James on Jesus: Reopening Pandora’s Box

I would first like to again thank James McGrath for providing his blog as a venue to discuss this subject; it is no doubt a highly-charged and, sometimes, volatile subject at that.  While James and I have had many conversations about this in the past, including a few phone conversations, we have always remained cordial and that is a credit more to his patience, I think, than to mine. That being said, James has opened the conversation once again and I, as usual, am willing to fire back.

His most recent aspirations to dispute the claim has been two-fold.  Of the first, he has brought up an age-old Philosophy of History problem: the problem of being too skeptical.  This is a very valid perspective on James’ part.  After all, and James is right, we can only know someone existed from the past by examining the evidence left behind about them and by them.  We cannot travel back in time and examine the data as it was then.  Only by evaluating the available data, with the best of our understanding, through the lenses of several fields of study (anthropology, archaeology, and so forth) can any determination be made about history (in general) and individuals from history (specifically).  If all we have are written records of an individual, however, then we can only evaluate the credibility of the accounts.  If they are deemed credible, at least believable to some degree, historicity can be established—but this is often situational and I will cover this briefly below.

James, however, makes a false analogy from the start.   He erroneously compares the state of evidence for the historicity of Jesus to the state of the evidence for that of George Washington.  The elephant in the room, of course, is that the state of evidence for Washington is so incredibly good that to dispute it would be non-sense and delusional; conversely, the state of evidence for Jesus is not even comparable to the evidence for Washington and to make such an analogy is a sign of desperation.  James is bluffing, hoping that the mythicists at the table will fold before he has to show his hand.    And just why would James ignore all of the vast physical evidence we have from Washington (clothes, equipment, blankets, odds and ends, his remains—ahem) in his analogy?  Unless James is coveting Jesus’ gourd or sandal somewhere, that’s rather dishonest of him.  Now, it might be that this was unintentional—which then leads me to question how much thought James has actually put into his position?  James may indeed try to retort by saying that we cannot expect the same sort of evidence for Jesus that we have for Washington.  Well, d’uh…he would be correct in saying so; but then just why would you use that example then, James?

There is, of course, a huge problem, besides the one mentioned above, with this line of argumentation.  The source evidence we have for Jesus, being written down as it is, presents itself as a part of a literary tradition that is well known to scholars of all fields of ancient history.  James can probably present some good instances where individuals who were highly mythologized did, most probably, exist historically.  However, I can also produce instances of mythological individuals in antiquity that were historicized and yet, most probably, never existed historically (Lycurgus [the Spartan, not the Athenian statesman], Romulus and Remus, Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Job, Enkidu, Gilgamesh, the Greek demigods associated with other mystery religions like Dionysus, Bacchus, and Orpheus, etc…).  Often it is very difficult to tell the difference between these two literary scenarios and often scholars will work towards a compromise; a middle ground which, oddly enough, does not exist with Jesus.  This begs the question: Where does that leave the evidence for Jesus?  This is precisely the problem that James, and most historical Jesus scholars, fails to address.  In order for me, however, to address the situation in its entirety, I would need to rewrite the first, second, fifth, and seventh chapters of my book and, to be frank, I have no urgent desire to do so.

James’ second venture to refute the position is a little more, shall we say, devious.  James should reevaluate his continuous appeals to emotion, hyperbole, and a false consensus (despite what James and others say, no real consensus exists on the state of evidence for a historical Jesus—it truly is just an assumed, oft taken-for-granted, position and one, as James is demonstrating for us, that is notoriously hard to break from) in fragile efforts to harangue and dissuade people from, essentially, disagreeing with him.  Yes, James, I believe we are all capable of recognizing hyperbole when we see it.  Fortunately, it is a correctable occurrence—one that I have worked hard to overcome, myself.  It is very easy to get carried away and overstate the evidence; we should all be cautious about doing so, including mythicists (who, sadly, do it quite often as well—Zeitgeist is a good example of a mythicist position full of overstatement).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; James and others have reason to distrust the mythicist position as a whole, but that should not suggest that the position itself is flawed.  The direction some mythicists have taken the discussion might be flawed, but really it all comes down to the state of the evidence.  I don’t believe James, or anyone, can produce an argument strong enough to show probability in favor of Jesus’ historicity anymore than one can produce a strong enough argument for the historicity of Lycurgus, or Horatius, or any other substantially historicized or mythologized figure that a great deal of individuals believed in throughout antiquity.  And unlike James, I can produce, as well as others, a steady line of Jewish scribal tradition where history was not only invented, but utilized to express theological and philosophical perspectives.  And how convenient for me, these authors often did just this by using invented fictional characters placed in historical settings (i.e. Moses, Abraham, Job, etc…).  It is not merely a Jewish phenomenon either; it is a literary tradition that extends beyond borders through long-standing socio-cultural ties and utilizes story-telling techniques (like cuing the reader with eponymous names, for example).

