Month: August 2012

2012-08-17

32. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 32 (Jesus an Apocalyptic Prophet?)

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by Earl Doherty

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Guest Posts, New Testament
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Ehrman’s Case for Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet

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COVERED IN THIS POST:

  • Ehrman’s criteria for Jesus as apocalyptic prophet
  • Jesus as the Son of Man
  • Did Q identify its Jesus with the Son of Man?
  • “L” and “M” not apocalyptic
  • No apocalypticism in Q1 and the Gospel of Thomas
  • No apocalypticist in the epistles
  • Does Q’s John the Baptist know a human Jesus?
  • Between the Alpha and Omega lies an apocalyptic Jesus

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Evidence for Jesus as an Apocalypticist

(Did Jesus Exist? pp. 297-304)

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The issue of multiple attestation

Bart Ehrman now presents his evidence that

Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who predicted that the end of this evil age is soon to come and that within his generation God would send a cosmic judge of the earth, the Son of Man, to destroy the forces of evil and everyone who has sided with them and to bring in his good kingdom here on earth. (DJE? p. 298)

Referring to his criterion of “contextual credibility,” Ehrman points out that apocalyptic expectation of this sort was widespread in Jesus’ day; and he promises to show that the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus also fit the criterion of dissimilarity.

But to begin with, he stresses that

. . . the apocalyptic proclamation of Jesus is found widely throughout our earliest sources. In other words, it is multiply attested, all over the map, precisely in the sources that we would normally give the greatest weight to, those that are our oldest. (DJE? p. 299)

I think the reader by now can detect what is going to happen here. After the sweeping declaration that Jesus as apocalyptic proclaimer is found “throughout our earliest sources . . . all over the map” (we have already seen that this is not the case), Ehrman reduces that map to the narrow world of the Gospels and Acts, and his claim that these or their underlying sources constitute “our oldest”—i.e., “Mark, Q, M and L.” Continue reading “32. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 32 (Jesus an Apocalyptic Prophet?)”

2012-08-16

New Comment Policy — “What’s All This Then?”

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by Tim Widowfield

Filed under: Vridar
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Freedom of Speech

First of all, before anyone brings up the subject of human rights and freedom of speech, let me be clear:  We’re all for freedom of speech in the public square. But this isn’t the public square. It’s Neil’s blog. Since its inception Vridar has permitted open commenting — you don’t have to wait for approval, unless you’re on the list of spammers who get sent to the trash heap right away or on the roster of off-topic windbags, copypasta commandos, and attention-whores who have to pass muster first. We don’t intend to change the policy.

Neil and I like comments. We don’t want to write in a vacuum, and we certainly don’t want to set ourselves up as knowledge-transmitters like certain scholars who would much rather talk than listen. You certainly don’t have to agree with us. Is there anything more boring that talking to somebody who thinks exactly the same way you do?

So I think we’ve been really tolerant for the most part. Unfortunately, that leniency has often come back to bite us when certain people abuse the privilege. It’s a problem we’ve needed to address for some time. We need to get a handle on comments.

New Rules

Vridar is not my blog. I’m just a lazy roommate who sleeps on the couch, leaves his stuff lying around, and steals beer out of the fridge. So to earn my keep, Neil has asked me to start helping moderate comments. I said I’d be glad to, as long as we can agree on the rules.

  1. All decisions are final. If your comment is denied, go publish it somewhere else.
  2. No abusive language. We get to decide what’s abusive language. We’re not impartial judges.
  3. No threats of any kind. No exceptions.
  4. Your comment must be relevant to the current post. If you want to publish a tract on your favorite scholar, get your own blog. There’s a vast Internet out there.
  5. If you can’t be interesting, at least be brief. If your comment is excessively long and and extremely dull, it will probably be denied. If your comment is really, really long and is not broken up into paragraphs, it will definitely be denied. Seriously, if you don’t have time for minimal proofreading, or if you’re too busy to break your wall of text into paragraphs, then we don’t have time to read it.
  6. Do not repeat your points. If you feel very strongly about a particular subject, start your own blog. Squatters are not welcome.
  7. Fairness is not an issue. If you think your comment was unfairly denied, you may be right. On the other hand, see rule 1.

We’ve already started the process. Neil and I began filtering comments yesterday. If yours aren’t showing up, or if they disappear suddenly, now you know why.

