Freethought Nation

We know the creationist camps all too well. The mythicist camps too. I think Erman would find himself hard pressed trying to refute something like Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God nor Man." More so than he may think going into it...

Earl Doherty participates in the FreeRatio.org forum to argue for his theory. His arguments seem intimidating to those who don't know the subject well, but I think his arguments boil down to creative interpretations of the evidence, making plentiful use of speculation of metaphor whenever evidence may otherwise seem to contradict the theory. That is one way to justify an improbable theory of Christianity's origins. Some theorists rely on speculations of scribal interpolations to make their case, meaning that the copies we have today don't actually contain the original texts but corruptions of it. Doherty has bragged that he does not depend on speculations of interpolations, but he does rely very much on seemingly-bizarre metaphorical interpretations of the ancient texts that you can not possibly see on the face. Using either method, you can make the historical texts say just about anything, and I don't think Doherty's approach is something Ehrman hasn't seen time and again, because such is the way fringe arguments are always made to satisfy niche audiences, and that has been normal for hundreds of years. An online friend of mine, GakuseiDon, also clashed with Earl Doherty many times, and his criticisms are much more detailed and thorough. He wrote full reviews of Earl Doherty's books, including Jesus: Neither God nor Man, here:

ApostateAbe, your post here is junk. If GakuseiDon is a friend of yours I have no respect for you after seeing his endless trolling slander towards Murdock. Your slander towards Earl Doherty in this post is on the verge of legally actionable. Whats with the "seemingly-bizarre metaphorical interpretations"? You sound like a fundamentalist Jesus freak.

A big reason that I prefer the model of Jesus as a doomsday cult leader is that I don't need to read the New Testament any less literally than the fundamentalist Christians.

Ok, so you're an evemerist then. The problem that I've found with evemerism (I've gone from believer, to evemerist, to mythicist) is that both the believer and the evemerist depend on faith based conclusions. You have to accept on faith that such a person as Jesus Christ as described in the NT ever existed in the early first century at all. He may have. But it's entirely unprovable at this point in time. To stay entirely honest, I think it's best to set out skeptical of the historical claim until proven otherwise. If proven otherwise then so be it.

If Erman the evemerist is claiming to provide such radical new evidence for the historicity of Jesus then I'm interested in seeing what he thinks is so concrete....

With all due respect to Ehrman, Spong, Crossan, et.al., I find belief in a historical Jesus to be naive.

Walter Bauer demonstrated the extreme diversity of early Christianity as early as 1934 in _Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity_. His work, although it contained a few errors, has substantially been found to be correct. And Bart Ehrman has substantiated the same facts in his _Lost Christianities_.

It remains for us, however, to take this findings to their natural conclusions. There was no single life that can explain early Christian diversity. There is evidence of widespread movements that evolved and merged from many sources. It clearly tells against any theory that postulates a single origin point, whether it is the crucifixion of a failed prophet, or an elusive "Q" preacher.

When we examine early Christianity geographically, we find wide areas of territory where the earliest demonstrable existence of Christianity was various types later labeled as heretical. In Egypt, the earliest forms of Christianity were Gnostic. In the east, and elsewhere, (i.e. Edessa), the earliest Christianity was Marcionite. In fact, as I have mentioned often, the earliest extant church inscription is Marcionite. Le Bas-Waddington, “Inscriptions Grecqueset Latines,” III, pp. 582f.; Harnack _Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott_, pp. 341 ff.; Blackman, _Marcion and His Influences_, pp. 4 ff. And it is not without merit to point out the Marcionites believed in no h u m a n founder, but an impassible spirit descended from heavens without birth.

Justin (Apol. 1:26) states that Marcionites were found all over the Roman Empire. In some areas, Ebionite Christianity predominated; in others Adoptionist. Even in areas that were thought to be firmly orthodox, we find views later deemed heretical coexisted within the same communities. For example Valentinus came very near to being appointed a Bishop in Rome. According to Polycarp 2:1 and 7:2 the vast majority of Christians were "heretics" even as late as Polycarp.