This is not the first time I have had to come down on James for using hyperbole and I sincerely hope he will stop this nonsense and correct the flaw in his rhetoric now; otherwise I might be forced to reconsider my position on his level of honesty and integrity and, as a person who respects James’ work and him as a human being, I really hope it doesn’t come down to that.  That aside, I continue to look forward to the work James has done on this subject.  Hopefully he will come up with something soon that will surprise me.

Creationism and the Ancient Mythic Mind

Creationism and the Ancient Mythic Mind

I thought it might be interesting to comment briefly on what it means to be a creationist in our day vs. what it meant to be a creationist in antiquity.  This deals with the difference between the modern ‘rational’ mind and the ancient mythic mind; the key is in understanding what the two best represent and, more importantly, what the two mean when undergoing any critical investigation of Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the account of origins found in ancient literature (in this case, Genesis).

What is creationism?  Before we answer that question I should stress what this short discussion is about.  When it comes down to creationism, what we are really talking about, whether modern or ancient, is myth.  What does it mean when we talk about myth and the mythic mind? Words like myth, and cognates mythic and mythical, do not imply that the subject is false, as a dichotomy of ‘truth’. Categories like ‘true’ and ‘false’ are terms which are too objective and too modern for our short study of myth.  Rather, myth must be understood as something that is neither bound by genre, culture, naturalism, or science.  I know the implications of what I’m saying; but this should not be understood as a statement of faith.  Myth is often not constructed with the intent to replace reality, but to coexist with it as an entity of its own.   This is often true of ancient myth more than it is of modern myth; our news media spins myth daily as a replacement for reality, but most ancient authors did not have that intention while creating or discussing myth.

For the ancient audience, myth was not looked at rationally—at least not in every instance (some naturalists, like Epicurus and Lucretius, did, in effect, consider myth to be in direct opposition to reality). That is to say, in our modern world, if we want to know about a possible “history” behind a myth, we can draw it out by rationalizing myth.  This is something the ancients rarely concerned themselves with.  We, however, focus on the parts of these “histories” that seem “less made up;” when we read the Iliad and the Odyssey we recognize that wars happen regularly, so it isn’t so hard for us to believe that some type of war, in some fashion, did occur between the ancient Mycenaeans and the Trojans. It isn’t a stretch for this part of the narrative of the Trojan War to become the historical kernel of truth that we want to grasp hold of. Cities do exist in 1200 BCE, some historians have suggested, so we might as well assume the conclusion that the city of Troy existed; Hector might be a completely fictional character, but Troy must have existed. All of this seems to make a lot of historical sense when you think abstractly enough about it. The myth of the Trojan War becomes a factual reality for us.   The shame of it is we often rationalize without even thinking about it.