2012-08-15

The German Radical Theologians: Why did they happen and what is their relevance today?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies
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The second chapter in Is This Not the Carpenter? is an interesting discussion by fellow Aussie Roland Boer titled “The German Pestilence: Re-assessing Feuerbach, Strauss and Bauer”. (The link is to Australia’s University of Newcastle tribute page to Roland Boer as one of their “research achievers”.) It is easy to see where Leftie Red Roland is coming from with a quick glance at his blog, Stalin’s Moustache. There he has a most informative page, Marxism and Religion: Annotated Reading List, in which readers can survey the relationship between Karl Marx and Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach — two persons at the heart of his chapter in Is This Not the Carpenter? One also learns of his penchant for “arresting titles” (beside words like “Lenin nudist” and “psychic terror”, “German pestilence” is right at home), and that he enjoys occasional sparring with Jim West, author of the first chapter of this book that I discussed in the previous post.

So what is Roland Boer’s essay about?

  1. Why German philosophy and public debates about human, political and economic justice were so entwined with theology and especially the Gospels in the early decades of the nineteenth century;
  2. What was the importance of
    1. Ludwig’s Feuerbach‘s theory that God and religion were “mere” projections of the best in human beings;
    2. David Strauss‘s demolition of the orthodox understanding of the Gospels and argument that they were really mythical stories;
    3. and Bruno Bauer‘s radical sceptical approach to the New Testament along with his radical politics and militant atheism.
  3. What messages from all of the above might be found relevant today.

So let’s begin. I outline the core of Boer’s argument as I understand it. Continue reading “The German Radical Theologians: Why did they happen and what is their relevance today?”

2012-08-13

‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ — A (Very, Very) Strange History of Minimalism

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament, Old Testament
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The opening chapter of Is This Not the Carpenter? is “A (Very, Very) Short History of Minimalism: From the Chronicler to the Present” by Jim West of the unaccredited Quartz Hill School of Theology (West has said he believes accreditation is “a scheme and a scam”) that is a “ministry” arm of the Quartz Hill Community Church.

When I first read Jim West’s article online in 2010 (before it was edited as part of Is This Not the Carpenter?) I was very surprised indeed. I responded with a blog post, The Refreshing Honesty of Jim West. Here is a section of his article/chapter that I quoted then:

Most “histories” of Ancient Israel and Earliest Christianity are simply examples of circular reasoning. Many historians use the Bible as a historical source; they reconstruct a history which is often nothing more than a recapitulation of the biblical telling; and the Bible is affirmed as historical because of the history so constructed. Similarly, the life of Jesus, for instance, is gleaned from a reading of the Gospels. Said reconstruction is named a ‘history of Jesus’ life.” That “history of Jesus’ life” is then utilized to prove historically the life of Jesus as described in the Gospels. One need only pick up John Bright’s “History of Israel” or Joseph Ratzinger’s “Jesus” to see circularity in action. True, ancillary materials are added to these histories (on the very rare occasions that they are available) – but these only reinforce the circularly circumscribed reconstruction.

As I mentioned in my initial response, Jim West has distorted the meaning of “minimalism” to sustain the conceit throughout his article/chapter. Minimalism is not, primarily, a denial of the value of texts for historical information. They certainly are valuable as historical sources. The question is what the “hard evidence” of archaeological finds and external controls can inform us about the nature and value of the texts as historical sources. Are their narratives true accounts of what happened or are they creative literature that is best explained as the ideology (or theology) of a people, time and place that can only be pinpointed with the aid of other sources external to those narratives?

Jim West’s point is that the authors of our biblical texts were not interested in historical reconstruction or recording. To illustrate, he points to the author of 1 Chronicles changing 2 Samuel’s account of God (Yahweh) causing David to take a census of Israel into Satan being David’s motivator. The author, we thus can see, was doing theology, not history. Continue reading “‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ — A (Very, Very) Strange History of Minimalism”

31. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 31 (Scholarly Reconstructions of HJ)

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by Earl Doherty

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Guest Posts, New Testament
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Scholarly Reconstructions of the Historical Jesus

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COVERED IN THIS POST:

  • Consensus scholarly views of the historical Jesus
    • The tyranny of the Gospels
    • What Q does not tell us about an historical Jesus
    • How New Testament scholarship operates
  • Conflicting scholarly views about who and what Jesus was
  • Finding Jesus in the Q prophets
    • An argument for the existence of Q
  • Not finding an historical Jesus in the epistles’ Christ
  • Ehrman’s criteria for the genuine words and deeds of Jesus

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Finding the Jesus of History

