Author: Neil Godfrey

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2011-08-24

Why I don’t trust a scholar’s review of Doherty’s book

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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I don’t mean “scholar” generically, but one scholar and his reviews in particular. The reason is, not to put too fine a point on it, that he blatantly misrepresents and suppresses what Doherty actually says. I even wonder if he bothers to read Doherty and merely skims, sees a few words that feed his prejudice, and sets to writing outright falsehoods.

I quote here what this reviewer has to say about Doherty’s argument in relation to the evidence of Origen for our understanding of what Paul meant by “rulers of the age” crucifying Christ. (My own emphases throughout.)

And perhaps Neil’s point over on his blog is correct, and I should indeed have pointed out what Doherty does with Origen. He finds evidence that Origen understood the “rulers of this age” as demonic forces. So? There are interpreters today who do the same, and just like Origen, do not understand this to be evidence against a historical Jesus.

I apologize for not mentioning this example of Doherty’s willingness to engage in apologetics-style prooftexting, citing a church father whose understanding of Paul and of Jesus he actually thinks is wrong, because he believes that he can appeal to him as an authority to bolster his case.

What do others think? Do I really need to mention every single one of Doherty’s claims in order to have demonstrated that he is engaging in apologetics for a predetermined view, rather than treating the evidence in scholarly, historical-critical manner?

How is it possible for any reviewer to write the above when Doherty’s whole argument in relation to Doherty is not about Origen understanding the rulers of the age as demonic forces at all, but about his being the pioneer to lay the basis of the modern interpretation that Paul meant the demons were working through earthly princes?

Here is what Doherty writes about Origen and the early interpretations of Paul’s meaning. Would a scholar ever be so careless with truth if he were addressing works of his scholarly peers? Continue reading “Why I don’t trust a scholar’s review of Doherty’s book”

2011-08-23

A scholar reads Paul without Gospel presuppositions

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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The Last Supper
Image via Wikipedia

Not every scholar thinks it is silly to read Paul’s letters without bringing to them assumptions from later documents like the Gospels. Some think it is a sounder method to interpret the later literature in the light of what we can understand from what went before it — and not the reverse.

Associate Professor William Arnal is one scholar who does know how to avoid bringing Gospel presuppositions into his reading of Paul’s letters. What he does in “Major Episodes in the Biography of Jesus: An Assessment of the Historicity of the Narrative Tradition” (Toronto Journal of Theology, 13/2, 1997, pp. 201-226) is use earlier sources to try to shed light on how the Gospel narrative came about.

Paul’s famous passage in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 about the Last Supper saying of Jesus is often pulled out as evidence that Paul knew about the scene we read in the Gospels of Jesus having a final meal with his disciples just prior to being betrayed by Judas. But that is reading the evidence backwards, Arnal rightly argues. First we need to understand what Paul does say, and then compare with the later narrative in the Gospels, and ask what evidence we have to explain the relationship between the two. Continue reading “A scholar reads Paul without Gospel presuppositions”

2011-08-22

McGrath’s defence of his review

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Dr McGrath has [http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/08/17/doherty-chapter-10/#comment-292699358 — link has since moved: Neil Godfrey, 22nd July 2019] responded with the following defence against my criticisms of his review:

 

Neil, Earl says what I quoted him as saying at the start of chapter 10, stating something that he has been saying all along, and still without providing evidence. By the end of the chapter, little has changed. The only “evidence” he offers is a claim that everyone in those days thought in such terms, and so the idea of a purely celestial Jesus ought to be read into the epistles. Continue reading “McGrath’s defence of his review”

2011-08-21

McGrath’s review of Doherty’s chapter 10, part 1 — a response

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Updated with links and headings.

Dr James McGrath continues with his chapter by chapter review of Earl Doherty’s Jesus Neither God Nor Man by posting a part one review of Doherty’s chapter 10. It will be clear from what follows that McGrath expresses much more about his own intolerant attitude towards mythicism than he does in informing readers about Doherty’s argument.

Losing the thread of the argument

McGrath writes:

Chapter 10 begins part four of the book, “A World of Myths and Savior Gods,” and the chapter itself bears the title “Who Crucified Jesus?” Doherty summarizes the interpretation of New Testament letters he has offered thus far, writing

“In the epistles, Christ’s act of salvation is not located in the present, or even in the recent past, and certainly not within the historical setting familiar to us from the Gospels. . . . “

McGrath has fallen over right at the starting line. The quotation he takes from Doherty simply does not summarize Doherty’s interpretation of the NT letters “he has offered thus far”. Here is Doherty’s explicit summary of a key argument he has offered thus far taken from the opening sentence of the chapter:

The pieces of the Jesus Puzzle in Part Three demonstrated how the New Testament epistles present Christ as a spiritual force active in the present time, functioning as a channel between God and humanity. (p. 97)

What McGrath quotes is not any summary of earlier argument but a summary or what Doherty is about to argue in Part Four of the book.