Consider, for example, a maximalist perspective on the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites on their return from Egypt.  The fall of Jericho, according to the Biblical account, was the result of priests blowing their ram horns at the walls and the encircling of the city several times by the children of Israel.  The extraBiblical rationalizing that some maximalists partake in is that the walls came down due to sound waves from the ram horns and vibrations from the marching army of Israel—the truth is quite to the contrary, evidence suggests that natural disaster destroyed Jericho and nothing else, sometime during the 16^th century BCE.  The city was eventually rebuilt and has been continuously inhabited since ancient times.  So why then do we rationalize this myth?  If it was an earthquake which affected the whole region, not simply one city, why do some scholars rationalize the Biblical telling of the story?  Clearly the Biblical authors did not think sound waves tumbled the walls of Jericho—for them, it was the power and will of God.  Moreso, the event itself had never occurred historically, but the authors of Joshua clearly felt it necessary to include it; for them the battle Jericho, as it is expressed in the Bible, was a miracle and a part of their traditional history, even if the story had never occurred as a unique segment of real history.   What does that tell us about the authors?  What can that tell us about how we examine history?

But then we must ask the question which I believe is often neglected: did the Jews, or for that matter the Greeks and Romans, think the way we do? This question must be investigated within its relationship to the ancient mythic mind. The problem, however, is that what literature we have from the past is hardly about historical, rational events. Returning to the example of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we aren’t looking at a rational telling of a war between two opposing economic powers in the ancient world. What one reads is a tale about an entire Greek army sailing across the Aegean to fight another army because the prince of that kingdom stole the wife of the brother of the king. To put this into perspective, it would be as if President Obama decided to invade the UK because the presidents’ brother’s wife ran off with the Queen’s son. As bizarre as that may sound, this is precisely the reason why the composers of the Homeric epics portray the start of the war.  The Iliad does not even mention, even in passing, any other factor for it—unlike the movie Troy, where control over the Aegean and more wealth is the primary motive for Agamemnon (another example of our modern desire to rationalize myth). Alexandros stole Helen from Menelaus and that was all the reason the Greeks needed to fight a ten-year war with Troy. This is hardly historical, regardless of how we rationalize it. Therefore, the story, quite plainly, is about something else other than history. Perhaps it’s about the differences between passion and reason, the steadfastness of honor and heroics, the bonds of kinship, and about the power of the Gods. Homer was no historian. But that is precisely the point, isn’t it? In our world, we quantify reality, we make it tangible and, if we wish to accept myth, we try to bottle it up into our modern, rational, historical mindset by creating a new rational context for it.

The difference between our modern historical mindset and the mythic mind of the ancient Greeks and Jews is that they seem to have cared little, if at all, about historically rationalizing their past.  “There is nothing new under the sun;” the phrase from Ecclesiastes is well known, if not famous, and suggests for us a very peculiar aspect of ancient mythic thought.  Thomas L. Thompson writes:

This ahistorical axiom of ancient Hellenistic thought gives voice to the structures of traditions about the past which were created in the ancient world.  It puts these traditions at odds with the goals of modern historical methods which are rather centered in defining events of the past as unique. (Thompson, 2000)

For the author(s) of this passage, the world was as it should be and the future, along with its past, would be as well.  History, in a Hegelian manner, was predetermined and set long before anyone scribbled down a verse.  For the Greeks, the Trojan War was not only an account of their past, it was datable–even though the story was essentially invented by Homer, from beginning to end. They were not concerned with whether or not Achilles had really been the son of a God; they simply accepted it as a part of a world that existed in the past known to us as the Heroic Age. They lived in a mindset where history and myth were bed fellows.  It might be argued that they just simply did not know that Homer had invented the tradition, but this is a hardpressed argument to make.  At least the educated would have had some large understanding of creating tradition.  Origen, a well educated Christian, knew of the mythical traditions when he wrote his treatise against Celsus in the second century CE:

We are embarrassed by the fictitious stories which for some unknown reasons are bound up with the opinion, which everyone believes, that there really was a war in Troy between the Greeks and the Trojans. (Origen, Contra Celsum 1.42)

All cultures of the ancient past engaged in free tradition adaptation and invention.  The truth is that myth was an acceptable part of history; even if Origen felt embarrassed by it the larger population, even educated individuals, did not.  Tradition was far more important, it seems, than historical truth.  This is perhaps best exposed in a figurative dialogue in Sophocles’ Antigone, where the tragic heroine Antigone and the hereditary new king Creon debate concerning the status of tradition vs. patriotism and citizenship; it didn’t matter that Antigone’s kin had betrayed the city and, along with seven other kingdoms, attempted to burn it to the ground—what mattered was that she wanted the rights to give him a proper burial, as this was traditional.

