
Sam… what is the point of inventing 21st century analogies from your own culture? It is all completely irrelevant. Apologetics is defence of a faith. Providing historical evidence combined with textual interpretation and analysis is not apologetics.
David Mills
May 24, 2012 at 1:49 pm
@ Joseph.
No, Joseph, it is not ‘clear’ that I haven’t read your article, but since I accept that my saying ‘derision and not much else’ was not a good choice of words and not accurate, I can understand why it seemed like that to you.
Yes, you do spend a lot of time on decent arguments, IMHO, but I am not the only poster here, nor elsewhere on other discussion forums where I have currently seen the issue discussed, who feels that there is a tad too much of a, shalll we say, less measured and mannered debate.
However, that is bye the bye, and arguably a proto-ad hom in itself. :)
My general impression is that there is not much of a middle ground in this matter, which I think is unfortunate for any debate, and that was why I was curious to know how it was that you came to go from ‘open, unanswerable question’, to your present position, since it was, I think, only in 2009 that you wrote that.
So, I would like to ask you the same question again. It’s not a leading question. I am a genuine agnostic.
rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 2:07 pm
@David Thanks, and I do detect a sincere open mindedness on your part. Unfortunately the positions are emotionally charged on both sides. There are undoubtedly a few who think that a mythical Jesus would “serve the Church right” for the harm it has foisted on people. I take it for granted that people in that circle are merely looking for emotional support. There are at the other extreme people who see the historical existence of Jesus as the sine qua non of their born-again belief system. The idea of a mythic Jesus is repugnant to them. For about three centuries now, liberal theology has stripped away the supernatural garments of the divine man and has done such a good job of deconstructing him that there is not much left of Paul s savior figure, the fully divine-full-human hybrid that the church eventually taught. Neither the old mythtics nor the new dispatched him; liberal theology and various schools of biblical criticism did. In the long run, the historical existence of Jesus may not matter very much: it certainly does not matter to me at any emotional level. The early deists and rationalists like Paine would have been much happier with a merely human Jesus who did exist than with a myth–and said as much–but I think (and have said so) that we are in the throes of certain thoroughgoing atheists who think that Jesus denial is a logical complement to God denial. I happen to think that while you can account for the beginnings of any religion without postulating an historical founder, it is ludicrous to think that historical religions like Judaism, Islam and Christianity developed as the result of some religious big bang or as the work of an overzealous fiction writer or story teller. Those of us who consider ourselves ‘experts” in this field would do better to explain our reasoning in archaeological terms because we look at the details by strata and try not to mix the beliefs of say the year 100CE into the formative beliefs of, say, the year 40CE. I would be the first to say it is risky business. Also the first to say that it cannot be done by intuition, appeals to analogy or to “common sense,” which has led many a scholar down the road to disaster. A lot of what I am seeing on this site is infinitely commonsensical and almost certainly wrongheaded–e.g., If Jesus or his brothers existed they could have written their memoirs. But enough for now. Thanks for writing.
David Mills
May 24, 2012 at 6:32 pm
@ Joseph
Thanks for that. It is reassuring and sensible. I can’t think of anything in it I would strongly disagree with. And thanks for not correcting my syntax. I think it ought to have been ‘by the by’ not ‘bye the bye’. I need to proofread more thoroughly. :)
It seems to me, as an outsider (i.e. not a scholar) that there is quite a risk in trying to discuss the issue ‘agnostically’, if that’s the correct word, perhaps ‘as an open question’ is better. I get the impression that to do so, perhaps especially these days, invites a sort of sensationalizing stampede of what I can agree are inexpert and somewhat tenuous contributors.
I have a pet theory (I’m guessing of course) that you started the Jesus Project in good faith, only to find the process hijacked, if that’s not too strong a word, by those who leaned a bit too much in the direction of mythicism.
I’m sure you and I could have a delightful discussion, had we the time. I respect your position, even if I do not entirely agree with it and think that you were on the money in 2009. :)
Anyhows, I’ll finish by saying that one of my favourite pieces on this topic was an article by linguist Elvar Ellegard, entitled ‘Theologians as Historians’ which was followed by a set of commentaries/reviews, from various scholars and historians (not many of whom agreed with him I might add) but all conducted with the sort of reasoned argument that one could hope for. The last review piece was by Professor Rolf Torstendal, not a scholar, but an historian. If any one piece summed up my own persp[ective, that was it. You are probably familiar with it.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/scandia/article/viewFile/1078/863
David
May 25, 2012 at 6:38 am
@ Joseph
ps
I meant the Torstendahl commentary, not the Ellegard article, when I said it represented my approximate approach.
samphire53
May 23, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Stephanie,
“and a brief article for luck (very good)
R. A. Derrenbacker, “Greco-Roman Writing Practices and Luke’s Gospel” in Christopher A. Rollston, The Gospels According to Michael Goulder: A North American Response (Harrisburg: PA; Trinity Press, 2004).”
i found plenty of references but no link to the Derrenbacker article. Is it available on the net and, if so, may I have the link?
At £32 for the Millard even in paperback I shall have to remain in ignorance of its contents until my winter fuel allowance comes through later this year. Could I swop a barely-opened Lee Strobel for your copy?
Thought not.
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stephanie louise fisher
May 23, 2012 at 9:55 pm
It is an essay in a book. All three books I cited are available in most university libraries I imagine – check the CAT. Alternatively you can interloan them as well. I paid less than £32 for all three – try harder… haggle. :-)
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Blood
May 24, 2012 at 11:14 am
“It is culturally ludicrous to expect anyone like Haim Cohn to give a fair account of a New Testament narrative…”
Oh really? It isn’t any more “ludicrous” than expecting the average Christian NT scholar to give a fair account … as if they weren’t culturally biased.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 24, 2012 at 11:29 am
I have a dog in this fight but not concerning this essay, but I do find a piece of illogic in this thread disconcerting. Many of you are complaining that Fisher and Casey have “appealed” to authority. This apparently is an attempt to make their arguments fallacious, as appeals to authority are usually considered fallacious. But they are not appealing to authority: they are appealing to knowledge and merit. It is the same sort of appeal we use in any profession to establish qualifications. Unless you want to say that qualifications and credentials are irrelevant, you need to make this distinction. If you do think this, then you have no way of distinguishing the bogus view of a Baptist preacher who says the Bible is verbatim true and the PhD of a Richard Carrier, which credential is repeatedly invoked by many of you in favour of his ideas. I am only playing umpire here, but this is very sloppy reasoning on your part: An appeal to knowledge and skill and demonstrated accomplishment vs incompetence or prejudice is not an appeal to authority, so please calm down a bit when you see words like “respectable” or “highly regarded” or “expert” used.
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Ken Scaletta
May 25, 2012 at 12:46 am
Steph said
“Well ‘grog’ – why for example, does Carrion struggle so desparately, contrary to critical argument and evidence, to deny that Jesus had siblings?”
Hoffman also denies this – or at least rejects the consensus that ?de?f?? t?? ?????? in Gal. 1:19 indicates a biological relationship between Jesus and James. Hoffman obviously does not see this as an argument against historicity, but he does deny that James was Jesus’ brother, so if you’re going to disparage the scholarly validity of this view then you also have to disparage RJH (http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2007/faccidents-bad-assumptions-and-the-jesus-tomb-debacle/).
I’m not a myther, by the way, nor am I convinced by Hoffman’s argument that Paul was using the term, ADELPHOS, ecclesiastically/congregationally (for multiple reasons), but it’s not a crackpot view.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 25, 2012 at 8:46 am
@Ken: I cited the 2007 blog piece (“Faccidents”) on Talpiot in my own article in footnote 85 to reflect new considerations in the James inventory and my own thinking about the issue, especially in the light of John Painter’s illuminating study. The article you reference was in response to the use of Gal. 1,19 “dispositively” in the Talpiot tombs discussion, and as is clear my point was really to draw attention to the plurality and ambiguity of James in the tradition. Just fyi, however, I do not regard Paul’s use of the name brother in relation to James clear cut, but I do not rule it out (see below) and I do think the idea that Jesus had actual brothers and sisters a very early and probably unerasable part of the tradition—one that obviously became inconvenient as doctrines about the person of Jesus and the chastity of Mary evolved. Here is footnote 85 for the record: [85] A credible recent survey is the study by John Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in Hnistory and Tradition (SPNT; Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina, 2004), especially as it concerns his critique of Robert Eisenman’s ingenious but unconvincing identification of James with the Qumran teacher of Righteousness. Puzzlingly, Hegesippus (d. 180?) Comm. 5.1, “After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem.” I consider the “James” and “Mary” traditions instances of doublets that were unsatisfactorily resolved by the compilers, both between the gospels and between the letters of Paul and the Book of Acts. (On the multiple-Mary problem, especially see Jesus outside the Gospels, pp. 41-50). It seems clear that apologetic tendencies govern this confusion. The external evidence is unhelpful and unreliable, causing the difficulty of determining which James is in view, as well as the possibility of pseudonymity and redactional stages, rendering any discussion of the name untidy: James the (obscure) father of Judas (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13); James the son of Alphaeus (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18; 15:40 [here called James the Younger]; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13); James the son of Zebedee and brother of John (Matt. 4:21; 10:2; 17:1; Mark 1:19, 29; 3:17; 10:35; 13:3; Luke 9:28; Acts 1:13; 12:2); James the Lord’s brother (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Gal. 1:19; called [?] simply James in Acts: 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; and in 1 Cor. 15:7), mentioned only twice by name in the Gospels (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3). Hegessipus’ conclusions however must be read back into the tradition to secure the identity of James as head of the Jerusalem church as Luke asserts. See also my online comments on the topic, “Faccidents: Bad Assumptions and the Jesus Tomb Debacle,” Butterflies and Wheels 7 March 2007, at http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2007/faccidents-bad-assumptions-and-the-jesus-tomb-debacle/ retrieved 7 May 2012. Since 2007 I have come to see Galatians 1, 18-20 as more problematical. While clearly reflecting a key element in the opponents tradition, it seems that 1.16 is in apposition to 1.18-19 as a list of the hyperlian apostoloi, though Paul does not use the language of 2 Corinthians 11.15//12.11; using instead phrases that imply historical priority (p??? t??? p?? ?µ?? ?p?st?????); for that reason, it is entirely possible that the phrase ton adelphos tou kyriou applied to James in Galatians 1.19 is meant to suggest biological relationship and as a term to distinguish James from the dishonesty (Gal 211-13) of Cephas. Rhetorically, in this section, Paul uses himself and Barnabas as a paradigm of faithful preaching of a gospel to the detriment of Peter, James and John (Gal 2.9), who merely “seem to be pillars”: ????ß?? ?a? ??f?? ?a? ???????, ?? d?????te? st???? e??a? de???? ?d??a? (i.e., of significance). Accordingly, the possibility that Paul is asserting biological relationship between James and “the Lord” in this passage between James and Jesus cannot be ruled out, since he is ridiculing the pretensions of the “reputed pillars,” not affecting to be inclusive.
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David Mills
May 25, 2012 at 11:43 am
Carrion?
Please tell me that’s not a snide moniker, to go with ‘penis-nose’ on another comments section here. :)
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steph
May 25, 2012 at 3:14 pm
David, Ironic but irrelevant isn’t it. It might have escaped your notice however that Carrier, in his outpourings loaded with foul language and abuse against Professor Hoffmann (see Carrier’s blog), persists in spelling Hoffmann inaccurately. His fans often imitate.
David Mills
May 25, 2012 at 7:58 pm
Well, Steph and Joseph, I have been, if you’ll pardon a pun, no saint, when it comes to banter, and what I believe is known on internet discussion forums as douchebaggery. I guess i just wasn’t expecting to find it here, from, er, both sides. From Richard Carrier, it is not surprising. He comes across as a bit of a hothead at times.
steph
May 25, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Excuse me? I miss typed Carrier on this thread once. Perhaps you might like to count how many times Carrier uses the ‘f’ word in connection with NT studies, method, scholarship and individuals. http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/255
I’m disappointed you are behaving like the moral authority without contributing useful conversation or engaging with actual arguments.
steph
May 25, 2012 at 12:19 pm
My point was about Carrier considering the sibling evidence vital and better when conveniently got rid of. However you seem to have made some effort to determine a disagreement of opinion between Joe and myself. Now would a hypothetical disagreement of opinion in scholarship be an indication of one disparaging another? Really? Do you understand what academic discussion and debate is about? The three of us approach the texts critically with independent trained minds. We share ideas, and constantly apply critical methods self critically and our ideas evolve. If we agreed on all things we’d be prone to unhealthy convictions. Disagreement is generally healthy and can lead to advanced resolutions and we do tend to form ideas which blend. By the way you spelt Hoffmann wrong.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 25, 2012 at 12:42 pm
In fairness to the Inquirer, the majority of people tuned into this are not here for academic discussion; they are interested in debate, and that involves assuming an argumentative position, usually fixed and unyielding, and winning. It’s pretty common in atheist and freethought circles–and I see nothing wrong with it in context–but of course, trying to settle a question like this can’t be done as though the goal were to score points. I just want to say that modern universities couldn’t exist if fixed positions ruled the waves. We had that once: it was called the Middle Ages. Debates ruled; discussion was unheard of. Sic et Non, up or down, the advantage being, the Church always had the final answer.