(Did Jesus Exist? pp. 267-296)

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What scholars claim to know about the historical Jesus

Here is Ehrman’s summation of what critical scholarship in general believes about the historical Jesus:

[T]here are a number of important facts about the life of Jesus that virtually all critical scholars agree on, for reasons that have in part been shown and that in other ways will become increasingly clear throughout the course of this chapter and the next. Everyone, except the mythicists, of course, agrees that

  • Jesus was a Jew who came from northern Palestine (Nazareth)
  • and lived as an adult in the 20s of the Common Era.
  • He was at one point of his life a follower of John the Baptist
  • and then became a preacher and teacher to the Jews in the rural areas of Galilee.
  • He preached a message about the “kingdom of God”
  • and did so by telling parables.
  • He gathered disciples
  • and developed a reputation for being able to heal the sick and cast out demons.
  • At the very end of his life, probably around 30 CE, he made a trip to Jerusalem during a Passover feast
  • and roused opposition among the local Jewish leaders,
  • who arranged to have him put on trial before Pontius Pilate,
  • who ordered him to be crucified for calling himself the king of the Jews. (DJE? p. 269 — my formatting)

This is a prime example of what I have called “the tyranny of the Gospels,” for not a single one of these biographical details is to be found in the non-Gospel record of the first century.

Furthermore, the three later Gospels of our canonical four (along with the satellite Acts) seem entirely dependent on Mark for their basic story of “Jesus of Nazareth.” Critical scholarship is essentially deriving its picture of an historical Jesus from the work of one author, at least several decades after the supposed fact. Continue reading “31. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 31 (Scholarly Reconstructions of HJ)”

2012-08-11

Evolved Morality

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ethics & Human Nature, Evolution, Science
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I  loved this video clip of Frans de Waal’s talk, Moral Behavior in Animals. (It was recently linked on Jerry Coyne’s Evolution is True blog.) It demonstrates that more animals than humans have evolved moral attributes of empathizing with others, offering others consolation, “prosocial” tendencies such as caring for the welfare of others, and a sense of fairness. The talk begins by balancing the themes we used to hear so often about our nearest animal relatives being so aggressive and territorial by showing that they also “believe in” reconciling after fights.

Or if you are short of time and want to jump to the funniest part where we see outrage over an unfair deal . . . . .

‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ — Introduction

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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What is the significance of the title of this book edited by Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas S. Verenna. The subtitle is “The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus” — “of the Figure of”, not “of Jesus”. Perhaps that helps guard the book from being seen as too bluntly opening up the Christ Myth question. The main title comes from Mark 6:1-6 —

And he went out from thence; and he cometh into his own country; and his disciples follow him.

2 And when the sabbath was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, Whence hath this man these things? and, What is the wisdom that is given unto this man, and what mean such mighty works wrought by his hands?

3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended in him.

4 And Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages teaching.  (ASV)

Now the themes latent in this passage and that are drawn out in this introduction are the same ones that led me to launch one of my very first diffident attempts to explore questions of historicity in an academic forum in 1998: Re: Jesus the Carpenter? in Crosstalk. Fourteen years later I am reading the same question, with the same implications for the historicity of the exchange between Jesus and his neighbours, being raised not by an amateur outsider in an open scholarly forum but by scholars in a book so prohibitively expensive that it is beyond the reach of the general reader — and with a clear warning that I am not to reproduce any of it for wider sharing, without even the usual allowance of short passages for reviews.

Nonetheless, this Introduction chapter has been available online since 2010 at The Bible and Interpretation — even complete with its annoying “itinerate” typo.  (And given that it is already online I trust I have a right to quote passages from it here.) So you can go there and read what Thompson and Verenna write for themselves or stay here and read what I say they write, with some of my own commentary. 😉 Continue reading “‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ — Introduction”

2012-08-10

30. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism — Part 30 (Did Mark Invent Jesus of Nazareth?)

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by Earl Doherty

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Guest Posts, New Testament
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Did Mark Invent Jesus of Nazareth?

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COVERED IN THIS POST:

  • How much did Mark invent in his Gospel?
  • John’s dependency on the Synoptics
    • John’s changes and innovations
    • Lazarus and the Signs Source
  • How independent of Mark are Matthew and Luke?
    • Robert Price on no “M” and “L” sources
  • Trusting Luke’s Prologue again
    • Ehrman’s fantasy world of “many Gospels” before Mark
  • Rehashing arguments which render an historical Jesus “fact”
  • Postscript

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Did Mark, Our First Gospel, Invent the Idea of a Historical Person, Jesus?