I tend to like Ambrose Bierce’s definition of myth. He writes that myth is ‘The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later’. This summary definition by Bierce is what this treatment hopes to argue, although with some modifications.

The creation account in Genesis is a great example of how the ancient mythic mind and the modern rational mind conflict and make Bierce’s point a maxim.  For the purpose of this discussion, I will leave out the obvious Intertextual trends between Genesis and other ancient Near Eastern creation myths and “histories” like the Epic of Gilgamesh and for the moment pretend as if the author(s) and later editors of Genesis had not been aware of these narratives.  In the story of creation from Genesis, the author uses clear language; God created (or, perhaps, separated) the heavens and (or, from) the earth.  God then created light and separated it from darkness.  On the second day God created a firmament to keep them separate, and added flood gates to this firmament to allow for the water that existed above to fall to the earth below.  On the third day he gathered the waters under the heavens into one pool of water (one place) and the dry land (earth) appeared. God then called forth vegetation from the ground, which grew (despite the lack of a sun and photosynthesis).  Then the fourth day; God created two lights (the moon isn’t a light, it acts as a mirror, but anyway…), the Sun and the Moon along with the stars (which are also suns—so really God created billions and billions of lights).  With that, the day passed and along came day number five.  On the fifth day, God filled the waters and skies with sea life and birds, and populated the land with animals of all kinds.  Finally, on day six, God creates man.  Then, some time later, he creates woman.  This is precisely how the creation story is laid out in Genesis 1 (and we don’t want to go into the contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2).  It doesn’t matter that the account is completely incomprehensibly flawed according to modern science, objective observation, and common sense; to the ancient mind, this was completely acceptable.  For modern man, this account is a huge problem—they may not always admit it, but there is no way to reconcile this with reason.  So, Creationism and Intelligent Design were fabricated as a means to do away with certain aspects of reason (like the use of real science) while utilizing less stringent methods to frame the story in a postmodern way.

Christian positions of Intelligent Design and Creationism interpret Genesis and recreate it; these positions purport to take the account of Genesis literally, but in fact they distort the account by moving the narrative away from its mythic background while attempting to place it into a rational (and here I use this term tentatively) framework; they attempt to justify the blatantly clear mythic tone by stapling it to pseudoscience and hyperbole.  In a very strong sense, Intelligent Design and Creationism recreate Genesis—they are interpreting it against itself and the modern world rather than understanding it within its mythic mindset.  By recreating the Genesis account, Intelligent Design followers invent a new account of the past.  Like the “rational faith” tactics of theological seminaries and “universities” like Liberty, they spend a great deal of time marketing these positions as fact- or science-based initiatives with their own journals and seminars; they do this while maintaining, almost universally, that the Bible has the answers.

While some might argue that this is, in itself, a unique form of a mythic mind, the difference is that Creationists and Intelligent Design enthusiasts work hard to replace modern scientific investigations with the Bible; they seek to bend natural law and forego factual data and evidence by superimposing the Bible as the authority rather than simply accepting the two as existing mutually inclusively towards one another.  This brand of thought is really nothing short of a contradiction, for something cannot replace science while attempting to claim it uses science.  This flat dichotomy is what, perhaps, most escapes discussion in the debate.  But while this is perhaps the most obvious and possibly least discussed aspect of Creationism and Intelligent Design by both proponents and dissidents, and since the focus on challenging these two nonscientific positions remain ever-presently entangled on the nuances of the contradiction (i.e. on specific flaws in Creationism logic and “science” practices, or on engaging flat out lies in Creationist/Intelligent Design arguments), the discussion misses perhaps the most striking embarrassment to Creationism and Intelligent Design; the complete loss of mythic mind and the role it once served for the ancients who understood Genesis in a way that modern Christianity, in particular, has itself lost sight.