Between that opening summary sentence and the one McGrath quotes Doherty writes the following to introduce the theme of the new book Part this chapter is introducing:

But there is another, more important role, being given him. . . .

So McGrath, in doing his chapter by chapter reviews, has clearly lost the train of thought that he is addressing. This suggests that he is not bothering to read Doherty with a serious intent to understand the argument of the book he is reviewing.

Continue reading “McGrath’s review of Doherty’s chapter 10, part 1 — a response”

2011-08-18

Why Mark Created a Gospel Role for Pilate

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Wenceslas Hollar - Jesus before Pilate 2
Jesus before Pilate: Image via Wikipedia

The earliest Christian records make no mention of Pilate. It is only with the composition of the Gospel of Mark that he first appears. And when he does appear, he is certainly not the bloodily efficient “historical Pilate” but almost a hapless figure who has no argument with Jesus at all. Thinking through the narrative of Mark’s Gospel while walking home from work this afternoon it suddenly occurred to me that Pilate’s appearance fits a tidy theological-literary pattern that is introduced and sustained throughout the first part of the Gospel. Mark wouldn’t be Mark if he didn’t have a balancing book-end arrangement so that this pattern is repeated at the end to complete the full impact of his theological message.

Pilate missing from the earliest record

The New Testament epistles (excepting the Pastorals) are earlier than the Gospels according to widespread scholarly agreement. There are only two passages in these epistles that identifies those responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion:

  1. 1 Corinthians 2:8 — “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”
  2. 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15 — “. . . the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus . . .” Continue reading “Why Mark Created a Gospel Role for Pilate”

2011-08-16

How modern historians use myths as historical sources – or, Can Hobsbawm recover the historical Robin Hood?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
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http://www.stockholmnews.com/upload/image/robin hood wiki.jpg

Can criteria used by New Testament scholars to uncover the historical Jesus (i.e., it is probably true if it is embarrassing, multiply attested, etc etc.) also be used on early ballads to see if we can know anything “probable” about the historical Robin Hood? Some people have “entertained reasonable doubts” about Robin Hood’s historicity, but at least one New Testament scholar has argued that if we can establish the probability of a deed or saying of Jesus Christ then it follows that he did exist. And we must not forget that “even fabricated material may provide a true sense of the gist of what Jesus Christ [ergo Robin Hood?] was about, however inauthentic it may be as far as the specific details are concerned” (from Dr McGrath’s review of Dr Dale C. Allison).

There is one modern historian who has much to learn from these pioneering advances in historiography made by historical Jesus scholarship, though since he is 94 years old now he had better hurry. Eric Hobsbawm has himself pioneered the historical study of social banditry (bandits who are accepted and honoured by societies as heroes) and, like the New Testament scholars, has made abundant use of mythical or legendary material. Unfortunately he never seems to have attended the same conferences as  Jesus historians and so has missed out on the methods they have pioneered:

  1. the rigorous application of precisely articulated criteria to dig beneath the surface of unprovenanced mythical tales to discover the probable historical nuggets at the root of them all
  2. the use of even fabricated material, however inauthentic its specific details, in order to arrive at the true historical “gist” of the historical person at the centre of the narrative. (See NT Scholars are Pioneers for details)

Here is what Eric Hobsbawm has explained about his use of mythical or legendary material across the three different editions of one of his more famous works, Bandits. His bandit and bandit myth subjects ranged from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

A rather tricky historical source: Continue reading “How modern historians use myths as historical sources – or, Can Hobsbawm recover the historical Robin Hood?”

hiatus, hopes, reflections

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by Neil Godfrey

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I’ve been having a break from real blogging since the past week. Need a breather and time for real life responsibilities. But when I return to the serious stuff that interests me most I want to address

  • Roger Parvus’s latest three posts on the “Ignatian” letters,
  • complete what I started with the study of George Athas’s arguments re Tel Dan,
  • have a closer look at that Nazarene word, especially in light of Rene Salm’s recent articles and translations,
  • finish notes from Horsley’s history of messianic movements up to the outbreak of the Jewish war,
  • return to studying Herodotus and the Primary History of Israel and the relationship between the two,
  • outline the evidence for the Persian and Hellenistic era provenance of the OT writings,
  • catch up on some publications about Marcion and Paul’s letters,
  • do more on the Lévi-Strauss model of myths and its application to Old and New Testament narratives,
  • continue doing chapters of Earl Doherty’s book,
  • try to finish my posts on midrash (if I can — I contacted one of the authors of one of the books I have been using to ask for clarification on a particular point I was about to address and have come away with more than I expected to think about),
  • and a whole lot more in the back of my head that escape me at the moment.

