October 15, 2013

Neil Godfrey posted about peer-reviewed journals and how the peer review process is imperfect, if not indeed deeply flawed, and thus even problematic studies manage to get through into peer-reviewed journals in the sciences. And if that is true in the sciences, surely it is also true in the domain of history.

And so what does that tell us? That most mythicist writings are so very bad, so obviously flawed, so profoundly bizarre, that they cannot make it past even a deeply flawed quality control process.

I’m so glad Neil Godfrey took the time to highlight this.

August 1, 2013

Neil Godfrey has made chapter 7 of Thomas Brodie's recent book, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, available online. It provides a wonderful illustration of the sort of forced parallelomania that I recently parodied.

There might perhaps be an allusion – whether by Jesus or by the Gospel author – to the stories about Elijah and Elisha in 1 Kings 19. A phrase like “I will follow (after) you” [ἀκολουθήσω ὀπίσω σου in the LXX, ἀκολουθήσω σοι in Luke] is hard to avoid in a context related to discipleship, and is scarcely a clear indication of dependence, or even deliberate allusion. But even if one hears some echoes of those earlier stories in Luke 9, Brodie tries to force as much material as he can into the mold of literary transformation of that portion of the Jewish Scriptures, no matter how slim the connection or how awkward the fit.

For instance, he treats the references to various people putting others or seeking to put others to death as the source of inspiration for the demand that one who would follow Jesus “leave the dead to bury their dead.” And the reference to Elijah lying down, and having food near his head, is supposed to be the source of Jesus' statement that “the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” And words like “someone” and “another” are also highlighted as indicating a connection.

All this may perhaps seem plausible to some. To me, it looks like a sort of Biblical connect the dots.

There is a longstanding Rabbinic tradition of exploring the additional meaning that surfaces when two texts which feature the same keywords are related to one another. It has always been possible to relate texts in this way, and the ability of interpreters to do so scarcely means that, in all the instances where this has been done, what we are dealing with is one literary text that was created entirely by a reworking of the other. The same words appear over and over in countless texts, and not all of them are connected. The ability to see such patterns more vividly than others may be indicative of a beautiful mind – but whether it is a healthy one is another matter.

The question of literary allusion can be a highly subjective matter, and those who seek to make sense of texts need to be cautious – as do those who would make sweeping assertions about ahistoricity on the basis of similarities that are, at best, slim and superficial.

You can click through here to read my review of Brodie's entire book.

 

July 4, 2013

Neil Godfrey has a post which claims that I’m unconcerned with facts and details. And unsurprisingly, his post has little interest in facts and details. It repeats Richard Carrier’s claim that mythicism is embraced by individuals like Thomas Thompson (who has distanced himself from mythicism) and Kurt Noll (whose contribution to Is This Not the Carpenter? is rather wonderful and does much to undermine mythicism).

He also claims that I am somehow ignoring the plain words of what Brodie wrote, even though the list I made of reasons why Brodie had trouble having his claims accepted are precisely what Brodie wrote. The only possible question about that is whether Brodie’s issues with not doing research and writing in an appropriate manner affected his ability to get things published, or only the assessment of his assignments by his professors when he was a student. As Brodie says, and I repeat, it was above all else his attempt to publish the idea that Jesus never existed through a Christian publisher.

If a Christian tried to publish a piece of dubious apologetics with American Atheist Press, and had their manuscript rejected, would anyone consider that evidence of discrimination against Christians in the academy?

Neil Godfrey offers posts of increasing length as though that somehow made up for lack of depth, when what he has to offer is nothing but a silly waste of time. Just read Brodie for yourself and see whether he makes a persuasive case for his views. Don’t let mythicist attempts to spin and dissect a book review distract from the point. It is just like the creationists who keep saying “there’s no evidence for evolution” and work hard to spin the mountains of evidence against their own position and to distract from all the ways that they are wrong by pointing out things that might be wrong in this or that writing reflecting mainstream science. Human beings are imperfect, and even solid scholarly work doesn’t always manage to avoid all errors, from typos to miscalculations. But those minor errors do not change the fact that serious work is being done by these human researchers, and that they consistently reach a particular conclusion. And so even if my book review had in fact been full of errors, it would not make mythicism plausible, any more than when a young-earth creationist finds that this or that book or book review contained an error, it changes the overall state of our scientific knowledge.