(Did Jesus Exist? pp. 259-263)

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Mark building on Q traditions

Mantegna's St. Mark.
Mantegna’s St. Mark. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the final section of his critique of individual mythicists, Bart Ehrman addresses the question of whether Mark invented his Gospel character. Insofar as he has my specific position in mind, he doesn’t quite get it right, as usual.

It is widely thought among those who hold such [mythicist] views that the Jesus of the Gospel tradition—the Jewish teacher and prophet of Galilee who did miracles and then was crucified by the Romans—is an invention of our first Gospel, Mark. . . . This view is suggested in several places by Wells and is stated quite definitively by Doherty: “All the Gospels derive their basic story of Jesus of Nazareth from one source: the Gospel of Mark, the first one composed. Subsequent evangelists reworked Mark in their own interests and added new material.” (DJE? p. 259)

I do not say that “the Jewish teacher and prophet of Galilee who did miracles” is the invention of Mark, but rather of the Q community which preceded him, although that invention was not in the form of any narrative life story, but simply as the alleged originator of a bare collection of the community’s sayings and a few anecdotes, with no biography, let alone a personality, in view. Continue reading “30. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism — Part 30 (Did Mark Invent Jesus of Nazareth?)”

2012-08-09

Sayings Manufactured For Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Jesus Outside the Gospels is a small volume compiled by R. Joseph Hoffmann and published 1984. He argued that various sayings of Jesus found across a variety of sources (not only canonical ones) “put it beyond doubt that the church was capable of generating sayings to suit new situations, and did not hesitate to invent new “words” of the Lord”.

“Sayings” of Jesus—which might better be termed traditions about the sayings of Jesus—are not confined to the Gospels canonized in the New Testament- There exist scores of sayings (logia) for which there are no parallels, or only distant ones, in the Gospels. Collectively, these go by the misleading name agrapha—unrecorded words. As this title prejudices their analysis (the Gospels do not present a verbatim record of Jesus’ words), it is best to designate them “extracanonical” sayings or sayings-traditions. The significance of these sayings, it should be emphasized, is not that they present a more reliable picture of Jesus than the one given in the Synoptic Gospels. Rather, they put it beyond doubt that the church was capable of generating sayings to suit new situations, and did not hesitate to invent new “words” of the Lord in furthering their missionary work. The questions of proselytes and the accusations of enemies of the sect were the most prominent but by no means the only situations addressed by these sayings. (JOTG, p. 69)

Hoffmann was not saying that no sayings went back to Jesus himself, but that it was clear that any such sayings were adapted (revised, mutated) according to the needs of the church. This has long been a widely held view among scholars. It is also clear, though, that many sayings were invented and attributed to Jesus himself to give them added weight of authority. Earl Doherty argues that even the Q sayings evolved in a way that they were attributed to Jesus relatively late in their life-cycle.

I think some readers would be interested in seeing a list of some of these extra sayings attributed to Jesus by the early church writers, and the samples following are taken from Hoffmann’s book. I am including here only those sayings found among the “proto-orthodox” Church Fathers and omit those found in Gnostic and other literature.

He begins with sayings of Jesus that appear in Paul’s letters. Continue reading “Sayings Manufactured For Jesus”

2012-08-06

Hoffmann: James was NOT the biological brother of Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Steven Carr has drawn our attention to Dr R. Joseph Hoffmann’s argument that Paul’s reference in Galatians 1:19 to “James, the brother of the Lord”, was clearly not meant to be understood by Paul as an indicator that James was the biological brother of Jesus. He wrote in The Jesus Tomb Debacle: RIP:

The James who is head of the church in Jerusalem is not a biological brother of Jesus. Later but inconsistent gospel references to James are muddled reminiscences based on the more prominent James of the Pauline tradition.

The Jesus Process (c) member and scholar Stephanie Fisher has just come out and publicly affirmed the solid scholarly foundation on which Dr Hoffmann’s conclusion that James was NOT the biological brother of Jesus are based:

Joe’s conclusions are based on evidence and argument

I would have been inclined to have suspected Hoffmann has since come to regret his earlier post but we are assured by his fellow member of  The Jesus Process (c)  that there is nothing about Hoffmann’s case that is not based on “evidence and argument” — presumably meaning “valid” argument.

