Category: Biblical Scholars

This post is an appendix to Ehrman’s Most Bizarre Criticism Of All Against Doherty.

In a recent post I pointed out that Ehrman fully agreed with Doherty’s portrayal of the ancient mystery cults as most likely having a quite different understanding of traditional myths from the way the philosophers interpreted them. (The only pity is that Ehrman did not read Doherty’s book in order to know that he and Doherty are on the same page.) Doherty points out, and Ehrman completely agrees, that the everyday person in the towns and villages was not at all interested in finding ways to interpret the myths allegorically in order to explain grander cosmic processes. That sort of thing was, as both Doherty and Ehrman explain in unison, the preserve of esoteric philosophers like Plutarch. Similarly, Ehrman heartily agrees with Doherty’s account that there many different views of the universe and a wide range of different philosophies — e.g. Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, Neo-Platonism — in the days of early Christianity.

Someone who read that post has since alerted me to further confluences of agreement between Ehrman and Doherty. Gosh, I wonder if Ehrman is a closet mythicist. You know, like the way gay-haters are sometimes thought to be suppressing their own homosexual urges. (I speak tongue in cheek. Of course Ehrman is not a mythicist. My point is to highlight the hypocritical (or worse) nature of Ehrman’s attempts to discredit Doherty.)

Readers of both Doherty’s books (1999 and 2009) and Ehrman’s publications (2000 and 2004) will be struck at how very similar they are at so many critical points. It is as if Ehrman and Doherty had attended the same classes and had come to think quite alike. Could that be one factor in Ehrman’s outrageous efforts to disinform readers about what Doherty really writes? Continue reading “Ehrman’s and Doherty’s Arguments: Spot the Difference”

In my previous posts on Bart Ehrman’s assertions about the argument of Earl Doherty’s Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, I think I have uncovered enough evidence to demonstrate that Ehrman at best only very patchily skimmed a few pages of the book. Was he perhaps merely attempting to grasp directions from some of Doherty’s critics rather than reading the book for himself? He has made a complete fool of himself, or worse, by building a recurring criticism upon a blatant misquotation from the book and accusing Doherty of arguing the very opposite of what he in fact writes.

I return here to Ehrman’s opening words about Doherty’s book. It looks like Ehrman never even bothered to read its cover!

He writes:

[Doherty’s] now-classic statement is The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? This has recently been expanded in a second edition, published not as a revision (which it is) but rather as its own book, Jesus: Neither God nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Christ.

This is only a tiny thing, but it is a curiosity.

The cover of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man twice says it IS indeed published as a revision of The Jesus Puzzle.

The front cover says:

NEW – REVISED – EXPANDED

and on the same cover beneath those words we read:

First Published As THE JESUS PUZZLE

Turn now to the verso of the title page where one normally reads the publication data:

A revised and expanded version of The Jesus Puzzle

The cataloguing in publication information says the book is published as a

New edition, Revised and Expanded, of The Jesus Puzzle.

It tells us a third time:

Originally publ. under the title: The Jesus puzzle.

So why does our good doctor and reviewer say of the book that it was not published as a revision of The Jesus Puzzle even though the cover and title page verso inform us five times that it is such a revision?

Why did he even think to make such a point that is clearly wrong? Continue reading “Did Bart Ehrman Not Even Read the Cover of Earl Doherty’s Book?”

Bart Ehrman’s attempt to deal with Earl Doherty’s book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, is “filled with so many unguarded and undocumented statements and claims, and so many misstatements of fact, that it would take a [book three times the size] to deal with all the problems.”

I have quoted Ehrman’s own words to describe Doherty’s book and turned them against Ehrman himself. In the paragraph following that description Ehrman flagrantly misquotes Doherty to falsely accuse him of claiming that there was only a single world-view among the ancients. I addressed this in detail in my first post of this series.

From this point on Ehrman continues to demonstrate that he has simply failed to read much of the book he claims to be reviewing. As part of his effort to dismiss Doherty’s argument that Paul’s Christ had no earthly context, Ehrman accuses Doherty of asserting, without any evidence, that the mystery religions at the time of early Christianity “were at heart Platonic”:

What evidence does Doherty cite to show that mystery religions were at heart Platonic? Precisely none. (p. 192, Did Jesus Exist?)