I encourage you to read my review, read Brodie’s book if you have access to it, read the posts at Vridar, and let me know whether the latter are anything other than an attempt to distract from the serious shortcomings in Brodie’s work, and its utterly unpersuasive character.

July 1, 2013

Tom Verenna posted a response to some of Neil Godfrey’s name-calling. It includes the following:

Now whether or not James McGrath is missing something, or he is not reading Brodie sympathetically, or he is merely interpreting Brodie differently, is obviously an important part of a discussion. But this does not ipso facto implicate James as ‘incompetent’ (he isn’t) or ‘dishonest’ (simply because he disagrees with something). James holds advanced degrees which he could not have earned had he been incompetent (incompetence is when someone barely passes or fails a course–these people don’t generally find work in academia and I doubt many could write a successful dissertation) and he would never have received his Bachelors had he been dishonest (dishonest people are the sort who copy-verbatim-Wikipedia articles and turn them in as assignments; this is something I’ve witnessed happening in my own classes).

So let’s be clear.  James is not incompetent and he is not dishonest.  Is James perhaps guilty of not fully reading the material on which he writes?  Perhaps.  He has been called on this before–but this doesn’t make him incompetent.  It doesn’t make him dishonest.  And if one were to simply direct James to the information responsibly–you know, like civil human beings will do–then James can then correct or amend his claims based upon information he may have missed.  As an academic, James has many responsibilities–responsibilities that an amateur like Mr. Godfrey cannot understand fully (as he does not have these same responsibilities–nor would he likely want them).  But this is why so little is ever fruitful in conversations with Mr. Godfrey.  Every response James gives, regardless of its tone, is understood by Mr. Godfrey as an attack or assault upon some cherished belief.  He will likely interpret this very post as some aggressive move against him, rather than the constructive criticism it is.

So maybe we can start treating each other with a little more respect here?  Maybe we can do away with all the polemical name calling?  It is intolerable and I find that I have a hard time reading through all the vitriol to find the point that is being made.

I will add that I read Brodie’s book carefully, and not having the book with me at home, I have not been able to double check a couple of points about my review raised by Godfrey’s accusations. It has been my custom to read books all the way through before writing a review, having spent time in the past discussing apparent shortcomings as I went which were addressed later, something that seems to me to be a waste of time and to have the potential to unduly influence a review in a negative direction. But reading and taking copious notes, and waiting until one is finished to write the review, can also have disadvantages, including that the short notes might not lead you to write about earlier parts of the book that are less fresh in your memory in as precise a manner.

If you write book reviews, how do you go about it?

June 30, 2013

Neil Godfrey's latest rant includes a quote from George Orwell, and describes the fact that I will be addressing mythicism and religious freedom in a conference paper as “Orwellian.”

And once again, there is no evidence of awareness of Poe's Law, as a mythicist writes things that seem like a ridiculous parody, something that no one could really believe, and yet it is real and not satire.

Click through, read the post, see what is going on. Look carefully at what is being done. Look at how, despite my acknowledgment that I may have run characteristics of Brodie's student work and his attempts at publication together (since they were mentioned in the same part of the book, and if such students publish anything, it tends to be work produced in the course of their studies), Godfrey continues to focus on such minor details in order to distract from the main point, which is that Brodie's methods are problematic. They allow any conclusion one wishes to be drawn, as long as one has sufficient creativity to make connections between texts.

There is nothing inherently Orwellian about academia, in the sense that Godfrey used the term. I followed the appropriate procedures and had a conference paper accepted. If mythicists follow the same rules they can do the same. But they almost never do, making it clear why mythicism is not found persuasive in the academy: it is not due to inappropriate censorship, but mythicists not following the rules of scholarly inquiry.

But of course, no good conspiracy theorist worth their salt will buy that simple explanation, when a more convoluted one that makes them look better can be concocted.

