2011-09-04

“Rulers of this age” and the incompetence of the historicist case against mythicist arguments

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by Neil Godfrey

It is a sad thing to see scholars who are doctors and associate professors and holders of chairs demonstrate a complete muddleheadedness and inability to grasp the simplest of logical arguments when attempting to gainsay mythicist challenges to the historical Jesus paradigm.

One such scholar continues to insist that Earl Doherty has constructed an argument from a false antithesis: to the best of my understanding — and I have asked the scholar many times to clarify his position — Doherty is said to argue that 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 must mean

EITHER that earthly rulers killed Christ
OR that demons themselves directly killed Christ
so the possibility that the verse means demons influenced human rulers to do the dirty deed must be excluded. Continue reading ““Rulers of this age” and the incompetence of the historicist case against mythicist arguments”

2011-08-27

The Earl Doherty — James McGrath discussion continued

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by Neil Godfrey

I am posting this (posts found on Dr McGrath’s ExploringOurMatrix blog) here solely for the sake of having what I consider to be significant blog exchanges involving Earl Doherty in the one place. (If I miss anything that others think should be collated in the one site then do let me know.)

Dr McGrath responded to Earl Doherty (see the post previous to this one) thus:

@Earl Doherty, thank you for your detailed comments, and I am sorry to hear that you had trouble posting them. I am glad that it seems to be working now.

Let me just address two points in is comment. First, with respect to the language you used about heavenly things determining earthly realities, I can certainly see how such a phrase could be used for what we see in Hebrews, with a tabernacle being constructed based on a heavenly archetype. The wording seems to fit equally well, and the concept seems not entirely distinct from, what we find in Daniel and Revelation, which are more apocalyptic than Platonic (although that is not to suggest that the two are mutually exclusive by any means). In one, heavenly princes battle and determine the outcome of competition between earthly princes and empires. In the other, demonic forces are said to be behind the powers of the earthly Roman emperors and empire.

Long before Descartes’ attempt to connect the spirit with the flesh by way of the pineal gland, people long assumed that there was a connection even when they had no rational explanation for how the connection worked. That the question seems obvious to us does not mean that it was obvious to pre-scientific minds, nor does their failure to provide an explanation mean that they didn’t accept that it was happening in some unexplained, or unsatisfactorily explained, manner.

Second, and mainly for the benefit of those who may not have read your book, would you agree that, in general, in an ancient Greco-Roman context, a reference to a figure bleeding and having blood would more naturally be understood to be a reference to an actual terrestrial human being? I think it would be useful for others involved in this discussion to hear a bit more from you about this.

Here is Earl Doherty’s response: Continue reading “The Earl Doherty — James McGrath discussion continued”

2011-08-25

Doherty’s responses to McGrath’s ch.10 (pt.1) review

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by Neil Godfrey

Dr McGrath’s review of the first part of Doherty’s chapter 10 is here. My response is here and between that post and this I have posted a number of McGrath’s defences against my criticisms. Earl Doherty has today posted his response(s) on McGrath’s blog and I copy them here. There are two. The first is what Doherty initially attempted to post but was unable to do so because of tech issues. I have bolded some of the text for quick reference.

The areas addressed by Doherty are:

Post 1

McGrath’s and some other NT scholar’s mind-reading abilities
McGrath’s criticism surrounding Doherty’s supposed doubts about his own theory occasioned by placing the word blood in quotation marks
The validity of Doherty’s quote from Morna Hooker

Post 2

McGrath’s claim that Doherty contradicts himself over the heavenly-earthly parallel in ancient thought in relation to 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 (the rulers of this age crucifying Christ)
The question of Origen’s understanding of 1 Corinthians 2:8 – being the first to introduce the idea that the heavenly rulers worked through the earthly ones to crucify Christ
The question of the Gospels — and their contradictory view of the crucifixion against the epistles: one earthly, the other non-earthly

Continue reading “Doherty’s responses to McGrath’s ch.10 (pt.1) review”

2011-08-24

McGrath’s further defence of his review and responses to my criticisms

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by Neil Godfrey

Dr James McGrath has written another defence of his review in response to my discussion of it and I think it would be useful to post it here so it can sit beside my criticisms. I am still trying to understand the hostility towards mythicism as well as the apparent inability of even some of the most educated among us to minimally comprehend what they read in its defence.

At least it must count in Dr McGrath’s favour that he is willing to even look at mythicist works outside his normal scholarly exchanges. At least one other blogger is not even interested in doing that much though he is at the same time quite prepared to denigrate the character and works of authors he has never met or read simply because they are not published in the scholarly arena. And this blogger sometimes murmurs sympathetic noises towards mythicism. It looks like he needs to protect his standing with the scholarly community by denouncing the “unclean” outsiders. Compared with one like that one has to appreciate Dr McGrath’s willingness to at least read Doherty’s book.