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May 25, 2012 at 3:23 am
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Enigma
May 25, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Question for Carrier fans: GIven the revolutionary nature of Dr. Carrier’s argument, can you please cite the article where he makes his case? I’m not interested in blog posts or popular books. I’m looking for the peer-reviewed journal article(s).
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Bradley Bowen
May 25, 2012 at 1:13 pm
Perhaps we are trying to swallow the whole elephant, and would have better luck digesting it one bite at a time.
I’m a supporter of the use of BT in historical analysis, but there are more basic issues that should probably be addressed first, before trying to answer the question ‘Is BT relevant to historical analysis?’.
If there is agreement on some more basic issues, that could provide common grounds for further discussion of the relevance or irrelevance of BT. If there is disagreement on the more basic issues, then further discussion of the merits of BT are likely to be unproductive, because the real issues are at a more basic level.
The more basic issues I have in mind are: ‘Are quantified probabilities relevant to historical analysis?’ and ‘Are logical/mathematical manipulations of quantified probabilities relevant to historical analysis?’
I also have a specific example in mind for each of these more basic questions:
Quantified Probabilities were used by the Jesus Seminar. (The Five Gospels, p.36-37). The 0 to 1.0 scale is not explicitly stated to be a scale of probabilities, but given the descriptions on page 36, this is a natural way of interpreting the 0 to 1.0 scale. Is such a quantification of probability of authenticity helpful, useful, and relevant to historical analysis?
Logical/Mathematical manipulation of quantified probabilities was used by Robert Stein in a skeptical argument about Q in Jesus the Messiah, p.39 & 40. Stein assigns estimated probabilities to various assumptions related to Q, and then uses the simple rule of multiplication to derive the low probability that all of the set of assumptions about Q are correct. The assumptions are supposedly required by any attempt at reconstruction of the original text of Q, and so Stein concludes that we should be skeptical about such efforts.
I don’t necessarily buy Stein’s argument, but it seems to me that his use of the simple multiplication rule on quantified probabilities is useful, helpful, and relevant to the presentation of his skeptical argument about reconstructions of Q.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 25, 2012 at 2:21 pm
It has been a while since I read Stein, but I don’t recall he used Bayes and almost all recent discussion uses some form of “probability” calculus that grows organically from the sourses and incorporate basic hermeneutical principles. Am I wrong about Stein? I am looking at Mark Goodacre’s reaction to it, which calls it weak and a little unbalanced. As a judgement, however, I should have thought that the Jesus Seminar would have been a billboard warning against putting faith in probabilistic calculus in biblical studies.
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Bradley Bowen
May 25, 2012 at 6:04 pm
Correct. Stein does not use Bayes Theorem in the argument I mentioned. He uses a simple multiplication rule:
If claim X has a probability of .8 and claim Y has a probability of .6, and if the probability of X is independent of the probability of Y, then the probability of it being the case that both X and Y are true is equal to the product of the probability of X and the probability of Y, which in this example is .8 x .6 = .48 or .5 rounded to one significant figure.
I was trying to get away from arguing about BT and to focus on more basic questions about the use of quantified probabilities.
It sounds like there is no disagreement here about the relevance of quantified probabilities in historical analysis.
It also sounds like there is no disagreement here about the relevance of logical/mathematical manipulation of quantified probabilities in historical analysis.
Did I understand you correctly?
David Mills
May 25, 2012 at 8:21 pm
I believe someone once said that mathematizing history is like dancing about architecture. Or something like that.
At a fundamental level, I doubt if it is possible for the human mind to rationally analyse anything, including historical data/evidence, without resort to logic, maths, statististics and probability, at least informally. I think that the danger arises when it becomes a formalized approach, because the input data is usually heavily assumptive. I don’t think maths is designed to answer historical questions.
On the other hand, nor, it seems to me, is the criterion of embarrassment, so perhaps there is a case for both, so long as their degree of reliability is understood, and they are not used, at least not on their own, to support or justify any conclusions.
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steph
May 25, 2012 at 9:33 pm
First of all the Jesus Seminar failed to be useful in furthering historical knowledge and determining reliable historical critical method or establishing convincing arguments for historical evidence. In fact, “The Jesus of the Westar project is a talking doll with a questionable repertoire of thirty-one sayings. Pull a string and he blesses the poor” (RJH 1993). Second Robert Stein has not been helpful in critical analysis. He teaches at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a fundamentalist Christian as demonstrated in Jesus the Messiah: A Survey of the Life of Christ.
“Without an openness to the supernatural, the result of any investigation of the life of Christ has predetermined that the resulting Jesus will be radically different from the Jesus who was born of a virgin, was anointed by the Spirit, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Yet it is this supernatural Jesus that humanity desperately needs, for only this supernatural Jesus can bridge the gap between human sin and God’s holiness. What the world so critically needs is a Savior, but only a supernatural Jesus can be a Savior….In writing this work I have assumed the presence of the supernatural in the life of Jesus. In other words, this life of Christ has been written from a believer’s viewpoint.”(Jesus the Messiah, p. 13)
Stein considers the virgin birth, Herod’s slaughter of the children, and the visit of the three wise men to be historical incidents. Stein concludes by saying that the life of Jesus did not end with the crucifixion, as Jesus rose from the dead and will return on the last day.
Bradley, you suggest: “It sounds like there is no disagreement here about the relevance of quantified probabilities in historical analysis. It also sounds like there is no disagreement here about the relevance of logical/mathematical manipulation of quantified probabilities in historical analysis.”
We discuss probability in relation to sources and characteristics of authors in textual interpretation, but the quantified probabilities that you are referring to, and manipulation of such, are agreed by most historians to be unhelpful for application to complex and composite historical texts. They don’t allow for human inconsistencies and fluctuations and composite nature of the texts and they are dependent on assumptions being consistently true and ‘unarguable’. There are no short cuts in method. Method is constantly evaluated and careful and cautious critical application of appropriate criteria continually assessed. We do not declare that continual discussion and evaluation in conjunction with new evidence and argument, is declaration of failure. However that is the unbelievable assumption of the author of ‘Proving History’.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 25, 2012 at 10:09 pm
Candor for a moment: Even if it could be argued that BT is useful for historical studies, and I do not grant that, it is far from clear that biblical studies and historical studies are the same thing. I will be happy to unpack that comment in another space. But for now let me make it abundantly clear that BT is not useful for biblical studies as biblical studies currently works. To put to rest any fears, I do not mean by this that “The Bible” is immune from historical analysis, but the way in which raw data can be extracted is far different and more susceptible of linguistic, anthropological and hermeneutical approaches prior to any operations that can be described as simply “historical.” Not coincidentally, the mythtics make most of their errors at these levels. As far as I know, Carrier & Co., Doherty, Godfrey and Verenna for example, have no qualifications at all to be doing research in biblical studies. I am fascinated by work in linguistic anthropology–even have a Masters degree in the area–but would e terribly gun shy about writing a professional article in the subject since I have nothing beyond that and have never studied the field in depth. So I have to ask: what makes these guys so confident, if not their errant presuppositions, that anyone who can read can read and make scholarly pronouncements about the Bible. Worse, when corrected, they pronounce the whole field askew and themselves right. That is not the way serious scholarship works–and I think, in their heart of hearts they must know that they are simply playing a game.
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David Mills
May 26, 2012 at 2:55 am
Fresh as I am from a lively discussion on another forum where those arguing the case for an historical Jesus were keen to stress that biblical studies and ancient history share the same methodology, and that this lends credibility to the former, I would be curious to briefly know what distinction you would draw between biblical studies and history generally.
History is, ultimately, a humanity, arguably at least in part an art. Furthermore, when the subject matter is ancient history, and ‘hard’ evidence is largely lacking (primary and secondary evidence, archaeology etc) then it seems to me it becomes, for any similar figure, a matter of assessing texts, and this will probably pull in considerations of linguistics, hermeneutics and anthroplogy.
I hear what you say about a particularly important need for an appreciation of the subtleties in this case, and would agree up to a point, but I can’t help sometimes thinking that there is a related issue, that if we step off the well worn track of historiographical method, we may inevitably (I sometimes think) need to admit that the ground becomes quite soft, in epistological terms.
Perhaps my, er, concern is best summed up by my saying that I don’t find it reassuring that even a scholar as qualified as E. P. Sanders can say (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here) that the evidence for Jesus is on a par with the evidence for Alexander the Great, and perhaps better, since the nature of the evidence for the latter does not generally allow us to work out what Alexander thought.
In other words, I wonder if Jesus isn’t a special case, in some ways, because he is treated as a special case. :)
rjosephhoffmann
May 26, 2012 at 8:12 am
@David: Sorry for the delay–I am behind on moderation. Biblical studies is far more composite than what is usually classified “ancient history”; they obviously are not identical fields–not least because a great deal of textual and physical biblical history is pre-ancient and has more in common with archaeology and anthropology–and biblical studies isn’t a subset of ancient history because the primary artifacts have different historical and cultural origins. At the same time, there could be no such thing as a conclusion which would be “true” for ancient history that is not also “true” for biblical studies at a factual level. Maybe your source was trying to discuss biblical history and archaeology which is one piece of biblical studies. It has probably contributed at least as much to the study of ancient history as the study of ancient history has ever contributed to it, especially in the study and authentication of texts and dating. Finally, and far more closely related to biblical studies is classics and what used to be designated philology (historical and descriptive linguistics/linguisitic anthropology) where much of the heavy lifting usually then made available to historians of the ancient world is actually performed. I remember thinking it odd that Richard Carrier took umbrage when Bart Ehrman called him a “classicist” and how eager he was to distance himself from that designation–when he should have taken it as a compliment. My own field is patristics and early Christianity; I would frankly be unable to function if I weren’t first and foremost a classicist. As to Jesus being a special case: I think I said pretty clearly in my own wrticle that the field of New Testament studies is infested with the belief in the divinity of Jesus and that this has had methodological implications for the way the literature has been treated. But perhaps you are saying something different?
David Mills
May 26, 2012 at 11:42 am
@ Joseph
Not being an historian, I can only say that my impression of ancient history generally is that it too is composite, in terms of all the various strands of inquiry and analysis that you mentioned. Though I accept distinctions for different circumstances, obviously.
I suppose what I am asking is if we, any of us, were to forage for “true facts” (double inverted commas intentional there :) ) about any minor figure from ancient history, then why would we adpot a different approach for this figure, Jesus? Or, are we going in the direction of saying he is an unusual case, evidentially?
I think I may as well be candid here, becaue I think you appreciate I have no sharp axes to grind. Is it possible that Jesus has become over-analysed? Do some scholars, immersed as they have been dring a lifetime of study, lose sight of the fact that at bottom, the evidence is, er, ultimately ,not strong’?
My basic position is that if you presented me with another figure having the same set of accounts and evidences, I believe i would be justified in having doubts.
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Bradley Bowen
May 26, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Stephanie Fisher – Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comments. I agree with your assessment of Mr. Stein.
My point was not that Mr. Stein is a great Jesus scholar and that since he uses BT, we ought to all jump on the bandwagon with him.
So far as I know Mr. Stein may well have never used BT in any argument about the historical Jesus.
My point was a much more humble one. Although Mr. Stein may not be much of a Jesus scholar, he did manage to produce at least one interesting argument, not necessarily a good argument either, but a skeptical argument that is interesting, at least to me. It may well be a bad argument that commits the fallacy of Straw Man or that is based on some questionable probability claims in his premises.
Nevertheless, on this one particular occasion, perhaps the only one in his career, Mr. Stein used quantified probabilities and the simple multiplication rule of probability, and I think that in doing so he enhanced his argument. Even if the argument fails to establish its conclusion, it is a better argument because of his use of quantified probabilities and use of the simple multiplication rule.
