Did the man "Jesus" exist?

[Robert Tulip]

Ant's comments here continue to be shallow rhetoric with no content. Earl Doherty has published several books, most recently Jesus Neither God Nor Man, which is over 800 pages of detailed scholarly research. Any objective reader who takes the time to explore this topic objectively by reading such books will be convinced that the Bible Jesus is fictional and the character was almost certainly totally invented.

Ant continues to use oratorical flourishes and empty assertions. He say the observation "lacks an ounce of objectivity" that the academic peer review process is compromised in an environment where belief in Jesus serves as an entry ticket to the guild. Yet again he fails to back up his slur with facts.

And I am not using Doherty as an authority in the way ant is using believers as authorities. I have explained exactly why Earl Doherty argues Jesus did not exist, focussing on the content, rather than side issues such as prestige. The best ant can come up with is that the church has successfully ignored and ridiculed the Christ Myth Theory so far, so if they keep their heads in the sand the debate will just go away. Ostriches.

Mainstream publishers will not publish Christ Myth material because they are afraid of the church. It is utterly extraordinary that such craven timidity could exist in this day and age, but that is the reality. It is not because Earl does not meet intellectual scholarly standards, it is because of religious corruption by publishers who have an emotional dislike to his findings.

A friend told me he offered to arrange debates between believing Christians and scholars who state that Jesus was a myth, but the preachers backed out. What we see is broadscale cowardice - Christians are so brittle and insecure about their beliefs that they refuse to allow them to be challenged in a collegiate way.

[ant]

Robert,
Published as in published in journals - scholarlship

HELLO?

Not for laymens leisure.

[ant]

Any objective reader who takes the time to explore this topic objectively by reading such books will be convinced that the Bible Jesus is fictional and the character was almost certainly totally invented

any objective reader would appreciate a critical evaluation of Doherty's "scholarly research" by experts in the field that have the credentials and experience to back them up. Unless of course you are convinced that Church is out to get you.

Yet again he fails to back up his slur with facts.

Please provide evidence that your conspiracy theory, which conveniently does away with the need for something as vital as peer review, has an ounce of truth to it. I've provided names of scholars, with no religious ax to grind, who totally dismiss the "what if" claims made by mythicists, including one FORMER mythicist. Is he in on it to, Robert?

that the church has successfully ignored and ridiculed the Christ Myth Theory so far, so if they keep their heads in the sand the debate will just go away. Ostriches.

A similar claim as ridiculous as the above can be made by Creationists, who complain that science is keeping them from entering the mainstream so as to keep the public at large from knowing the truth that God created the universe and there is evidence to prove it. Science is hoping creationism eventually goes away. Total conspiracy theoryISH.

Mainstream publishers will not publish Christ Myth material because they are afraid of the church

Evidence, please?

t is not because Earl does not meet intellectual scholarly standard

Question:
Where did he receive his BA from? I'm not certain.
Are you?

A friend told me he offered to arrange debates between believing Christians and scholars who state that Jesus was a myth, but the preachers backed out.

I guess that settles it all.
Case closed. Jesus did not exist. He is a myth.

Robert, this is getting comical -
all because I dared to question the credibility / scholastic credentials of Doherty, and broached the topic of the importance of peer review for works as complex and involved as ancient historical research. If you didn't have a horse in the race your scientific nature would be in full support of verifying research by peer review(or coming as close as possible).

[Robert Tulip]

I fully support the need for peer review as an essential step in public acceptance of new ideas. However, to repeat, the entire Jesus industry is premised on the existence of Jesus, and will not give oxygen to ideas that it sees as threatening. So the peers who are in control of the institutional power are corrupted by faith. This does not mean they consciously conspire to keep out new ideas, just that they have a consensus which they are not willing to expose to public challenge. This is why academics and theologians do not hold conferences where they invite people with diverse points of view, they refuse to review material that doubts the existence of Jesus, and they discourage publication of material seen as fringe.

The question of whether a topic is fringe is often more about cultural prejudice than objective evidence. Yesterday I summarised Earl Doherty's peer review published article outlining main reasons why the existence of Jesus is dubious. But ant prefers to snipe irrelevantly about Doherty being a nobody rather than engage with the content. Such sniping is purely ad hominem and should be outside the scope of logical discussion.

