The success of Christianity came when someone took his shop with the offer of conversion from the “Greek” synagogue where practically nothing could be sold because potential customers with the frequency of the watch ridiculed the offered LXX exegesis.
Success came as the store fronted pagans unfamiliar with the LXX and started selling what they wanted most
I can’t understand this. LXX was accessible and Philo calls it the perfect Torah.
Jarek said
…. the gospels are anything other than fan fiction …This is exactly the case because a story prepared for a specific recipient, tailored to his requirements, will always be more interesting than a description of a normal, ordinary life. If the story doesn’t agree with the facts, so much the worse for the facts.
The success of Christianity came when someone took his shop with the offer of conversion from the “Greek” synagogue where practically nothing could be sold because potential customers with the frequency of the watch ridiculed the offered LXX exegesis.
Success came as the store fronted pagans unfamiliar with the LXX and started selling what they wanted most – understandable fan fiction.
This thread offers up a genuine question for those — like Robert and Chris Hansen — who take textual criticism and biblical scholarship seriously, to wit: does it cause any second-guessing that Bart’s (let’s call it) extremely skeptical approach to the historical accuracy of the NT texts — things like rejecting the burial of Jesus and believing that Papias was referring to a document other than what we call Mark’s Gospel — has breathed so much life into mythicists?
Mythicists are all over this message board; they seem to account for the majority of active users.
I understand the need for skepticism and the rejection of reading the NT as a science or history textbook. But Bart’s approach seems to have come at a cost. In the UK, for example, recent polls have suggested that some 40% of the public do not think Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person. Obviously, I’m not laying that all on Bart; but his work has helped fuel the mythicist industry.
…his work has helped fuel the mythicist industry.
Nonsense. That’s like blaming the vaccine for the pandemic. Prof Ehrman is one of the few actual scholars who has taken the time to critique the mythicist viewpoint. Most scholars don’t take it seriously enough to even pay attention.
More books. Less YouTube.
“I understand the need for skepticism and the rejection of reading the NT as a science or history textbook. But Bart’s approach seems to have come at a cost. In the UK, for example, recent polls have suggested that some 40% of the public do not think Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person. Obviously, I’m not laying that all on Bart; but his work has helped fuel the mythicist industry.”
Thomas Paine did not read Bart Erhman. He considered the Bible to be tales.
I have posted quite a bit, so that may be overwhelming the board. I do put my ideas that I find in looking into the structure of the Bible and reading Bart Erhman and others out there to be challenged and criticized, trying to find the limits on what is just my own bias and what may actually be true. I am here to be corrected, but not with hand waving, eye rolling, or overgeneralizing statements that are so general that they defy the variety of beliefs found in ancient Judean or protoChristian belief as well as the variety of outlooks among biblical critics themselves.
As for Erhamn’s approach, which is hard worked and honest, the same approach or nearly the same approach has produced a variety of so-called “historical Jesuses.” His is the “itinerant preacher” and I think he makes a great case for that. But militant leader or prince Jesus are “historical Jesuses” as well.
My approach explains why there are so many “historical Jesuses” to be carved out of the gospels, as well as so many myth Jesuses to carved out. Mark simply intended to roll up the hopes of all Judean culture, as best he could, into one character that was destroyed by the Judean and Roman authorities. He was destroying the savior myth, at least for the time being, as the Roman troops plundered Galilee and headed for Jerusalem.
vergari
Does it cause any second-guessing that Bart’s (let’s call it) extremely skeptical approach to the historical accuracy of the NT texts — things like rejecting the burial of Jesus…
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy and Instructor
You think it is a good thing for Bart
– to reject the burial of Jesus
– supposedly, dogs jumped up the cross and ate his feet off
– supposedly, Mary the mother of Jesus and John, the beloved disciple, did not shoo away the dogs
– supposedly the Roman guard at the crucifixion who said, Surely he was the son of God, did not keep the dogs away
– supposedly, there is no reason for women to visit his tomb
– supposedly, there is no reason for Easter
– supposedly, there is no narrative referencing the Jesselsohn Stone, Gabriel’s Revelation, where Gabriel tells one of the three tax revolt rebels to rise from your defeat, messiah
– supposedly, Paul had no basis for resurrection in his Christology
What? Dogs knocked the cross over and when it fell to the ground, then the dogs ate him?