But I am coming to believe that there is nothing I can say, or that any mythicist can say, that will in the present circumstances make any dent in Dr McGrath’s beliefs, attitudes, and inability to comprehend what he reads of mythicist arguments. I wonder now if his mind is made up and whatever he reads or hears will only confirm what he believes because that he cannot read or hear a mythicist point any other way. I might be quite wrong since I am trying to reach back into my own experience and nature to understand his. I once read a book that I found myself disagreeing with totally. I wrote indignant notes in the margins declaiming the author’s ignorance and shallow understanding of the issues, etc etc. Years later I looked again and saw how I agreed with everything the author wrote and how incapable I was of comprehending and accepting what he said the first time I read his book. The reason was simple. The book was addressing something that I was still very close to, that had been a core part of my identity for many years. It took me a long time before I could gradually wean myself off my past allegiance to that old self and accept how utterly wrong I had been about something once so important to my identity. The funny thing was that at the time I first read this book I knew I had been wrong, but I did not want someone else telling me just how wrong, or that I was wrong-er even than I could believe. It’s like family. I am free to argue with a close family member, but don’t you dare say a word against them!

Anyway, enough of that. What I write is written for those not trapped in one way of thinking but who are open to exploring new idea and who do not hold to any belief about Jesus (mythicist or historicist) with the arrogance of the ignorant. One thing most people who learn most know is that the more they learn the more they know how little they know.

McGrath’s criticisms and defence Continue reading “McGrath’s further defence of his review and responses to my criticisms”

2011-08-22

McGrath’s defence of his review

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by Neil Godfrey

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

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”

2011-08-11

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

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by Neil Godfrey

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” . . . .”

2011-07-28

Mythicism and Peer Review

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by Neil Godfrey

In response to Dr James McGrath’s post on Mythicism and Peer Review Earl Doherty wrote the following:

Jim, you are a piece of work. I only wish that your mindless animosity toward the idea that, just possibly, the Christian record could represent something which two thousand years of hidebound and confessionally-driven tradition could never have brought itself to envision, was a rarity. But you are legion, and such animosity is hardly a dispassionate, scientifically founded position. Your counters to my arguments have been consistently naïve and pathetically lame, misunderstanding and misrepresenting my case, loaded with emotional prejudice and just about every fallacy in the book. And you’ve now added that voice to the farcical question of peer review.

This idea of “peer” review is a joke in NT scholarship. The latter is a closed and privileged club, with boundaries that cannot be crossed (witness the failure of The Jesus Project), and no journal or publisher within that field is going to give mythicism the time of day. There would be no more possibility of an unbiased and effective review of a mythicist’s work than what you’ve given mine, and mythicists know that. You know it as well. The very idea that centuries of scholarship could have been based on a serious misinterpretation of the record is so abhorrent even to so-called critical scholars (there may be the rare exception, Mack or Ludemann for example), that no honest review is possible. You’ve shown that. And considering that people like you represent a good part of the general readership of such journals and publications, no journal or publication would risk the firestorm they would create in accepting and publishing mythicist viewpoints.

An interested party (not a mythicist) in the U.S. several years ago offered The Fourth R publication of Westar/the Jesus Seminar a donation of $5000 if they would devote part of an issue to mythicism, consisting of an article by myself presenting my case and a rebuttal article by any scholar of their own choosing. They turned it down. Continue reading “Mythicism and Peer Review”

2011-07-25

Response to McGrath’s review of Doherty’s chapter 9

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by Neil Godfrey

Dr McGrath’s review of Chapter 9 of Doherty’s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man conveys no idea to the uninformed reader what the chapter is about. So to make up that lack (surely scholarly reviews should give readers some clear idea of what exactly is being reviewed!) I outline the content of the Doherty’s chapter here in the process of responding to McGrath’s review, and in particular to a fundamental misreading on McGrath’s part that resulted in his post being an unfortunate travesty rather than a serious review.

In chapter 8 Doherty had argued that Paul’s source for his understanding of the gospel and Christ was primarily revelation through the Jewish scriptures. In chapter 9, the chapter being discussed here, Doherty addresses another influence that guided Paul’s interpretation of those scriptures – the dominant philosophical and theological ideas in the Hellenistic and Jewish worlds of his day.