Geo earlier asked about burden of proof. I actually think the real burden of proof should sit with those who wish to deny the existence of Jesus, simply because the great weight of tradition gives the benefit of the doubt to the incumbents. You need much stronger forces to invade than to defend. The invaders in this case are those who seek to demolish the conventional belief in Jesus. Their arguments need to be extremely strong to get over the first hurdles of being ignored and ridiculed, just so that objective people can see the rot in Biblical studies and understand why it is a topic that should not be left in a theological ghetto controlled by the true believers.

[ant]

've been looking again at Earl Doherty's argument, and found a useful precis of his views at http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/jhcjp.htm in an article published in the Journal of Higher Criticism, Fall 1997.

The Journal of Higher Criticism (JHC) was an academic journal presenting "articles dealing with historical, literary, and history-of-religion issues from the perspective of higher criticism", published by the Institute for Higher Critical Studies. The editor-in-chief was Robert M. Price.[1]
In the introductory article, the editor criticised modern biblical scholarship as "a toothless tiger or worse yet, covert apologetics wearing the Esau-mask of criticism" and advocated a return to the "golden era of bold hypotheses and daring reconstructions associated with the great names of Baur and Tübingen".[2]
During the journal's first decade, it was sponsored by The Theological School at Drew University. Some notable contributors included Richard Carrier, Barbara Thiering, Earl Doherty, Robert Eisenman, Jacob Neusner, and George Albert Wells. The final issue of the journal (Volume 10, No. 2) appeared in Fall, 2003.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of ... _Criticism

Editor In Chief Robert M Price a self proclaimed "humanist" of a long dead "scholarly" Journal with a built in bias toward mythicism.
You define this as a serious attempt by Doherty to get published? By a Journal who's Editor in Chief is more than happy to cheer mythicists on till he's blue in the face?

Seriously, Robert? Is this the best we can do here??

Eisenman is known for his conspiracy theories - (see Wiki)

"Scholars have been highly critical of Neusner's methodology/arguments being circular or attempt to prove "negative assumptions" from a lack of evidence (e.g., Cohen,[2] Evans,[3] Maccoby,[5] Poirier,[7] Sanders[8]). Others are critical of Neusner's reading and interpretations of Rabbinic texts, finding that his account is forced and inaccurate (e.g., Cohen,[2] Evans,[3] Maccoby,[6] Poirier[7] and in detail, Zuesse"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Neusner

We've covered George Albert Wells (aka G A Wells) the reformed Mythicist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Albert_Wells

Why do you think this Journal is now dead meat, Robert?

Shall I go on?


Honestly... look what someone can discover when looking under a rock.
If only one choses to consider the source of information that otherwise would not be questioned.

[Robert Tulip]

Ant, you appear to be incapable of anything other than ad hominem fallacy in this thread.

An ad hominem fallacy, 'playing the man', is a failure to engage with a substantive comment, while dismissing it because of some other perceived attribute of the person making the claim. I say 'Earl Doherty points out that the Epistles and early Christian literature never quote Jesus'. Instead of exploring why that might be the case, you instead say an irrelevant comment to the effect that 'Christians won't publish this material that criticises their faith'. It is not a substantive response.

It is not relevant to the content of the debate that an article is published in a journal that is sympathetic to the article. Such baseless slurs are tedious.

You already poisoned the well in this thread by your farcical implication that people who ridicule a new view have to publish it before any discussion of content is possible.

You fail to understand that religion has different standards from normal disciplines. Because people have faith in Jesus, they are offended by comments that call their faith into question. Religious scholarship is dominated by believers. Even most non-believers who engage in religious scholarship are reluctant to offend believers, and are very cautious when it comes to examining the historical Jesus. It is a big taboo.

[Interbane]

Geo earlier asked about burden of proof. I actually think the real burden of proof should sit with those who wish to deny the existence of Jesus, simply because the great weight of tradition gives the benefit of the doubt to the incumbents.

The criteria is that the burden is held by the party that makes the ontologically positive claim. It was never fulfilled, but glossed over by faith, and made mainstream by spreading the idea that faith is essential and good in general.