For Tertullian, for Irenaeus, even for Philo of Alexandria who allegorically explained creation according to the Bible, the words of Genesis were not representations of a rational sting of events but, rather, were the words of God, divinely inspired, to explain why things were as they were.  Modern Creationists use the Bible as a template to explain things in a manner becoming a paranormal investigation.  Other cultures, like certain Native American tribes for example, still maintain a mythic mindset—they are not bound to renaissance-period western idealism and, in many ways, post-modern philosophical western idealism.  If you seek out certain Native American shaman, for example, the stories of creation for them are wound up around the same sort of mythology we find in the Genesis account; there is little or no hint whatsoever of neoclassical rationality in the Iroquois tradition of Hah-nu-nah, the turtle, carrying the earth (oeh-da) on its back; there is no pseudoscientific explanation for the two birds flying up to the great tree to bring down Ata-en-sic, the mother of good and evil (the twins Do-ya-da-no, the light and the darkness, sun and moon), to oeh-da.  For traditional shamans, events like these happened according to their own traditions.  They do not create rationalizations for them in order to replace modern scientific understanding; there are no movements to teach Iroquois creationism in school in place of or along side of evolution.  Comparatively, it is the Native American who maintains his own mythic mind while the Christian Creationist is content with doing away with it.

I must reiterate that I am in no way supporting Creationism, Intelligent Design, or even Iroquois mythology; my intention here is only to stress the difference for a modern audience who may not understand or appreciate the irony or the history.  It is easy for the modern critic to say that Genesis is myth, but have no real gain on what implications that statement has.  For the ancient audience, myth was a part of their Genesis because myth coexisted with history and for the modern supporter of Creationism, myth is absent from their Genesis.  The book of Genesis, while relatively unchanged since Late Antiquity, is not the problem and never has been.  The issue for today’s critics of Creationism is not the mythology but the mindset of the Creationist.  It is here that one must pick there battles.

Some Classic Cartoon Jesus Parodies

Dinner with Jesus

Jesus’ Miracles Highly Exaggerated

Black Jesus

Autistic Jesus

Jesus of the North Pole

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=53782710

Ninja Jesus

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/1791087/South_Park_Ninja_Jesus

Why I Choose Not to Support Blasphemy Day

As Joe Hoffmann puts it, “this preposterous exercise in how to be religiously offensive is as tactless as it is pointless.”

A few years ago, I helped organize the Blasphemy Challenge.  At the time, it was useful.  We had a target (Christians who never read the Bible).  We had a purpose (to allow atheists to step out of the “closet” and tell the world they were not afraid).  We brought atheism into the media light–even before Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (2006) hit book shelves and took off running.  We challenged preconceived notions about atheism by letting atheists speak for themselves.  This was over four years ago.

While some may say that Blasphemy Day is the same, it isn’t.  There was a message behind the Blasphemy Challenge; it was not meant to ridicule.  It was meant to awaken minds.  Blasphemy Day has no real message other than to say “We’re here, now STFU and watch while I degrade this crucifix!”    America, and the world, has already been made aware of atheists, their large numbers (as referenced by President Obama during his inaugural speech and his discussion on faith before he became president).  What possible point could such a Blasphemy Day serve?

Additionally, my ideals have changed some.  I left activism because I no longer felt I believed in the direction it was headed.  If this is where activism has arrived, I am glad I stepped off the bus when I did.  Secular thought, critical thinking; these characteristics used to be the staple of atheist organizations and at some point (perhaps I am a little responsible for this), it became about ridicule and isolationism.  We are isolating ourselves from other atheist communities, other freethought organizations, other humanist organizations, and now we want to isolate ourselves once again from society.  By participating in Blasphemy Day, we are saying “we’re different” rather than saying “we’re the same” and the rest of the world–who have had spent all that time rethinking what they had thought about atheist organizations–will start to develop those same stigmas about us.  We’re stepping backwards rather than moving forward.

I’m not saying that irrational beliefs do not deserve to be criticized–what I am saying is that irrational beliefs deserve to be criticized.   When someone tells you that the world was created in 6 literal days, its okay to criticize the claim.  Analyze it, discuss it–but ridicule it?  I’m not sure what simply ridiculing a belief will accomplish when the person you’re talking to can not be embarrassed.  If a person believes the earth was created in 6 literal days, they believe you’re the idiot for not agreeing with them.  Ridiculing their beliefs is only going to make them hold on tighter.