He could have presented the argument without doing this. He could have said “Look, there are a whole bunch of assumptions that scholars who are attempting to reconstruct the original text of Q are making, and none of those assumptions is certain, each is only probable at best, so given that there are many such assumptions it is very likely that at least one of them will turn out to be mistaken.” But his point was more precise and more logically rigorous by his assigning probability estimates to various assumptions that allegedly are being made by those attempting to reconstruct the original text of Q.
I’m just saying that I think there are some instances where quantified probabilities and mathematical calculations involving probabilities can enhance an argument that relates to the historical Jesus.
It appears to me that neither you nor Mr. Hoffman disagree with this point, so perhaps my example was not necessary.
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David Mills
May 27, 2012 at 2:55 am
Antonio,
If BT turned out positive estimates of probability in this case, I doubt there would be such an issue.
I’m kidding. :)
I see the historian Christopher McCullough has a chapter on the use of statistics in history in his book, ‘Justifying Historical Descriptions’. You can actually read it online here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dH46AAAAIAAJ&pg=PR7&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false
I just love the last part of this sentence from the publisher’s blurb, because as with Rolf Torstendahl, it seems to sum up what i consider to be the most interesting, perhaps even crucial, though not in my experience often aired aspect of the matter:
‘The author concludes that no historical description can be finally proved, and that we are only ever justified in believing them for certain practical purposes.’
Incidentally, I believe McCullough has a particular interest in early Christianity, and is a committed Christian himself.
Bradley Bowen
May 28, 2012 at 3:35 pm
David – Thank you for the Google Book reference to Justifying Historical Descriptions. Pages 58 and 59 have a couple of objections to the use of BT in relation to inferences from general knowledge to singular historical claims.
McCullagh argues that statistical inferences are much more common in historical reasoning of this sort, and that statistical inferences are superior to inference to best explanation (p. 46).
The pattern of statistical inference involves two premises involving probability, in which the probabilities are multiplied to yield the probability conferred on the conclusion by that particular evidence (not taking into account other evidence which might either confirm or dis-confirm the conclusion):
1. There is a probability (of the degree p1) that whatever is an A is a B.
2. It is probable (to the degree p2) that this is an A.
Therefore (relative to these premises):
3. It is probable (to the degree p1 x p2) that this is a B.
(see p.48)
So, it appears that McCullagh agrees that quantified probabilities and mathematical calculation using those quantified probabilities has an important role to play in historical reasoning, esp. the use of the simple rule of multiplication.
Bradley Bowen
May 28, 2012 at 4:24 pm
I had Chinese take out for dinner last night, and my fortune cookie contained this message: “Mathematics will figure in a fortunate occasion for you this week.” What are the chances of getting this fortune this week? (Perhaps a sign from God for me to sing the praises of probability calculations?).
I’m no math whiz. Never had a course in statistics. Only took algebra and trig in college….many decades ago. But I do enjoy math, and try to use it whenever I can in my reasoning, especially probability.
John Locke was a believer in probability. It made a nice contrast between his empiricist attitude and that of Descartes and Spinoza, who tried to turn philosophy into a branch of Geometry, with their deductive metaphysical ‘proofs’.
Locke focused probability as the critical thinker’s alternative to the unmerited and unmitigated certainty of religious enthusiasts. Like Locke, probability reminds me of our limitations as humans, and of the difficulty of achieving certainty, as well as the suspicion that is appropriate to feel towards those who frequently assert their beliefs to be certain.
I especially appreciate quantified probabilities, because they provide a bit more precision than ordinary language terms, such as ‘probable’, ‘very probable’, ‘improbable’, ‘very improbable’, ‘almost certain’, and so on. Even when the data does not clearly imply a particular probability (like .73), it is at least helpful to know the degree of confidence someone places in a claim or assumption (a probability of .6 or .7 is significantly different than a probability of .9, although .7 might be said to be ‘very probable’ in some instances, and .9 expressed as simply ‘probable’ in some instances).
Multiplication of probabilities, when multiple assumptions are required to get to a conclusion, is a simple bit of math, but I think it is common to fail to appreciate this little bit of logic.
In my job (Project Management) a common failure of project management is the failure to recognize this bit of logic. If you have a schedule with consecutive tasks A, B, and C, where task A must complete prior to starting task B, and B must complete prior to starting C, each task having a high probability of completing on time (say .8), people often fail to see how it is somewhat probable that such a schedule will fail to complete on time. Since each task must complete on time for the project to complete on time, the probability of the project completing on time is .8 x .8 x .8 = .512 or .5 rounded to one significant figure. Although each individual task is very likely to complete on time, the three phase project has only a 50/50 chance of completing on time. It is very common for people to fail to do this simple bit of reasoning and to recognize the degree of risk that the project will fail to complete on time.
I also look on conditional probability with a significant degree of affection.
P (A/B) means The probability that A is the case, given that B is the case.
A basic principle of probability is that the probability of a claim is always relative to a body of evidence or assumptions. So, the little slash mark serves as a constant reminder (to me) of how our beliefs and claims are bound by point of view. Good scholarly writing generally begins with a statement of ones basic assumptions.
Mr. Hoffmann, for example, listed several background assumptions about first century Palestine in one of his comments here concerning whether there was an historical Jesus. There are many such assumptions made by Jesus scholars, assumptions that may be generally accepted by other Jesus scholars, but not by all. For example, that Matthew and Luke used a written copy of Mark as one of their main sources is a common assumption made by most Jesus and NT scholars, but this assumption is not universally accepted. So, it is good to lay out such assumptions at the beginning of a book or article, so others can see the point of view in which one’s thinking is grounded.
It is entirely possible to spend one’s life thinking and reasoning from a particular point of view, only to discover late in life that this point of view is fundamentally in error. This is a sad and even tragic event for someone who loves to think and make intellectual discoveries, but it is an unavoidable risk of being a finite and limited human being.
In any case, the little slash in conditional probability reminds me that not only should my beliefs generally be ‘probable’ rather than ‘certain’ but also that there is an additional layer of uncertainty in all human thinking, which is the unavoidable fact that we must always think from some point of view or other, from one particular set of assumptions rather than another set, and that those assumptions themselves are subject to doubt, dis-confirmation, or revision in the light of new evidence.
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Ananda
May 29, 2012 at 10:16 am
“Mathematics will figure in a fortunate occasion for you this week.”
Thats your next girlfriend….34-26-38
Bradley Bowen
May 31, 2012 at 4:28 pm
I have not studied Carrier’s articles proposing BT as the solution to ‘the problem’ of ‘invalid or defective’ methodology in historical Jesus studies. So, I’m not in a position to pass judgment on his proposal.
It does seem, on the face of it, to be a rather implausible proposal, like suggesting the use of Venn diagrams or symbolic logic to turn philosophy into a science. I have nothing against Venn diagrams or symbolic logic, but (a) bad philosophy will not be fixed by such technical means, and (b) philosophy is not and never will be a science.
But there appears to be an interesting disagreement here over whether or not there is a crisis or dramatic turning point in historical Jesus studies, where an old paradigm is being widely challenged and there is a scramble to develop a new approach.
Another question, perhaps the unmentioned elephant in the living room, is whether historical Jesus studies can or should be scientific. Your comment about consensus strikes me as hitting on that issue:
“It is presently too early to expect a consensus, even on methods, among all critical scholars, in view of new evidence and new argument especially since the 1970s and in view of more recent developments in Aramaic scholarship. Consensus involving ideological extremes is impossible and this has a regrettable effect on the most critical scholarship because all critical scholars are human beings who necessarily begin and continue their lives within some kind of social framework.”
The idea that is is ‘too early’ to expect consensus on methods seems like special pleading to me, and pointing to some recent change in the field is irrelevant, because the same point could be made about any alleged scholarly or scientific field, including pseudo sciences such as astrology and Scientology.
But the problem of the failure to arrive at consensus among historical Jesus experts is one that cannot be easily side-stepped. Chemistry and biology don’t vary according to ideology. There is no ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ chemistry. No ‘Christian’ verses ‘Hindu’ biology. We have international and cross-cultural consensus in the sciences, but cannot even get American Christian Jesus scholars to come to any consensus about the historical Jesus.
Please say a bit more about your views on historical analysis, science, and the problem of lack of consensus about the historical Jesus.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 31, 2012 at 5:06 pm
“But the problem of the failure to arrive at consensus among historical Jesus experts is one that cannot be easily side-stepped.” I don’t think anyone is. It was experts in Christian origins who identified the problem, which is a residuum of source analysis–pretty technical stuff–which I’d be happy to demonstrate–which is precisely why packing the problem into predictive templates (see Albert’s useful comment on “Proving What?”) is useless. Given many of the same assumptions that are piled onto different species of ancient literature, I can plausibly argue that Alexander and Pythagoras did not exist and that he rose from the dead.
As far as I can see, it is a simple cart-horse problem which certain probablists are trying to apply to dead horses and dysfunctional carts. “There is no ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ chemistry. No ‘Christian’ verses ‘Hindu’ biology. We have international and cross-cultural consensus in the sciences, but cannot even get American Christian Jesus scholars to come to any consensus about the historical Jesus.” As you must know, these are obvious points; but then you cannot expect history to work like the pure sciences and mathematics, which is not to say that there are not relatively sophisticated and relatively objective methods for dealing with questions of evidence and composition. Besides, consensus as to method has never been an end in itself in scholarship; consensus is not the same as finding the right method, and in historical studies, conclusions remain to be overturned by the next “find,” as happened with the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi documents—which btw, the mythtics hardly ever mention as having toppled some of their pillar assumptions. Please try to avoid using emotive terms like “American Christian Jesus scholars”–I do not deny their existence, if you mean people who practice their religion through their scholarship; for historical reasons, we have more of our share in the United States. But no one who drives research forward in this area is unaware of the special burden they represent–just as there are apparently “respected” scientists out there who deny global warming and claim to use the same method that other scientists use. Where is your consensus then?
rjosephhoffmann
May 31, 2012 at 5:26 pm
@Brad: Sorry, My answer got ahead of your question.
David Mills
May 31, 2012 at 5:46 pm
@ Joseph
Briefly, what parts of some mythicist assumptions would you say are incompatible with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi documents?
Bradley Bowen
June 1, 2012 at 1:24 am
Mark Powell’s survey of modern historical Jesus scholars does, as Carrier states, “the whole confusion of contradictory opinions that has resulted from applying these methods” [i.e. the methods used for distinguishing authentic sayings and deeds of Jesus from inauthentic sayings and deeds.
However, it is important to note that what modern historical Jesus scholars have in common, is those methods, and Powell sees no problem with that fact:
“…scholars will usually rely most heavily on those sources that they determine to be the earliest. …some scholars rely more heavily upon certain criteria than others. Some also modify the criteria that are defined here, in an attempt to apply them with more precision than their peers. For now though, let us list six factors that, in one way or another, come into consideration for almost all researchers studying the historical Jesus.” (Jesus as a Figure in History, p.46)
Powell then covers: multiple attestation, dissimilarity, memorable content or form, language & environment, explanation, and coherence (p.46-50).
Jesus scholars covered by Powell’s book are: John Crossan, Marcus Borg, E.P. Sanders, John Meier, and N.T. Wright.
Carrier also quotes James Charlesworth:
“James Charlesworth concurs, concluding that ‘what had been perceived to be a developing consensus in the 1980s has collapsed into a chaos of opinions.’ ”
Again, Charlesworth does not draw the conclusion that Carrier does from this lack of consensus among modern historical Jesus scholars:
“What are the most reliable methods for discerning Jesus’ own traditions recorded by the Evangelists? Five are major.” (The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide, p.20)
Charlesworth then goes on to describe the following five methods:
embarrassment, dissimilarity, multiple attestation, coherence, Palestinian Jewish setting/historical plausibility. (p.20-27). He then describes ten “additional supporting methods” (p.27-30).
Powell and Charlesworth acknowledge the diversity of views and lack of consensus among modern Jesus scholars, but they don’t see this as implying a crisis for the methodology used in historical Jesus research.
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rjosephhoffmann
June 2, 2012 at 3:09 am
@Brad: Yes, good points: Variety of method and even theories of method are not indicative of “chaos.” Even if you are using the term scientific method as a norm, it doesn’t consist of a single approach “but refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge” (Goldhaber, 2010) The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is “a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses…” The way in which the method works on empirical data–microbes for example– will obviously differ from the way it is applied to historical data or social phenomena.
Ananda
May 26, 2012 at 9:00 am
“Yet it is this supernatural Jesus that humanity desperately needs, for only this supernatural Jesus can bridge the gap between human sin and God’s holiness”
Didn’t we do this already for 1500 some odd years ? but we need more of the same………….lol
Also of major importance is that all supernatural events need to be understood on other levels beyond a literal past,a Gnosis so to speak…………..