(Where there are any quotations in bold type that is entirely my own emphasis — not Doherty’s. All or most of the scripture references are hyperlinked to see the full text. )

Greek Philosophy and the Logos Continue reading “Response to McGrath’s review of Doherty’s chapter 9”

2011-07-20

Doherty’s response to McGrath’s “review” of chapter 9

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by Neil Godfrey

In response to McGrath’s “review” of chapter 9 of Earl Doherty’s book Doherty has written the following response. (I note that McGrath in comments on his blog justified his failure to address any of Doherty’s actual arguments in his review by labeling them all as “wrapping” to sell an unsuspecting reader a bogus product. Since McGrath likes to bring in comparisons with Creationism, it is worthwhile pointing out that it is Creationists who dismiss arguments through scoffing and it is evolutionists who have no reason to misrepresent Creationist arguments — the facts they present speak for themselves.)

Doherty’s response:

Jim: “thus far the essence of Doherty’s “case” has been a combination of saying that there are no hints of a historical Jesus in the epistles, combined with a postponement of discussion of counter-evidence.”

Once again, Jim, you are guilty of misrepresenting my arguments, falsifying what I say, and then thinking to discredit your own straw men. You really do need to read me more carefully. But I know that you are so blinded by your rabid animosity toward mythicism and mythicists that you just charge ahead and (mis)represent me in whatever way suits you best.

I did not make any blanket statement that “there are no hints of an historical Jesus in the epistles.” The subject matter you were responding to related to those descriptions of the Son such as we find in Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-3 and so on. Let me quote right from your above review: Continue reading “Doherty’s response to McGrath’s “review” of chapter 9″

Appeals to McGrath, Regrets and the Responsibility of Public Intellectuals

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by Neil Godfrey

Let’s deal with the regrets first. Yes, I have expressed some regret over when, a little over a year ago, I once made an offensive play on his name.* I have also taken note of Lester Grabbe’s discussion of unscholarly standards of debates and have taken his words as a warning to myself as much as a commentary on a wider situation. I have attempted to understand why the irrational and unprofessional hostility among some scholars towards certain views and to be careful how I do express myself. I highly respect the way others like Earl Doherty and Rene Salm maintain their civility and I am grateful to a number of readers of this blog who, after I had posted something heated, wrote to me encouraging me to keep my cool.

I have also appealed to McGrath to put the past behind us, but even since then his responses to me have been laden with hostile insinuations. I have appealed to McGrath repeatedly to acknowledge Lester Grabbe’s warnings. Till now my appeals have done nothing to lessen his personal barbs against me. It is clear he cannot carry on an exchange without imputing sinister motives.

There is simply no place for this from one who speaks as a representative of the scholarly community. And I am a little surprised that McGrath’s manner has apparently gone without censure among his own peers. This is not a good sign. Some biblical scholars like to follow Noam Chomsky’s outspokenness on international issues. It is time they also took note of his criticisms of public intellectuals.

* (The accusation that I also insulted McGrath an earlier time is false. I re-wrote his name as an innocuous anagram when creating a parable to clarify through analogy a point I was trying to make about his argument at the time. It was by no means an insult.)

2011-07-19

Why McGrath Should Honourably Step Down From the Debate

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by Neil Godfrey

Dr James McGrath blogs as the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University. That is how he identifies his blog — it is the blog of the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University. So he writes as a professional, a public intellectual, and it is to the standards of professional scholarly discourse and the responsibilities of public intellectuals that he must be held to account.

If a judge or prospective jury member is known to have a conflict of interest or deep-seated prejudice that will inevitably affect their ability to approach the trial appropriately they have a duty to step aside. We like to imagine we have moved on from the days when an accused would be condemned whether they sank or swam.

So when McGrath

publishes an Amazon review of a book before he has read more than a small fraction of it,

and when he says he knows he will find an argument implausible before he even reads it,

and when he says he should not explain fairly or fully an argument that he detests because he fears someone might think favourably of it — thus conceding he does not respect his readers and lacks confidence in the power of reasoned arguments,

and when he finds himself incapable of thinking someone can present a mythicist argument with sincerity and honesty — that such a one is either incompetently deluded or a blatant liar

and when he refuses to respond (except with insulting barbs) to questions and posts addressing the discrepancies between what he says about Doherty’s arguments and what Doherty actually does write

then it is time he admits that he is no longer thinking of his opponents as normal, healthy, fellow creatures with whom he can have even a normal healthy human rapport. Every attempt at communication will inevitably be governed by feelings of contempt that scarcely will be hidden as innuendo and ad hominem inevitably surface.

When one reaches that point then one owes it to everyone to admit that one is biased beyond reason and incapable of engaging in a genuinely respectful and fair discussion. Continue reading “Why McGrath Should Honourably Step Down From the Debate”

2011-07-18

Doherty’s Chapter 8 in outline & Review of McGrath’s review

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by Neil Godfrey

11 am 18th July 2011, Revised the section “What the Chapter is about”

James McGrath begins his review of chapter 8 protesting that Doherty is placing a different interpretation on some known and agreed facts in order to argue a mythicist case.

