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Author | Topic: The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
I still have some pages left to go in Did Jesus Exist?, but I ordered this book from Amazon and have started reading it as I finish Ehrman's.
As I already posted over at FRDB, the very first two paragraphs of the introduction are leaving me with serious worries about the rest of the book. Have a look for yourself:
quote: Say what!? Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I'm very glad to see that there are members here who not only are able to spot Earl's mistake but are also genuinely troubled about finding it in a supposedly serious piece of scholarship.
As to those who haven't spotted it yet, the issue is this: In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is not God. At best this opening statement is a misrepresentation of Earl's sources; at worst it shows us that Mr. Doherty hasn't even bothered reading the texts he is reviewing. Later in the intro Earl gives a definition of 'Christian' that rests on the very thing he is trying to prove:
quote: It would appear that with this definition, Mr. D's got himself quite the easy road ahead. All he'll have to do in the rest of the book is prove that there were early Christians living in 'that initial period' and he will, by definition, have proven that they did not believe in an historical Jesus. I wish I could have gotten away with this kind of malarkey when writing papers in school. Man, life would have been good. JonLove your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
To refer to Jesus as the Son of God and then launch into a discussion of Mark seems an unlikely mistake for a true Biblical scholar. Well; that might have been excusable. But Earl didn't just refer to Jesus as the 'Son of God'; he referred to him as 'God'; and this is inexcusable: Mark does not make such a declaration anywhere in his Gospel. John does. Many later Christians do. Mark doesn't. Earl's gotten his sources twisted and mangled (at best) or hasn't even read them (at worst). JonLove your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Jon writes: As to those who haven't spotted it yet, the issue is this: In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is not God. Except that, as I just showed, he is. You showed no such thing. Don't be ridiculous.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I confess ignorance. What is it about the divinity or lack of divinity of Jesus in Mark have anything to do with the historicity of Jesus? If Jesus is god in Mark, how does that help Earl show the lack of historicity? If Jesus is NOT god in Mark, how does that refute Earl or alternativly, show proof of historicity? It has to do with the quality of Earl's scholarship and his misuse of sources. Mark does not talk about Jesus as being God. Earl needs to do a better job evaluating and analyzing the information in his sources. A first good step would be to actually read them.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
You seem to be rather incensed that he doesn't have his ducks in a row for a reason that doesn't seem at all obvious. Even if he is wrong about Mark, what does that have to do with anything regarding his scholarship other than that he is being sloppy on this one issue. Sloppyness seems to be something that is common for people who wade into this arena. I'm merely pointing this out. I'm not claiming that sloppiness is unique to Doherty. The Mythicist camp, however, does seem rife with it. Earl's mistake here doesn't help their image.
Some people DO believe that Mark points to Jesus' divinity and on those terms is is very much a theological issue. People can believe what they want to believe. But the text still says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say. The mental gymnastics required are just too much for taking the position seriously. Yet even taking all of that into consideration, we must still conclude that Earl has assumed as fact something that is highly debatable; making this is D- scholarship at best. JonLove your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I don't see that it's inconsistent with Mark, where Jesus is referred to by the divine appellation "Lord." Obviously the later gospels do much more to flesh out Jesus's divinity but you can't say that a seed of the idea isn't present in Mark. It's right there at the beginning - the whole gospel is the story of how the "way was laid" for "the Lord"; I.e. God in the person of Jesus. Mark keeps Jesus and God separate. Nowhere does he identify them as one and the same, and at times he even draws attention to their distinction. Here are two clear examples:
quote: quote: quote: In all of these instances Jesus is clearly set apart from God as being a separate entity; first he is the 'Holy One of God'; second he is the 'Son' who, being independent of the 'Father', does not know the time of the apocalypse; third Jesus is the 'Son of Man' sitting separately at the 'right hand of Power [= God]'. Nowhere in Mark is Jesus equated with God and in many places (such as those I quoted) he is clearly described as a separate entity. No wonder repeated requests here and at FRDB for evidence that Mark wrote about a Jesus who was God have been met with nothing but silly excuses and apologetics of a quality below even the most insane fundamentalists. Jon Edited by Jon, : No reason given. Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
And, what? You're surprised that an editorial turn of phrase that begins with "once upon a time" doesn't reflect complete and accurate academic accuracy? Earl's apparently been in trouble over this already, as he admits:
quote: This opening statement is a troubling thing to see in a scholarly work about early Christianity. Doherty's claim that "it's valid if you don't insist on trying to take it apart on uncertain technicalities" is just a copout for "I did a sloppy job and don't want to admit it". In a work such as this, nobody wants to read stuff that "doesn't reflect complete and accurate academic accuracy"; the audience isn't looking for poetic language or turns of phrase or any other such nonsense. The author is expected to be straight and unambiguous with his claims; and if he fails to do this he must suffer the consequences from his critics. 'Poetic license' is never an excuse for a factual error in a piece of academic writing. JonLove your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Okay, Crash. What gives? Why do you keep quoting that passage from Mark where he doesn't say that Jesus is God?
I don't see the separation. God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit are the three aspects of the Triune Christian God. That doesn't mean that they're in any way separate from each other. Too funny, Crash. Triune Christian God? What does that have to do with the gospel of Mark?Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I confess that my knowledge about Paul's letters is not as extensive as my knowledge on the gospels; and I haven't read his letters in as much detail as I have the gospels. However, I cannot recall any instances of Paul claiming that Jesus is God, though Doherty makes the assertion that he does:
quote: In fact, this appears to be a key piece to Earl's argument against an historical JesusJesus couldn't have originally been a man because he was thought of as being God and no one, Paul included, would have fallen for such malarkey as claiming a mere man was God; therefore Jesus, believed to be God by early Christians, could not also have been seen as having been a flesh-and-blood human. But for this line of argumentation to carry any weight at all we have to see in the writings of the earliest Christians (this is a restriction set up by Doherty for reasons there isn't time to mention here) an identification of Jesus as God. But do we see this? I cannot find any instances. The closest reference I can find occurs in Philippians 2:5—11, yet even here we do not have a declaration of Jesus being God, only a claim that Jesus was in the same form as God (Magic ether? Holy Spirit juice? We don't really know what that form would be...) and even then he was not equal to God, and he certainly wasn't claimed to be one and the same as God. So where does Paul say that Jesus is God?Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Really? Where does he claim that Paul claims Jesus was god? Notice the "If" in the beginning of the sentence? That usually indicates a hypothetical. Out of curiosity, have you read the book? The 'if' statement has to do with Paul's knowledge about the historical Jesus. Doherty is saying that: If this God Paul was talking about had actually been a human, Paul should know more about his human life; Paul doesn't know much about his human life; therefore this God (Jesus) Paul is talking about most likely had not been a human. It is a difficult thing to point out on a forum since the argument involved spans several pages; what I'm trying to point out is that Doherty's argument rests on the assumption that Paul was declaring Jesus God. But I cannot find evidence that this was going on. Making things even more difficult is Earl's sloppy use of terminology; he uses things like 'Son of God' and 'divinity' and 'God' as though they are interchangeable in the early Christian writings. They are not. He seems completely okay with viewing the letters of Paul through the lens of a modern Christian, using Trinitarian terminology to talk about Pauline theology. For example, he says:
quote: Paul does talk about having the Spirit working inside people, but not in the way Doherty describes things. And to even introduce the word 'Godhead' in describing Pauline Christianity shows, in my opinion, a serious lack of attentiveness to his sources and too heavy a reliance on modern Christian theology in building his view of the early Christian movement. But the question remains: Where does Paul call Jesus God? Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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