Justin in Apology 1.26 wrote:
"And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians"

Isn't that interesting? All those who follow Marcion and the Gnostics are called Christians. I would say that the literalist proto-orthodox sect with their carnalized Christ were the late comers to the scene. This is why the arguments for "Historical Jesus" rely almost exclusively on the canonical gospels--which did not appear until Irenaeus in the 180's CE. This is why the alleged Historical Jesus is so glaringly absent from not only the Pauline epistles but ALL of the epistles and Revelation.

This widely diversified Christianity itself merged at the edges on one side into non-Christian Jewish apocalyptic beliefs (Similtudes of Enoch, etc.), and on the other side into decidedly non-Christian Gnostic redeemers (Derdekas, Seth, etc) as documented in the Nag Hamadi library discovered in December 1945. There are really no clear dividing lines. Earliest Christianity was part of an overarching movement of messianic expectations, Gnostic redeemers, seething salvation sects and mystery religions. The historical evidence does not suggest that the simple words and deeds of a Historical Jesus radiated into varigated expressions of religous belief, but rather that the heady brew of diverse (and even contradictory) beliefs finally precipitated into an "orthodoxy" that claimed a very particular vision of a Savior as its founder. It was an after the fact effort to obscure the real history of conflict in Christian origins and "they" were not entirely
successful at erasing their tracks.
Who then were these manipulators and forgers of scripture? It was the eventual winners of the doctrinal wars of the second century CE. Bart D. Ehrman calls them the proto-orthodox, and this is as good a description as I have seen. The proto-orthodox can largely (but not completely) identified as the Roman church. And they were indeed commited to erasing competing Christianities not for doctrinal reasons alone; the internal Christian conflicts were over power, not just Christology.

The Roman church *needed* a Historical Jesus and an unbroken line to him in the form of apostolic succession in order to justify their supremacy. Is their any wonder that documents (such as Acts and the Ignatians) supporting this self-serving view were forth-coming? And to be known as the “catholic church” all opposing views had to be marginalized as “heresies” of willfully deviant individuals, while the majority had held the orthodox (meaning “right belief”) views from the beginning. This is the fiction promoted by Eusebius.
But instead, as far back as we can trace our sources; we find any number of divergent forms of Christianity, none of which represented the “truth” against all others. Bart D. Ehrman beyond all others should understand this, yet will it find no place in his forthcoming book???

We will have to wait upon B.Ehrman's book to see the form the argument for a Histotical Jesus takes. The indication so far is that it will just be a heavy handed smear of ahistorist positions by appeal to authority and the status quo assumption in Historical Jesus. If he does this without reference and the context that his "Lost Christianities" arose, one may rightfully wonder at his motivations.

Behind Christianity is the myth of a "Gnostic" savior who descended from and ascended back to heaven. Nor should we forget the older Greek & Egyptian mythologies, or the mystery cults that spread like wildfire over the Roman empire in the same era that Christianity did. These religious trends are the historical facts, the prima facie case for Christianity is origin in the myths prevalent in the era of its inception.

Dr. Detering has remarked that "historical Jesus" is the result of a scientific-historical and religious aberration. It obscures more "higher truth" than it reveals. It is now urgent to say goodbye to the
"historic faith" of a Küng, Crossan, Theissen, etc. to again discover the world of religious images and symbols (Novalis, CG Jung, Eugen Drewermann)."


Jake Jones IV

ApostateAbe, your post here is junk. If GakuseiDon is a friend of yours I have no respect for you after seeing his endless trolling slander towards Murdock. Your slander towards Earl Doherty in this post is on the verge of legally actionable. Whats with the "seemingly-bizarre metaphorical interpretations"? You sound like a fundamentalist Jesus freak.

Earl Doherty chewing out GakuseiDon at IIDB post 23:

"This sort of thing is what makes you so infuriating to deal with, and regularly invites an accusation of being deliberately deceptive about what your opponents are claiming..."

"Anyway, I’m leaving it at that, before my frustration with you leads me down paths the mods might find objectionable..."

"Don, you are clearly an intelligent man (unlike a lot of the fellows you hang out with on places like the Matrix and FRDB), so I have to conclude that the deceptive presentation above is quite conscious. What did I say was...."