But there most definitely is something Orwellian about mythicism. Have a read of the source of the Orwell quote, in which Orwell focuses particular attention on the use of language to defend the indefensible, and talks about how that is accomplished. And then see if what Orwell wrote about political language reminds you of the sort of language you have encountered on a mythicist blog you may have read.

And then see if you can reread Godfrey's words about psychological projection without laughing out loud.

 

June 29, 2013

Before Vridar had been shut down as a result of a copyright complaint from Joel Watts, I had begun to respond to something Neil Godfrey wrote there. Now that his blog is back (at the different address of Vridar.org), I will do so. But let me first direct readers to some discussion of the events that unfolded resulting in the blog being removed by WordPress. In addition to my own post (where much came to light in the discussion thread), see Ian’s post about Joel’s copyright complaint and his attempt to remove the Creative Commons notification on his posts after the fact, as well as Neil Godfrey’s and Joel Watts’ own posts on the subject. This incident, and the issues it raises, need to be given serious attention in its own right..

So now, let me return to what I was in the process of saying before this whole debacle: Neil Godfrey (once again, as usual) accused me of being either incompetent or dishonest.

The latest instance involves his discussion of the book review I posted here back in February, of Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery.

As an academic, I know that the research we work on as graduate students forms the basis of what we then try to publish, whether while still students or soon after. And so when Thomas Brodie said that he submitted work to his academic supervisor which lacked proper citation of and interaction with other scholars, and in the same section of the book says that he had difficulty finding a publisher for things that he wrote, the biggest but not the only reason being his view that there was never a historical Jesus, it seemed that the two were connected and that the other reasons were precisely the things that Brodie himself mentioned within a few pages of the statement.

I am perfectly open to the possibility that my inference may have been incorrect, or that I may have run together, because of their close proximity in the book, things that Brodie intended to have viewed as completely separate (although whether they truly were separate is, as it were, a separate issue). When I have time (when preparing my SBL conference paper if not sooner), I will look into the relevant passages again.

But I think it should be clear that only a perversely hostile (or dishonest, or incompetent) reading of my review would lead to the conclusion that I was being either dishonest or incompetent. The point I was making in that section of my review was about the fact that Brodie drew a conclusion about whether Jesus was a historical figure even before learning how to do scholarship in the appropriate manner. I can tell you that I myself had all sorts of ideas that I thought were brilliant, publication-worthy insights as an undergraduate. Few withstood the testing to which I subjected them in my ongoing studies. Brodie, on the other hand, appears to have been so gripped by an idea early on, that it came to dominate his thinking in a manner that has led him to defend an implausible view of how early Christian literature was produced, rather than revising his views in light of criticism.

I approached Brodie’s book hopeful that it would offer what I have long said mythicism needs: a serious scholarly presentation of one possible case for mythicism, one that could be discussed in detail on its merits, rather than being littered with misdirections, careless errors, and misunderstandings of the sort that characterize internet-based and self-published mythicist works. Although it is a memoir, Brodie does offer his reasoning and discussion of his methods. And those methods seem to me to be an exercise in parallelomania, something for which Brodie has a reputation as a result of his previous publications.

Brodie did work on the Gospel of John, which I consulted when I was myself working on my dissertation on the Gospel of John. I found occasional nuggets of insight, but largely found Brodie to be creating connections between the Gospel of John and other texts, rather than discovering them. And so his work seemed to me to be mostly unpersuasive. Nothing since then has changed my mind, and much has reinforced that impression.

As for Neil Godfrey’s claim, “When I asked McGrath why he sometimes claimed Doherty wrote the very opposite of what he did write, or accused him of not addressing themes and arguments that he clearly did address and at length, I received in return either no reply or an insult,” longtime readers will already know that that does not describe actual events. Newer readers are invited to read back through the discussions and fact-check it. Such allegations do not support mythicism, but they do illustrate a point made by mainstream historical scholars: they show that sometimes human beings are indeed capable of not merely offering a mild reinterpretation of events, but completely distorting them.