The chapter gets several things right and mentions important information about the context of earliest Christianity – and yet consistently manages to interpret those details as leading to mythicism.

It sounds as if McGrath simply does not want Doherty reinterpreting anything at all in a way that can present a mythicist argument. But that is hardly a sound objection to what Doherty’s actual interpretations and arguments are.

Unfortunately McGrath does not specify which arguments or interpretations Doherty uses are faulty. In fact, as we have come to expect in these reviews, Doherty’s arguments are sidestepped. In their place McGrath reverts to pulling out arguments he has used against mythicism time and again even before reading Doherty’s book. Sometimes he claims to be informing readers of what Doherty argues, but in the following response I will quote passages from Doherty that belie McGrath’s portrayals of Doherty’s lines of reasoning. Continue reading “Doherty’s Chapter 8 in outline & Review of McGrath’s review”

2011-06-04

Doherty’s chapter 7 (2): reviewing McGrath’s review

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by Neil Godfrey

Continuing from the previous post, addressing McGrath’s comments on Doherty’s chapter 7.

I have so often heard scholars repeat, as if it were a truism, that in pre-modern cultures that relied more on oral traditions and story-telling than on stick-it notes people had trained themselves to have remarkable memories. But I was obviously mistaken. McGrath informs us that if the news of the assassination of Kennedy (or let’s say Julius Caesar) were spread as “a tradition”, then by the time anyone came to write it down as a story, they would be obliged to invent a host of imaginary characters and variable settings simply to tell it as “a story”. Maybe some would say the assassination happened in Rome, others in Actium or Athens (or Dallas, or San Francisco). Such basic detail is not likely to have been included in the original oral transmission of the news, so McGrath would have us believe.

Or if we think of tales involving resurrections/reappearances after death, imagine the tales of the death and reappearance of Romulus. He was murdered in the environs of Rome and reappeared there after his assassination according to accounts, but presumably other accounts could well have had him reappear in northern Italy or Syracuse instead. We have no record that oral transmission did leave such details as the geographic setting of the event open to imaginative recreation, but then the absence of such details is most likely evidence that they were all well-known and no-one needed to put such things in writing. (This line of reasoning works for explaining the epistles’ silences about Jesus’ earthly life, so it can surely work here, too.)

McGrath actually equates the recovery of a fundamental geographic setting with the problems a story-teller would have in trying to imaginatively reconstruct story dialogue! Continue reading “Doherty’s chapter 7 (2): reviewing McGrath’s review”

Congratulations, Vridar, . . . I declare, Vridar, your own hard work translating Bruno Bauer will make a major difference in future studies of Bruno Bauer and the evolution of Hegel’s philosophy of religion.

-- Paul Trejo, - April 2023
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— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
This is superb work, Neil, and reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s work from a century ago. . . . .

I commend you for being the first to even TRY to translate Bruno Bauer’s brilliant Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, which is now more than 150 years old.

. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

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Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
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-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
"By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jim’s review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. I’m also happy to see even Jim giving Neil credit where credit is due."

— Earl Doherty, June 2011
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"Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work."

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It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

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-- Klaas Spronk, - Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXI, 3/4 (2014)
"I find your blog most interesting and appreciate your ongoing effort to keep to the evidence for the issues discussed!"

-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
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— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"I’d like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. It’s always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Thank you for this careful and engaged reading of my work – much appreciated!"

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"For an excellent example of generally high-quality scholarship by someone who isn’t a biblical studies professor, see Neil Godfrey’s work posted on the website vridar.org."

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LC on Are Historical Sources “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”?: “>> What interests me are the canonical texts — especially the Gospel of Mark. Can you demonstrate that that is…” Nov 18, 05:18
Neil Godfrey on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “Thanks for the clarification and yes indeed. I am also generally quite partial to Marxist interpretations (though I should not…” Nov 18, 05:17
Chrissy Hansen on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “As someone very partial to Marxist research, I do want to preface that Marx and Engels did eschew the idea…” Nov 18, 02:55
Gordon Rouse on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “Give the words “Jesus Mythicism” appear in the title of these posts. I am wondering if I need a definition…” Nov 18, 02:18

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McGrath’s criticisms and defence Continue reading “McGrath’s further defence of his review and responses to my criticisms”

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Losing the thread of the argument

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

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Greek Philosophy and the Logos Continue reading “Response to McGrath’s review of Doherty’s chapter 9”

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