Hence my lazy off-the-top-of-my-head reflections on things I’ve covered a million times before and that still seem to bug  the arrogant and ignorant.

I was reading Richard Carrier’s comments that Dr McGrath pointed to recently and note him saying that a PhD is the equivalent of 10,000 hours of training. I wish I had the time and opportunity for that (my circumstances did not permit me to take up an invitation for higher studies at the end of my post grad educational studies degree) since I painfully aware of my limitations as an amateur hobbyist in the area of biblical studies. I know I often present a slapdash argument or statement assuming that what I have said somewhere else a week or more ago is on any other reader’s minds, too. And I look back and am embarrassed at how often I have presented a point very badly.

I get a lot out of reading many formal scholarly works from a range of disciplines, and Doherty’s works, and it’s not always the raw content — often I’m studying the argumentation, the logic, the presentation and structure of the argument, etc. (And yes, this is where I find a lot of historical Jesus works a very mixed bag of flashes of brilliant insights and absurdly baseless circular and incredibly blinkered arguments.)

Anyway, before I get back to what I love to blog about the most, I have at hand some notes I hope to do up soon – one on the way a historian of relatively modern history uses myths and legends as sources in his historical inquiries, and another on how a historian uses certain kinds of analysis of ancient inscriptions in order to reconstruct historical events. I believe both illustrations demonstrate the point I have made for some time now about the different approaches of New Testament historians (I hope that’s a valid term — I copy it from Dr McGrath after he chastised me for using the term “biblical historians”) to the Gospels for their inquiries into the historical Jesus and the way other historians handle material that is mythical or in need of close literary analysis to decipher its meaning.

2011-08-15

The fallacy at the heart of historical Jesus scholarship

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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I post the following in good faith after having attempted multiple times to elicit advice from a New Testament scholar on its accuracy.

Historical Jesus scholarship is unlike other historical studies in the following way:

Historical Jesus scholars (or “historians”)  set about applying a set of criteria (embarrassment, double dissimilarity, coherence, etc) to the Gospels for the purpose to trying to find what is factual (or “very probably factual”) about anything that Jesus actually did.

This is different from what other historians do since other historians, as far as I am aware, are much luckier. They have public records and eye-witness and contemporary accounts and documents of verifiable provenance to work with. They have sufficient data to be able to interpret to give them assurance that they have a body of “historical facts” to work with. No historian can get away with suggesting Hitler or Napoleon or Julius Caesar did not become leaders and wage wars and institute major political reforms and a host of other things that are known facts about them. I am not saying we know everything there is to know about them, or that some things we think we know may not be apocryphal, but I am saying that we have clearly verifiable substantial numbers of facts about their lives to enable historians to study them. History is not about simply recording known facts, but about explaining, interpreting, and narrating those known facts.

In the cases of ancient figures lacking a body of verifiable facts in the historical record, historians do not bother to address their lives as matters of historical inquiry at all. Their names may appear in the history of ideas, but that is quite a different matter. If it wasn’t Hillel who really did say something, it is the fact that the ideas are attributed to someone or some group that is significant, not the specific historicity per se of the name.

Historical Jesus scholars, on the other hand, do not work like this. They have no commonly agreed facts about Jesus. The only datum they seem to agree is a “fact” is that he was crucified. But as I intimated in my previous post, even that “fact” is based on circular reasoning. But scholars seek to understand his personal history (“the real Jesus”, the “historical Jesus”) by trying to FIND some facts about his life by means of criteriology. Continue reading “The fallacy at the heart of historical Jesus scholarship”

2011-08-14

Another way to study Christian origins

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Updated 5 hours after posting to expand Schweitzer quote.
Sibyl reading the book of history
Sibyl reading the book of history: Image via Wikipedia

The approach I like to take is one I learned from the way historians (certainly many of them at any rate) investigate other topics, whether in modern, medieval or ancient times.

