Author: Earl Doherty

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Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Pt. 10

Listening to the Sounds of Silence

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COVERED IN THIS POST:

• Silence: Why did no-one until modern times deny the existence of Jesus?
  • – Does anyone on the early Christian scene deny the existence of the Gospel Jesus?
  • – Ignatius’ letters the first to show support for the Gospel story

• Sounds in silence: Or were they?
  • – Does 1 John reveal the first dispute over an historical Jesus?
  • – Should we expect Celsus to be a New Testament exegete?
  • – Trypho’s “groundless report”
  • – Sound of Silence: Ehrman fails to hear

• Golden silence of the Rabbis
  • – Silent rabbis on Jesus’ non-existence

• The silence of Irenaeus, Tertullian and their heretics
  • – Why do 2^nd century apologists not attack the Christ cult of Paul as a heresy?

• The sound of transition: From Paul to Orthodoxy
  • – The process of transition from a heavenly to earthly Christ

• The sound of diversity: A Logos religion
  
  • – The Logos religion of the 2^nd century apologists

• Silence complete: Revisiting Josephus and Tacitus
  • – Ehrman’s unsupportable assumptions

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Evidence for Jesus from Outside the Gospels

(Did Jesus Exist? pp. 94-97)

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Later Sources from Outside the New Testament

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Silence: Why did no-one until modern times deny the existence of Jesus?

Ehrman spends a few pages at the beginning of his Chapter Four on the old canard which too many historicists seem to think is a knockout blow against the mythicist theory: that no one in all the documents we possess from the earliest period right up to the 18^th century ever suggests, or deals with an accusation, that Jesus never existed. A moment’s reflection ought to reveal why this might be the case. (There are in fact a handful of notable exceptions to this silence that I will go into shortly, which puts the lie to Ehrman’s sweeping statement.)

First of all, if an earthly Jesus did not exist for Christians of the Pauline variety of faith in a sacrificed Savior through almost the first hundred years of the movement, how would we expect to find a denial that he had? No one would have been claiming it.

We also have to ask, who would have been in a position to know that Christians were claiming something that was false?

When do we first see that claim surfacing? One can’t point to the Gospels themselves because the very issue in question is whether there is any support for their presentation of a supposedly historical figure and set of events; and their traditional dating is dubious.

The first direct reference by a Christian to an historical man who was crucified by Pilate is found in the letters of Ignatius, which if authentic can be dated no earlier than 107 CE, or if forgeries, some time after that. Is anyone going to be around in Antioch in 107 or later who had been alive in Galilee or Jerusalem three-quarters of a century earlier—with the upheaval and destruction of the Jewish War occurring in the interim—someone who knew everything that happened there in the 10-year period of Pilate’s governorship and was thus in a position to verify that such a figure never existed? A preposterous idea. Christians themselves show no sign of being familiar with the Gospel story, let alone that it had any circulation outside their circles, before the time of Ignatius. Continue reading “10. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Listening to the Sounds of Silence”

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Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Pt.9

Form Criticism and the Sources of the Gospels

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COVERED IN THIS POST:

• Form Criticism and Oral Traditions About Jesus
  • The Fallacy of Form Criticism
  • The Written Evidence of Common Patterns Versus the Oral Hypothesis
  • Literary Construction out of Scripture, not Oral Traditions
  • Traditions in Thomas and Q — not independent
  • The Path to Jesus is Paved with Good Assumptions
  • How Ehrman Dates the Sources to the Day After Jesus
  • From Contradiction and Confusion to Total Chaos

• The Aramaic Origins of (Some) Oral Traditions
  • Aramaic originals?
  • An Aramaic Son of Man?

• Conclusion

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The Oral Traditions About Jesus

(Did Jesus Exist? pp. 83-93)

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Form Criticism and Oral Traditions About Jesus

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In a section entitled “Form Criticism and Oral Traditions About Jesus,” Ehrman encapsulates the traditional scholarly approach to analysing the content of the Gospels, and sets these beside the current views he is espousing. But there are inherent contradictions in his scenario.

The Fallacy of Form Criticism

The “form-critical” approach, or “form criticism,” has sought to understand how the various stories about Jesus took shape as they were being “transmitted orally.” Scholarship has long observed something curious, says Ehrman:

Why is it that so many miracle stories seem to follow the same basic pattern? A person comes up to Jesus, his or her problem (or illness) is described, there is a brief interchange with Jesus, Jesus agrees to heal the person, he does so by a word or by a touch, and all the crowds marvel. Every miracle story seems to have the same elements.

Or take the controversy stories. Jesus or his disciples do something that offends the Jewish leaders; the leaders protest; Jesus has a conversation with them; and the story ends with Jesus delivering a withering one-liner that shows that he gets the better of them. Time after time, same form. (p. 84, emphasis added)

As Ehrman puts it, form criticism has asked: How did the various kinds of stories assume their various forms?

The stories about Jesus came to be shaped in the process of telling and retelling, as they assumed their characteristic forms. This means that the stories were changed, sometimes radically, when they were retold, and thus formed over the years. (p. 84)

Something doesn’t compute here. Ehrman has just told us that all the healing miracle stories, for example, are found in the Gospels in a more or less identical form. But oral transmission over a wide area, within an uncoordinated movement, is not likely to produce conformity. Quite the opposite. Continue reading “9. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Form Criticism and the Sources of the Gospels”