No, it is not a good thing. It is one thing to criticize the historical fiction. It is another thing to re-write, ridiculously corrupting the historical fiction.
For those who take textual criticism and biblical scholarship seriously? What erroneous thinking, vergari.
Textual criticism and Bible scholarship: mislead people to alternative events of the biblical Jesus not resulting in a victory over death. That is overstepping.
Stephen said
…his work has helped fuel the mythicist industry.Nonsense. That’s like blaming the vaccine for the pandemic. Prof Ehrman is one of the few actual scholars who has taken the time to critique the mythicist viewpoint. Most scholars don’t take it seriously enough to even pay attention.
More books. Less YouTube.
I don’t think the covid analogy would hold unless there was evidence that the vaccines were making covid more transmissible.
Yes, Bart has, without reservation, rejected and refuted the position of mythicists. He’s written a book doing so; and he’s debated mythicists.
But, at the same time, one cannot deny that mythicists routinely adopt Bart’s arguments into their apologetics. I can cite many examples, but some common ones are that all four gospels (and Acts) circulated with not only internal, but also external, anonymity for a century before having names ascribed to them; that the NT texts were hopeless corrupted by early scribes; and that the burial and empty tomb stories were invented by early Christians.
I think Bart has done an exemplary job of refuting the popular mythicist argument that Paul only believed in a celestial Jesus and never claimed to have received information from other Christian disciples.
However, on the whole, we have seen repeated examples just on this forum of Bart’s arguments being co-opted, misrepresented and re-purposed by mythicists.
I wish Bart would take more seriously and attempt to wrestle with how the gospel writers sourced their information. When confronted with arguments that the gospel writers clearly had a rather familiar knowledge of early First Century Judea and Galilee, Bart has responded by side-stepping the argument and responding that familiarity with the time and place does not equate with knowledge about Jesus.
There is a certain all or nothing approach to biblical history that reminds me of debating a fundamentalist. I wish Bart would simply concede that these writers had a lot of uncommon knowledge about the time and place which is the subject of their texts, and that claims of first hand accounts cannot be so easily dismissed.
Robert said
Amen, Brother Stephanus.Bart’s approach has been going on in New Testament scholarship for 250 years. A scholarly approach to the gospels must allow for extreme skeptical positions if we are going to promote true critical scholarship. What in the world is the alternative?
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.
By way of example, it has become increasingly trendy in textual criticism to say that academics have given up searching for the texts of the autographs. This raises an existential issue with the discipline: if the autographs are methodologically out of our reach, then what is the purpose of doing textual criticism at all?
Stephen said
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.You mistake cause for effect.
I don’t think so.
If a wife repeatedly corrects her husband every time he makes a grammatical or other linguistic error, she may be entirely objectively correct in correcting his mistakes. But that doesn’t mean her corrections won’t result in him being increasingly bitter and hostile over time.
vergari said
Robert said
Amen, Brother Stephanus.
Bart’s approach has been going on in New Testament scholarship for 250 years. A scholarly approach to the gospels must allow for extreme skeptical positions if we are going to promote true critical scholarship. What in the world is the alternative?
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.
By way of example, it has become increasingly trendy in textual criticism to say that academics have given up searching for the texts of the autographs. This raises an existential issue with the discipline: if the autographs are methodologically out of our reach, then what is the purpose of doing textual criticism at all?
How is it antithetical to scholarship? Scholarship is all about exploring new theories and modes of critically evaluating history, science, and more. Sounds to me like someone just doesn’t like feminism and wants to live in an echo chamber where there isn’t a magnifying glass peering at things. Let me ask, do you consider (neo) Marxism to be postmodernism?
