{"id":12719,"date":"2013-01-31T08:25:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T13:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=12719"},"modified":"2013-01-31T08:25:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T13:25:53","slug":"joseph-hoffmann-on-mythicism-skepticism-and-historical-reasoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/01\/joseph-hoffmann-on-mythicism-skepticism-and-historical-reasoning.html","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Hoffmann on Mythicism, Skepticism, and Historical Reasoning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Joseph Hoffmann posted on whether \u201canything goes\u201d in mythicism<\/a>, providing a wonderful discussion of the appropriate and inappropriate sorts of \u201cskepticism\u201d and illustrating how historians reason about the evidence regarding Jesus. Around a lengthy treatment of Hegelianism, he writes things like this:<\/p>\n

To say that Jesus is a plausible figure is thus merely to say the following: (1) His description fits the historical matrix from which it comes; (2) Allowing\u00a0only for the credulity of writers and\u00a0listeners\u00a0of the time, there is nothing especially\u00a0surprising\u00a0about this description that would cause us to conclude it is fabricated or composed from assorted myths and legends, and (c) Lacking any\u00a0positive\u00a0grounds for\u00a0thinking\u00a0that the figure was invented\u00a0through\u00a0the fraudulence or\u00a0malice\u00a0of legend-spinners, it is more economical to think that it is a story (not an historical record) based upon the life and work of an\u00a0historical\u00a0individual. Saying only this and no more is saying that we prefer plausible explanations to more\u00a0extravagant\u00a0ones: that is what Occam\u2019s razor requires us to do\u2013to utilize and exploit the\u00a0possibilities\u00a0before us\u00a0before\u00a0spinning off into other possibilities that do not arise organically from the material in front of us and its\u00a0closest\u00a0known correlates.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"Some responders who are\u00a0deeply\u00a0committed\u00a0to mythicism (and use the word \u201chistoricism,\u201d rather absurdly, to describe a \u201cbelief\u201d in the historicity of Jesus) cling to a notion that the\u00a0existence\u00a0of the\u00a0gospels\u00a0do not \u201cprove\u201d that Jesus\u00a0exists because it is just as \u201cplausible\u201d\u00a0that<\/p>\n

(a) they (the writers) were wrong about him or,<\/p>\n

(b) they are talking about some other Jesus or some other character by some other name who was wearing a Jesus wig; \u00a0or<\/p>\n

(c) are, for amusement or malice, \u00a0making the whole thing up.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, each of these\u00a0invitations\u00a0to skepticism is non-parsimonious; that is, they ask us without warrant to lay to one side the\u00a0concrete\u00a0information and what it says in favour of alternative\u00a0explanations not warranted by either\u00a0internal\u00a0or external reasons for doing so. \u00a0Parsimony does not ask us to put\u00a0skepticism\u00a0on hold; it asks us to use skepticism\u00a0methodologically\u00a0rather than as a Pyrrhonic silver key that, at the\u00a0extreme, calls final certainty about anything into question. \u00a0The effect of unbridled,\u00a0unsystematic\u00a0Pyrrhoinism has always been antagonistic to final knowledge about anything and mythtic utilization of the \u201cIt could be this, or that, or anything else, or nothing at all\u201d suggests that sort of indifference to \u00a0a constructive skeptical approach to the Bible. \u00a0Hume\u2019s rejection of Pyrrhonism might apply: \u201cPhilosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.\u201d In short, the prior question\u2013\u201dWhat<\/em>\u00a0are we dealing with in the New Testament books and how can it\u00a0efficiently\u00a0be described\u201d cannot begin with the belief that \u00a0all explanations have the same status and that all those rendering\u00a0opinions\u00a0have the same capacity to render good ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click through to read the rest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of related interest,\u00a0there is a conference about early Christianity and mystery cults<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of tangential relatedness, Richard Carrier found Bart Ehrman\u2019s appreciative remark about Christianity, in a book about Christianity, inappropriate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Hoffmann posted on whether \u201canything goes\u201d in mythicism, providing a wonderful discussion of the appropriate and inappropriate sorts of \u201cskepticism\u201d and illustrating how historians reason about the evidence regarding Jesus. 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