Dr Hoffmann also informs us that his conclusions have the support of other New Testament scholars. He does not name these other scholars, presumably because they are so numerous and well-known among his intended scholarly readership that singling any names would have been superfluous. He writes: Continue reading “Hoffmann: James was NOT the biological brother of Jesus”

2012-08-05

Comments on Vridar

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by Neil Godfrey

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It’s great that this blog attracts a range of views in the comments on the posts, but I’d like to ask for a curbing of enthusiasm if you start to notice from the icon count in the right-hand column that you are starting to dominate the discussions.  Even I get embarrassed if, after catching up with comments I find I have my name and avatar appearing more than three times in the currently visible list.

And please do aim for conciseness in comments. I doubt many take the time to read lengthy comments anyway. But if you find you are compelled to write regular lengthy posts in the comment box then it would be more appropriate if you started your own blogs. It is not really appropriate to use another’s blog as a regular sounding board for your own lengthy views. From your own blog you can still comment upon posts and other comments here and link to them.

Lately several comments are going well beyond merely “commenting” on the thoughts on the posts or on others’ views.

I have had to place in the spam filter a few commenters who have tried to use this blog as a platform for regular evangelization or other forms of preaching, racist bile, and personal abuse. I recently removed one comment that included an inappropriate term of address for Stephanie Fisher. (I regret not noticing the same term used in several earlier comments.) A little joking and humorous cutting down arrogant and other nonsense I don’t mind, and calling a spade a spade is okay at times, too. But we can draw the line at using this blog as a public platform for sneering and insulting expressions.

2012-08-03

Only scholars can “know” Jesus existed

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies
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I asked Dr Hurtado point blank:

I grant that there are many questions that require much training in order to make reliable judgements. But what specific expertise do I need to make “to make a reliable judgement” on whether or not Jesus was historical?

The good doctor explained most explicitly: Continue reading “Only scholars can “know” Jesus existed”

Lost Responses to Larry Hurtado

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies
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Dr Hurtado asked me for specific and concise responses to his recent comments and I gave them. Presumably they have got lost in his moderation queue because they have not appeared on his blog though later comments from others have since appeared. It gets to the heart, I think, of where historicist reasoning gets warped within its institutionally embedded assumptions. Larry appears to me to be genuinely confusing the logic of the argument involved and is trapped in his own belief that scholarly attention to what Jesus was like by “definition” has taken care of the question of having addressed the historical existence of such a figure. Scholars have found the answers to past questions so easily answered by the historical Jesus model that to now question its logical foundations is beyond their abilities.

In short, Jesus is said to have existed primarily because scholars have found him such a handy reference in all their questions — never mind that the questions were always ultimately predicated upon his existence in the first place.

Larry asked the following:

Neil,  

I stand by my characterization of your stance (and that of Vincent) [that is, that we are intellectually akin to flat-earthers]: I provide you with texts and reasoning, and the typical response has been “oh yes, but it just might also mean something else,” without offering any reason for preferring the latter.   Continue reading “Lost Responses to Larry Hurtado”

2012-08-02

Frank Zindler’s Response to Bart Ehrman: The Parable of the Cheshire Cat

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Frank Zindler’s response to Bart Ehrman is now online, Clarice O’Callighan of the JesusMysteries Forum alerts us. See his online article Bart Ehrman and the Cheshire Cat of Nazareth

His opener:

When all that is left of a Cheshire cat is its grin, how can we be sure it is in fact the grin of a cat? To be sure, if we have watched a grinning cat disappear progressively until all we see is its grin, we can have some confidence that the aerial grin we perceive to remain is in fact that of a cat. As the grin further dissolves into the fog and mist of a perplexing day, however, it becomes harder and harder to determine if the motes that float before our eyes are still the remnants of the grin or just the random rubbish of polluted air. At some point, however, we will have to admit that the cat is gone—completely gone.

This all seems obvious enough and uncontroversial. But what if someone else were to walk by as you were standing at the wayside peering into the low branches of a tree and fixing your gaze on the fading remnants of the grin?

Then there’s this gem:

If Q was a true listing of the wise sayings of Jesus, then Ehrman could probably argue that Jesus had been well educated in Greek literature—including Aesop’s Fables! In fact, Jesus had had such a good Hellenisic education that he even quoted Aesop in one of his sayings that is reported in Q and adapted as Matthew 11:17 and Luke 7:32.

And what must historicists try to do? Continue reading “Frank Zindler’s Response to Bart Ehrman: The Parable of the Cheshire Cat”