But he [Doherty] then asserts that they [the mystery cults] thought like the later Platonist Plutarch. . . . 

Quite oblivious to everything Doherty wrote on the matter, Ehrman attempts to refute what he (wrongly) says is Doherty’s argument by explaining the very things Doherty himself points out in his book. That is, Doherty has argued that the beliefs of the mystery cults were for most part very probably unlike the philosophical views of the day and then offers the reasons for this judgement. Ehrman bizarrely says Doherty argues the very opposite of what he does, that the mystery cults thought like the philosophers of the day. He then proceeds to explain how it really was, and then presents Doherty’s argument as if it were his own and as if he is explaining what Doherty should have written! But what he thinks is his own argument against Doherty is exactly what Doherty did write! This is most bizarre!

Here are Ehrman’s “corrective” statements he obviously thinks (wrongly) that Doherty “should” have understood:

And it is highly unlikely that adherents of the mystery cults (even if we could lump them all together) thought like one of the greatest intellectuals of their day (Plutarch). Very rarely do common people think about the world the way upper-class, highly educated, elite philosophers do. . . .

In the case of someone like Plutarch there is, in fact, convincing counterevidence. Philosophers like Plutarch commonly took on the task of explaining away popular beliefs by allegorizing them, to show that despite what average people naively believed, for example, about the gods and the myths told about them, these tales held deeper philosophical truths. The entire enterprise of philosophical reflection on ancient mythology was rooted precisely in the widely accepted fact that common people did not look at the world, or its myths, in the same way the philosophers did. Elite philosophers tried to show that the myths accepted by others were emblematic of deeper spiritual truths. (p. 192)

One can only read this and shake one’s head in dismay. Doherty himself has written just that! Where was Ehrman’s mind when he was turning the pages that contained the following paragraphs? Continue reading “Ehrman’s Most Bizarre Criticism Of All Against Doherty”

One of the staunchest defenders of a mythicist view of Christ, Earl Doherty, maintains that the apostle Paul thinks that Jesus was crucified, not here on earth by the Romans, but in the spiritual realm by demonic powers. In advancing this thesis, Doherty places him self in an ironic position that characterizes many of his mythicist colleagues. He quotes professional scholars at length when their views prove useful for developing aspects of his argument, but he fails to point out that not a single one of these scholars agrees with his overarching thesis. (Bart Ehrman in Did Jesus Exist? my emphasis)

Can Earl Doherty ever have stooped so low! Quoting scholars when it suits but not informing his readers that they were not mythicists? What deviousness! This has to be outright deceit, of course, since if he really believed they were mythicist he would have shouted that out in bold caps.

Given the track record I have addressed in my previous posts I am sure we know just how much evidence we can dig up against Doherty to support Ehrman’s accusation. Ehrman also implies that Doherty only refers to scholars when “their views prove useful” to developing his argument. How sneaky!

Let’s try to trace just how dishonest this man is. Let’s begin with the Preface to his book, Jesus, Neither God Nor Man.

He fails to point out?

On the very opening page of his book, in his Preface, Earl Doherty refers to the Christ Myth as “such a radical idea” that when it was referenced on a popular TV show he believes very few in audiences would have even recognized what was expressed. He refers to it on that same page as “a fringe idea”. On that page, the first page of his book, he sets his thesis in opposition to “traditional academia” and “mainstream critical scholarship”. The bulk of those who currently embrace the idea for now are “amateurs” whom he defines as “those who undertake private study outside an official educational setting.”

The same theme dominates right through to the last page of that Preface where Doherty acknowledges his debt to traditional New Testament scholarship. He describes his debt to this as “immense” even though he is obviously presenting a thesis at radical odds with the assumptions and beliefs of that scholarship. This theme of his view being in stark opposition to traditional mainstream scholarship is sustained throughout the book. Would anyone who picks up JNGM really suspect for a moment that Doherty is supported by a significant number of mainstream New Testament scholars?

But let’s get to the nitty gritty. Does Doherty at any point mislead his readers into thinking that mainstream scholars he quotes might somehow support his mythicist argument? Continue reading “Devious Doherty or Erring Ehrman?”

I am posting here Earl Doherty’s comment — originally made on FRDB — about my recent posts on Bart Ehrman’s treatment of his book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man.

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