June 28, 2013

I was in the process of writing a response to Neil Godfrey’s latest accusation against me, when Joel Watts drew my attention to the fact that his blog Vridar has apparently been shut down by WordPress:

I hope this is not the result of someone who finds the content on the blog objectionable making a frivolous complaint. While I’ve often said myself that mythicism is to history what young-earth creationism is to biology, and objected to the slanderous way scholars in my field (including myself) are sometimes spoken about, filing objections against the websites and blogs that reflect such views is not going to be a successful solution. It will likely only reinforce the sense the individual or group has of being a persecuted minority that cannot get a fair hearing for its views.

To help counter that possible claim, I’d like to offer the comments area on this post to anyone who normally posts or comments and Vridar and now cannot do so. If you post about mythicism, you may expect that I or regular readers might disagree with you – but that will be nothing new, either for Vridar or here.

If you are someone who normally comments on Vridar and who was banned for troll-like behavior, e-mail me and I will gladly give you another chance. I’m even willing to ignore such things as long as they are kept in this one thread.

I suspect that Vridar will be back, since I subscribe to its feed and did not notice anything that would constitute spam or hate speech (although I admit I do not read everything posted there in detail). In the mean time, I invite any “Vridarites” who may wish to do so to be my guest and discuss, post, and comment here.

January 29, 2013

I laughed out loud when reading a recent post by Neil Godfrey. Most of it was neither laughable nor surprising. He discusses how we know people in the ancient world existed, with his usual shtick depicting historical Jesus scholars as confused bumblers. Nothing surprising, or interesting, except perhaps for his acknowledgment that historians in most fields do not feel the need to constantly revisit the question of a figure’s existence once it has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the experts.

What made me laugh out loud was a chart he inserted at the end.

Not that the concept was bad, or that making charts cannot be helpful. Indeed, such a table could have been useful if it had been filled in to reflect the actual state of the evidence as scholars and historians understand it.

But the way Godfrey fills in the table is arbitrary, and reminds me of how fundamentalist Christians make charts to show how their own tradition has all the “right” answers while all the “cults” are wrong (here’s a slide show with an example of that sort of thing).

The reason historians think Jesus existed is because they would fill in the chart differently than he does, because the evidence is different than he claims it is.

So here is the chart as it appeared on the blog Vridar, with the boxes emptied of the content Godfrey inserted. How would you fill in the boxes?

Historical name

(Green – primary evidence exists so historicity certain)

Name appears in non-fiction literature confirmed by primary evidence Name appears in non-fiction literature confirmed by independent literary sources Verifiable and creditable author / provenance of non-fiction literature.

Thus can be reasonably confident the author’s sources are likely traced to time of the person/events.

Genre supports historicity
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar
Pilate
Publius Vinicius the Stammerer
Honi the Circle Drawer
Bernice (daughter of Herod Agrippa I)
Tiro (Cicero’s slave)
Socrates
Hillel
Hercules
Romulus
Jesus
January 22, 2013

There have been a couple of amusing posts over at Vridar. In one of them, Neil Godfrey discusses Daniel Boyarin’s claim (in his book The Jewish Gospels) that there may have been an expectation about a suffering Messiah prior to Christianity. Whatever your thoughts on this (the view is not unique to Boyarin, but neither is it a view that most find compelling), what is really interesting is to see a mythicist apparently embracing mainstream historical reasoning.

Boyarin is quoted as saying,

My reasoning is that if this were such a shocking thought, how is it that the rabbis of the Talmud and midrash, only a couple of centuries later, had no difficulty whatever with portraying the Messiah’s vicarious suffering or discovering him in Isaiah 53, just as followers of Jesus had done? (pp. 134-35)

If one agrees with Boyarin that the Talmud can give us a sense of what Jews believed centuries earlier, when studied critically with use of deductive reasoning, then one cannot be consistent and deny that the same can be done with the Gospels, especially given the much shorter time between them and the historical Jesus. Of course, Godfrey has yet to show that sort of consistency, but one can hope. Who knows? He might even, if he finds Boyarin persuasive, come to share Boyarin’s view that there was a historical Jesus!

In the other of his recent posts that I alluded to above, Godfrey cites a book I have mentioned in discussions with him and other mythicistsFrom Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. One reason I love the book is perhaps because mythicists seem not to be able to find any phrase they can latch onto in it, in a vain attempt to argue that mainstream historians would support their own case, without ending up accomplishing the opposite.