You can’t kick the crutch out from under someone who faithfully believes they cannot walk without it.  You need to first show them that the crutch is useless and let them toss it away themselves.  In effect, Blasphemy Day is a thousand people kicking at a few crutches.  There is no doubt in my mind that these people will simply hold on for dear life and, in the end, may even use their crutches to swing back at us.

Sacked City Found in “Preserved State”

Skeletal remains of victims found where they had fallen during the sacking of the city.

According to the article: “These skeletons were found at the north entrance to Burned Building II, one of the temples in the Lower court area of the citadel.”

http://www.penn.museum/iran-hasanlu.html

Absolutely incredible.

On ‘Of Men and Muses’

I know there are questions surrounding my book since I first published it last week. My time is much more limited now due to current commitments to other projects and I have just not had the ability to sit down and organize a post about my book like this. I thought I might now take the time to address some of the questions and I apologize for not predicting these issues early on. The response to my book has been both one of interest and of curiosity. I’m surprised continually by the support I receive; it humbles me.

To start, I will address exactly what the book is. Of Men and Muses is a collection of essays I have written, some were originally for submission to academic journals and series and some appeared on my blog, which, as the subtitle explicitly suggests, deal with history, literature and religion. The book is 210 pages long and about 95% of it is new content. To be clear, only four of the essays in this book were once blog articles and all four have undergone revisions. These revisions included overhauling large chunks of the text in some of the articles in order to beef them up (both in terms of argument and in footnotes). Each one of the four no longer resembles the original blog articles. The other four essays along with the seven page introduction had been rewritten specifically for this book (as I said, some were treatments I was considering submitting to academic series).

The final manuscript was sent to an editor (I thank him in the introduction) and, on top of that, each chapter was sent off to leading scholars in the appropriate fields for their insight. All of them had useful suggestions and offered thoughts on how to expand a point here or there (I thank them also in the intro). This, I feel, is an important point to make because, as my introduction states, this book is not written with the Academy in mind. I compiled this book and wrote these articles for the layman and laywoman. While the book does require some knowledge of the material, I agree with Richard Dawkins that science is something that should not be dumbed-down. To do that would be an insult to my readers. I am aware that some of my readers may get lost in the terms and the application of terms so common to academia (like kerygma, or intertextuality, or form criticism, etc…) so as consequence I have included a select bibliography organized by subject at the end of the book to aide the reader in their own investigations.

There have been some questions raised about the publisher. Yes, it is POD (Print on Demand) and, yes, Richard Carrier’s new book Not the Impossible Faith is what inspired me to consider POD as a possibility. I did have other offers from “real” (in quotes here because Lulu is still a publishing company, regardless of the fact that it is POD) publishers—Prometheus was one of them. But there were reasons I decided to go with POD over Prometheus or even through, perhaps, an academic series like CIS.

Thomas Thompson—who had known I was planning to put a book like this together for some time—had asked if I had considered publishing the book through an academic press when I first explained to him my idea for the book project. I explained to him that the book was not organized for an academic audience and, as I am working with him on a collection of essays that is going to be published through CIS (upon the books completion sometime this year), I did not burden him with the book due to the formatting.

While Prometheus is an excellent publisher with a notable reputation—especially among free-thinkers—there were some reasons I felt publishing this particular book through them would not be the right choice for me (at least, not for this book). Part of the reason was that I didn’t want an advance for the book initially, but to make money off the book each sale (more on royalties below). The advance would be generous, but if my book did happen to make it big (this book probably won’t), I would not be entitled to any more money (this is, as far as I understand it, the way Prometheus’ advances work—this may depend on the author and the book, of course). The advantages to publishing through Prometheus are well-known. It is considered to be a “real” publisher with good editors and a strong following (for lack of a better term); there is also the reputation the publisher has that would bring the book some prestige. However I would also have to wait at least six months before the book would be available (perhaps longer, up to a year) and I just wanted to get the book out there.