Textual Criticism is not about finding the actual autographs. We probably never will. Textual Criticism is about coming to the most probable form that the autographs looked like. All historical studies are measures of probabilities. We don’t search out “truth”.
vergari said
Stephen said
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.
You mistake cause for effect.
I don’t think so.
If a wife repeatedly corrects her husband every time he makes a grammatical or other linguistic error, she may be entirely objectively correct in correcting his mistakes. But that doesn’t mean her corrections won’t result in him being increasingly bitter and hostile over time.
There is no such thing as “correct” grammar. All languages and dialects are valid, so if the wife sits around “correcting” her husband’s grammar, then she is just an arse. She is not objectively correct on anything.
Robert said
vergari said
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.
Again, what in the world is the alternative? Surely you would not want an authoritarian body censoring honest inquiry and free debate, right?
The alternative is a more modest, circumspect mode of skepticism. For example, when evaluating an issue like the “historical reliability” of the gospels, rather than taking a more strident approach that the texts are simply unreliable (and corrupted), Bart can concede that the texts are relatively reliable when compared to their similar, contemporary texts — just as our modern biographies, even the best ones, may fail the standards of two centuries from now. Just because texts fail the standards of future generations doesn’t mean that they are “unreliable”; rather, they are reliable as compared to their contemporaries and very well may provide large pieces of accurate historical information.
By conceding this, Bart doesn’t have to adopt Christian apologetics or advocate for a particular strand of theism; instead, he’d be ascribing to the texts a sort of historical context on par with other figures and events and writings of antiquity.
And I am not taking about, nor have I (or would I) suggest, any type of oversight body dictating what Bart’s views or teachings are. I’m advocating an approach which is entirely at Bart’s discretion.
Robert said
vergari said
By way of example, it has become increasingly trendy in textual criticism to say that academics have given up searching for the texts of the autographs. This raises an existential issue with the discipline: if the autographs are methodologically out of our reach, then what is the purpose of doing textual criticism at all?
To find the earliest exemplar of the current texts. Obviously. The reasons for not claiming to find original autographs is really about larger questions than the mere mechanics of textual criticism. The latter have not been abandoned, but we also need to recognize the reality of ancient publication practices. The mechanics of textual criticism cannot realistically hope to solve larger questions such as the possibility of a proto-Luke or an Aramaic original of Q or partition theories of Pauline letters. If the earliest exemplar of a letter of Paul were already part of a collection of letters, some of which were already composite, how much sense does it make to use textual criticism to get behind the earliest available text? See what I mean?
“The latter have not been abandoned”
I think Bart would disagree with you here; and instead assert that the best a modern textual critic can do is to seek to arrive at the ausgang text, which Bart has rather clearly differentiated from the autograph.
If the autograph — that is, the last edition to depart from the original author’s hands — is definitionally and ideologically out of reach, then the entire discipline of textual criticism is really an elaborate parlor game. The distinction I’m drawing here is that scholarship cannot simply be about attaining more information; it has to be a search for the truth (even if all truths or the ultimate truth remain beyond our momentary grasp).
Chris_Hansen said
vergari said
Stephen said
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.
You mistake cause for effect.
I don’t think so.
If a wife repeatedly corrects her husband every time he makes a grammatical or other linguistic error, she may be entirely objectively correct in correcting his mistakes. But that doesn’t mean her corrections won’t result in him being increasingly bitter and hostile over time.
There is no such thing as “correct” grammar. All languages and dialects are valid, so if the wife sits around “correcting” her husband’s grammar, then she is just an arse. She is not objectively correct on anything.
Does the “no such thing as correct grammar” extend to spelling? What about word pronunciation? Beyond that, what about rules of logic? Do those exist or are there no such things as rules of logic either?
Chris_Hansen said
vergari said
Robert said
Amen, Brother Stephanus.
Bart’s approach has been going on in New Testament scholarship for 250 years. A scholarly approach to the gospels must allow for extreme skeptical positions if we are going to promote true critical scholarship. What in the world is the alternative?