I have used the example of Alexander the Great before, so for convenience I use it again here. It’s a safe bet to say that the existence and conquering career of Alexander is a “fact of history”. We have primary evidence from his own time still surviving (e.g. coins) and testifying to his place in history. We have much other evidence for major cultural, economic and political changes throughout the Middle East that are most cogently explained as the result of his conquests. So when we read secondary sources about him we have supporting knowledge that assures us that these sources are about someone real. We might call this sort of supporting knowledge “external controls” that we can bring to our reading of the secondary sources.

The problem with studying Christian origins as if Jesus himself were the historical founder of Christianity is that we have no similar controls to support the New Testament narratives. This is why, after discussing the problems with using Josephus and Tacitus as evidence for the historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer wrote:

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.)

So what is the safest way to approach the Gospel narratives about Jesus? Continue reading “Another way to study Christian origins”

New Testament scholars are pioneers in historical methods

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography
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New Testament scholars have sometimes been pioneers. The attempt to define criteria of authenticity was in fact an attempt to articulate more precisely and rigorously things that in most other areas of history were determined in much the same way, but with a far greater degree of intuition and instinct. (Dr. James F. McGrath, Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University, Indianapolis, Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity Among Friends and Enemies . . . )

In the same post, Dr. McGrath explains that the pioneering method of applying more clearly defined criteria of authenticity can be used to hopefully understand the great mystery that started Christianity:

While it is surely true that an attempt to find an uninterpreted Jesus amid the interpretation of the Gospel authors is implausible, it does not follow that criteria of authenticity are useless. What we seek to catch glimpses of are Jesus as he interpreted himself, and Jesus as his disciples interpreted him prior to the changed perspective resulting from Good Friday, and from whatever subsequent experiences and reflections persuaded them that he had been raised from the dead and exalted to God’s right hand.

My earlier post complaining about the absence of known facts about the life of Jesus and the consequent need for historical Jesus scholars to try to find some through criteriology was misguided. It appears that historians who are so backward as to seek explanations for known public facts are “fact fundamentalists” and have much to learn from New Testament pioneers.

. . . . . the issues Allison and others raise are fatal for the historical Jesus enterprise, but are fatal for the misguided and futile quest for certainty that “fact fundamentalists” have brought with them into the discussion. (Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity . . .)

What is one of the issues raised by Allison according to Dr McGrath that is fatal for “fact fundamentalists”?

Even fabricated material may provide a true sense of the gist of what Jesus was about, however inauthentic it may be as far as the specific details are concerned. (Review of Dale Allison, Constructing Jesus) Continue reading “New Testament scholars are pioneers in historical methods”

2011-08-13

Historians on Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Obviously the fact that people can speak about Jesus as if he had really existed does not mean that he really did exist.

But what if historians (whose careers are in history faculties that have nothing to do with biblical studies) who write about the Roman empire mention Jesus as the founder of the Christian religion. Do they make such a statement on the basis of their independent or even collective scholarly research into whether Jesus really did exist or not? I think we can be confident in answering, No. I think we can further say that, if really pushed, many would say that for the purposes of what they wrote, they would not care if he existed or not. What they are addressing is not the historicity of Jesus, but the historical fact that Christianity had its beginnings in the first century in the Eastern part of the empire. What they are addressing is the fact of the appeal and reasons for the spread of Christianity.

The reason they might phrase an initiating discussion with reference to Jesus himself as the founder of Christianity is because this is the commonly accepted understanding of Christian origins, and it is, at bottom, quite beside the point for their own purposes — which are explaining Christianity’s spread and influence in the empire — whether it turns out that Jesus himself really was or was not the founder of Christianity. Continue reading “Historians on Jesus”

2011-08-11

Even IF “according to the Scriptures” meant “according to what we read in the Scriptures” . . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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James McGrath appears to have conceded the possibility that Earl Doherty may (perhaps only theoretically) be right when he wrote:

Even if one granted that by “according to the Scriptures” Paul might have meant “according to what I have read in and derived from the Scriptures,” that would still not be incompatible with his understanding the Scriptures in questions as predictions of or applying to a historical Jesus

Not that McGrath believes for a minute that this is what Paul meant, since he later corrects any possible misunderstanding of his position by adding that the dominant view among biblical scholars is something else:

the dominant view, which is that the early Christians had persuaded themselves, wrongly of course, that the death and resurrection of Jesus were foreseen in Scripture, and that that is what Paul is referring to here.