Godfrey offers the following quote, among others:

It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that one of the historian’s principal tasks is to uncover the original purpose of functions of the relics of testimonies that have come down to posterity, to divine what use they were intended to serve and what purposes they actually served at the time they were created. (p. 18)

Note the reference to the need to “divine” the intention and purpose of texts. I assume that one need not have a degree in religious studies to know what divination is. The use here is metaphorical, of course, and in that usage denotes the use of intuition and deduction to puzzle out meaning. Exactly the sort of work that historians have done on the Gospels to deduce their context and setting, which mythicists consistently ignore or even denigrate.

One of the great things about the internet these days is how many books are available online in at least preview form. From Reliable Sources is one of them, and so I encourage readers interested in the historical figure of Jesus to have a read of the section from which Godfrey quotes. Read the relevant pages around the quote offered above. But also don’t miss p.141, where they refer to Christ as a historical figure!

One could read both of Godfrey’s posts and never realize that he is quoting mainstream scholars whose methods and conclusions are incompatible with the claims of mythicists. You might not realize that the impression one gets from reading those books is very different from the impression you’ll get reading snippets of them embedded in and filtered through the lens of a mythicist blog post. And so I encourage you to check the sources and read them for yourselves. If you do, I am confident you will understand why I continue to find mythicism thoroughly unpersuasive.

Elsewhere on the web of related interest:

Joseph Hoffmann responds to Jerry Coyne.

Paul Regnier discussed denialism.

Andrew Perriman is reviewing Richard Horsley’s recent book.

One news source is reporting that Thomas Brodie is being disciplined by the church for his mythicist views.

Jeremy Myers shows just how much conservative Christians despise historical-critical study of the Bible.

December 16, 2012

Some mythicists might consider it a major achievement that Rene Salm got invited to speak at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting this year.

They would do well to keep in mind that Simcha Jacobovici was also invited to be on the program. 🙂

But more seriously, the only people who get really excited to be on the program are (1) young scholars needing to build up their resumes, (2) established scholars who depend on being presenters for their university to pay the cost of their attendance, and (3) pseudoscholars thinking that being there will somehow make their work credible. Scholars who attend know that many of the ideas that will be put forward at a conference will turn out to be wrong – including possibly their own. Anyone who thinks that merely being involved in a session at an academic conference demonstrates that your views are correct has clearly not understood how scholarship works.

Salm's paper is online and is embarrassing for many reasons, including in its combination of apologetics-style tactics and its fundamentalist-style uncritical treatment of the Gospel narratives. Read it – and fact-check his claims – and then if there are any points people want to talk about here, we certainly can. But as with most mythicist materials, I am glad it is online where its claims can be closely examined by anyone with the interest in doing so.

Jim Linville presented in the same session as Rene Salm, and on his blog has described Salm's unprofessional and rude behavior there. Salm apparently not only turned up late, but while he was there he either wasn't paying attention or didn't understand what Jim Linville and others were saying, and yet nevertheless blogged about what he (mis)understood.

Also about mythicism is the more serious discussion between Mark Goodacre and Richard Carrier on the radio show Unbelievable (which previously had Bart Ehrman on talking about the existence of Jesus; see too Ehrman's recent article). Neil Godfrey has a recap of the episode (with comments added in an usuccessful attempt to lessen the force of Mark Goodacre's solid points). Do give the interview a listen – Carrier emphasizes that there is only one defensible mythicist theory, but fails to make a case for it that can compete with how mainstream secular historians and scholars interpret the evidence. Carrier has objections at every point which those familiar with his work will have heard before, including some which are thoroughly bogus, like the claim that Philo calls the Logos “Jesus.” But even setting such considerations aside, mainstream scholarship offers an interpretation of the entirety of the evidence, while mythicism offers ad hoc attempts to explain away evidence inconvenient to its preconceived ideas.

Also of interest, Tom Verenna tackles some bizarre pseudoscholarly Essenic mythicism. And of related interest is Anthony Le Donne's blog entry beginning to offer a scholarly evaluation of the Wikipedia entry about the historical Jesus.

Let me close by mentioning that I thought of Salm's claims about Nazareth when I recently saw this cartoon on IO9:

 


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