Additionally, I wanted something I could springboard other studies off of. Having the book available now means I can cite the book in any other treatment I do (of which I have at least three to do this year) and my monograph (which is, sadly, still far from completion). Also, now that the book is available, I expect to get feedback from reviewers and from academia (those who so choose to read it) and work on strengthening perspectives and arguments now so, when I do work on my monograph, I know my arguments will be (generally) unassailable. I imagine that no author or critic or amateur historian or academic gets it right the first time; undoubtedly I will get criticism for something in my book and not everyone will agree. This is part of the reason I put this book together—to generate a dialogue with others to better my arguments, perhaps even to change an opinion or two that I hold, to become more educated, and, frankly, having a published book is quite a good feeling.

That being said, POD through Lulu was the best option for me. Some may not approve of it (and, at times, this is a valid concern), but as my book was (a) not written for the scholar but the layperson, (b) and formatted differently than most books (not to mention the fact that I wanted to have it available as soon as possible) made POD the best candidate and Lulu was the easiest POD publisher out there to work with. That doesn’t mean Lulu is perfect.

Some questions (although not many) have been raised about the price of the book. Unfortunately, Lulu has a policy that I must charge the same amount (or less) for retail suppliers that I do for Lulu.com. The problem is, retailers mark up the books ridiculously and for both Lulu and retail services, an additional fee is charged (in addition to the production costs) by Lulu. This means that the royalties I (or any other Lulu author) make from retail sales of my book (like from Amazon, B&N, and Borders) will be significantly less than from purchases made on Lulu.com. In fact I make less than half the royalties from purchases on retail sites than from Lulu’s website. In order for me to make any sort of royalty on the book from those retailers (which will probably end up selling my book better than Lulu will) I had to mark the book up to the price it is now. Hopefully Amazon will not mark up the book as much as Lulu predicts, in which case I would recommend picking up the book on Amazon when it becomes available. I’ll make less money for each copy sold, but it will be cheaper overall (hopefully).

I hope this addresses the questions some may have had about my book. There will always be critics to whatever I do (partly because of mistakes I have made in the past and partly because it makes for good net drama) but as long as at least some of it is relevant and critical, I don’t mind. I hope those who choose to pick up a copy enjoy the read and find it thought-provoking and interesting, compelling and even persuasive.

Joe Hoffmann on Jesus, Ellis and Kurtz

Found here:

http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/founders-syndrome-jesus-elllis-and-kurtz/

Joe Hoffmann on Paul Kurtz

Read about it here:

http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/the-lion-in-winter-the-exile-of-paul-kurtz/

Of Men and Muses

Well Book 1 is here!  It’s not my monograph, however.  Two more yet to go this year!

Updates and Such

I know its been about three weeks since I updated last, but some news.

(1) You’ll notice that I have removed some of the blog posts on here. Not to worry, they’ll return. You may have to update your links to them if you’re linking in. They’ll be back around mid-April.

(2) I’ve been very busy lately working on submissions; too busy to contribute anything here. I apologize to my frequent visitors for not updating as frequently or with new content. As mid-year approaches I will be weighed down with other responsibilities, but I’ll try to keep everyone updated as more good things happen.

(3) There is a certain internet apologist who feels it is his duty as a devout Christian to slander my name across the web. At some point in the future, a portion of this blog will be sectioned off to deal with the claims made by this individual, along with documentation and correspondence which has been omitted or ignored by the perpetrator in order to continue his slander campaign. In light of some recent identity theft crimes that this person may have committed, some other colleagues and I may be launching a full legal investigation. In light of similar identity theft and cyberbullying incidents that happened to Dr. Schiffman (so similar, in fact, that its eerie), along with the charges filed against Normal Golb’s son for committing the crimes, there is a good chance authorities will be looking into the matter. Updates to follow.

Note: Its one thing to have opinions. Opinions are like noses, after all; everyone has them (and its their right to).  But engaging in slander and posing as academic individuals to harass somebody else because you feel that it is your god-given duty to destroy that person’s reputation–that is something entirely different. It’s also illegal.