[Since posting the above James McGrath has expressed concern that I misrepresented his stance, so to avoid any suspicion that I was implying McGrath holds a view he does not hold, let me repeat more prominently what I said just now: 

Not that McGrath believes for a minute that this is what Paul meant . . . .  ]

Surprisingly McGrath does not also explain that the first evidence that Christians came to think that Jesus’ death and resurrection were foreseen in the scriptures appears only quite some time after Paul wrote, and that the argument that Paul himself meant this is entirely an extrapolation from the mainstream model of Christian origins.

But anyway, I found Doherty’s response worth a read. What if Paul did mean to say that he learned about Christ from reading the Scriptures? Would this really impact the assumption that Jesus was historical and not entirely a figure understood through Scriptural revelation? Continue reading “Even IF “according to the Scriptures” meant “according to what we read in the Scriptures” . . . .”

2011-08-08

Leaving creationism, meeting a new authority or learning to think for oneself

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by Neil Godfrey

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There’s an interesting response to McGrath’s recent post. It traces one person’s evolution from a belief in creationism to belief in evolution — and, I think, ironically identifies something that went “wrong” in the process. No, of course I don’t think creationism is right and evolution wrong. So let me explain. First, here is the key part of the comment:

Maybe you had this experience too; but I remember reading a book arguing for creationism, it was well-written, finessed, and aid out all this data, had charts and figures, asked thoroughly compelling questions, and well, just seemed to reveal that the whole academy of science was just wrong- demonstrably wrong. Thankfully, through reading peer-reviewed, academic scientific studies I am no longer a creationist. I realized the lines they were given me were rhetorical, the gaping holes they pointed out that seemed just so persuasive and ground breaking were, once I became more scientifically literate, a chimera of rhetorical making. The questions they strung together just did not make sense once you realized the field,-and I noticed that I would need to read several books just to reveal a error in one dot in their whole join-the-dots technique spread across a chapter.

At the end of it I felt rather embarrassed that I listened to self-published, amateur scholarship, that I didn’t spot that despite the thousands of scientists there were in the world, it seemed to be only those with marginal nor tentative qualifications in the field though this was ground-breaking and became fawning enthusiastic devotees of pseudo-science.

That journey was a little different from mine and I am sure from many others who left creationism. Continue reading “Leaving creationism, meeting a new authority or learning to think for oneself”

Fear of mythicism?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies
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What is it about the mythicism that inspires the following sorts of venom and outlandish accusations?

  1. Amazing how these kooks all sound alike. (comparing mythicism with intelligent design and holocaust denial) (http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/07/27/mythicism-and-peer-review/#comment-279858598)
  2. while you don’t seem like a Neo-Nazi, you are as stupid and dishonest as one. (http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/07/27/mythicism-and-peer-review/#comment-279798340)
  3. you expect people to take your kooky imaginings seriously and honestly think your rejection by the academy is because they can’t handle your wonderfulness. (http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/07/27/mythicism-and-peer-review/#comment-278526746)
  4. Mytherists are compelled to reject the scholarly consensus in a range of fields in order to privilege their position. So we can expect them to follow Doherty on the issue of Jesus, we can expect them to reject the standard professional lexicons, we can expect them to take Thompson’s view of Israel’s history, and naturally we can expect them to accept DM Murdock’s claims concerning a global civilization of genius pygmies. It is also no surprise when we find Mytherists claming vaccinations are of no use, questioning germ theory, and doubting that HIV causes AIDS. (http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/07/14/review-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man-chapter-8/#comment-279752483)
  5. This is tantamount to would-be book burning aimed at whole schools of historical research. It is growing quite terrifying, frankly, . . . . It is no exaggeration to suggest that, if unchallenged, this profoundly anti-intellectual outlook against most modern serious historians and scholars of the ancient world might soon imperil freedom of inquiry way beyond the parameters of the online world. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/23512)
  6. Giving credence to the Jesus Myth is no different then giving credence to holocaust denial . . . .  someone who defends minimalism and mytherism has an extreme chip on his shoulder to the subject in question no matter how much they protest to the contrary. (http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/07/14/review-of-earl-dohertys-jesus-neither-god-nor-man-chapter-8/#comment-280066941)

I can read rational, evidence-based rebuttals of holocaust denial, psychic powers, creationism, etc.

I am reminded of why I left Christianity and belief in the Bible. The more I searched for answers the more I realized that there were no rational, evidence-based answers.