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steph
May 26, 2012 at 11:06 am
I was quoting a fundamentalist Christian, Stein, who is completely out of touch with ciritical historical analysis of texts. He was professing his convictions of faith. Critical scholarship distinguishes the difference between myth and plausible reality in texts. Gnosticism is a completely separate matter.
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Ananda
May 26, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Still Steph, the distinctions the Critical scholars make between myth and plausible reality are contained in a vacuum of one dimensional literal interpretation in a piece of literature that is Spiritual. What is spiritual? Well beyond the material literal understanding for sure.
Example: Jesus walks on water is dismissed by historians as a myth, prop for the story or legend when taken in the literal sense however it is as oblivious as skating on ice,a walk in the park or a piece of cake if one considers waters are none other than the cares, riches and pleasures of the world and being able to enter one of the three heavens in this flesh and blood body as Paul mentioned one is not sinking into deeps of the waters attractions and aversions of worldly existence (Equanimity) It’s not like these states of consciousness have not been fully quantified in the east as the 8 Jhanas as well as in Pistis Sophia and the NHC or even the born again experience. Waters is also symbolic of the second chakra responsible for the whole host of attractions and aversions of the other kind…..lol…(sexual)
One cannot surgically remove un-plausible reality inherent for the overall comprehension of the story and expect anything other than a butchered unrecognizable patient.
The only solution is that Critical scholars must join John of the Cross or Ibn Arabi and become Scholar mystic ships and plunge past the dark night of critical material literalism.
Ps I am a natural redhead………lol……….really
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steph
May 26, 2012 at 2:24 pm
I think Joe is right: ‘when corrected, they pronounce the whole field askew and themselves right. That is not the way serious scholarship works–and I think, in their heart of hearts they must know that they are simply playing a game.’ I think perhaps the alarming over confidence, there is still a conviction that it really is all just a game.
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steph
May 26, 2012 at 2:25 pm
or rather ‘despite’ the alarming over confidence.
Antonio Jerez
May 26, 2012 at 8:48 pm
Steph,
I think you are on to something. I often get the impression that for people like Richard Carrier and Neil Godfrey the search for the non-existent Jesus is just an intellectual game. It´s like they are testing a very odd idea to see how far they can stretch things by making intellectual acrobatics (Bayes theorem.. etc etc), making extremely farfetched mythological analogies (Comparing the death of Hercules with the death of Jesus etc etc) and thereby earn some adulation by a lot of others fools and incompetents on the Internet who think heroes like Carrier, Doherty and Godfrey have finally given a deathly blow to Christianity by sheer brainpower.
Ken Scaletta
May 27, 2012 at 1:00 am
I would agree. Carrier strikes me not so much as an objective investigator as a hired expert witness. He’s qualified and smart enough to know how to massage and frame the data to support a desired conclusion, but it feels forced and predisposed and leans on tendentious interpretations and connections. I don’t think he’s generally reckless or dishonest. His stuff is presented in a superficially logical way, and he’s not irresponsible about facts or sources, but his arguments come off more as “clever” to me than revelatory.
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Neil Godfrey’s response 2: @ Stephanie Fisher « Vridar says:
May 27, 2012 at 2:00 am
[...] faults me for supposedly quoting Paula Fredriksen’s words out of context. Stephanie at no point presents and dissects my own arguments that relate to mythicist conclusions. [...]
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 10:48 am
think Neil is a little bit miffed my brief essay wasn’t all about him. Like Carrier he has gone to great lengths to contradict a slight allusion. Perhaps he was just too irrelevant. He thinks his ‘skills’ in analysis ought to have been celebrated and I’m a little astonished he still doesn’t quite grasp his abuse of Schweitzer. Never mind – he has his own soap box.
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David Mills
May 27, 2012 at 2:25 am
@ Steph and Joseph.
As a percentage, where would you normally choose to put the strength of your view that Jesus existed, with zero as total certainty that he didn’t, 100 as total certainty that he did and 50 as completely neutral.
Yes, I know it’s a hugely oversimplified question. On the other hand, it can be interesting, and potentially constructive, because a lot of the time those discussing this hot topic can appear to slide, perhaps needlessly, into either the 0-10 trench or the 90-100 trench and end up lobbing points across a no man’s land.
Same question to any other poster who is interested in giving their answer.
For myself, I tend to fluctuate between 45 and 60, that is to say not far away from neutral and if anything usually falling slightly on the side of historicity. A few years ago, I would have said always slightly on the side of historicity, but I have widened my range a tad. :)
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rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 12:23 pm
@David: If you begin with facts that are supported by general agreement: Rome existed, the province of Palestine existed, the Herodians existed, Pilate existed, apocalyptic Judaism existed, radical political and dissident religious parties existed, food rules existed, sexual apartheid between men and women existed, sects existed, the Herodian bulding proejct existed, “publicans” existed, eschatological preachers existed, the Galil ha’goyim called Galilee in the the gospels existed, magicians and healers existed, cults existed, the cruicifixion of bandits and troublemakers existed, messiahs existed, baptism existed, both rabinical and synagogue Judaism (we now know for sure) existed, the Sanhedrin existed, Caiphas existed, Greek as a lingua franca of Judaea existed, Aramaic as a language of both Judaea and the region existed, .. I will stop, but not because I am out of items. Does parsimony then lead you to the following: Jesus of Nazareth, who is perfectly typical of this context, did not exist. Or are you basing an argument for non-historicity on exceptions (e.g., syanagogue Judaism may have existed but there may not have been one in Nazareth…)–or something more visercal (Resurrections and sons of god don’t exist…) or something conspiratorial (All Cretans are liars; the gospels are written by Cretans)? It seems to me an exception to the clear historicity of context would have to use some extrapolation of one or more of those bases.
The seduction of BT, for those easily seduced, is merely that Carrier is using it like a priestly argot to impresss his followers; in fact, everyone knows that Bayes is nothing more than a logic game performed on premises devised by the machine operator. Stuff in sausage out. In Carrier’s Bayes machine, the assumptions and the values are Carrier’s; Bayes is just the system. Onlookers need to be clear about that before they think this is really about degrees of certainty in relation to facts as opposed to degrees of confidence in propositions. In (for the sake of argument) John Q. Fundamentalist’s Bayes machine, the variables will be different and so will the unarguable conclusion. I am happy to play the plausibility game because that is where research takes us. But I’m not at all persuaded that throwing probability dust at unsorted assumptions–many of them real absurdities and worn down by age and criticism–gets us closer to facts. BT deals with probability as the data are loaded into the system; and anyone knows that probability in logic has nothing necessarily to do with factuality.
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David Mills
May 27, 2012 at 6:25 pm
@ Joseph.
You don’t need to convince me to be sceptical about the application of BT here. I already have enough reservations not to give it undue weight, so I agree with you on that.
As to your initial question, and here I hope you will appreciate that I am temporarily considering one side of an argument which I consider to be undecided in overall terms, I would simply say this, that being plausible in context seems qite a separate thing from historicity for an individual, not least because figures who are or were taken to be historical but about whom there are doubts, often fit plausibly into the context of accounts concerning them. Muhammad al Mahdi is one example which springs to mind, but there are many others, Prester John, Buddha, Budai, Krishna, Ned Ludd, William tell, Betty crocker, John Frum, Paul Bunyan…..so I am not sure how much weight to give to that.
IMO, there are features of the evidence which are in favour of historicity, and there are features which aren’t, and when I either add up the former, starting from a hypothetical zero, or alternatively start from 1 and deduct according to the shortcomings and conta-indicators, I find myself close to 0.5 in both cases.
David Mills
May 27, 2012 at 6:27 pm
@ Joseph. Whoops, that was meant to be ‘contra-indicators’ and ‘quite’, not conta-indicators and qite.
Ken Scaletta
May 27, 2012 at 2:24 pm
I think you have to define “Jesus” here. I’ve found that it’s difficult to pin mythicists down on what would constitute a “Historical Jesus,” or what would falsify mythicism. I’ve generally try to unload the question by completely ignoring the Gospels and asking whether the basic Tacitus claim is inherently implausible. I’ve found that some of them, if pushed, will grant that some kind of historical crucifixion is possible, or that some real personality cult lies at the root of Christian origins but they are vague about whether this is sufficient to constitute a Historical Jesus. To some of them, it seems, only Bible Jesus is Jesus, and Bible Jesus didn’t exist, ergo Jesus didn’t
exist.
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ROO BOOKAROO
May 27, 2012 at 3:45 pm
You’re touching the real problem.
And it is not one for the mythicists alone, it’s equally true for the historicists.
For us, being born in the 20th century, how do we approach the concept of “Jesus”? What is the phenomenological birth and growth of the concept in a 20th century brain? It’s got to start with the Christian Churches, the Bible documents, the popular images and icons of the Christ on the Cross. Has it not struck you that Christianity seems to be the only religion universally adoring the image of a corpse?
Anyway, if you don’t start with the Jesus Christ of the Bible, how on earth are you ever going to define or clarify the mental concept of “Jesus”?
When Paul was writing his letters, how come his recipients were fustigated for listening to “other” Gospels of the Christ. Who were those other apostles competing with Paul? How come they were already there? Was there a pre-existing concept of Jesus Christ already circulating and different from Paul’s? Were there many Christs being already preached around the Meditteranean when Paul was travelling?
Gabriel in Luke’s annunciation gives the future baby the name of Jesus, “the Son of the Most High,”. After the birth, an angel is kind enough to come down and advertise the event to the shepherds out in the field: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” This Jesus was a “Savior”.
Whichever way you take it, our concept of Jesus starts with the Christ of the Bible, the one and only divine Jesus.
Then it’s up to you how to define your concept of Jesus stripped of divinity, and reduced to a normal human figure, and make sure that you can make it clearly identifiable from the multitude of other Jesuses crowding the early manuscripts of the 1st and 2d centuries.
If this figure turns out to be a pale shadow lost in the mists of times, how do we know we’re still dealing with a residue of our original Jesus? This is homeopathic theology or would-be history. Strip, reduce, dilute, bury in the fog, and you’re still dealing with Jesus? What Jesus?
Your final remarks are just a little too glib for the fundamental problem.
rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 4:41 pm
@Roo: There are interesting points but a few too many assumptions in this comment. My Schweitzer is not in front of me (he is probably in front of Steff, who thinks of him as her Schweitzer) but at the conclusion of the QofHJ he says that the Jesus of the popular mind and of the church has died a death of a thousand cuts–indeed, that that Jesus never really lived. Almost all critical Christian origins scholars agree with that assessment. I know I do. And most would also say that contemporary investigation began with that challenge; it didn’t end there. Your further point however — that you are left with a cipher — is simply not correct. And the tendency of the mythtics, who conflate the results of 19th and 20th century scholarship with their own hyper-view of “how it really happened,” is simply an attempt to fill in the gaps with fluff instead of the hard cement and reasoned conclusions based in real research. The Jesus of later Christian doctrine who had no historical existence is no more the cul de sac to investigation of the Jesus who did than the Augustus who became a god by proclamation would be an end of inquiry into the life and works of Octavian. In fact, what was done with and to the image of Jesus is also entirely plausible within its historical context: this is the way signifcant men were memorialized. We don’t get any sort of record of insignificant events and men. –Except of course Augustus had a Livy and even a Vergil and Jesus had nothing like it. Plus, as Helmut Koester used to remind his students, papyrus was expensive.
ROO BOOKAROO
May 27, 2012 at 5:36 pm
The question asked by Ken Scaletta is not being answered.
“I think you have to define “Jesus” here.” Sure, and that it s the problem.
Accepting the divine Jesus is no problem. You simply absorb whatever the churches or theologians are willing to push down your throat, or your brain.
Modern existence deniers have a simple solution: they finesse the problem entirely.
Ancient skeptics couldn’t swallow the tall tales and thought that Christians were inventing their Jesus Christ.
Modern mythicists reject the whole construction altogether. Clean the table, label all the Christian documents as great literature, or interesting fictions, or a subtle invention of a new mystery cult (an attractive hypothesis), or see in your new God a Gnostic spirit floating somewhere and connected by holy radio to human brains. Sublunar? Why not? Supralunar and in the clouds? Why not?
Or a construct of a preacher spewing out Seneca-like wisdom, like with Bruno Bauer, or cynic-like morality, as is the modern fashion? Any way you want to conceive this imaginary figure.
But the problem is more acute for historicists. They can’t sweep all the biblical stuff under the carpet. Something has to be salvaged. What? Jesus as a “historical man”? What man? Why is he called Jesus? How is he differentiated from the thousand of Jesuses in Palestine history?
