2010-09-19

Attis lifts his finger against the Christ-Myth (again), the “ideal type” and “the fatal flaw” — Dunn on Price (6)

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by Neil Godfrey

The so-called “resurrection” of Attis cannot be compared with the resurrection of Jesus because all Attis ever managed to do was avoid bodily corruption, grow his hair and raise a single finger. With this assertion Dunn completely ignores and gives his middle finger to Price’s arguments about the relevance of pagan resurrections to the Christian myth.

Dunn’s attempt to rebut Price by slashing away at straw men also involves claims so muddled and contradictory that one can only assume that he is confident enough of his scholarly status to assume that most readers will thoughtlessly nod their heads to anything at all that sounds critical of the Christ-Myth theory.

Dunn’s raising of Attis’ finger follows directly from his attempt to contrast Jesus with pagan creations on the grounds that Jesus challenges the world about “sin” and calls for “suffering” and “rejection by the world”.

[I]s this Jesus . . . a god of human fabrication made to make the world feel good? (p. 102) Continue reading “Attis lifts his finger against the Christ-Myth (again), the “ideal type” and “the fatal flaw” — Dunn on Price (6)”


Dunn on Price (5)

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

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing a series of responses to Dunn’s response to Price’s chapter on Jesus mythicism. (See Historical Jesus: Five Views for all related posts.)

It is quite “interesting” to regularly run across remarks in web-land about how “spot on” Dunn’s criticism of Price’s chapter is, and how so many “fully agree with everything Dunn says.”

I can only imagine most readers who say these sorts of things never read Price’s chapter and Dunn’s together. Or if they did, they are swayed by Dunn’s status as a scholar — and their own eagerness to find anything to rebut a Christ-Myth argument — to swallow everything he says and forget the many many instances where Price’s own words belie so much of what Dunn writes.

In this post I look at

  1. an instance of Dunn saying that Price “ignores” evidence that he does not ignore at all but discusses explicitly
  2. an instance of Dunn leading readers to think Price resorts to ad hoc claims of interpolation to sidestep contrary evidence, when in fact he does not
  3. where Dunn argues that the Bible’s claims of supernatural appearances are evidence for the historical Jesus
  4. and where Dunn even manages to argue that the absence of a detailed description for a supernatural appearance of Jesus strengthens the case for the historicity of Jesus against Jesus mythicism.

Continue reading “Dunn on Price (5)”