I actually think extreme skeptical approaches, like we have seen during the post modernism, is antithetical to scholarship; and, ultimately, when taken to their logical ends result in undermining the academic disciplines themselves.
By way of example, it has become increasingly trendy in textual criticism to say that academics have given up searching for the texts of the autographs. This raises an existential issue with the discipline: if the autographs are methodologically out of our reach, then what is the purpose of doing textual criticism at all?
How is it antithetical to scholarship? Scholarship is all about exploring new theories and modes of critically evaluating history, science, and more. Sounds to me like someone just doesn’t like feminism and wants to live in an echo chamber where there isn’t a magnifying glass peering at things. Let me ask, do you consider (neo) Marxism to be postmodernism?
Textual Criticism is not about finding the actual autographs. We probably never will. Textual Criticism is about coming to the most probable form that the autographs looked like. All historical studies are measures of probabilities. We don’t search out “truth”.
Because “exploring new theories and modes of critically evaluating history, science, and more” is a frivolous activity if it is not in search of the truth. Exploring new idea for the sake of exploration, and without a desire to reach truth, is definitionally pointless. It’s nothing more than a game.
“Sounds to me like someone just doesn’t like feminism and wants to live in an echo chamber where there isn’t a magnifying glass peering at things. Let me ask, do you consider (neo) Marxism to be postmodernism?”
This is the type of wind-up and question someone asks if they’ve never heard of post-modernism before Jordan Peterson. Obviously, neo-Marxism and third wave feminism are very different than post-modernism, and I have never once referred or alluded to feminism or neo-Marxism in this forum.
And, by the by, by adopting a view that there is no such thing as objectively correct English grammar, you yourself are adopting a sort of anti-realist, post-modern position.
“Textual Criticism is not about finding the actual autographs. We probably never will. Textual Criticism is about coming to the most probable form that the autographs looked like. All historical studies are measures of probabilities. We don’t search out ‘truth’.”
This is largely a semantic issue. Yes, scholarship is about the examination of probabilities, but those are probabilities in connection with the truth. So, the search is for the truth, and we seek to achieve as much of truth as is possible. This is no different than scholarship associated with gravity. I don’t think anyone would suggest that Newton was not seeking to find the truth about gravity; and what he discovered got us 99% of the way there. Then, Einstein came around and improved on Newton, and got us 99.99% of the way there (actual more).
I don’t think so.
Of course not. That’s why you’re mistaken.
If a wife repeatedly corrects her husband every time he makes a grammatical or other linguistic error, she may be entirely objectively correct in correcting his mistakes. But that doesn’t mean her corrections won’t result in him being increasingly bitter and hostile over time.
Your formulation assumes the husband is too stupid to take proper instruction. I know of a couple mythicists who thought it was the only game in town until they were presented with the scholarly historical case. Of course it helped mightily that they began with the desire for their opinions to comport with reality.
The alternative is a more modest, circumspect mode of skepticism.
You mean the kind that lacks the temerity to challenge your deeply held beliefs, right?
For example, when evaluating an issue like the “historical reliability” of the gospels, rather than taking a more strident approach…
Once again you confuse cause with effect. Scholars do not begin with the assumption that the texts are historically unreliable but arrive at that conclusion through scholarly analysis of the texts.
Because “exploring new theories and modes of critically evaluating history, science, and more” is a frivolous activity if it is not in search of the truth.
What is truth?
vergari said
There is no such thing as “correct” grammar. All languages and dialects are valid, so if the wife sits around “correcting” her husband’s grammar, then she is just an arse. She is not objectively correct on anything.
Does the “no such thing as correct grammar” extend to spelling? What about word pronunciation? Beyond that, what about rules of logic? Do those exist or are there no such things as rules of logic either?