And if he is lost in the mist of times, what can we say about this phantomatic figure? Why is that nearly evanescent shadow still Jesus?
Herakles didn’t exist? Fine, suit yourself. But then, why did this Jesus (assuming we’ve satisfied Ken Scaletta’s inquisitive mind) exist? On what basis? What on earth do we know of him?
Thomas Paine thought it was philanthropy. Or are we constructing and inventing another Jesus? Schweitzer thought so. What was his criterion for spotting the existence of Jesus? His immense “spiritual” influence that descended through the ages to him. Spiritualism was a rage in Europe and the States at the end of the 19th century. Schweitzer’s Jesus joined the crowd of famous spiritual influences.
And why does Bart Ehrman, undisputedly a fine brain, feel that he has to produce a book “proving” the existence of Jesus? He’s declared that he’s the first one to do so. Really? Nobody had done it before? Never mind the spate of books on “Jesus: Myth or History?” produced since the late 19th century, all the way to 1946.
Once we’ve rejected the Jesus of divine origin, the questions of who is this historical Jesus? How do we get to him? Who is this man Jesus? have no obvious immediate answers.
Ken Scaletta has a great point. It touches on the phenomenological perception of Jesus, and beyond that the mental definition of a “historical” Jesus. You have to analyze your own brain to discover what you mean by a “historical Jesus”. Empty sentences on the generalities of “good” critical research don’t even get to it.
rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 6:21 pm
@Roo: “But the problem is more acute for historicists. They can’t sweep all the biblical stuff under the carpet.” I think you just shot yourself in the foot. I suspect that even Carrier and Doherty might agree, though who can tell?
ROO BOOKAROO
May 27, 2012 at 7:54 pm
I don’t know about shooting oneself in the foot, or the mouth, or the head. I don’t get the answer.
I still don’t understand how a 20th century brain can “define” a historical Jesus by starting from thin air. What Jesus?
That brain has got to start from somewhere, and this starting point must be the concept and images presented and transmitted by the Bible documents. Historicists cannot escape starting from the original Biblical documents even to formulate any simple idea of Jesus.
Then they take out their scissors, like Thomas Jefferson, or they mark out the “mythical parts” like David Strauss, until by a process of elimination and reduction, they obtain a “residue” that they call the “historical” Jesus. So the whole process hinges on the reduction and cutting out process.
Otherwise I don’t understand how any “historical” Jesus can be defined and reached by a modern brain. Historicists are obliged to start with the Biblical material in order to reach a reduction which is the “historical ” component of their initial material.
The definition of the Jesus requested by Ken Scaletta will consist of outlining the process of elimination and reduction, and pointing to the residue, if there is any.
I don’t understand how else can a 20th century brain conceive any idea of a Jesus, if this brain is not connected by a mysterious radio to some mystical source of knowledge.
rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 8:18 pm
“Still don’t understand how a 20th century brain can “define” a historical Jesus by starting from thin air. What Jesus?” There comes a point where Jesus denial borders on Holocaust denial and germ theory of disease denial: If you know of a reputable historical verdict achieved by major faculties that gets us to that point, I should like to hear about it. Or are you saying that the coven you belong to has all the answers, and the rest of scholarship is, in the words of Richard Carrier, fucked because it can’t bring itself to that conclusion. This is probation. Not a tutorial or a sounding board for your increasingly private views.
steph
May 27, 2012 at 2:36 pm
The problem is, I think it’s not just ‘over simplified’ but it is an irrelevant question to the nature of responsible historical enquiry. Probability and parsimony can be useful in explanatory logic, like simple hypotheses, but neither reflect historical realities or incorporate literary complexity. For example the simple hypothesis of Q as a single written Greek document, when reconstructed and claimed to be a source for history, is not only flawed, forcing evidence where it does not fit for the sake of simplicity, but it is based on the assumption that it exists. It is therefore unhelpful and destructive to critical historical enquiry. As Joe says, “I’m not at all persuaded that throwing probability dust at unsorted assumptions–many of them real absurdities and worn down by age and criticism–gets us closer to facts.”
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David Mills
May 27, 2012 at 6:35 pm
@ Steph. That may be your view, but it appears statistical analysis is accepted by some professional historians to have a minor role in historiography. How minor is probably up for grabs. But I don’t think it’s justified to say that is is blanket ‘destructive and unhelpful to critical historical enquiry’. My view is in no way to support carrier’s use of BT.
ROO BOOKAROO
May 27, 2012 at 7:13 pm
David Mills:
Not only it is a personal view, but it is an answer loaded with empty sentences and phrases. That’s the sad part of this blog.
Watch:
“an irrelevant question to the nature of responsible historical enquiry. ” What does that mean? Do you get it? I don’t.
“Probability and parsimony can be useful in explanatory logic, like simple hypotheses, but neither reflect historical realities or incorporate literary complexity”. Do you get it? I don’t.
“For example the simple hypothesis of [Q as a single written Greek document,] when reconstructed and claimed to be a source for history, is not only flawed, forcing evidence where it does not fit for the sake of simplicity, but it is based on the assumption that it exists. ” You get the part in bracket, but what about the part outside the brackets? Who wants to read that stuff?
“It is therefore unhelpful and destructive to critical historical enquiry. ” What does that really mean? Empty sentence.
““I’m not at all persuaded that throwing probability dust at unsorted assumptions–many of them real absurdities and worn down by age and criticism–gets us closer to facts.” Is there anything really said in here? Anything to learn? Or is it just empty text?
And reams after reams of this profound-sounding but really empty language are being offered as…as what indeed? Advice? Generalities? Platitudes? Or space fillers?
Which publisher would accept to publish this kind of empty text? Bewildering.
When it comes to factual pronouncements, they edge and equivocate, because they don’t want to be quoted later.
They’ll never give you your percentage of conviction.
rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Dear Roo:
“Factual Pronouncements.” The only factual pronouncements you want to hear is Jesus did not exist. That is not factual. You have no way to corroborate this. But you speak of facts. You have evidently not read much in this area, but every comment is a bit worse and less knowledgeable than the one before. If you wish to whine about this, go and whine within the mythtic cult and not here. You seem to regard yourself as an arbiter of what counts as evidence. Silence is not evidence. Superficial analogies from indeterminate sources randomly assigned are not evidence. You proclaim your ignorance as though it was a credential, and sound very much like a sophomore when you say you don’t “get” things that, in order to be a meaningful participant in a discussion like this, you need to get. You are careless of fact, indifferent toward detail, dismissive of consensus and frankly just not very knowledgeable but want to be taken seriously. Why? I suggest you post your further comments on another site–because no one who is trying to engage the material has time to conduct the tutorial necessary to bring you up to speed. The only empty sentences I see here are your assertions that there are empty sentences. Other correspondents have been challenging on matters of fact and history. But not you. I think they have been treated rather well because, after all, truth comes from learning, not from digging holes in trenches and defending positions. There is another Harvard song, btw: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/music/mar_24_2006/mar_24_2006_001.mp3
James
May 27, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I’m a little late to this discussion but just to lend my support to Stephanie’s case and the good points she raises. Nothing much to add to her essay or the other cases made but we could really do without the sexist discourse attributed to “Roo Buckaroo” (!!) when the internet warrior says “this lady”.
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Thanks James. The cowardly Roo no relation to Kanga (except Disney’s)… he’s a dinosaur from the Victorian era and like NT Wright’s zombies, still haunting the globe. I have honestly never personally encountered this sort of sexism before. It’s not just inappropriate, it’s pathetic. Buckaroo… who would choose that!! Maybe Philip Philips.
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David Mills
May 27, 2012 at 6:49 pm
@ Steph and joseph
I see that neither of you wants to ascribe a figure. That’s perhaps understandable in one way, but also a bit puzzling, since surely you must lie somewhere on the spectrum of conviction?
The way it would be understandable would be if you think I am confusing a personal estimation with a mathematical probability, which would be silly. What I am asking is nothing more that what could be also expressed in language (and often is, in questionnaires and polls for example) as, ‘do you agree/disagree slightly, somewhat or strongly, or are you undecided.’
I won’t press this question. I just wanted to clarify that point. :)
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rjosephhoffmann
May 27, 2012 at 7:01 pm
“Spectrum of conviction.” Gosh: was there a spectrum of conviction before probability? I suspect there was. Same as here was Plato before Aristotle. John before Jesus (whoops).
How’s this: I would be dumbfounded if, transported back to Jerusalem round about the time it is supposed to have happened, not to put too fine a point on it, an accused felon name Yeshua, pejoratively Yeshu ben Stada, but immortalized as Yshu ben h’enosh, was not sentenced to die by a Roman tribunal. Is that Okay? What do I have on my side: a collection of very early documents that only a very odd skepticism can trump. What do the mythicists have on theirs? A very odd skepticism based on silence, analogies that do not fit the picture, and private mythologies “more incredible than anything in a gospel.” Like Hercules. And David: I really have no confidence based on your comments that you have read my article. Sorry to say so. There are many better things to read on the topic–but interestingly, nobody at Carrierville and Vridarland is asking for suggestions–they are just batting away at whatever contradicts them.
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steph
May 27, 2012 at 8:36 pm
You haven’t demonstrated from the direction of your comments, a reasonable comprehension of Joe’s essay. Perhaps you have ‘read’ it but not read it. How can you fail to understand context means everything and expression in context is not expression in another context? How can you fail to understand that as scholarship makes progress, new evidence and argument take shape. Inspired by healthy discussion and debate, self critical independent critical thinking individuals form new ideas. Ideas evolve. Convictions stay the same and belong to fundamentalisms. Change of heart? Belongs to people with convictions without evidence and argument, who end up ‘changing heart’ and batting for the other side. Contrary conviction, no argument or evidence, new heart.
steph
May 27, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Do you like playing games David?
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David Mills
May 28, 2012 at 3:37 am
When I came here, it was out of honest curiosity as to why someone changed their view from one to which I would subscribe to one to which I would not subscribe. If that was because of new evidence, or new reasoning, then what were the new bits?
I have no idea what you mean about playing games.
Regarding Joseph’s essay, I’m sure there may be elements of his argument which I do not fully appreciate. That’s a given, in the circumstances.
When the mythic and allegorical and supernatural features are stripped away from Jesus, there is no doubt that what is left can be a plausible person, in harmony with context. But surely, establishing plausibility in a context is not the same as establishing historicity, by a long chalk? To say that Jesus should not be compared to antecedent mythologies is one thing, but to say that he can’t be compared to other figures who were also plausible in context is another.
I might add that to an outsider, it seems that there are quite a variety of plausible Jesuses, with several versions being presented by different scholars.
steph
May 28, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Probabilily games David.
As to seeming lack of comprehension of Joe’s essay, your direction of questioning dealt with issues discussed in his essay and you showed no signs of engaging with them, disagreeing, agreeing or acknowledging them.
And as to a number of plausible Jesuses eminating from recent critical scholarship, there are more agreements than disagreements and certain major socio-historical things can be agreed upon with evidence and argument. It is not a probability game. With constant evolution of methodology we make progress in ascertaining the reason for and shaping of Christian origins.
steph
May 28, 2012 at 1:08 pm
probability… (plobiblee?)
Antonio Jerez
May 28, 2012 at 2:57 pm
I think some folks who have shown up in the discussion are playing games with us. Definitely Roo Bookaroo. The fact that they don´t dare show up with their real names on a site like this with academic standards show it. I wish that they could go to some islamology site and play intellectual games trying to prove that Mohammed never existed and that the Quaran was fabricated hundreds of years after the traditional dating.
David Mills
May 28, 2012 at 3:45 am
As an aside, when I discussed this topic with Earl Doherty on a different forum, he also felt that I hadn’t read his stuff, or if I had I hadn’t understood it, and indeed that I must be playing games of some sort. That’s not to compare or equate Joseph Hoffmann with Earl Doherty in terms of knowledge and expertize, but it is puzzling. I sometimes think that, in general terms, those on either side of a debate do really have trouble comprehending why some are not on any side, and so treat such people as if they were part of the other side.
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rjosephhoffmann
May 28, 2012 at 10:26 am
@David: Rest assured, my concern is not that anyone be “on my side” in this discussion. It is that a fair number of questions posed by you, and not just by you, seemed not to reflect the fact that I had dealt at some length with the issues in my article. My article deals with tips of tips of icebergs, so there would be nothing, of a big picture variety, to side with me about…
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David Mills
May 28, 2012 at 11:24 am
@ Joseph.
Thanks.
