RE: For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus
February 23, 2013 at 6:00 pm
(This post was last modified: February 23, 2013 at 6:20 pm by Confused Ape.)
(February 23, 2013 at 5:02 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The problem there is that jesus IS the magic tricks. Without them he is just some guy who got himself killed.
If Jesus did exist he was just some guy who got himself killed.
(February 23, 2013 at 5:02 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Either he DID come back from the dead or xtianity is just a pile of shit.
That's not the subject of Davies's article.
(February 23, 2013 at 5:02 pm)Minimalist Wrote: There is no escaping that simple fact and trying to hide behind "well, he might have been a teacher" is pointless.
You originally posted a link to the article here and said he's one of the more respected Minimalist Old Testament scholars. He's not trying to claim that the Christian religion is true - he's just saying that there might have been some kind of guru who got obscured by myths but there's no evidence for anything else.
(February 23, 2013 at 5:02 pm)Minimalist Wrote: They don't worship the words...or particularly follow them. They do all profess to believe in the bullshit.
What's that got to do with Davies's article? He's criticising the way some scholars behave where the question of whether Jesus existed is concerned.
Quote:surely the rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear, or even to work out what kind of historical research might be appropriate. Such a normal exercise should hardly generate controversy in most fields of ancient history, but of course New Testament studies is not a normal case and the highly emotive and dismissive language of, say, Bart Ehrman’s response to Thompson’s The Mythic Past shows (if it needed to be shown), not that the matter is beyond dispute, but that the whole idea of raising this question needs to be attacked, ad hominem, as something outrageous. This is precisely the tactic anti-minimalists tried twenty years ago: their targets were ‘amateurs’, ‘incompetent’, and could be ignored.
I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist, or even possibly didn’t exist, but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability.
Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?
