Category: 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)”

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Bart Ehrman vs. Earl Doherty

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COVERED IN THIS POST:

• Using previous scholarship with a different end result
• Ehrman’s numerous misreadings and misrepresentations of my text
  • Platonic (and other) ancient views of the universe
  • What was the interpretation of the cultic myths:
    • allegorical or literal, heavenly or earthly?
    • among the philosophers?
    • among the devotees of the cult?
    • among the common people?
• Revisiting 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16
• Revisiting “the rulers of this age”
• Was the Christ cult Jewish or Greek—or both?
• Jewish sectarian thinking moves upward
• Was Pauline Christianity “Aramaic rural Palestinian Judaism”?
• Must Christ have shed his blood on earth?
• Problems and declarations

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Was Jesus Crucified in the Spiritual Realm Rather Than on Earth?

(Did Jesus Exist? pp. 252-258)

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The practice of drawing on previous scholarship

Ehrman calls me “one of the staunchest defenders of a mythicist view of Christ.” Well, that’s almost the only valid statement he makes about me in the entire book. He starts off with a complaint which has often cropped up in criticisms directed against me:

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. (DJE? p. 252)

First of all, I scarcely think I needed to point this out. What mainstream New Testament scholar subscribes to the mythicist theory, let alone that Paul regarded Christ as sacrificed in the heavenly realm? If any of these scholars I draw on had so believed, does Ehrman think I would not have trumpeted it to the skies? I was hardly concealing what anyone would assume was the historicist orientation of such scholars.

More importantly, does Ehrman or anyone else regard it as illegitimate of me to draw on observations and conclusions on the part of established scholarship if they can be fitted into the context of my own argument? Mainstream scholars do that all the time. All of scholarship builds on the work of predecessors, and all of those predecessors are subject to reinterpretation and the reapplication of their work to the new conclusions of their successors. Besides, many of my references to the views of historicist scholars involve a clear indication that I make use of their observations in different ways than they do, with different end results.

Enough said on that fallacy. Ehrman’s motive in raising it is quite clearly to impugn to me some form of dishonest procedure.

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Multiple views of the universe
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One of the “problems” Ehrman finds in my book is its main thesis:

One particular piece is especially unconvincing: in Doherty’s view, Paul (and other early Christians) believed that the Son of God had undergone a redeeming “‘blood’ sacrifice” not in this world but in a spiritual realm above it. (DJE? p. 252)

In the course of explaining why he is unconvinced, Ehrman makes a number of egregious misreadings of my text. (I know it is 800 pages, but it is still incumbent upon Ehrman to actually see the words as they stand on the page if he is going to find fault with them.) He says: Continue reading “Bart Ehrman vs. Earl Doherty. Part 29 of Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism”