R. Joseph Hoffmann Weighs In

Joe Hoffmann asked me to post this up on my blog for the time being.  Below, Joe weighs in on the recent exchange and comes out with his own feelings on it all.  Take it away Joe:

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Memorandum to Myself : The Jesus Project

R. Joseph Hoffmann

Just as I was beginning work for my PhD at Oxford my supervisor was recovering from a bad time in British theological circles for having been a “founder” of the “Myth of God Incarnate” debate. With John Hick and others, Maurice Wiles had been blamed, even in the national press, for undermining the foundations of the Christian (read: Anglican) faith which had always been especially devoted to the doctrine of the incarnation.

The Myth-theologians were not especially interested in the historical Jesus but in pressing the fairly obvious point that the language of the New Testament is essentially derived from a time when gods did become men and men became gods—that is to say, antiquity. Coming fresh from the more energetic Germanics of Harvard Divinity School (I will not name names, but the years were 1976-1980), I found the whole discussion a little quaint. In fact, the former dean of Harvard Divinity School Ronald Thiemann called it that to my face, as I recall, during an interview in 1982. Oxford–England in general with its traditional antipathy for the splashiness of German and American biblical scholarship–arrived late to any interest in Nag Hammadi and felt that its obligations toward the apocrypha had been neatly summarized by a strange little collection by a certain Montague Rhodes James, a librarian, medievalist, and ghost- story writer, whose New Testament Apocrypha had appeared in 1924. Oxford repaid its debt to scholarship with the superb re-do of J K Elliott in 1994. What was happening at Claremont, Utrecht and Cambridge, MA in Coptic-Gnostic studies seemed robust and real compared to the cold-tea debates (as I saw them) when I arrived as a brash postgraduate at Wiles’s door in Christ Church.

This is a memorandum to myself as to why I no longer see the Dutch-American initiative in quite the same way, and why I think I missed the point and the wisdom of the Myth debate. The Myth of God Incarnate was not (to repeat) a seminar devoted to the historical Jesus. That there had been one was assumed with the same nonchalance as one would say “Well of course I had a grandfather. Where do you think I come from?” What there had not been is an incarnation—presumably also, while there was disagreement on some specifics, not a resurrection, virgin birth, or assorted other signs and wonders either. God had not become man. But like the Jesus Seminar later which trudged over some of the same ground the Myth seminar was greeted with a series of awful ripostes including a piece of apologetical nonsense called The Truth of God Incarnate. It was one thing to call Genesis a myth. It was OK to say, even, that Abraham was about as real as Oedipus. But were the canons of Christ Church and the Queen’s appointed theologian now saying that the word did not become flesh?

It’s sad in a way that the Myth seminar was doomed to be overshadowed by the gnostic gospels craze and other, equally important trends in New Testament Studies. Sad because the Myth seminar reminded scholarship beyond theology that the New Testament does not put itself forward as the story of a simple Galilean peasant who got himself godded through the reminiscences of his “community.” We can infer the community from the existence of the written sources, but in fact we only need to infer a writer and an audience for his work to explain the survival of the story. The twentieth century infatuation with the word “community” was itself a construct of theology in its attempts to depersonalize the origins of the gospels. But, as rule, communities do not write books, with the possible exception of the Jesus Seminar. Nor do communities invent the elaborate mythological framework we find fully fledged in the Fourth Gospel, but nascent in all the others. If by social memory we mean a “personality” whose character and actions can be recovered from the myth that encases it, or retrace the process that brought the transformation about I’m afraid I can’t see it at all in the New Testament. I do not think we are dealing with a man who became god, but a god who was made man. I think the New Testament is telling the truth about itself.

The growth of anti-supernaturalism and rationalism from Holbach’s day forward could deal with a man who became God only by ignoring the primary artifact—the story itself. Once you begin to demythologize (and even that once-radical word has become quaint) Jesus can be anything you want him to be. That in my view is what happened as theology tried unsuccessfully to fight for an “ordinary” Jesus whose message could be detached from the prevailing literary form we call gospel.

So my memo to myself (and anyone else who wants to share) is this: you can believe that the author of the Fourth Gospel was “mistaken” or “gnostic” or “inclusive” in using incarnational language, but the story he tells is not about a man who became God. The acts of Jesus, the words of Jesus and the deeds of Jesus befit someone who is God incarnate, the word of God. That’s also, more or less, the Christ of Paul’s Philippian hymn. It is fair enough for theologians and biblical scholars to say that this is the cultural ornamentation through which the significance of Jesus is being expressed by one social group who’d heard the Jesus story (yawn), but the story is the datum, not that guess, and the story is a myth. That’s what the Myth seminar was able to say with something approaching clarity—a clarity never achieved by later investigations—before it disbanded in 1980. The gnostic Jesus, whatever we may mean by that term, is a slightly more radicalized or de-historicized myth; the Lucan Jesus an artificially historicized version of the same thing. But each is to the datum as Subaru is to car. They are not perspectives on an historical individual, but variations on a mythic theme. In its most abstruse and literarily earliest form, it is Paul’s myth of Christ the Lord. In its most abstract and impersonal form, it is the Hymn of the Pearl. It is composite and as I’ve said elsewhere metamorphic—like all myths. But it does not provide knowledge of the life, profession, social status, or parentage of a man.

Where to Go From Here: A Response to April DeConick

By Thomas Verenna

I would like to thank April for continuing this dialog.   She makes an excellent point.

If we are really going to talk about whether or not constructed myths have any historical value (which seems to me to be the ultimate goal of TJP), then we better get up to speed fast on what other fields are saying about it.

We should be looking outside the field of Biblical Studies.  But I do not think that the appropriate area should be Social Memory in the manner presented on April’s blog.  Unlike her modern-day example, we cannot know how memes transformed past social memories of Jesus.  We only have what is left in written format which would have made up only a small percentage of the social memory that formerly was extant.  April is repeating the mistake of so many past Jesus scholars and doing exactly what Albert Schweitzer criticized his colleagues for doing. She is applying modern perspectives of social trends to ancient social trends (of which we have barely any knowledge).

While Obama’s “own historical story is being framed in terms of our collective memory of Lincoln”, knowledge about social trends, media spin, the value of having an African American in office, comes about precisely because it is within our contemporary age.  There are hard, irrefutable facts concerning the historical existence of Obama, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy (and for that matter, Abraham Lincoln).  Video tapes, contemporaneous written documents recorded by the affectionate and the livid. by both friends and enemies–this is attestation that we simply do not have for Jesus.

Perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be that of Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill.  These American icons were shaped through (and helped shape) an American frontier and an American ideology.  Broad social trends developed these characters, and later, these characters supplemented the development of social trends as they became popular among frontiersmen. These characters were developed from already existing socio-cultural memes which led to their popularity; they became cultural icons and influenced the socio-cultural memes that followed.

But let’s bring this back to antiquity. Let us look at socio-cultural trends in Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Could it be said that the Gospels represent politically-motivated messianism like we find in the Maccabees? Not really. With the exception of later Gospels (like Luke), Mark (assuming Markan priority) does not portray Jesus as a revolutionary leader or as a messianic figure (like Simon bar Kokhba or Loukuas, for example). In fact, if Jesus had been a revolutionary leader, you would see a very different account of him—you would not see the character portrayed in the Gospel of Mark who said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and he certainly would not have taken a Tax Collector into his entourage.

What then do the Gospels best represent? This is a question I feel needs to be asked. It is here that many misrepresent the mythicist position to some extremes (but perhaps that is because we’re not being clear).  For example, it is not because “he is a fabrication of the ancient mind and their myths” nor is it because we can’t “trust an ancient author who makes things up.” It isn’t about the mythic mind (in the sense that we’re dealing with “myth”–I am hesitant to refer to Jesus as a “myth”) that we should question the historicity of the figure of Jesus and it certainly is not a matter of “trust.” That the Gospel authors “make things up” is beside the point (and “this is no new insight” either). The questions I posed were not about “what things the authors made up.” I clearly think that question is old hat (and according to my arguments, irrelevant—as I feel the Gospels are ancient novels not meant to be fractured and torn apart as they have been by scholars of the Jesus Seminar). My point is that the authors were (as April rightly point out) a product of their social landscape. The problem is that far too often scholars seem to presume what that social landscape is. Every time you say, with some certainty, that Jesus existed you take for granted that social landscape and ignore the underlying questions.

I said earlier that their social memory is something we cannot know beyond what they have written down. But even assuming that what was written constitutes as social memory is something we cannot know with any certainty at this point. We can hope that what we are dealing with represents social trends, but clearly when one reads any of the canonical gospels or epistles, they are inevitably faced with the reality that we are not looking at the originals; what we have are copies that have been tampered with. This means that each Gospel and each epistle may in fact represent multiple social trends over a period of four-hundred years. But even that may be stretching what Social Memory was like for that period. We cannot know because we do not have answers to underlying questions. So it is assumption alone that one formulates the idea that what the Gospels and the epistles are is “social memory.”

What can we say with certainty? What is certain is that the ancient Jews were proficient at manufacturing origin traditions (one might be inclined to say with some authority that the entire Hebrew Bible represents the sum of manufactured Jewish origin traditions). What is certain is that they used eponymic characters to supplement ideals (Job=Persecuted, Isaac=Laughter, Abraham=Father of all Nations, Moses=To Draw Out, Jesus Christ= Anointed Savior, Peter=Rock, etc…). What is known is that Jewish authors frequently adapted old traditions to new socio-cultural settings. What can be said is that Jewish authors searched through scripture to find passages that would be used for narrative and plot creation (see Josephus’ use of Judith to formulate his fictional narrative about Alexander the Great’s march on Jerusalem; See Acts author’s use of the conversion of Heliodorus from 2 Maccabees to supplement Saul’s conversion, etc…). Paul tells us that he is doing this very thing in Romans 16:24-26:

“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God.”

Why is Mark’s Jesus the messenger of Malachi, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 51-53, who is to be pierced through hands and feet in the manner of a slave with lots casted for his clothes as discussed in Psalm 22? Why was Paul’s Jesus crucified by the archons of the aeons instead of the Romans or Pilate? Why not the Sanhedrin? Where is Judas in all of this? What about Jesus’ parents? Can we, as a community of enlightened thinkers, accept the conclusion that Paul just didn’t care about these details? Why does Paul never directly quote Jesus to solve a dispute among the churches? He certainly goes through a drawn out process of scripture interpretation when all he would need to do is say “Jesus told his followers thus” and it would end right there. When you remove all of the assumptions from the narrative, the assumptions of historicity, you can see how hollow and ineffectual they really are. The questions that should be asked are not being asked at the expense of more assumptions.

So while you may think that by questing the historicity of Jesus is “so flawed that” you “do not even know where to begin to deconstruct it” (nor do you seem to know what it even is), I already know where many historical Jesus scholar’s (in the vein of those of the Jesus Seminar) reasoning happens to be flawed: It starts at one assumption and builds off of others. I also know where to start deconstructing it: You start by removing assumptions. If we can come to common ground, if we can accept that we need to start asking questions that need to be asked (like “did Jesus exist”), then two conclusions will develop from them: (1) Jesus existed and we have to ask more questions (Who was he? When did he live? Where was he from? Can we even know anything about him?) or (2) Jesus didn’t exist and we have to ask more questions (Why did the Gospel authors write? Who were they written to? At what point were they believed as historical? What did Paul convert into? Can we even know the answers?)

From either of these two conclusions, our work will begin. But if we want to avoid the same failures of the past quests, we cannot start with the conclusion in advance. We must first develop methods that are rigorous, logical and stand up to criticisms. From there, we will have a springboard with which to ask the questions that need to be asked, one of which includes the question you feel is ridiculous: Did the figure of Jesus exist historically? Like all other important questions, this question cannot be taken for granted. If we do not proceed this way, we will not succeed.

The Jesus Project: Offering Another Perspective on the Chilton-Hoffmann-Crossley Exchange

By Thomas Verenna

James Crossley recently commented on the exchange between Bruce Chilton and R. Joseph Hoffmann. I would like to weigh in with my own opinions on this recent exchange. I can only hope that my suggestions will prove useful to the Project and continue to generate the sort of dialog we have seen so far in the community. Although I respect James and Bruce a great deal, I feel some of their advice may be misplaced when one considers the goals of the Jesus Project as a whole. Overall I agree with where they feel the Jesus Project’s focus needs to be. This is a gem from James’ article which I feel was overlooked by the Jesus Seminar and should not be underestimated in the Jesus Project’s investigations:

There is enough work on social history and social anthropology and enough empirical data collected and analyzed to exploit these issues. Areas ripe for exploitation might include: social networks, ethnic interaction, and the origins of gentile inclusion; class-conflicts and the emergence of a new religion; universal monotheism, developments in communication, and the origins of the deification of Jesus; and so on. In each case, the influence of Jesus the individual could be tested.

It is unfortunate that he employed these suggestions in such a limited and narrowed manner (applying these issues specifically to “the influence of Jesus the individual”). They can and should be expanded upon (instead of the “individual Jesus” which implies historicity, for example, these articles should be tested against the character or figure of Jesus, the authors intent, matters of intertextuality, literary composition, and the development of textual-tradition in the Jewish communities and later Christian communities throughout the ANE). I agree with James that these “ripe issues” are often overlooked or misrepresented by historical Jesus scholars. With the exception of a few scholars off the top of my head (Crossan and Mack most prevalent in my mind, but there are perhaps others as well), the Jesus Seminar et al seems to ignore the lack of orthodoxy in Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, instead opting for the dated perspective that Jews had some sort of unified interpretation of who and what the Messiah would be (and ignore the conclusions of the Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins in 1987 onward). The focus of too many studies rest entirely on Jesus’ sayings and deeds, as James rightly points out (but ironically, he is guilty of in his own study when he compares sayings and deeds to Talmudic sayings and deeds). But while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is done in an often backwards manner (the method of voting comes to mind, used by the Jesus Seminar; thankfully voting will not be used by the JP) or where authorial intent is often ignored or taken for granted–sometimes to ridiculous proportions (like N.T. Wright’s perspective that the author of Matthew 27:52 documented honestly that the saints really did rise from the dead and walked around Jerusalem).

I would like to see some of the project dedicated to textual structure, narrative creation, model use, eponymic character creation (often indicated by how their names correspond with their actions in the narrative), and to some extent, liturgy (in the sense that we must challenge long-held presuppositions about Paul’s letters being read aloud to congregations of Christians; likewise the Gospels) and the development of “Christian” as a designation (and what came before); these should be explored without the shackles of commonly-held presumptions. In other words, I feel some portion of the project should ask why the Gospel/Acts/epistle/pastoral authors wrote and who they wrote to. These questions cannot be answered as they have been previously (as Philip Davies would put it, “because it happened” is not an adequate reason).

Other questions should also be considered. Could those who read them be considered “full-knowing readers”? Did the authors intend to have their works read as history or something else? Can it be decided what genres we’re dealing with? It cannot be supposed that the Gospels are Graeco-Roman biographies, as Charles Talbert had suggested, as this has been challenged more recently by several scholars like Mary Ann Tolbert, Michael E. Vines, Thomas L. Thompson and Dennis R. MacDonald (the latter two being a part of the JP). Answering the question of genre (as well as the other questions proposed above) will not only provide for the project a new direction by which to judge the New Testament literature, but will answer some of those “big, big questions” that James talked about. If it is determined that the genre of the Gospel of Mark is Jewish Novel (and not Jewish/Graeco-Roman biography or history) that changes the direction of several perspectives, does it not? As Kurt Noll has discussed in a recent SBL article (Why Does the New Testament Exist?, SBL 2008), textual interpretation can change as rapidly as cultural memes, especially in antiquity. Where a letter may have been written with one purpose in mind, that would not change others from using the letter for another purpose entirely. So it may be that Mark’s intention was lost on the second wave of readers or used in a manner he never intended, much like how Paul’s letters were thrown about and used by different sects of Christianity in the second-third centuries CE. The answer cannot be known without first asking, then investigating the questions.

I also fear that Bruce and James are a bit biased in their desires to incorporate Aramaic scholars into the Project. After all, if you start with the assumption that “Jesus spoke Aramaic” (as both Bruce and James do), there would have to be some urgency to incorporate scholars into the project who can authoritatively speak about it, right? While Aramaic scholars should be included for other reasons, and while I feel they are useful for socio-cultural investigations, what should be apparent to everyone is that the statement “Jesus spoke Aramaic” is precisely what has yet been investigated and is not something we should start off assuming. If it can be shown that Jesus existed historically, in some form, using the specific methodologies this Project is working towards perfecting now, the question of “which language Jesus spoke” will have to be asked. But, it will have to be asked while investigating the socio-cultural world of that particular figure of Jesus. It can not even be suggested that Jesus was a Galilean (another oft-to assumed “fact”) and therefore spoke Aramaic, as this subject has also not been investigated thoroughly (it has only been assumed based on readings from the Gospels alone)–nor can it be investigated until the question of historicity has been established in any detail. Until then, all scholars on the project should be open to the possibility that the answer to the question “did Jesus exist” might make their questions obsolete (including those of mythicists–that statement was not just directed towards historicists). Remembering that fact (i.e. every perspective we now have might be turned on its head) will hopefully generate more interesting, thought-provoking questions that will likewise bring about more thought-provoking studies and one-on-one interactions between participants.

Joe’s More “Gloves-off” Approach to Jesus Project Criticisms

All interested parties should read this article.  It’s the revised version of the article published below.

R. Joseph Hoffmann’s Response to Bruce Chilton

(Original article here) R. Joseph Hoffmann has responded to Bruce Chilton’s article (found at the link below).

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The following comments are not a direct response to Bruce Chilton’s very helpful article on the Jesus Project but in many ways anticipate and respond to some of his observations. I offer it as further commentary on the pros and cons of undertaking yet another “quest,” at a time when New Testament scholarship, in the eyes of some, is a mission without a guiding purpose.

R. Joseph Hoffmann (PhD, Oxford) is Chair of CSER, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and co-Chair (with Robert M. Price and Gerd Luedemann) of The Jesus Project. He is Scholar in Residence (2009) at Goddard College and teaches History at Geneseo College (SUNY).
January 2009

Crouching somewhere between esthetic sound byte and historical detail is Michelangelo’s famous statement about sculpture. “The job of the sculptor,” Vasari attributes to il Divino, ”is to set free the forms that are within the stone.” It’s a lovely thought—poetic, in fact. If you accept the theory of Renaissance Platonism, as Michelangelo embodies it, you also have to believe that “Moses” and “David” were encased in stone, yearning to be released—as the soul yearns to be set free from the flesh in the theology of salvation. You will however be left wondering why such a theory required human models with strong arms and firm thighs, and why the finished product bears no more resemblance to real or imagined historical figures than a drawing that any one of us could produce. We may lack Michelangelo’s skill and his deft way with a rasp and chisel, but we can easily imagine more probable second millennia BC heroes—in form, stature, skin-tone, and body type—than the Italian beauties he released from their marble prisons. In fact, the more we know about the second millennia BC, the more likely we are to be right. And alas, Michelangelo didn’t know very much about history at all. And what’s more, it made no difference to his art, his success, or to his reputation. That is why idealism and imagination are sometimes at odds with history, or put bluntly, why history acts as a control on our ability to imagine or idealize anything, often profoundly wrong things.

If we apply the same logic to the New Testament, we stumble over what I have (once or twice) called the Platonic Fallacy in Jesus research. Like it or not, the New Testament is still the primary artifact of the literature that permits us to understand the origins of Christianity. It’s the stone, if not the only stone. If we possessed only gnostic and apocryphal sources as documentary curiosities and no movement that preserved them, we would be hard-pressed to say anything other than that at some time in the first and second century a short-lived and highly incoherent religious movement fluoresced and faded (many did) in the night sky of Hellenistic antiquity. The Jesus we would know from these sources would be an odd co-mixture of insufferable infant a la the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a hell-robber, like the liberator of the Gospel of Nicodemus, a mysterious cipher, like the unnamed hero of the Hymn of the Pearl, or an impenetrable guru, like the Jesus of the gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Despite the now-yellowed axiom we all learned as first year divinity students of a certain generation and later in graduate school (the one where we are taught that “no picture of early Christianity is complete without availing ourselves of all the sources”), I will climb out on a limb to say that these sources are not so much integral to a coherent picture of early Christianity as they are pebbles in orbit around the gravitational center we call the canon. They are interesting—fascinating even—in showing us how uniformity of opinion and belief can wriggle out of a chaos of alterative visions (maybe the closest analogues are in constitutional history), but they are not the stone that the most familiar form of Christianity was made from. That recognition is as important as it is increasingly irrelevant to modern New Testament discussion.

So, how do we approach the New Testament? What kind of rock is it? We know (to stay with the metaphor) that it’s “metamorphic”—made of bits and pieces formed under pressure—in the case of the New Testament, doctrinal and political pressure to define the difference between majority and minority views and impressions, once but now unfashionably called “orthodoxy” and “heresy.”

Whatever the root-causes of canon-formation, canon we have. The Platonic Fallacy comes into play when New Testament scholarship labors under assumptions that emanated from the literary praxis of Renaissance humanists and then (in methodized form) fueled the theological faculties of Germany well into the twentieth century (before a staggering retreat from “higher criticism” by neo-orthodox, and then existentialist, postmodern, and correctness theologians). The sequence of Jesus-quests that began before Schweitzer (who thought he was writing a retrospective!)—and the succession of theories they produced were honest in their understanding of the metamorphic nature of the canon and the textual complexity of the individual books that composed it. The legacy, at least a legacy of method, of the early quests was a healthy skepticism that sometimes spilled over into Hegelianism, as with F. C. Baur, or mischievous ingenuity, as with Bruno Bauer. But what Left and Right Hegelians and their successors—from Harnack to Bultmann to the most radical of their pupils–had in common was a strong disposition to approach the canon with a chisel, assuming that if the historical accretions, misrepresentations, and conscious embellishment could be stripped away, beneath it all lay the figure of a comprehensible Galilean prophet whose life and message could be used to understand the “essence” (the nineteenth-century buzzword) of Christianity.

Whether the program was demythologizing or structuralist exegesis, the methods seemed to chase forgone conclusions about what the Gospels were and what the protagonist must “really” have been like. Judged by the standards of the chisel-bearers of the Tuebingen school, Schweitzer’s caution that the Jesus of history would remain a mystery (“He comes to us as one unknown…”) was both prophetic and merely an interlude in the effort to excavate the historical Jesus. If it was meant to be dissuasive, it was instead a battle cry for better chisels and more theorists. In the latter part of the twentieth century, it has involved a demand for more sources as well. –Not to mention cycles of translations, each purporting to be “definitive” and thus able to shed light on a historical puzzle that the previous translation did not touch or failed to express. Judas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene have achieved a star-status far out of proportion to anything they can tell us about the historical Jesus, let alone consideration of literary merit or influence on tradition. When I say this, I am not asking modern scholarship to embrace the opinions of “dead orthodox bishops” or “winners,” but to get behind the choices the church’s first intellectuals made and their reasons for making them. The politicization of sources, the uninformative vivisection of historically important theological disputes into a discussion of outcomes (winners, losers) may make great stuff for the Discovery channel or the Easter edition of Time, but it is shamelessly Hollywood and depends on a culture of like-minded footnotes and a troubling disingenuousness with regard to what scholars know to be true and what they claim to be true.

Moreover, it is one of the reasons (I’m loathe to say) why a hundred years after the heyday of the “Radical School” of New Testament scholarship—which certainly had its warts—the questions of “total spuriousness” (as of Paul’s letters) and the “non-historicity of Jesus” are still considered risible or taboo. They are taboo because of the working postulate that has dominated New Testament scholarship for two centuries and more: that conclusions depend on the uncovering of a kernel of truth at the center of a religious movement, a historical center, and, desirably, a historical person resembling, if not in every detail, the protagonist described in the Gospels. This working postulate is formed by scholars perfectly aware that no similar imperative exists to corroborate the existence (or sayings) of the “historical” Adam, the historical Abraham, or Moses, or David—or indeed the prophets—or any equivalent effort to explain the evolution of Judaism on the basis of such inquiry.

The Platonic Fallacy depends on the “true story” being revealed through the disaggregation of traditions: dismantle the canon, factor and multiply the sources of the Gospels, marginalize the orthodox settlement as one among dozens of possible outcomes affecting the growth of the church, incorporate all the materials the church fathers sent to the bin or caused to be hidden away. Now we’re getting somewhere. It shuns the possibility that the aggregation of traditions begins with something historical, but not with a historical individual—which even if it turns out to be false, is a real possibility. Even the most ardent historicists of the twentieth century anticipated a “revelation” available through historical research; thus Harnack could dismiss most of the miracles of the Gospels, argue for absolute freedom of inquiry in gospels-research (a theme Bultmann would take up), insist that “historical knowledge is necessary for every Christian and not just for the historian,” all however in order to winnow “the timeless nucleus of Christianity from its various time bound trappings.”ⁱ

The Jesus Seminar was perhaps the last gasp of the Platonic Fallacy in action. Formed to “get at” the authentic sayings of Jesus, it suffered from the conventional hammer and chisel approach to the sources that has characterized every similar venture since the nineteenth century, missing only the idealistic and theological motives for sweeping up afterward. It will remain famous primarily for its eccentricity, its claim to be a kind of Jesus-vetting jury and to establish through a consensus (never reached) what has evaded lonelier scholarship for centuries.

The Seminar was happy with a miracle-free Jesus, a fictional resurrection, a Jesus whose sayings were as remarkable as “And how are you today, Mrs. Jones?” It used and disused standard forms of biblical criticism selectively and often inexplicably to offer readers a “Jesus they never knew,” a Galilean peasant, a cynic, a de-eschatologized prophet, a craftsman whose dad was a day-laborer in nearby Sepphoris (never mind the Nazareth issue, or the Joseph issue). These purportedly “historical” Jesuses were meant to be more plausible than the Jesus whose DNA lived on in the fantasies of Dan Brown and Nikos Kazantzakis. But, in fact, they began to blur. It betimes took sources too literally and not literally enough, and when it became clear that the star system it evoked was resulting in something like a Catherine Wheel rather than a conclusion, it changed the subject. As long ago as 1993, it became clear that the Jesus Seminar was yet another attempt to break open the tomb where once Jesus lay (I’m reminded of a student’s gospel paraphrase of Luke 24.5, with 24.42 in view) to find a note that read “Gone Fishing,” in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. It was then that I commented in a popular journal that “The Jesus of the Westar Project is a talking doll with a questionable repertoire of thirty-one sayings. Pull a string and he blesses the poor.” I was anticipated in this by none other than John Dominic Crossan (a Seminar founder) who wrote in 1991, having produced his own minority opinion concerning Jesus, “It seems we can have as many Jesuses as there are exegetes . . . exhibiting a stunning diversity that is an academic embarrassment.” And Crossan’s caveat had been expressed more trenchantly a hundred years before by the German scholar Martin Kaehler: “The entire life of the Jesus movement,” he argued, was based on misperceptions “and is bound to end in a blind alley . . . Christian faith and the history of Jesus repel each other like oil and water.”ⁱⁱ

If we add these to the work of the Jesus Seminar, the “extra-Seminar Jesuses,” magicians, insurgents, bandits, we end up with a multiplicity that “makes the prospect that Jesus never existed a welcome relief.”¹

Bruce Chilton is one of a number of scholars who comes away from the Jesus Seminar sadder but wiser and hopes that the Jesus Project will not be another stuttering attempt to break rocks and piece them back together to create plausible Jesuses, as Michelangelo created a plausible Moses for the Italians of the sixteenth century. His challenge to the Project is fair enough. In fact, one of the benefits we inherit from the Seminar is a record of success and failure. It raised the question of methodology in a way that can no longer be ignored, without however providing a map for further study. Its legacy is primarily a cautionary tale concerning the limits of “doing” history collectively, and sometimes theologically, and the Jesus Project must take this seriously.

Let me add to this commentary a special concern as I watch the Project unfold. Jesus-research—biblical research in general—through the end of the twentieth century was exciting stuff. The death of one of the great Albright students last year, and a former boss of mine at the University of Michigan, David Noel Freedman, reminds us that we may be at the end of the road. Albright’s careful scholarship and research, and his general refusal to shy away from the “results” of archaeology, were accompanied by a certain optimism in terms of how archaeology could be used to “prove” the Bible. In its general outline, the Bible was true; there was no reason (for example) to doubt the essential biographical details of the story of Abraham in Genesis. Albright’s pupils were less confident of the biblical record and as William Dever observed in a classic 1995 article in The Biblical Archaeologist, “His central theses have all been overturned, partly by further advances in Biblical criticism, but mostly by the continuing archaeological research of younger Americans and Israelis to whom he himself gave encouragement and momentum…The irony is that, in the long run, it will have been the newer “secular” archaeology that contributed the most to Biblical studies, not “Biblical archaeology.”² New Testament archaeology is a different house, built with different stones. To be perfectly fair, the biblical appendix lacks the geographical markers and vivid information that suffuse the Hebrew Bible. If the Old Testament landscape is real geography populated by mythical heroes, the New Testament trends in the opposite direction. For that reason, New Testament scholars in my opinion have tried to develop an ersatz-“archaeology of sources” to match the more impressive gains in Old Testament studies.

The reasons for the “new sources” trend in New Testament research are multiple, but the one I fear the most is Jesus- fatigue. There is a sense that prior to 1980 New Testament scholarship was stuck in the mire of post-Bultmannian ennui. Jesus Seminars and Jesus Projects have been in part a response to a particular historical situation. Five gospels are better than four. The more sources we have the more we know about Jesus. Q (a) did exist, (b) did not exist, or (c) is far more layered and interesting than used to be thought. Judas was actually the primary apostle. No, it was Mary Magdalene.

When we considered developing the Jesus Project, it was not out of any malignant attempt to “prove” that Jesus did not exist. (The press releases have done an immeasurable disservice by harping on this as the agenda). As a Christian origins scholar by training, I am not even sure how one would go about such a task, or be taken seriously if it were undertaken. Yet the possibility that Christianity arose from causes that have little to do with a historical founder is one among many other questions the Project should take seriously. Inevitably, scholars and critics (if not always the same people) will ask, And just how do you go about doing that?, and neither the answer “Differently” or “Better” will suffice. The demon crouching at the door, however, is not criticism of its intent nor skepticism about its outcome, but the sense that biblical scholarship in the twentieth century will not be greeted with the same excitement as it was in Albright’s day. Outside America, where the landscape is also changing, fewer people have any interest in the outcomes of biblical research, whether it involves Jericho or Jesus. The secularization of world culture, which will eventually reach even into the Muslim heartlands, encourages us to value what matters here and now. As one of our members, Arthur Droge (Toronto) mentioned at the recent meeting of the Project in Amherst, NY, most of us were trained in a generation ”that believed certain questions were inherently interesting.” But fewer and fewer people do. Jesus-fatigue—the sort of despair that can only be compared to a police investigation gone cold—is the result of a certain resignation to the unimportance of historical conclusions.

Reaching for the stars and reaching back into history have in common the fact that their objects are distant and sometimes unimaginably hard to see. What I personally hope the Project will achieve is to eschew breaking rocks, and instead learning to train our lens in the right direction. Part of that process is to respond to Droge’s challenge: Why is this important? And I have the sense that in trying to answer that question, we will be answering bigger questions as well.

Notes:

1 Hoffmann, Introduction to G A Wells, The Jesus Legend (Open Court, 1996), xi.

2 William Dever, “What Remains of the House that Albright Built?” The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), 464.

i What is Christianity? Translated by Thomas Bailey Sanders. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986, p. 191.

ii http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&;page=hoffmann_27_3

Resources for Metaphysical Naturalism

Richard Carrier has a great page for articles on, concerning, or in defense of metaphysical naturalism.  It can be found here.

The Quest of the Mythical Jesus

This article can be found here.  It’s a great, personal story of how Bob went from historicist to mythicist.   Enjoy.

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The Quest of the Mythical Jesus

Robert M. Price

When, long ago, I first learned that some theorized that Jesus had never existed as an historical figure, I dismissed the notion as mere crankism, as most still do. Indeed, Rudolf Bultmann, supposedly the arch-skeptic, quipped that no sane person could doubt that Jesus existed (though he himself came surprisingly close to the same opinion, as did Paul Tillich). For a number of years I held a more or less Bultmannian estimate of the historical Jesus as a prophet heralding the arrival of the eschatological Kingdom of God, an end to which his parables, faith healings and exorcisms were directed. Jesus had, I thought, predicted the coming of the Son of Man, an angelic figure who should raise the dead and judge mankind. When his cleansing of the temple invited the unforgiving ire of the Sadducee establishment, in cahoots with the Romans, he sealed his own doom. He died by crucifixion, and a few days later his disciples began experiencing visions of him raised from the dead. They concluded that he himself was now to be considered the Son of Man, and they expected his messianic advent in the near future.

From this eminently reasonable position (its cogency reinforced by the postmortem unfolding of the messiahship of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson) I eventually found myself gravitating to that crazy view, that Jesus hadn’t existed, that he was mythic all the way down, like Hercules. I do not hold it as a dogma. I do not prefer that it be true. It is just that the evidence now seems to me to point that way. The burden of proof would seem to belong with those who believe there was an historical man named Jesus. I fully admit and remind the reader that all historical hypotheses are provisional and tentative. This one certainly is. And yet I do favor it. Why?

I remember first encountering the notion that the Jesus saga was formally similar to the Mediterranean dying and rising god myths of saviors including Attis, Adonis, Tammuz/Dumuzi, Dionysus, Osiris, and Baal. I felt almost at once that the jig was up. I could not explain away those parallels, parallels that went right to the heart of the thing. I felt momentary respite when I read the false reassurances of Bruce M. Metzger (may this great man rest in peace), J.N.D. Anderson, Edwin Yamauchi (may I someday gain a tenth of his knowledge!), and others that these parallels were false or that they were later in origin, perhaps even borrowed by the pagans from Christianity. But it did not take long to discover the spurious nature of such apologetical special pleading. There was ample and early pre-Christian evidence for the dying and rising gods. The parallels were very close. And it was simply not true that no one ever held that, like Jesus, these saviors had been historical figures. And if the ancient apologists had not known that the pagan parallels were pre-Christian, why on earth would they have mounted a suicidal argument that Satan counterfeited the real dying and rising god ahead of time. That is like the fundamentalists of the 19th century arguing desperately that God created fossils of dinosaurs that had never existed.

And, yet, all of this scarcely proved that Jesus had not existed at all. Bultmann freely admitted that such myths clothed and shaped the form of resurrection belief among the early Christians, but he felt there had actually been certain Easter morning experiences, visions that might have given rise to a different explanation in a different age. I now think Bultmann’s argument runs afoul of Ockham’s Razor, since it posits redundant explanations. If you recognize the recurrence of the pagan savior myth in the Christian proclamation, then no need remains to suggest an initial “Big Bang” (Burton L. Mack) of an Easter Morning Experience of the First Disciples.

G.A. Wells, like his predecessors advocating the Christ Myth theory, discounted the gospel story of an historical Jesus, an itinerant teacher and miracle worker, on the grounds of its seeming absence from the Epistle literature, earlier than the gospels, implying that there was no Jesus tradition floating around in either oral or written form at the time Paul and Peter were writing letters. All they referred to was a supernatural Son of God who descended from heaven to vanquish the evil angels ruling the world, then returned heavenward to reign in divine glory till his second advent. Had Paul known of the teaching of Jesus, why did he not quote it when it would have settled this and that controversial question (e.g., paying Roman taxes, celibacy for the Kingdom, congregational discipline)? Why does he seem to refer to occasional “commands of the Lord” in a manner so vague as to suggest charismatic revelations to himself? Why does he never mention Jesus having healed the sick or done miracles? How can he say the Roman Empire never punishes the righteous, only the wicked?

This is a weighty argument, but another makes it almost superfluous. Take the gospel Jesus story as a whole, whether earlier or later than the Jesus story of the Epistles; it is part and parcel of the Mythic Hero Archetype shared by cultures and religions worldwide and throughout history (Lord Raglan and then, later, Alan Dundes showed this in great detail.). Leave the gospel story on the table, then. You still do not have any truly historical data. There is no “secular” biographical information about Jesus. Even the seeming “facts” irrelevant to faith dissolve upon scrutiny. Did he live in Nazareth? Or was that a tendentious reinterpretation of the earlier notion he had been thought a member of the Nazorean sect? Did he work some years as a carpenter? Or does that story not rather reflect the crowd’s pegging him as an expert in scripture, a la the Rabbinic proverb, “Not even a carpenter, or a carpenter’s son could solve this one!”? Was his father named Joseph, or is that an historicization of his earlier designation as the Galilean Messiah, Messiah ben Joseph? On and on it goes, and when we are done, there is nothing left of Jesus that does not appear to serve all too clearly the interests of faith, the faith even of rival, hence contradictory, factions among the early Christians.

I admit that a historical hero might attract to himself the standard flattering legends and myths to the extent that the original lines of the figure could no longer be discerned. He may have lived nonetheless. Can we tell the difference between such cases and others where we can still discern at least some historical core? Apollonius of Tyana, itinerant Neo-Pythagorean contemporary of Jesus (with whom the ancients often compare him) is one such. He, too, seems entirely cut from the cloth of the fabulous. His story, too, conforms exactly to the Mythic Hero Archetype. To a lesser extent, so does Caesar Augustus, of whom miracles were told. The difference is that Jesus has left no footprint on profane history as these others managed to do. The famous texts of Josephus and Tacitus, even if genuine, amount merely to references to the preaching of contemporary Christians, not reporting about Jesus as a contemporary. We still have documentation from people who claimed to have met Apollonius, Peregrinus, and, of course, Augustus. It might be that Jesus was just as historical as these other remarkable individuals, and that it was mere chance that no contemporary documentation referring to him survives. But we cannot assume the truth of that for which we have no evidence.

A paragraph back, I referred to the central axiom of form criticism: that nothing would have been passed down in the tradition unless it was useful to prove some point, to provide some precedent. I am sorry to say that this axiom cancels out another, the Criterion of Dissimilarity: the closer a Jesus-saying seems to match the practice or teaching of the early Church, the greater likelihood that it stems from the latter and has been placed fictively into the speech or life of Jesus merely to secure its authority. Put the two principles together and observe how one consumes the other without remainder: all pericopae of the Jesus tradition owe their survival to the fact that they were useful. On the assumption that Christians saw some usefulness to them, we can posit a Sitz-im-Leben Kirche for each one. And that means it is redundant to posit a pre-Christian Sitz-im-Leben Jesu context. None of it need go back to Jesus.

Additionally, we can demonstrate that every hortatory saying is so closely paralleled in contemporary Rabbinic or Hellenistic lore that there is no particular reason to be sure this or that saying originated with Jesus. Such words commonly passed from one famous name to another, especially in Jewish circles, as Jacob Neusner has shown. Jesus might have said it, sure, but then he was just one more voice in the general choir. Is that what we want to know about him? And, as Bultmann observed, who remembers the great man quoting somebody else?

Another shocker: it hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized, after studying much previous research on the question, that virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material from the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides’ Bacchae, and Josephus. One need not be David Hume to see that, if a story tells us a man multiplied food to feed a multitude, it is inherently much more likely that the story is a rewrite of an older miracle tale (starring Elisha) than that it is a report of a real event. A literary origin is always to be preferred to an historical one in such a case. And that is the choice we have to make in virtually every case of New Testament narrative. I refer the interested reader to my essay “New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash,” in Jacob Neusner and Alan Avery-Peck, eds., Encyclopedia of Midrash. Of course I am dependent here upon many fine works by Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan, and others. None of them went as far as I am going. It is just that as I counted up the gospel stories I felt each scholar had convincingly traced back to a previous literary prototype, it dawned on me that there was virtually nothing left. None tried to argue for the fictive character of the whole tradition, and each offered some cases I found arbitrary and implausible. Still, their work, when combined, militated toward a wholly fictive Jesus story.

It is not as if I believe there is no strong argument for an historical Jesus. There is one: one can very plausibly read certain texts in Acts, Mark, and Galatians as fossils preserving the memory of a succession struggle following the death of Jesus, who, therefore, must have existed. Who should follow Jesus as his vicar on earth? His disciples (analogous to the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, who provided the first three caliphs)? Or should it be the Pillars, his own relatives (the Shi’ite Muslims called Muhammad’s kinsmen the Pillars, too, and supported their dynastic claims). One can trace the same struggles in the Baha’i Faith after the death of the Bab (Mirza Ali Muhammad): who should rule, his brother Subh-i-Azal, or his disciple Hussein Ali, Baha’Ullah? Who should follow the Prophet Joseph Smith? His disciples, or his son, Joseph, Jr.? When the Honorable Elijah Muhammad died, Black Muslims split and followed either his son and heir Wareeth Deen Muhammad or his former lieutenant Louis Farrakhan. In the New Testament, as Harnack and Stauffer argued, we seem to see the remains of a Caliphate of James. And that implies (though it does not prove) an historical Jesus.

And it implies an historical Jesus of a particular type. It implies a Jesus who was a latter-day Judah Maccabee, with a group of brothers who could take up the banner when their eldest brother, killed in battle, perforce let it fall. S.G.F. Brandon made a very compelling case for the original revolutionary character of Jesus, subsequently sanitized and made politically harmless by Mark the evangelist. Judging by the skirt-clutching outrage of subsequent scholars, Mark’s apologetical efforts to depoliticize the Jesus story have their own successors. Brandon’s work is a genuine piece of the classic Higher Criticism of the gospels, with the same depth of reason and argumentation. If there was an historical Jesus, my vote is for Brandon’s version.

But I must point out that there is another way to read the evidence for the Zealot Jesus hypothesis. As Burton Mack has suggested, the political element in the Passion seems likely to represent an anachronistic confusion by Mark with the events leading to the fall of Jerusalem. When the Olivet Discourse warns its readers not to take any of a number of false messiahs and Zealot agitators for their own Jesus, does this not imply Christians were receiving the news of Theudas or Jesus ben Ananias or John of Gischala as news of Jesus’ return? You don’t tell people not to do what they’re already not doing. If they were making such confusions, it would be inevitable that the events attached to them would find their way back into the telling of the Jesus story. It looks like this very thing happened. One notices how closely the interrogation and flogging of Jesus ben-Ananias, in trouble for predicting the destruction of the temple, parallels that of Jesus, ostensibly 40 years previously. We notice how Simon bar Gioras was welcomed into the temple with palm branches to cleanse the sacred precinct from the “thieves” who infested it, Zealots under John of Gischala. Uh-oh. Suppose these signs of historical-political verisimilitude are interlopers in the gospels from the following generation. The evidence for the Zealot Jesus evaporates.

I have not tried to amass every argument I could think of to destroy the historicity of Jesus. Rather, I have summarized the series of realizations about methodology and evidence that eventually led me to embrace the Christ Myth Theory. There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth. At least that’s the current state of the evidence as I see it.

Inerrancy and Mythicism: My Turn

James McGrath published a recent article on mythicism after I sent him over a link to a radio interview with Richard Carrier.  James makes some very good points and also some not-so-good points (but its okay, he’s still new at thinking like a “mythicist”).  So instead of doing what I normally do (write a ten page, highly detailed article with endnotes and citations), I’ll repost his statements and add my thoughts which, I hope, will produce a very good discussion (I’m in great need of a good discussion after another recent debacle).

There is an interesting parallel between the situation of those arguing for the inerrancy of the Bible and that of “mythicists”, i.e. those who argue that Jesus was originally thought of as a heavenly figure, one who was later then turned into an allegedly historical figure. The case for inerrancy has to be able to demonstrate that every single factual claim made in the Bible is without error. The case for errancy, by contrast, has only to demonstrate conclusively that there is a single error.  The situation for mythicists is similar. They must show that all the stories about, sayings attributed to and evidence about Jesus is best explained in terms of his never having existed as a historical figure. The historicist, on the other hand, only has to show decisively that one event in the life of Jesus makes best sense if Jesus was in fact a historical figure, and that makes the case for there having been such a figure more probable.

This is 100% accurate.  I have the burden of proof to some degree and, as James describes it here, he is correct.  However, there is something missing from James’ critique.   It does not just require the mythicist to explain the sayings and events of Jesus from the Gospels, and Paul’s statements in the Epistles, as something other than historical (because historicists still have some part of the burden of proof on them, i.e. they must show that the Gospels are not, in some fashion, similar to Plutarch’s biography of Romulus).  Both historicists and mythicists have the burden of proof in this area (as there is insufficient data to establish, with any certainty, historicity or ahistoricity).  The mythicist, however, must show that the interpretations of the sayings and events of Jesus, Paul, et al, are inferior; conversely, the mythicist must also show how their interpretations of the data are superior.  Additionally, the mythicist must show where the historicist might have overlooked or taken for granted additional, related materials.  (These last few methods swing both ways)

While I have accepted the burden of proof, I have also met this burden (to a large degree).  The question is, when will historicists (like James McGrath) take it upon themselves to show how my arguments for mythicism are inadequate, lacking, or inferior?  It is one thing to continue to repeat an opinion (for example, James, et al, can say how unpersuaded they are by the arguments all they’d like), it is another thing entirely to show in what manner you were unpersuaded, and offer alternative reasons that refute or expose the arguments of mythicists (like me).

Richard Carrier’s example (used in the podcast below) of the guards at the tomb in Matthew is a case in point – that story is clearly a creation by Matthew, or someone between the time Mark wrote and the time in which Matthew was composed. It is patently unhistorical, but that doesn’t show it to be an unhistorical narrative about the burial of a mythical figure.

James is right again.  But as he even said, it is just *one example* that Carrier used.  Carrier used another example (and remember, Richard even points out that it would be impossible in a show clip to explain his position to its entirety, or to give all the examples required to produce a study or monograph) of the Bar’abbas scene related to Leviticus.  I have made cases against the crucifixion and Gethsemane, and the sayings on divorce.  Although these last few are also not comprehensive (they cannot be; after all, this is a blog and I am still working on my monograph–and Richard is writing a monograph on this subject as well), they do offer a sufficient-enough interpretation that it meets (albeit wth minimal standards as, once again, it is just a blog post at the moment) the burden of proof required from my position.  Thus, the burden has shifted back to the historicist.

There is an additional problem as well.  Assuming the Jesus Seminar is right, very little can be said to be “probably authentic” historically (remember that the Jesus Seminar went in assuming historicity).  That already leaves the majority of the Gospels, Paul, etc…fictional or legendary (opposite: historical).  Other studies that have been done more recently (Dennis MacDonald’s work, for example) exclude everything in the Gospels (entirely) as historical.  I would even remind James that as I have shown in my article here, no two scholars can sit down and agree on even five things that are historical from the Gospels or the Epistles.  Opinions in this area are too far strung, and James is overstating his position by suggesting what he has in this particular manner.  The job of the mythicist is mostly reduced (thanks to the work of historicists).  Although it should still be done, the fact that the vast majority of scripture, New Testament Gospel or Epistle, is already accepted (whether fully or in part) as fictional, the little left behind is all the mythicist really needs to expose.  The job, in other words, is already done.  To put it bluntly, the historicists have just done a very half-assed job of it.  It is left to the mythicist, in this case, to clean up the crumbs that were brushed to the floor.

Carrier (a mythicist) has some wise advice for mythicists on how to make the case for mythicism. I don’t find his viewpoint persuasive, but it deserves to be heard and considered seriously in a way that some pseudo-historical claims, popular among so-called skeptics prone to engaging in parallelomania, do not (HT Tom Verenna).

(Just curious what “HT” means in context with the statement and my name)

But I find it problematic when Carrier claims that the Romans must have known that Jesus did not exist, since otherwise they would have rounded up the followers of Jesus.  Why do Roman sources (Tacitus or the letters of Pliny) not mention that this movement is seeking to historicize a mythical figure? How is it that, in all the history of Roman opposition to Christianity, the non-existence of Jesus never gets a mention?

Why don’t Roman sources (the many we have on Orpheus and Dionysus) discuss how the Orphites and Dionysiacs are historicizing fictional characters?  I think the answer is not that far off.  But also, these sources (Pliny and Tacitus in particular) both show disdain and apathy towards Christians and their “superstitions” (a word shared by Tacitus and Pliny alike).  Tacitus was so put-off by Jewish cults and religious history that he recited rumor concerning their exodus in his Histories instead of even consulting Jewish literature on the subject or examining the claims made by the rumor proveyors.  Pliny (as Carrier rightly points out, one of the more influential characters of the Roman state at that time, holding many high positions) was completely unaware of Christians prior to his torturing of a few of them (and seems to only have recieved his information from them upon torturing them).  It wasn’t as if Pliny had known of Christians prior to this event (in fact, it appears to be quite the opposite) and what he does know, he seems to not to care much about.  (Once more, he likens Jesus to a God and never once refers to Jesus as a human, in past tense or otherwise–this is interesting).

Paul himself claims that Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh, and there is a reasonable likelihood that Paul may indeed have been executed by the Romans.

This claim is handled here.  (By the way, James, I have linked you to this article five times now over the course of our friendship!)

Richard Carrier on ‘How Not to Argue the Mythicist Position’

This is quite a good explanation for the differences between actual, serious scholars who accept the Mythicist position compared to uncritical, shoddy research by the likes of Graves, Gandy and Freke, and more recently the Zeitgeist Movie.  I recommend everyone, both detractors of Mythicism and those who are persuaded by it, listen to this interview.  It is a great show.  Feel free to ask any questions you feel are not adequately answered by Richard and I’d be happy to offer my own interpretation of the data.

http://odeo.com/episodes/7840813-Richard-Carrier-How-Not-to-Argue-The-Mythicist-Position

Some things that are covered: James’ mention in Paul and Josephus, Mary the mother of Jesus, poor research and shoddy publications of nonscholars and nonhistorians who have published books over the past few years on the Mythicist position, the Testimonium in Josephus, Origin’s parallels philologically to the James’ passage in Josephus, the genre of the Gospels…and much more!

Burning the Mona Lisa: Biblical Literalism and Biblical Nihilism

Equilibrium is a movie based in an alternate reality, where World War 3 claimed the lived of billions, leaving those to survive to question the necessity of emotion. A police force was instituted called the Tetragrammaton, of which the Grammaton Cleric is of the highest rank of the order. Their purpose is to enforce the dosing of a drug called Prozium, which closes off the stimuli in our brains to produce feelings, emotion, sensation. Those who go off the dose, the rebels–known as ’sense offenders’–who are caught are brought to a detention center and are later incinerated for their ‘crimes. ‘ The ultimate fear is that sensations lead to jealousy, hate, fear, war, violence, prejudice, and more. For those who wish to see the movie, I highly recommend it. (It’s a great movie, all around)

At the beginning of the movie, the protagonist John Preston (a senior Cleric, master of the gun kata) is at first the antagonist. He is in charge of hunting down sense offenders in the region outside the city walls and disposing of sense-materials (things that induce feelings like paintings, music, colorful objects, decorative furnishings, etc…). He raids a warehouse full of rebels, a gun fight ensues, and after the rebels are wiped out (in a fantastic action sequence) Preston locates the sense-materials. In very iconic imagery, a boarded up hiding place under a rug yields the Mona Lisa, smiling smugly at the cleric, moments before Preston has the famous painting and everything else burned into oblivion. Watching through the flames is Preston’s partner, a sense-offender unbeknownst to Preston at the moment (but which is made clear early on, so no spoiler here).

There are religious and nonreligious themes that run rampant through the film. But the underlining theme is very apparent; extremes lead to bad things. On the one hand, to be completely taken over by emotions can lead to horrible atrocities. On the other, completely ignoring them can lead to atrocities as well (although, the point of the film is that in giving up our emotions we sacrifice another part of ourselves that goes beyond murder; we sacrifice our individuality, our uniqueness, our culture). In light of James McGrath’s few posts on Biblical literalism (and in light of a new book project on it by him), I felt it was time to add the perspective of a metaphysical naturalist on biblical literalism, but also on the opposing perspective–the polar opposite of biblical literalism–of “biblical nihilism.”

At first, allow me to define briefly what it is I mean by both Biblical Literalism and Biblical Nihilism, as both can be construed differently depending on one’s personal ontological or epistemological perspectives. In my understanding, Biblical Literalism is akin to hermeneutics. In accordance with hermeneutics, the idea of inerrancy is allowed to persevere as a legitimate hypothesis and interpretation. On the other hand, Biblical Nihilism is the opinion that the Bible is worthless, unnecessary (even for study), and irrelevant.

Biblical Literalism has led to, among other things, horrible atrocities to be committed upon mankind. Consider just for a minute the reality of the following statements (taken from here):

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” — Hon. Leon Bazile, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 3 (1967)

“The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” — Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bradley, Bradwell v. State, 83 U.S. 130, 141 (1873)

“The slave-trade is perfectly consonant to …Christian Law, as delineated to us in the Sacred Writings of the Word of God” — Rev. Raymund Harris, Scriptural researches on the licitness of the slave-trade, shewing its conformity with the principles of natural and revealed religion, delineated in the sacred writings of the word of God (1788)

Inerrancy and literalism have also spawned violent hate crimes justified by interpretations of the Bible, often by zealots, religious fundamentalists, or maniacs. In current news, with Gaza, Israel’s continued dependence on Genesis 13:14-15, 17:8 (as well as the false perspective that they were there “first”; also that they deserve the land because they had a historical kingdom there even though such perspectives run counter to archaeological evidence) led not only to continued support by our government (ignorantly) but has allowed fighting in the Middle East between Jews and others to persist there for millennia. Interpreting Leviticus 21-25 led many slave owners in America to feel justified in mutilating African Americans, breaking up families, beating some near death (and even to death). Readings of Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:27, Deuteronomy 18:10-12, 1 Chronicles 10:13-14, Micah 5:11-12, and Galatians 5:20-21 have led to countless innocent women being burned for being falsely accused of as witches (as if one can really preform “witchcraft” successfully anyway). 2 Samuel 13:1-21 has allowed some men to rape women without fear of God’s wrath. The list goes on.

In many ways, it is this literalism which has caused many apostates to not only fear interpretations of the Bible, but to flat our demonize the book itself. While some may say that this is justified (perhaps in some way it is), I find that there is an extremism to this that is disgusting and needs to be addressed. There are, after all, some atheists who want to see the Bible taken off book shelves and destroyed. I find this to be akin to the imagery associated above with the destruction of the Mona Lisa. And with this statement I need to clarify a few things.

First and foremost, I do not think the Bible is the inspired word of God. It isn’t even “one” book in the sense that it is a collection of books. These books were chosen with intent by men who willfully discarded other religious Christian and Jewish texts. The authors themselves probably did not think of themselves as writing fact, history, the word of God, or otherwise (seeing as they were creating their narratives by modeling off earlier, already available literature). So my reservation about the Bible’s importance does not lie in any spiritual, religious reason. I have no interest in trying to prove the Bible so I have no apologetic agenda. As I have made it clear, I am not a Christian (I’m not even a theist). But my reasons are also not purely academic, either.

There are some who say the Bible is not just literature, but poor literature. “It may be fiction,” some skeptics will say, “but it is poorly written fiction.” But I do not think that, even if this were true (I don’t believe it is), this should warrant its destruction or censorship. I personally think that Charles Dickens’ literary works are terrible but I would never accept the proposition that because I think it sucks, his entire collected works should be destroyed. One might suggest that Charles Dickens’ works never caused anybody to interpret them in a manner that would cause others pain and suffering, but literature (and history) are not short on such examples. Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey caused Greeks (and later Romans) in some extent to view nonGreeks in a particular way allowed for them to treat nonGreeks as uncivilized or illiterate barbarians. Romans, who claimed to be the heirs of Trojans who escaped the Greeks destruction of their homeland, conquered Greece as if they were avenging their ancestors (and liberating Troy from the Greeks in the process). These are just a few of the instances where classical literature, particularly that literature concerned with religious matters of any kind,has caused harm to other individuals. But I don’t hear cries from anybody to burn the epic poems of Homer. Nobody is suggested that Virgil’s Aeneid be censored and removed from bookshelves.

From an academic perspective, all ancient literature (whether one finds it boring or are simply disinterested) helps scholars develop an understanding, the overall picture, of history. That is not to suggest the Bible represents actual history (it doesn’t), nor does it suggest that the intentions of the authors were to write histories (they probably weren’t) but what it does suggest is that the Bible represents a part of history. As unfortunate as it is, people will abuse anything (including the Bible) in order to achieve control over others, do harm to others; but the Bible has (albeit indirectly, as many Christians have never read even a page of the Bible) also inspired some to be generous and kind (yet, still, they sometimes do so with ulterior motives like pleasing God to make it into heaven or fear of hell). It must always be remembered that the Bible has no mystical power over man. It cannot conjure up demons or send them away. It cannot inspire peace or incite war. The Bible is only a collection of books, which are collections of pages that contain words made up letters. The Bible is no different than any other piece of literature, ancient or otherwise. That also means the Bible has no sense of morality (it’s an inanimate object, after all) and cannot force the reader to do anything. People choose to do what they want and the Bible is a rather convenient excuse to do those things. Just as Aryan Nation advocates and white supremacists use Mein Kampf as an excuse to behave the way they do. While it was written by a genocidal maniac, the book has no power over anybody.

What is true, and something that should be taken quite seriously, is the influence of the written word. A story, regardless of its intentions or origins, can be persuasive. Persuasive stories can be compelling enough for a person to take them too seriously. This is, it seems, what happens more often than naught. Words do not have power, but it is how we interpret those words that give power to meaning. And meaning is based on our own life experiences. This is why Christian fanaticism and fundamentalism is tied into ideas of biblical inerrancy. It is also why hatred stems from literalists and inerrantists. Life experiences have taught them to fear, hate, demonize, and it has taught them that these attributes reflect love (at the very least, they reflect love in the eyes of God because they are doing what God wills from their readings of the Bible).

What this means is that, as a society, destroying literature or censoring it is not the answer. Instead, parents and communities should constantly be reminded of their responsibility to teach their children the right way to think, not what to think.  Instead of indoctrinating your children to be robotic imitations of yourselves, teach them to think for themselves. The ability to think for themselves will free them from being narrow-minded thinkers, allowing them to question their actions, interpretations, and agendas. Those who are most fundamentally-minded are often those who were raised to think in strict, narrow patterns. This is a serious problem and one that instigates literalism in all religions (and even politics) to the point of fanaticism (which spawns wars, violence, genocides, prejudices, etc…).

Another solution that must be taken into consideration is how influential scholarship must be on politics and government. To clarify, this means that scholars need to take more of a stance against fundamentalism in government and politics. Take the current situation in Gaza as an example. The modern day Israelites have no God-given right to that land; there is no archaeological “right” to that land. The Jews of antiquity did not have some grand empire that gave them rights to Gaza, Jordan, etc… It most certainly does not give them rights to commit acts of war against others. Scholars need to be able to stand up and correct public officials, need to stand up and say “wait a minute, if you want to claim that they have a God given right to the land, you need to back up your claims first before we allow you to stand behind what they are doing.” Scholars have a moral obligation to demand that our politicians, apologists, and religious leaders back up their claims over this region with evidence that actually contains some high standard of verisimilitude. If Bush wants to make the claim that God gave the Israelites that land thousands of years ago, he’ll just have to provide the archaeological and epistemological evidence to back it up. And if he cannot, it is up to us to call him, and others, on their ignorance.

I also think that scholars should let go some of their resignations and soap boxes. Elitism is fine… in moderation. The public is important too. Far too often, there are those scholars who never publish a book through a public press. This is a problem. Aside from the fact that most Americans don’t read the Bible (or anything), for those who do decide to read they will only find apologetic material available. Actual scholarly interpretations of religious literature are hard to find, leaving those fanatics to believe that the book they have by Josh McDowell or Luke Timothy Johnson represents actual scholarship (or worse! They may assume NT Wright represents the views of actual critical scholarship)! Having scholarly materials and interpretations, data, and reading resources available to the layman are crucial in stemming Biblical literalism and inerrancy. Biblical nihilism is also made more prevalent when skeptics can only find apologetic interpretations of the Bible–is it any wonder why so many atheists find the Bible irrelevant when they aren’t given adequate reasons to think otherwise? If no sound, rational arguments exist outside of scholarship, where books range into the hundreds of dollars, how is the common woman or man able to afford to educate themselves outide of going to college for it (and not everyone has the temperament for such a career)?

In conclusion, literalism and nihilism are both problematic and represent extreme (although not necessarily fundamental) perspectives. Both of these perpsectives can lead to sour consequences. On the one hand, the subjugation of others is justified and in the other the subjugation of history is justified. The good news is that there are ways (and the means) to correct these perspectives, and in doing so create a brighter, more enlightened world. But it is up to those who are reading this to make that difference. Do we go the way of the Tetragrammaton, or the way of the 3rd World War, or do we take the position of the resistance?