2010-08-18

Historical facts and the nature of history — exchange with Rick Sumner

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Rick has posted an interesting discussion titled What is History? The Nature of “Facts” in response to my Historicist Hocus Pocus post. This follows a short exchange between us in the comments beneath my own post, and is an extension of earlier blog posts of his own on the same theme. I appreciate Rick’s response and the opportunity it gives me to explore my own argument in a little more depth.

If I understand Rick correctly, he disagrees with my view of the nature of facts when I assert that biblical studies have no “historical facts” to work with that are comparable to what are generally conceded as facts in relation to, say, the history of Julius Caesar. Continue reading “Historical facts and the nature of history — exchange with Rick Sumner”


Seed of David, born of woman, and mythicism

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

I have been recently addressing some common misconceptions about mythicist arguments. Another one is that “mythicism” places strained interpretations on passages that refer to Jesus as “the seed of David” and as being “born of a woman.” This post does not explore all the ins and outs of the arguments, but briefly points to what is overlooked by many of the historicist critics.

Other misconceptions I have recently addressed:

Mythicism’s alleged reliance on arguments from silence and too many assumptions:

/2010/08/16/doherty-the-sublunar-realm-and-paul-correcting-some-disinformation/

Mythicism’s alleged reliance on arguments for interpolations and metaphors (this includes a comment on the specifics of this post – seed of David and born of woman):

/2010/08/13/do-mythicists-read-pauls-references-to-jesus-humanity-as-interpolations-or-metaphors-or-is-it-the-historicists-who-do-this/

James the brother of the Lord:

/2010/05/02/applying-sound-historical-methodology-to-james-the-brother-of-the-lord/
and /2010/03/11/the-plot-driven-need-to-create-siblings-for-jesus/

Doherty’s sublunar realm discussions:

/2010/08/16/doherty-the-sublunar-realm-and-paul-correcting-some-disinformation/

So what about the “seed of David” and “born of woman” readings?

Mythicism per se does not hang on any particular reading of either of these passages in Romans and Galatians. Continue reading “Seed of David, born of woman, and mythicism”