This is mostly meta-discussion now. Why not start a new thread that is centered around one piece of historical evidence? Perhaps the writings by Josephus? Less reference to what others think, and more discussion of the evidence on the ground. There is necessary overlap of course, but the secondary evidence points can be minimized.

I'd like to see where the evidence leads. I'm not convinced either way, although it's a cesspool I'm not sure I want to wade too deeply into.

[ant]

The criteria is that the burden is held by the party that makes the ontologically positive claim. It was never fulfilled, but glossed over by faith, and made mainstream by spreading the idea that faith is essential and good in general

Mainstream historical scholarship has concluded that the burden of proof has been met in the positive based on the available data and evidence. It is erroneous to refer to it as an "ontological" claim. The word "ontological" itself is loaded. It was not approached as an ontological claim. It is/was a historical claim.

Because a splinter faction is interpreting the evidence in a different manner, they are presenting a different conclusion. Unfortunately, it has not been well represented due to lackluster credentials, lousy methodological practices, and questionable research that must be considered inferior until scrutinized and sanitized further by peer review.

Until mythicists' research can be examined by experts in the field (a good start would be publishing in recognized scholarly journals) no real waves will wash ashore. There will be disciples that are willing to accept mythicist claims of fraud, deception, astrological interpretations, all at face value, and lots of books will be sold on Amazon, but little else thereafter.

This nonsense of a secret underground scholar cabal does not serve mythicists well. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.


Thanks

[Robert Tulip]

The criteria is that the burden is held by the party that makes the ontologically positive claim. It was never fulfilled, but glossed over by faith, and made mainstream by spreading the idea that faith is essential and good in general

Mainstream historical scholarship has concluded that the burden of proof has been met in the positive based on the available data and evidence.

Yes, that is true that the existence of Jesus remains the dominant belief. So the burden of proof rests with mythicists.

It is erroneous to refer to it as an "ontological" claim.

The term ‘ontological’ is not loaded. It simply sets the historical evidence within a broader scientific framework. Ontology is the study of being.

Until mythicists' research can be examined by experts in the field (a good start would be publishing in recognized scholarly journals) no real waves will wash ashore.

That is absurd. There is plenty of published material out there that just gets ignored by believers because it destroys the foundations of their faith so they reject it on principle.

I asked Earl Doherty’s opinion about the exclusion of mythicism through the academic peer review process. He said “Of course, it's not written down anywhere as a prohibition (as far as I know), but informally one can hardly doubt that there is what amounts to an operative refusal to give any open-minded consideration to the proposition.”

This ‘operative refusal’ means there is very limited public dialogue because the true believers in Jesus insist on principle that any questioning of his existence is ridiculous and must be censored out of view.

Historicists elide from their imaginary hero Jesus, who brings together everything good in human life, to the assertion that this perfect being must have actually existed. It is about emotional commitment driving perceptions of historical evidence. It is quite wrong to suggest that questioning the historical evidence implies a questioning of the ethical framework of Christianity, except where these aspects are explicitly linked.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Very true. The extraordinary claims made on behalf of Jesus Christ have steadily been whittled away in a process that Robert Price describes as ‘Jesus at the Vanishing Point’. (I have not yet read Price's article but will do so soon).

The best way to save the ethics of Christianity is to apply principles of truth and reason to analysis of Christian origins. Recognising that Christ is a myth allows people who regard conventional faith as absurd to see that Christianity can still have a coherent moral message. Hanging on to the false history makes true believers look just like fundamentalists who still believe in Adam and Eve.

[DWill]

In your posts, Robert, you somewhat abuse the word 'believer.' When applied to Jesus Christ, the word clearly implies the lock-stock-and barrel belief of the religiously orthodox. There is no evidence presented that writers and researchers connected with scholarly journals and academic departments are these 'believers', though most of them may believe that Jesus emerged from history. Therefore the kind of prejudice you say is motivating the exclusion of mythicists may not exist. Prejudice is still a possibility, but it would not be a product of religious resentment. It could be simply resentment of those outside the academic establishment, of those who haven't paid their proper dues.