- Earl Doherty

"You will excuse me if I butt in, GakuseiDon, But this is exactly why I generally make as little effort as possible to engage you in discussion.

The sequence in this thread is typical.

1. GDon makes a fatuous charge that, supposedly according to Doherty’s words, strongly implies that the ancients could not possibly have had a common notion of demons acting independently of human agencies;

2. I point out that this is indeed the implication of GDon’s initial accusation.

3. GDon comes back and denies this by misquoting Doherty in a way that leads unwary readers to think Doherty says something he does not say at all.

It goes on ... http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/ ... arguments/

"The utterly "bizarre and wacko theories proposed" throughout the bible don't seem to bother GakuseiDon one bit."

GakuseiDon: "Correct, they don't."

freeratio. org /showpost. php?p=6940244&postcount=195

Right. When Ehrman took on this project, he probably went into it with the idea that all of the Jesus-minimalists are in one camp. But it takes deeper investigation to realize that there many different camps who fall under the Jesus-minimalist umbrella. You got the "copycat Christs" camp, with Acharya S, Zeitgeist and Freke & Gandy. You got the Jesus-agnostics, such as Robert M. Price, R. Joseph Hoffmann and Richard Carrier. And you got the non-copycat-Christs Jesus-mythicists, such as Earl Doherty, R.G. Price and GA Wells. Those camps are often at rhetorical odds with each other, even when their leading authors are not. Neither is creationism fast and easy to refute. A lot of people think that "creationism" is just "young-Earth creationism." It isn't. It includes young-Earth creationism, day-age theorists, progressive creationism, and old-Earth creationism.

Doherty's idea of Christ as descending through the heavens actually does have evidence in Gnostic belief. Doherty did not make it up.

Saint Paul talks a lot about Jesus, but never manages to mention Bethlehem, Galilee, Nazareth or even Jerusalem. The Epistles are completely unhistorical. He never says "as our great and illustrious founder Jesus Christ taught", but rather, 'as the spirit has revealed to me'. Even when he supposedly says Jesus had a brother James, a Father of the Church (Origen) comes along and tells us that Paul meant this as allegory.

Here is a good summary just posted on another board.

The writings of Paul do contain a handful of allusions to the historical Jesus. I keep a list of such passages:
...Galatians
...Romans
...1 Corinthians
...1 Thessalonians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship ... e_epistles
The "undisputed" epistles
A nineteenth century picture of Paul of Tarsus.
The name "undisputed" epistles represents the traditional scholarly consensus asserting that Paul authored each letter. However, even the least disputed of letters, such as Galatians, have found critics;[11] Moreover, the unity of the letters is questioned by some scholars. First and Second Corinthians have garnered particular suspicion, with some scholars, among them Edgar Goodspeed and Norman Perrin, supposing one or both texts as we have them today are actually amalgamations of multiple individual letters. There remains considerable discussion as to the presence of possible significant interpolations. However, such textual corruption is difficult to detect and even more so to verify, leaving little agreement as to the extent of the epistles' integrity.[citation needed] See also Radical Criticism, which maintains that the external evidence for attributing any of the letters to Paul is so weak, that it should be considered that all the letters appearing in the Marcion canon were written in Paul's name by members of the Marcionite Church and were afterwards edited and adopted by the Catholic Church.

Romans
First Corinthians
Second Corinthians
Galatians
Philippians
First Thessalonians
Philemon

Continuing along with certainty verses uncertainty in mind:

These are far less than anything concrete upon which a world view ought to be based upon, aren't they?

It sounds radical but it's possible. We have no more contemporary source evidence from contemporary historians for the life of Paul or any of the 12 disciples than we do for the life of Jesus. There were contemporary historians writing, in the said region, but it's completely silent.

Trying to prove Jesus' historicity via Paul is basically saying that the bible proves the claims made within the bible. That angle is riddled with problems. Josephus is even worse. I think that much of these sparse passages were forged after the fact by the Catholic Church. They had every reason to forge historical - like inserts here and there into the Pauline Epistles after the gospels were written to try and harmonize it all together. This was more than likely the case with Revelation too. And that is what we'd expect if the myth was later historicized into an exoteric presentation.