There is no such thing as correct spelling or pronunciation. “Proper grammar” and “proper spelling” and “proper pronunciation” are all inventions that have no basis in reality. These rules largely did not exist until the 17th century, when white racist het-cis men decided that they did not like specific groups of people who spoke in specific ways (usually slaves, and poor people). Hence, the bullcrap rule of “no double negatives” came up, and then certain words were said to only be able to be spelled certain ways. The reality of the situation is that until basically the 1800’s, there was no standardized spelling, pronunciation, grammar, or anything else. By then, elitist agendas formed whose entire goals were to eliminate diversity. Linguists have known and discussed this for ages. It is basically all to do with colonialism, imperialism, and racism. Also, the rules of logic differ depending on (a) what form of logic you use (for example, paraconsistent logic does not use the Law of noncontradiction); (b) how your language conceptualizes those rules (we do not conceptualize things the same way as people of other languages, this is a proven fact as well); (c) whether those rules even make sense in your respective language.
Do you think that it is improper grammar to use singular they/them pronouns, since our textbooks tell us that it is a plural and not singular (and they ignore the fact that singular they/them has been used for hundreds upon hundreds of years)? Do you think it is improper for speakers of African American English to say “aks” instead of “ask” because our grammar books say so (ignoring that ask was spelled as aks for hundreds upon hundreds of years)? Do you think that it is improper for people to say “ain’t” instead of “I am not”? Do you think that it is improper for us to use a double negative, because our textbooks tell us it is wrong (even though the double, triple, and quadruple negatives have existed since even Old English over a thousand years ago)?
If you think that anyone’s grammar is wrong, then you essentially think that their entire dialect (which has a code, grammar, and system that allows for these differences) is wrong, and therefore inferior. And it makes you racist, elitist, and probably sexist or homophobic, since LGBTQ+ people often have community dialects.
vergari said
How is it antithetical to scholarship? Scholarship is all about exploring new theories and modes of critically evaluating history, science, and more. Sounds to me like someone just doesn’t like feminism and wants to live in an echo chamber where there isn’t a magnifying glass peering at things. Let me ask, do you consider (neo) Marxism to be postmodernism?
Textual Criticism is not about finding the actual autographs. We probably never will. Textual Criticism is about coming to the most probable form that the autographs looked like. All historical studies are measures of probabilities. We don’t search out “truth”.
Because “exploring new theories and modes of critically evaluating history, science, and more” is a frivolous activity if it is not in search of the truth. Exploring new idea for the sake of exploration, and without a desire to reach truth, is definitionally pointless. It’s nothing more than a game.
“Sounds to me like someone just doesn’t like feminism and wants to live in an echo chamber where there isn’t a magnifying glass peering at things. Let me ask, do you consider (neo) Marxism to be postmodernism?”
This is the type of wind-up and question someone asks if they’ve never heard of post-modernism before Jordan Peterson. Obviously, neo-Marxism and third wave feminism are very different than post-modernism, and I have never once referred or alluded to feminism or neo-Marxism in this forum.
And, by the by, by adopting a view that there is no such thing as objectively correct English grammar, you yourself are adopting a sort of anti-realist, post-modern position.
“Textual Criticism is not about finding the actual autographs. We probably never will. Textual Criticism is about coming to the most probable form that the autographs looked like. All historical studies are measures of probabilities. We don’t search out ‘truth’.”
This is largely a semantic issue. Yes, scholarship is about the examination of probabilities, but those are probabilities in connection with the truth. So, the search is for the truth, and we seek to achieve as much of truth as is possible. This is no different than scholarship associated with gravity. I don’t think anyone would suggest that Newton was not seeking to find the truth about gravity; and what he discovered got us 99% of the way there. Then, Einstein came around and improved on Newton, and got us 99.99% of the way there (actual more).
Marxism is a Modernist theory. And Third-Wave Feminism IS A POSTMODERNIST theory. The fact that you think Feminism is “very different than post-modernism” proves you have no idea what postmodernism even is. I should know, given I have a peer reviewed paper that was just accepted specifically on feminism lmao. Postmodernism was a reaction against Modernists who believed that they could form a grand-narrative of history and humanity, and the postmodernists came and were like: um, no actually you can’t and here is why, and here is how we can better understand humanity. This is what led to Third-Wave Feminist, Post-Structuralist, etc. Also they do challenge the idea that we “know the truth”, because we do not. We know approximations of it (which is what science at best comes to). They also challenge the idea that the reality we are observing is objective, and there is scientific reasons for doing so (for example… reality is not objectively seen or observed, it is interpreted through our brains and senses, and with this come biases; linguists have proven such biases on interpreting reality exist just from the way grammatical gender works).