I have been in many a conversations on this fascinating topic. It seems to me there are two basic types. One is to go up close, close enough to analyse the pixels, to temporarily use a visual analogy, and the other is to step back and look at the overall. picture. IMO, both are important, perhaps equally so. This did not seem to be the place for the former. :)
That is why I restricted my response to your article to the general question, how can fit with context, no matter what level of conformity we find, go any closer to historicity than establishing plausibility?
Perhaps you would agree that it can’t. Perhaps you would say that it is a matter of comparing the relative coherence of various explanations. I can understand this argument, and accept that going with what may appear to be the ‘most plausible scenario’ option is sufficient for many thoughtful, intelligent people.
But I do think one has to opt for this definition of ‘convincing’ before the evidence is even inspected. Which is fine. In many respects that is what historians and scholars do.
For myself, I cannot say that if I were presented with an identical set of evidences and accounts for any other figure, that i would not have doubts.
steph
May 28, 2012 at 6:29 pm
Bayes is only useful in determining conditional probability, which by definition is a probability regarding future events based on historical occurrrence.
The probability that event A occurs, given that event B has occurred, is called a conditional probability.
The conditional probability of A, given B, is denoted by the symbol P(A|B).
In other words, it could not be used for historical occurrences where the event is sui generis.
The mythtics also invent mythtics victories (see Vridar for the latest) to create the illusion of success; maybe they think this is what the apostles did to spread news of the resurrection Hallelujah, except – O wait – there was no resurrection, so what were they on about?
Because there was no Jesus, they also invented their joy at the death of their non existent nondead non raised nonleader, which makes perfect sense; it was hiding under our noses all the time… but the truth and the stench…
When to Apply Bayes’ Theorem
Part of the challenge in applying Bayes’ theorem involves recognizing the types of problems that warrant its use. You should consider Bayes’ theorem when the following conditions exist.
The sample space is partitioned into a set of mutually exclusive events { A1, A2, . . . , An }.
Within the sample space, there exists an event B, for which P(B) > 0.
The analytical goal is to compute a conditional probability of the form: P( Ak | B ).
You know at least one of the two sets of probabilities described below.
P( Ak n B ) for each Ak
P( Ak ) and P( B | Ak ) for each Ak
Unarguable.
I heard it somewhere.
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steph
May 28, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Neil complains that I haven’t drawn attention to his main focus which he claims focuses mainly on the question of Christian origins. I am drawing attention to his misuse of Schweitzer as an atheist blogger in a post that is about flawed methodology among people who reject critical evidence and argument for historicity. The point is that Vridar’s questioning of Christian origins involves contradicting and misrepresenting scholarship and a high degree of manipulating evidence out of context. Besides he is irrelevant ultimately and not the subject of my post. He is merely an example demonstrating mad method.
He claims I say historical arguments can’t be summarised. It is Neil I have criticised for misrepresenting historical arguments. His comment on James Crossley was: “Any one of these arguments, Crossley admits, may not be persuasive for all readers, but together they become an argument of “cumulative weight” and therefore much stronger. The maths proves it: 0+0+0=3.” This is obviously not a summary of anything which James ever wrote, but a deliberate attempt to make him look stupid. This is basically what is wrong with Godfrey’s summaries. The problem with summaries in general is only that they are summaries and can never be proofs. Godfrey does not seem to understand that difference either. None of us has every suggested that no-one should summarise arguments accurately, or that even an accurate argument is a substititute for a learned proof. Neil is incapable of summarising historical arguments with conclusions he disagrees with. He merely mocks and invents silly analogies and misrepresents. And now he misrepresents me on his blog post and claims I never demonstrated his misrepresentations. But then he has denied that all along the way despite evidence to the contrary.
Neil says ‘I have pointed out on numerous occasions that the very reason I quote Schweitzer’s statement on historical methodology is BECAUSE he is a “historicist” and “not a mythicist”. His words would hardly have any force for my own particular point, otherwise. Stephanie is simply flat wrong when she says I am “oblivious to the fact that nobody suggests that mythicists pretend Schweitzer was a mythicist”.’
Yet Neil just confirms what I said. Yes indeed Neil, nobody is accusing you or other mythtics of pretending Schweitzer was a mythicist. We know you know he believed in a historical figure. I can’t believe Neil’s failure to comprehend something so simple, and quote it and still interpret it as the opposite to what it says. So yes we all agree that Schweitzer did believe in a Jesus who was historical, and he followed Weiss, as I pointed out in my essay: Schweitzer was a committed German Lutheran Christian. What mythicists don’t understand is that Schweitzer like Weiss DID think we could use historical methodology to demonstrate it in historical terms because they quote him out of his own historical context and I pointed this out in my essay which Neil fails to comprehend. As such, Schweitzer believed that salvation was by faith, not by works, and historical research was merely a ‘work’.
This is what he considered ‘uncertain’ about all historical research. It has nothing to do with what decent present-day historians or incompetent bloggers mean when they think that something is ‘historically uncertain’, which normally indicates that it may or may not have happened. It is well known that Schweitzer followed Weiss in supposing that Jesus expected the kingdom of God to come in his own time, and was mistaken. He commented,
His Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, published in 1892, is in its own way as important as Strauss’s first Life of Jesus. He lays down the third great alternative which the study of the life of Jesus had to meet….either eschatological or non-eschatological!….The general conception of the kingdom was first grasped by Johannes Weiss. All modern ideas, he insists…must be eliminated from it; when this is done, we arrive at a kingdom of God which is wholly future….He exercises no ‘messianic functions’, but waits, like others, for God to bring about the coming of the kingdom by supernatural means….But it was not as near as Jesus thought. The impenitence and hardness of heart of a great part of the people, and the implacable enmity of his opponents, at length convinced him that the establishment of the kingdom of God could not yet take place….It becomes clear to him that his own death must be the ransom price….
The setting up of the kingdom was to be preceded by the day of judgement. In describing the messianic glory Jesus makes use of the traditional picture, but he does so with modesty, restraint and sobriety. Therein consists his greatness….
The ministry of Jesus is therefore not in principle different from that of John the Baptist….What distinguishes the work of Jesus from that of the Baptist is only his consciousness of being the Messiah. He awoke to this consciousness at his baptism. But the messiahship which he claims is not a present office; its exercise belongs to the future….
…Reimarus…was the first, and indeed before Johannes Weiss, the only writer to recognise and point out that the teaching of Jesus was purely eschatological….But Weiss places the assertion on an unassailable scholarly basis.[1]
Now where has all the supposedly historical uncertainty gone? It was never there! In this second passage, Schweitzer was discussing what really happened, and he had no doubts about that at all. His apparent doubts in the much quoted passage above are not historical doubts, as Neil understands them, at all. They are entirely due to his German Lutheran conviction that salvation is by faith, not works, and historical research is a ‘work’ which does not bring salvation. Neil says, ‘I have always in discussions stressed that the methodological principle is NOT an argument for mythicism. It is an argument for an understanding of what constitutes a valid historical methodology.’
Once again, Neil misses the point and has taken Schweitzer out of his historical context, and deliberately persistently fails to acknowledge it, to make him sound like people he had never heard of him. Moreover, the whole idea that the judgement of anyone more than a century ago can be treated as if it were a judgement on the work of Sanders, Vermes and competent scholars who have written since then shows a total lack of historical sense.
For all Neil’s trumpeting of holding a degree which includes modern history, he failed to learn something we all learned in stage one if we weren’t already aware of it. He fails to put people in their own modern historical context. He does this with Fredriksen’s regrettably unhelpful analogy which he took out of historical context and applied to ancient history which is a clear abuse of her demonstration. No he is not implying that didn’t suggest “Fredriksen’s point meant that Jesus was a myth.” I never said that. He is abusing her analogy out of context. Neil does not understand context and the implications of context. Neil also refers to Fredriksen as “a naughty schoolgirl who has no interest in the content of the lesson, believing the teacher to be a real dolt, and who accordingly seeks to impress her giggly “know-it-all” classmates by interjecting the teacher with smart alec rejoinders at any opportunity” and me as “a vampire declaring an outrage if someone shows it the sign of the cross” and biblical scholars as “silly detectives” etc: all completely ludicrous.
As for identification of Neil as an ‘atheist’ blogger, that epithet is significant in view of ‘Christian origins’ and his bias, just as he would refer to a Christian scholar or atheist scholar etc. I never identify people by their race or sexual orientation like Roo Buckaroo. It’s irrelevant here or anywhere. Does Neil regularly identify people like that?
As to his final sentence in his post, I can’t resist repeating it because it is a clear example of his malice and spite ‘But if “The Jesus Process (c)” aspires to make a serious contribution to the “required debunking” of the Christ-Myth it is going to have to refrain from diluting their efforts with the uncomprehending Stephanie Louise Fisher.’ Neil has already pronounced that the copyright symbol is “unnecessary but pretentious, demonstrating his ignorance of the necessity of litigation processes, and now, in addition to his malice and spite, he demonstrates a complete lack of comprehension of the purpose and aims of the Jesus Process.
I suspect Neil has found criticisms of me while gazing at himself in the mirror.
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Ananda
May 29, 2012 at 10:48 pm
“As such, Schweitzer believed that salvation was by faith, not by works, and historical research was merely a ‘work”
Who could perform this labyrinthine tangle of historical/ahistorical inquiry without faith and both be justified to boot?
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Stephanie Fisher Responds to Neil Godfrey | Unsettled Christianity says:
May 28, 2012 at 9:31 pm
[...] complains that I haven’t drawn attention to his main focus which he claims focuses mainly on the question of Christian origins. I am [...]
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The Three Brusque-Fakirs — The Jesus Process© Hits the Web « Vridar says:
May 29, 2012 at 9:36 am
[...] things first. I mustn’t forget my manners. Welcome new bloggers! Welcome Blogger Hoffmann, Blogger Fisher, and Blogger Casey! We extend our warmest wishes to the new blog, The Jesus Process©™®, and its [...]
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steph
May 29, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Completely incompetent, ludicrously malicious, drivel. Irrelevant.
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Ralph
May 29, 2012 at 1:57 pm
I was disappointed in the vindictiveness of this comment of yours.
“As a member of the Worldwide Church of God he could not cope with the Jewishness of Jesus, and when he converted to atheism this did not change. As N.T. Wrong astutely observed, ‘Once a fundie always a fundie. He’s just batting for the other side, now.”
I suggest you read this post of Neil’s, in which he describes in detail the experience of leaving the cult and how that taught him to continually question his own assumptions. What he describes is very different to your accusation.
’http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/i-left-the-cult-and-met-the-enemy/
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steph
May 29, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Precisely Ralph. I think we’ve all read that account. Perhaps you don’t realise the implications of conversion experiences. And yes that claim is not uncommon and contradicts subsequent behaviour and the concept of the ‘Christ myth’.
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steph
May 29, 2012 at 2:51 pm
The claim that he continually questions his own assumptions, ie is constantly self critical.
Michael Wilson
May 29, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Ralph, Unfortunately questioning his own assumptions is not what Neil does, at least not rationally. His level of argumentation is so poor that have questioned his commitment to the ideas he champions, but that sort of twisting of evidence is the way things are done in the off brand religious sects, so it seems that their methods of twisted logic still suit Neil.
On Steph’s mention of the World Wide Church of God and Jewishness of Jesus, I think that the WWCG was one of the Christian sects like the 7th day Adventist that maintained that the Levitical laws applied to their adherents; they also thought that the English were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. Neil’s support for holocaust “revisionist” and the anti-Semitic regimes of Iran and Syria seem to stem more from his far left world view than Drew’s disgust of Jewishness in Christianity. Of course on the issue of what to do with the Zionist entity the far right and far left have found themselves in agreement, even if for completely different motivations.
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Paul Regnier
May 29, 2012 at 4:18 pm
From the interaction I’ve had with Godfrey, he seems wholly unable to respond dispassionately to *other people* questioning his assumptions. So I seriously doubt that he has a little inner Socrates testing his every idea, whatever he might say on his blog.
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steph
May 29, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Vindictive presupposes an inclintation towards revenge. Now that’s a bit silly. I have read that account as have my colleagues. Perhaps you don’t realise the regrettable and inevitable implications of conversion experiences and the continuation of convictions, but different convictions. The claim to self criticism and continual questioning of assumptions is not an uncommon illusion among people who have left a situation like that but it does not reflect the reality of his subsequent behaviour, while the concept of the non Jewish ‘Christ myth’ is one of the consequences. This is not synonymous with anti semitism, but it is a reflection that the Jewish historical figure without the ‘Christ myth’ accretions’ has been denied.
