{"id":27601,"date":"2014-12-16T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T14:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=27601"},"modified":"2014-12-16T09:00:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T14:00:39","slug":"mythicists-gain-nothing-by-exaggerating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/12\/mythicists-gain-nothing-by-exaggerating.html","title":{"rendered":"Mythicists Gain Nothing By Exaggerating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Raphael Lataster has an online article<\/a> allegedly about the evidence for a historical Jesus. It is incredibly disappointing. Some of what he writes is ridiculous \u2013 as for instance when he says:<\/p>\n

\n

The Pauline Epistles, however, overwhelmingly support the \u201ccelestial Jesus\u201d theory, particularly with the passage indicating that demons killed Jesus, and would not have done so if they knew who he was (see:\u00a01 Corinthians 2:6-10<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Humans \u2013 the murderers according to the Gospels \u2013 of course would still have killed Jesus, knowing full well that his death results in their salvation, and the defeat of the evil spirits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What?!<\/p>\n

Much else of what he writes\u00a0is oversimplified. Take for instance this\u00a0example of his treatment of the criterion of embarrassment:<\/p>\n

The criterion of embarrassment says that if a section would be embarrassing for the author, it is more likely authentic. Unfortunately, given the diverse nature of Christianity and Judaism back then (things have not changed all that much), and the anonymity of the authors, it is impossible to determine what truly would be embarrassing or counter-intuitive, let alone if that might not serve some evangelistic purpose.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His response to this criterion\u00a0is simply poor reasoning on multiple levels. On the one hand, if historians have no idea whether something was embarrassing, they won\u2019t apply this criterion. But on the other hand, we know a great deal about a great many things \u2013 such as, for instance, what the idea of a Davidic anointed one entailed.\u00a0The fact that we do not have comprehensive evidence is often selectively touted by denialists as though it were an objection to what scholars do in all fields of inquiry: draw the best conclusions they can, given the evidence available, remaining open to revising conclusions should new evidence come to light.<\/p>\n

To offer superficial and at times incomprehensible claims, and then to refer to\u00a0\u201cthe atrocious methods used by mainstream Biblical historians,\u201d does Lataster no credit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I mentioned in a discussion on Facebook<\/a> yesterday:<\/p>\n

[Richard]\u00a0Carrier published with a publisher that publishes a fair amount of historical-critical Biblical scholarship. And so if the mythicist claim is correct that such scholarship is worthless, then so is the peer-review process that vets it, correct? I am really tired of mythicists playing these games which are exactly what we see from pseudoscientists and other pseudoscholars. The way to get out of such categories is not to do more effective editing of Wikipedia, but to actually do genuine scholarship in a consistent manner.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mythicism<\/a> cannot take a short cut to acceptance by using sleight of hand, shoddy reasoning, poor argumentation, oversimplification, or exaggeration. It may fool people with no background in history and related scholarly fields. But if you are trying to persuade the public, having resigned yourself to being unable to persuade experts, then you\u2019ve already\u00a0acknowledged defeat.<\/p>\n

Of related interest, I had a draft post created a while back that I meant to return to, about the criteria of\u00a0authenticity. And so here are some more links of interest:<\/p>\n

Phillip Long posted about the criteria of authenticity<\/a>\u00a0a while back, a topic that has often come up here as well. I\u2019m disappointed with his treatment of the criteria as a whole, as well as the\u00a0explanation of what individual criteria are and do. He followed up with another post about the historical Jesus and skepticism<\/a>. These posts will hopefully illustrate that the would-be skeptics in the mythicist camp are borrowing heavily from objections to the criteria that are motivated by the desire of conservative religious believers to shield Jesus from historical-critical skepticism!<\/p>\n

Anthony Le Donne<\/a> blogged about the objection that historians in other fields do not do things the way they are done in historical Jesus studies.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Bernier blogged about probability and criteria<\/a>, what the criteria cannot do<\/a>, and why he doesn\u2019t use them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Simon Joseph has a helpful post<\/a> on how criticisms of the criteria of authenticity, which recognize their limitations, should not be viewed as indicating the end of the possibility of history in general or investigation of the historical Jesus more specifically.\u00a0Also of interest, see his posts on\u00a0Jesus and violence<\/a>\u00a0and Jesus in India<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In short, there are mythicists and conservative Christians who would like to use criticisms of existing methods as justification for\u00a0claiming that their problematic views are\u00a0of equal value to the hard-earned if minimal results of scholarly historical critical work. But the options are to use existing methods, or to propose new ones. Noting the uncertainty inherent in historical critical scholarship doesn\u2019t tell us anything we did not already know, and the fact that most scholarly investigation deals in probabilities does not mean that your unfounded assertions are more probable than the consensus of scholars after decades of research.<\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0here are the covers of a forthcoming book. The list on the back cover of\u00a0those interviewed is\u2026interesting.<\/p>\n

\"Jesus \"Jesus<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

Raphael Lataster has an online article allegedly about the evidence for a historical Jesus. It is incredibly disappointing. Some of what he writes is ridiculous \u2013 as for instance when he says: The Pauline Epistles, however, overwhelmingly support the \u201ccelestial Jesus\u201d theory, particularly with the passage indicating that demons killed Jesus, and would not have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":27616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2297,2300,2301,3029,4652,5677,7459,7853,9961],"class_list":["post-27601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","tag-criteria-of-authenticity","tag-criterion","tag-criterion-of-embarrassment","tag-embarrassment","tag-historical-jesus","tag-jesus","tag-minas-papgeorgiou","tag-mythicism","tag-raphael-lataster"],"yoast_head":"\nMythicists Gain Nothing By Exaggerating<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Raphael Lataster has an online article allegedly about the evidence for a historical Jesus. 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