And no, I am not adopting “a sort of anti-realist, post-modern position”. I am adopting the position of the vast majority of all linguists. There is no “proper” or “correct” grammar of English. By that logic, African American English is “improper” and therefore “incorrect” because it doesn’t abide by a completely abstract “standard English” that was created by racists with the specific intent of targeting and eliminating the dialects of poor people and people of color because they did not like the way they spoke. I am literally getting my degree in English, and I know what the heck I’m talking about. If you think there is any such thing as a “proper grammar” then it is because you’ve bought a bunch of kool-aid.
And no, probabilities have no direct connection to truth. If you think they do, then you obviously do not know why we talk in probabilities and not truth (in which case you really need to take a philosophy of science course). We approximate things as close as to reality as we assume we can get. The difference between a probability and truth is not semantic. If you think it is, then you seriously need to take an introductory class on logic.
Robert said
vergari said
“The latter have not been abandoned”
I think Bart would disagree with you here; and instead assert that the best a modern textual critic can do is to seek to arrive at the ausgang text, which Bart has rather clearly differentiated from the autograph.
Not sure where the miscommunication is here (perhaps my use of ‘the latter’ was not clear), but my position is exactly the same as Bart’s. What the Germans call the Ausgang text is exactly the same thing I meant by the earliest exemplar of the current texts. We cannot always know that the earliest exemplar is an original autograph and there are various compositional and redactional issues (cf the examples I gave above) which can never be solved by the mechanics of text criticism alone.
If the autograph — that is, the last edition to depart from the original author’s hands — is definitionally and ideologically out of reach, then the entire discipline of textual criticism is really an elaborate parlor game.
Not sure why you feel that way. It is still an essential discipline toward understanding the history of the text.
The distinction I’m drawing here is that scholarship cannot simply be about attaining more information; it has to be a search for the truth (even if all truths or the ultimate truth remain beyond our momentary grasp).
Not sure what you’re getting at here. Do you think those of us who acknowledge that we may never be able to arrive at an original autograph because of a variety of larger issues are no longer interested in the truth?
I find it funny he also calls me an anti-realist, for pointing out the very real reality that every Language and Dialect has a perfectly functioning grammar, and that no grammar is more “proper” than another, and there is no “proper” English, and pointing out further than the entire concept of “proper English” is largely a colonialist and imperialist invention… like… we have the textbooks they wrote. We have the letters they wrote. We know why, when, and how these rules came to be developed. Like, my position is about as realist and evidence based as they come lol.
The only way around this is to assert that there is this esoteric magical “proper grammar” which renders all other dialects inferior. “Proper grammar” is just taught in order to exterminate dialects and variety in our language, based on arbitrary rules (like “no double negatives” a rule specifically developed because rich white men did not like their usage).
“You are an anti-realist about English because you point out what every major Linguist of the 20th and 21st centuries has known for sixty years about the history of our language and how “standard English” and “proper grammar” were inventions and are used to eliminate the dialects of people of color, poor, and working class Americans from existence.”
Here is a podcast that covers some of this, by professional linguists (** you do not have permission to see this link **). As Carrie notes:
“In 1762, Bishop Robert Lowth – I think that’s how you pronounce his name – wrote a short introduction to English grammar with critical notes, and that seems to be where this rule comes from. So it’s just some dude, writing it down – okay he was a bishop, so I guess he’s not just “some dude” – one person just decides, “okay, this is a rule. I’m gonna write it down”. And it’s still around! We still obey this.”
Literally, rules of “proper grammar” were inventions by singular angsty white dudes.
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