2012-04-08

Earl Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman‘s Did Jesus Exist?

[1.] Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Introduction

  1. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapter 1

  2. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapters 1-2

  3. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapter 2 continued

  4. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: A Roman Trio

  5. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: What Did Jews Have to Say?

  6. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Telling the Gospels Like It Is

  7. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Existence of Non-Existent Sources for the Gospels

  8. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Form Criticism and the Sources of the Gospels

  9. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Listening to the Sounds of Silence

  10. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Three Voices on the Historical Jesus – No. 1: Papias

  11. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Three Voices on the Historical Jesus – No. 2: Ignatius

  12. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Three Voices on the Historical Jesus – No. 3: 1 Clement (with Addendum on the Epistle of Barnabas)

  13. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Non-Pauline Epistles – Part One 

  14. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: The Epistle to the Hebrews (Part One)

  15. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: The Epistle to the Hebrews (Part Two)

  16. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Jesus Tradition in the Acts of the Apostles

  17. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: The Pauline Epistles – Part One

19. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: The Pauline Epistles – Part Two

20. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: The Brother of the Lord

21. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: “Key Data” in Proving Jesus’ Historicity – The Crucified Messiah

22. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: A Crucified Messiah

23. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Mythicist Claims: Problematic Record

24. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Mythicist Claims: The Gospels Are Interpretive Paraphrases of the OT

  1. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Is Jesus Based on Pagan Precedents?

26. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Mythicist Inventions: Part One – Creating the Mythical Christ from the Pagan Mystery Cults

  1. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Did the earliest Christians regard Jesus as God? 

  2. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: G. A. Wells

  3. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Bart Ehrman vs. Earl Doherty

  4. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Did Mark Invent Jesus of Nazareth?

  5. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Scholarly Reconstructions of the Historical Jesus

  6. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Ehrman’s Case for Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet

  7. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Ehrman’s Picture of the Apocalyptic Jesus

  8. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Conclusion (Jesus and the Mythicists)

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Other posts on Bart Ehrman’s attempts to deal with mythicism

The following titles do not always give much indication of the contents of the posts. It might be better to click on this archive link: Ehrman: Did Jesus Exist?, and see the first paragraphs of all posts related to this book, Earl Doherty’s, Tim Widowfield’s and mine.

Bart Ehrman’s New Book: Did Steven Carr’s Prophecies Come True?.

Bart Ehrman’s Huffing and Posting Against Mythicism

Historical Jesus Studies As Pseudo-History — Bart Ehrman’s Jesus As a Case-Study

Bart Ehrman’s First Attempt to Grapple with Mythicism

The Democratization of Knowledge and the Reaction of Reactionary Scholars

Bart Ehrman’s false or careless assertions and quotations concerning Earl Doherty

Another Bart Ehrman mis-reading of Earl Doherty’s book

Earl Doherty’s comments on my posts about Ehrman’s treatment of his book

Ehrman hides the facts about Doherty’s argument: Part 1

Ehrman suppresses the facts while falsely accusing Doherty: Part 2

Devious Doherty or Erring Ehrman?

Ehrman’s Most Bizarre Criticism Of All Against Doherty

Did Bart Ehrman Not Even Read the Cover of Earl Doherty’s Book?

The Ehrman Debacle and Our “Post-Truth” World

Ehrman explains: Doherty could be right after all

Ehrman says Doherty’s argument is “intriguing and worthy of reflection”

Ehrman sacrifices Paul to launch his attack on mythicism

Does anyone know Ehrman’s source for this?

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Neil Godfrey

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13 thoughts on “Earl Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman‘s Did Jesus Exist?”

  1. Pingback: Den fortgående debatten kring Bart Ehrmans ”Did Jesus Exist” « Jesus granskad
  3. Pingback: Blogger Godfrey’s Reply (1) to Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey of the The Jesus Process ©®™ « Vridar

  4. I don’t know if anyone can help. In an online discussion, after I recommended this page and paying attention to Doherty, all of Doherty’s ideas were dismissed with a single statement: Doherty;s whole thesis is founded that Paul’s Jesus resided in a fleshly sub-lunar realm, which he asserts was a common feature of Middle Platonic thought. This idea is met with a universal “What? Do you know anything about Middle Platonism? It doesn’t say that at all.”

    Has this been addressed and does anyone know of a link or book I can read to understand how to respond to it?

    Reply

    1. To see what Doherty does in fact argue have a look at http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/ehrmans-most-bizarre-criticism-of-all-against-doherty/ where I quote Doherty’s words against Ehrman’s attack with a similar dismissal.

      To show what were the common ideas at the time of Paul I have posted:

      http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/ancient-beliefs-about-heavenly-realms-demons-and-the-end-of-the-world/

      http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/demonology-the-basics-of-middle-platonic-beliefs-as-a-background-to-early-christianity/

      http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/doherty-the-sublunar-realm-and-paul-correcting-some-disinformation/

      and the archive on the Fallen Watchers: http://vridar.wordpress.com/category/religion/fallen-watchers/

      Reply

    2. Lowen, you won’t find Doherty’s “World of Myth” theory in any books or scholarly essays on how people thought back then. It is missing from John Dillon’s comprehensive “The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220”. It is missing from the primary sources of pagan literature like Plutarch, as well as secondary sources. You can’t open a scholarly book and read a chapter about “the World of Myth” theory, because it doesn’t exist.

      For me, Doherty distorts the thinking of the pagans and Jews in Paul’s time in order to jam his theories in. And that is a damn shame, because how they thought back then is fascinating. All rationalists need to resist that kind of agenda-ridden distortion, whether it comes from the bad apologetics of the fundamentalists, or the bad apologetics of the mythicists. Ask yourself: how would you go about proving or disproving Doherty’s theories?

      Reply
  5. Pingback: Seriös eller oseriös debatt? « Jesus granskad

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