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David Mills
May 29, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Couldn’t we have a little bit less of the ad hom approach? A man’s arguments are all that matter, surely? Not that I subscribe to his, you understand, I don’t, for the most part. But if we were to take the line that those who held or indeed still hold certain beliefs about supernatural this or that may have their thinking coloured, where would it end? It would leave us wide open to people saying, ‘well you’re a committed Christian, maybe that affects your approach and judgement’? Which a lot of critics do say about Bible scholars. Phrases involving the words goose, gander, hoist, petard, pot, black and kettle spring to mind. :)
rjosephhoffmann
May 29, 2012 at 9:46 pm
@David: it seems to me, you are the one who emphasizes Bayes. I thought this might be.,..instructive. It is hardly a name-calling exercise. You are welcome to deal with it at some deeper level; I can handle it.
steph
May 29, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Excuse me David Mills – to whom do you address your ‘advice’? Your comment is very unclear.
David Mills
May 29, 2012 at 3:00 pm
I see E. P. Sanders has got a mention, and that he is held in high regard.
From where I’m seeing things, it is quite the opposite of reassuring to hear that he has apparently said words to the effect that the evidence for Jesus is on a par with Alexander the Great and in fact may be considered better, since for the former we cannot explore what he thought.
I might even go as far as to say that this comment might neatly articulate some of my, er, misgivings about Bible Scholarship.
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steph
May 29, 2012 at 6:59 pm
David, he wrote that in 1993 in the book he wrote for a popular audience, The Historical Figure of Jesus, on page 4. He wrote that before the surge in interest in Christian origins which inspired an equivalent increase in amateur and especially internet-based speculation and attempts to promote mythicist arguments. Do you really think it reflects badly on his entire contribution to scholarship including his detailed research and published work on early Judaism and its sources, such as Judaism: Practice and Belief (1992) for example?
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David Mills
May 30, 2012 at 3:11 am
@ Steph.
No, I don’t think it reflects badly on his entire contribution.
Setting that aside, I’m not sure why it matters where he wrote it. It either is or isn’t an accurate thing to say.
@ Joseph
I have no idea where you think I emphasized Bayes.
Regarding the tone and unnecessary personalization of some (emphasis some) of the discussion, I can handle it too. I just wasn’t expecting it, here.
rjosephhoffmann
May 30, 2012 at 11:10 am
As most objections to Bayes are usually (as by Sober: “Likelihood and the Duhem/Quine Problem,” ) over its predictive accuracy, it would be interesting to hear your view on how predictive accuracy applies retrogressively to past events. With respect to Bayes, I would like to see a calculation of the likelihood that Jesus was the messiah based strictly and without interpretation on the messianic and apocalyptic texts of the period 167BCE through 135 CE. It seems to me that the probability is very high indeed–maybe .80?–that using the premises that can be constructed from occurrences, Jesus was indeed the messiah. And of course, this must mean he really existed.
rjosephhoffmann
May 30, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Hi David, No that was just a rumination–not in response. I take you at your word that you are not pushing Bayes T. Almost no one is.
steph
May 30, 2012 at 10:41 am
Of course it matters when he wrote it. Context is essential. And there is no ‘right or wrong’ answer in this case. It is a matter of interpretation within a social and historical context which has altered since he wrote.
David Mills
May 30, 2012 at 11:29 am
@ steph. Let me just get this straight. Are you actually suggesting there is a context in which it is or was in 1993 accurate to say that the evidence for Jesus is on a par with Alexander, indeed better, because we can’t explore what the former thought? Is that something you are willing to make a case for?
David Mills
May 30, 2012 at 11:29 am
Whoops. Meant to say latter, not former.
David Mills
May 30, 2012 at 11:51 am
@ Joseph
Regarding Bayes, it certainly could be a very interesting case, the one you would like to hear, and I might enjoy reading it too, but (for the second time) I’m not sure why you might think I’m the one to put that case, since I’ve not indicated any inclination to apply Bayes? I have tended in quite the opposite direction in regard to Bayes, on more than one occasion here.
David Mills
May 31, 2012 at 3:22 am
@ Joseph.
Ah. A rumination. I thought it might be, but wasn’t sure, and was reluctant to take up the offer, lest I be taken to be an advocate. :)
David Mills
May 31, 2012 at 5:55 am
@ Joseph
Now that I know we are just ruminating…..
I should first admit that if philosophy and mathematics and logic can in some fundamental way be described as (not unrelated) ‘languages’, my fluency in them could be described as pigeon, at best. ?
Regarding predictive accuracy being applied retrospectively, as I understand it, that is not a fundamental problem. In fact, it seems to me that BT is geared towards it, because it is not an attempt to predict a future event, but to go backwards to see how an hypothesis, or the conjunction part(s) of an hypothesis, fits with outcome evidence.
At this point, it might be briefly worth noting that BT is sometimes applied in a court of law, where again, the assessment analyses retrospectively, back to the crime scene. A court of law is not the same as the study of ancient history, of course, and although there are similarities, one could argue that there is more onus to make a call in the former than the latter. Those in favour of reducing the overcrowding in prisons might be pleased if courts had more leeway or inclination towards arriving at agnostic verdicts, but I suspect that indecision is more of an affordable luxury for both the historian and the general thinker (i.e. me). As an historian, you may disagree. I have heard historians argue that it is obtuse not to at least provisionally run with plausibility, but that is a slightly separate argument, and one which I have my own views on, speaking as a rational sceptic and not an historian. ?
Regarding your second point, about a possible calculation based on apocalyptic texts from 167BC-135CE, what you seem to be saying (quite reasonably, IMO) is that we could, if you like, use the very theorem that Carrier uses against historicity to make a case FOR historicity, and in principle, perhaps we could. In a nutshell, it seems to me that this approach is akin to what you and Steph have been saying about how Jesus can arguably be deemed likely to have been historical because of a very good fit with context, that is to say, he is plausible. Which I agree is not an insignificant matter (though IMO inconclusive, for reasons briefly given previously, not the least of which is that I am tempted to opine that him not having actually existed is not implausible either, IMO).
Interestingly, I think it is often suggested that his historicity is enhanced precisely because he was not the expected messiah, that is to say not the type of messiah that was expected, so I don’t know how that affects the calculation. ?
To finish a rather overlong post, I might end up by saying that the idea of a calculation of the sort you are suggesting seems to do more to confirm the idea that using BT is ropey in the circumstances, because of the subjective and arbitrary (i.e. non-mathematical) nature of many of the input probabilities, than it does to confirm the credibility of its usefulness in history. Perhaps that was your point, and you were being whimsical about suggesting its use? Anyhow, I would remain at my previous position, that while it may be intellectual fun, and possibly of some minor use, maths is not designed to resolve historical matters such as this, not least because the ‘crime scene’ in this case is so remote.
David Mills
May 31, 2012 at 6:00 am
Errata:
The smileys I copied and pasted from Microsoft works have morphed. Please read ? as a smiley in the above post.
Also, Joseph, if you could delete my double pasting while moderating I would be grateful. :)
Or not, as you prefer. I must, after all, take responsibility for my own technological shortcomings.
Grog
June 1, 2012 at 11:52 pm
“it would be interesting to hear your view on how predictive accuracy applies retrogressively to past events.”
Ahhh….a common creationist argument against Evolution. Almost word for word.
rjosephhoffmann
June 2, 2012 at 2:58 am
@Grog: No. It’s not: there is a virtually unbroken string of evidence that supports evolution making the theory plausible, and Bayes wasn’t used to arrive at it. What a silly analogy.
steph
May 30, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Dear David, I am relieved that you don’t think a claim made in 1993 reflects on his entire contribution to scholarship. That was however the implication I received from your association of Sanders being held in high regard with his statement articulating some of your ‘er’ misgivings about Bible Scholarship. It is essential to understand that what he wrote in 1993 he would not repeat now. In 1993 it was unnecessary to qualify such a claim, because his audience would have understood his qualifications as implicit. However since 1993 there has been a surge in interest in Christian origins which has inspired an uprise in amateur and especially internet-based speculation with attempts to promote mythicist arguments. Sanders would write something far more complicated to counteract precisely those sort of literal interpretations which make his words mean something different now.
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David Mills
May 30, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Steph,
If I were to try to clarify how I could say that someone could write something which might summarize or typify some reservations I may have (whether they are justified or not is a separate issue, because I accept that they are essentially impressions) without it necessarily implying blanket criticism, it would simply be to say that anyone can have, er, if you’ll pardon my phrase, weaknesses and have strengths. In fact, most people I know have some of both. :)
I may, still, consider that observation to be an unjustifiable, particular thing to say, because I don’t yet understand the point you are making about the context at the time not requiring him to qualify it. In what way am I supposed to say, ‘oh well, in that case, it was a perfectly reasonable view to take’? But I would not presume to damn a person who as far as I can tell, ‘knows his onions’ in many other respects.
I Might add, incidentally, that I personally view Bart Ehrman’s recent expression of certainty in a somewhat similar light, that is to say, sounding very like the sort of thing someone might say when their objectivity is arguably wanting.
David Mills
May 30, 2012 at 6:59 pm
ps
…..their objectivity (arguably wanting) in one respect, or in one particular sense, not their objectivity generally. I can’t imagine that the latter would be a fair thing to say, given how many good scholars have demonstrated a willingness and a skill in explaining the texts with an admirable degree of rational criticism over the years. Rational sceptics like myself, especially those of us who declare agnosticism on this issue, probably have a great deal more in common with people like yourself and joseph, and sanders, than we have to differ about. :)
David Mills
May 29, 2012 at 3:01 pm
If he didn’t say that, I will eat my humble hat, or whatever the expression is. In all honesty, I can’t believe he did.
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steph
May 29, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Save your hat. I think it is ‘I’ll eat my hat’ and its the pie that’s humble.
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peadarmaccionaoith
June 10, 2012 at 8:48 am
SLJ: Notably incompetent are his discussions the “Criterion of Embarrassment.”
——————————————————————————————
Can you summarise Meier’s coherent and lengthy argument for the criterion which you say follows the comment quoted by Carrier? Having stated what Carrier quotes, Meier does seem to proceed immediately (p168) to examples of things he thinks the early Church was “stuck with”, not to a detailed justification of the criterion. If so, is it so unreasonable to describe Meier’s view on the CofE as an ‘assumption’? It is not clear from your essay that ‘it is not an assumption at all’, nor how/why it is “notably incompetent” to say it is.
The criterion does raise questions: do we know what would ‘embarrass’ all elements of ‘the early church’, and who they would be embarrassed in front of? Was ‘the early church’ homogenous, and would their audience also have been consistently and homogenously embarrassable by the same things? What is the depth of our field knowledge of ancient embarrassment, and particularly in the context of religious movements? What is the dynamic of evangelists/redactors being ‘stuck with’ a particular detail – what would happen if they denied an embarrassing element or were ‘economical with the truth’? Meier thinks that the early church was “stuck with” the baptism of Jesus by John, then states that John didn’t just ‘soften’ but simply “erased” the episode. If the evangelists and redactors were embarrassed that Jesus came from Nazareth, why did they have to own up to it? How would they have been called out on it if they’d elided or changed that detail?
Meier appears to recognise that there were different beliefs, and that even within the proto-orthodox ‘church’ the putative feeling of ‘embarrassment’ changed with time. Are there not inevitable incongruities between different thematic, symbolic, mystical and religious priorities, which complicate even further the difficulties of identifying ancient embarrassments?
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rjosephhoffmann
June 10, 2012 at 7:02 pm
M. calls it embarrassment; it is more properly called the dissimilarity principle: that is to say, if a belief recorded or traditioned through an aporia in the gospel differs substantially on the basis of reasonable assumptions to what the church would have wanted to propagate, that element may be regarded provisionally as earlier to the tradition. It has nothing to do with embarrassment as you are using the term, and frankly I think the term embarrassment is embarrassing; as a general principle in the evolution of texts, however it is quite sound. Disconfirming and challenging outcomes dictate editorial changes to primary traditions when these can be effected. Vid., Heremeneutics of suspicion.
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steph
June 10, 2012 at 9:28 pm
It is regrettable that Meier calls it ‘embarrassment’ which is a misleading term. It is appropriately called dissimilarity, as Joe has clarified. Meier discusses it, including its limitations, in his chapter 6 titled ‘Criteria’ from pp.167-95 in Volume One of his massive Four Volume “Marginal Jew”.
peadarmaccionaoith
June 14, 2012 at 4:46 am
Yes, Meier calls it ‘embarrassment’, but he also lists ‘dissimilarity’ (or ‘discontinuity’) as a separate criterion. While he does critique other criteria quite succinctly, he appears to deem the former limited mainly because there are few clear cases of “embarrassment”. Dissimilarity he sees as words or actions which are ‘discontinuous’ or ‘dissimilar’ in relation to 1st century ‘Judaism’ or ‘the early Church’ (e.g. the rejection of fasting). This seems to be a different notion to that of being ‘stuck with’ something ‘embarrassing’ (because of a well established MS tradition rather than necessarily because the ‘embarrassment’ is ‘true’?)
Meier points out the holes in his five primary criteria, but says if they are used in conjunction they represent reliable criteria of historicity. He does not appear to argue this closely, however – perhaps by some accumulation of indeterminate probabilities (?) – but it is not unambiguously clear that stacking sieves together will necessarily bring water from the historical well.
rjosephhoffmann
June 14, 2012 at 7:17 am
“Dissimilarity” is constructed from a range of probabilities built up from both external and internal constituents of the traditions. Many of these traditions are ideological and perspectival, notoriously difficult to pin down by region and date (there is reason scholars call this the early Christian “movement” after all) and depend on a pretty high degree of historical knowledge and technical skill to be useful at all. If I had another year of my life I could take you through several examples, but for example, the widespread rumour that Jesus was the illegitimate child of a Jewish girl impregnated by a Roman soldier (the external “ben Panthera” tradition) might lead to the counter-rumour that he was born of a virgin and narrative development as we find it in Matthew and Luke. The historicity of either story, for different reasons, must remain in doubt, but any tradition that seems to lack this polemical focus (e.g., Mt 12.47f) might be arguably older than a story that develops it. Dissimilarity is more familiar when assessing apocalyptic statements by Jesus and their modification over time. “Embarrassment” is a silly and unnecessary gloss of the same essential criterion. One caution however concerning the trend in these conversations to assume falsely that a criterion that employs intuition or subjectivity in its application is somehow “wrong.” It isn’t, and cannot be. The degree of “rightness” will always be an adjunct of the degree of sophistication with which the procedure is carried out. If you think science is the standard here, don’t think rocket science and the laws of physics as your way ahead–much less Bayes T. which doesn’t fear subjectivity at all–think surgery and skill. I think your analogy to sieves is–no pun intended–strained.
David Mills
June 14, 2012 at 7:38 am
@ peader
‘….but it is not unambiguously clear that stacking sieves together will necessarily bring water from the historical well.’
I have been scratching my head on many occasions to come up with an analogy to cover this, and that is the one I was looking for. :)
Of course, any response will revolve around the words ‘unambiguously clear’ and those who believe that Jesus existed will quite rightly point out that this is asking too much, and thus remain ‘as they were’.
Those of us who have a fondness for uncertainty will simply stop at ‘ambiguous’ and file under ‘unanswerable’.
Here is a question. What methodology allows us to tell the difference between a story and a cult which grew and was embellished around a non-historical figure from one which was embellished around a non-historical one?
If there is no clear answer to that one, what are we left with, other than a subjective choice about whether to approach the material with an attitude of trust or mistrust, both of which, or a combination of the two, are warranted, IMO.
rjosephhoffmann
June 14, 2012 at 7:53 am
“What methodology allows us to tell the difference between a story and a cult which grew and was embellished around a non-historical figure from one which was embellished around a non-historical one…” You to seem to think the answer is “none.” The answer, which will be wholly unsatisfying, is that while cults do in fact produce rituals, stories and adherents (just like political systems do), the gospels are sufficiently unlike these narratives to require the approaches that have been developed to understand them. It is simply not the case that the historical critical method is sieve-like: radical biblical criticism developed from the same root system as mainstream critical studies at the end of the 18th century and then got tangled up in self-contradiction and confusion. The idea therefore that we are confronted with the choice between knowing nothing or only believing what the fundamentalists believe strikes me as a medieval choice. In fact, I am wondering why apparently smart people want to paint themselves into that corner. And btw, knowing that Jesus did not exist is not something we know. The evidence (you can spare me a lecture on “evidence,” please) does not begin to prove it, and the mythtic view of it has not changed or improved in a century. I was amused at a responder yesterday who said something to the effect, “Yeah but we don’t have any coins with the face of Jesus on them, do we?” The obvious answer is, if we did, it would prove only the existence of the coin.
David Mills
June 14, 2012 at 8:05 am
I can concur on all fronts.
Having said that, I’d prefer if you’d reply to my agnosticism, and stop telling me of the shortcomings of mythicism. Are you (again) addressing mythicism via me, or what? J
I would not dream of giving you a lecture on ‘evidence’. Yes, that choice you gave is a medieval choice. I take your point about the coin. And yes, your answer to the question I posed is indeed unsatisfactory, to me personally, at this time, because I don’t agree that the sieve analogy is strained at all.
David Mills
June 14, 2012 at 8:34 am
@ Joseph
Addendum:
In addition to comparing the stories of Jesus to stories from other cults, should we not also compare it to stories of people who were once thought to exist but are now thought either not to have or possibly not to have?
I am not sure whether you will object (and if you do I may want to probe a bit further as to why) if I mention Betty Crocker, who, I believe, was voted the USA’s second most influential woman in a magazine article in 1947, without existing.
I think we can all agree that people can become thought of as if they have existed, when they may not have. Why not Jesus?
rjosephhoffmann
June 14, 2012 at 8:52 am
@David: You know that I will say these two cases are not symmetrical, though it is a valiant try if the point were simply to prove Mencken’s point (and Barnum’s) about the credulity of the American public or credulity in general.
David Mills
June 14, 2012 at 8:56 am
@ joseph.
Of course they are not symmetrical. I am not sure why they need to be. Nor, in defense of Americans, is Betty the only example I can think of, by a long way.
Hm. A comparison between the credulity of ancient Judeans and modern Americans. Now that might be an interesting pub discussion, if nothing else. :)
peadarmaccionaoith
June 10, 2012 at 8:57 am
SLF: This supposed contradiction depends on a traditional translation of µ? ?? t? ???t?, (Mk 14.2) as, e.g., ‘Not during the festival’ (NRSV). Jeremias long ago pointed out that the Greek heorte also means ‘festival crowd’, as standard secondary literature intermittently repeats
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What examples of heorte meaning, clearly but implicitly (on its own), ‘festival crowd’ are cited by Jeremias (and what do you mean by the intermittent repetition of ‘secondary literature’)? Matthew/Mark refer first to he heorte and then separately to ho laos (likewise John 2:23, 4:45, 7:11 – as an elaboration, this could be read against as well as for such a meaning? It is difficult to read John 12:20 as referring to Greeks coming to worship in the festival crowd; likewise in the LXX, the phrase seems to clearly mean during the festival, with ‘in the festival crowd’ making little sense (it seems particularly unambiguous in its triple use for specific festivals in 2 Chronicles 8:13). So too with other prepositions/cases – Mark 15:6 seems to mean festival; Antiquities 18:90 seems to mean festival too. Further afield, there are unambiguous usages in Aristotle to mean ‘festival’.
The normal usage therefore seems to be ‘festival’. LJS gives Plotinus’ 6th Ennead as an instance where it means ‘assembled multitude at a festival’, though it seems to me that this is far from clear: Plotinus has the word in a list of words which includes ‘this’ and ‘what’ as well as army and crowd, and he goes on to repeat heorte and explicitly make the point that heorte means nothing apart from the people who are gathered at it. This suggests to me that he was quite deliberately proposing the meaning as part of his philosophical ruminations on monadic thought – how single things are in fact multiple in nature.
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steph
June 12, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Yes it meant festival which is how it came to also mean festival crown. Secondary literature refers to scholarship discussing primary texts.
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peadarmaccionaoith
June 14, 2012 at 4:53 am
But what are the chronologically appropriate instances of it clearly coming to mean that? The only one I could find was in Plotinus, as cited by LSJ. As I pointed out, though, this appears to be a self-conscious usage where Plotinus (in the 3rd century) is saying what is a festival if it’s not the festival crowd. What are your/Jeremias’ primary sources?
I’m not sure it’s a matter of great import, just curious!
steph
June 14, 2012 at 7:05 pm
Yes it is fascinating. I’ve been held captive for days and days and weeks, a long time ago now, doing this sort of thing. Reading through texts, cataloguing references, making lists and lists and lists. I looked up sources a long time ago, some of which are in the British Library, and was convinced by them and haven’t kept a record. I suggest you do the same.
peadarmaccionaoith
June 10, 2012 at 9:02 am
SLF: At no point in such a process does a critical scholar throw his or her hands in the air and pronounce a fatwah on all preceding efforts.
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I am unsure what you intend by fatwa, but in other arts/humanities fields scholars do occasionally question pretty much all that has gone before (and sometimes create new paradigms and orthodoxies by doing so). It is not forbidden, and while controversy and dispute do arise, I am not sure they generate anything like the heat seen here. The expression of such controversy usually centres on the arguments and evidence rather than the people involved.
A case which may be interesting (or even pertinent) is that of what we might generally call literary studies: in the last century scholars increasingly widened the supposed ‘context’ of a literary work, and, some would say, removed literary criticism from the common (sense, people) and vocationalised it. Barriers of ‘training’ and technique appeared around the new criticism, which ironically appeared to seep into everything the more private and solipsistic it became: if life was short, art was getting longer, and one needed to make one’s living in an academic post to have a voice. Yet voices from within did protest and mounted what were seen as ‘attacks’ on academic scholarship itself – a scholarship which continued to centre around the University English Department teaching abstract theory and ‘methodology’ as the key to unlocking literary works (placing the theoretical cart firmly in front of the literary horse). In some quarters, the more incomprehensible the theory (qua Derrida?!) the greater the ‘technical’ expertise” that was required: the antithesis, it seems to me, of opening up a discipline.
Yet still, given the current economic climate for literary studies, papers from individuals who are not professional academics do appear in refereed journals in the study of literature. Possibly there is some private contempt for these ‘amateurs’ (who in many cases simply did not have the same life opportunities as the professionals), but I have never seen it expressed in disparaging comments about the individual’s credentials, personal background, and even their personal psychological profile. And I have seen the dominant scholarly norm dismissed wholesale as a “disciplinary fiction”.
I am curious therefore about the dynamic of the personal reaction to internet ‘mythicists’. I have been an academic for over 20 years now (not in the subject I might have preferred, but I count my blessings daily for the privilege), and cannot imagine either denigrating others for failing to gain access to our turris eburnea (“top tier” or otherwise) – or attaching the name of my institution (as student or lecturer) to some of the personal ‘heat’ in this essay. Isn’t exchanging libel-proof insults what internet anonymity is for?!
I understand the notion of expertise in subjects that are relevant to the study of the NT (Greek, palaeography, ancient history etc), but my experience/understanding of “technical expertise” is knowledge of mechanical techniques based on demonstrable scientific principles which (usually) produce physical results – and these lend themselves to ‘training’. The techniques might employ a range of tools (chosen in accordance with the method) but the results in any case can be scientifically tested and verified. What techniques/technologies does the phrase “technical expertise” in NT studies refer to? Is the use of the phrase metaphorical (perhaps harking back to an original Greek nuance?), or is it intended to denote scientific technique (which people can be ‘trained’ in) and demonstrable correctness? It seems to me that criteria such as that of ‘embarrassment’ (see previous post) don’t constitute formal methods in this sense: if they represent technique or science, it is a very inexact one. I have not come across these ‘methods’ in other areas of history or mythology: are they transferable to other areas (e.g. Homer, Malory and associated writings)? How does one know from the results whether this criterion has been applied correctly or incorrectly? And why, in this era of the ‘edgeless university’ and the institutional VLE, do these particular techniques not lend themselves to self-study?
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steph
June 12, 2012 at 7:01 pm
I’m sorry my metaphor isn’t clear. Carrier has announced that New Testament studies is “f**ked” and historical method “invalid” which seems a bit to me as if he’s declaring a fatwa on an entire academic discipline. Banning it. All disciplines, including those of New Testament studies, Old Testament studies, and History of Religions, Classics, Modern History, etc, constantly discuss and debate and improve method and application in view of new evidence and argument. Carrier wasn’t making a concession for this or even acknowledging the existence of it in academic discussion. He seems oblivious to the existence of positive, constructive and ‘heated’ conversation in the discipline.
As far as claiming authority and expertise when one has no disciplined formal training, Proverbs 26.4-5 comes to mind. I am not rejecting the interest of amateurs, only those amateurs without training and critical skills who become ‘know-alls’.
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rjosephhoffmann
June 12, 2012 at 7:07 pm
@Steph: “f*cked” yet seems to believe that the messiah is at hand.
steph
June 12, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Amen. Maranatha. :)
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