(i) of Thompson's statements about his own position (outlined in a previous book) eg. -
my 'The Messiah Myth: The Ancient Near Eastern Background of David and Jesus' [2006] offered an analysis of the thematic elements and motifs of a particular myth, which had a history of at least 2000 years. This included a discussion of the Synoptic Gospels’ theological reiteration that Samaritan and Jewish scriptures had their roots in an allegorically driven discourse on a large number of dominant ancient Near Eastern literary themes and concerns, most of which were tied to ancient royal ideology ...
...my considerable analytical discussion ...was rooted in a wide-ranging, comparative literary classification and analysis of the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern inscriptions. ...more than 40 years I have devoted to research in my study of the primary fields of Old Testament exegesis, ancient Near Eastern literature and ancient history —not least in regards to questions of historicity ...
(ii) Thompson is addressing Bart Ehrman's dismissal of Thompson's work in his 2012 'Did Jesus Exist?', especially The Messiah Myth, as "anti-religious motivated denials of a historical Jesus", and because Ehrman had "attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed."
Ehrman pompously ignores my considerable analytical discussion, which was rooted in a wide-ranging, comparative literary classification and analysis of the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern inscriptions ...the more than 40 years I have devoted to research in my study of the primary fields of Old Testament exegesis, ancient Near Eastern literature and ancient history ...
His lack of reflection on ancient forms of allegory, such as that reflected by Qohelet’s —and indeed Philo’s —principle that, in their world of theologically=driven literature, there is little new under the sun, certainly provides adequate grounds for considerable disagreement, which I welcome. It is puzzling, however, that he seems sincerely unaware of the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern thematic elements which are comparable to those of the Gospels: pivotal motifs such as “the one chosen by god,” the “inaugural announcement of the divine kingdom,” and “the good news” of that kingdom’s saving reversals, which offer a utopian hope to the poor and oppressed, the widow and the orphan. He even seems to ignore the stereotypical implications of the royal figure of a conquering messiah —which historical kings have indeed used in their “biographies.”
Such an ancient theme as “life’s victory over death” gets its first treatment in the Gospels in a reiteration of the stories of Elisha. Surely, this is not news to him —anymore than he can be unaware of the Gospel reiterations of the “eternal need to crush the head of the evil one,” so central to the St. George myth— though no less central to an understanding of Jesus in the Gospels. Such narratively embraced themes can hardly be understood as providing historical evidence for any figure of the ancient world; this has always been the stuff other than the historical. Why has he written such a diatribe as Did Jesus Exist? And having decided to write it: why didn’t he take his title seriously and attempt to give a reasonable argument concerning his conviction that he did?
(iii) The interactions garnered by subsequent comment responses from James McGrath, and others, and responses from Thompson
#3 - James F. McGrath - 07/10/2012 - 02:50
In referring to the existence of a historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth as an "assumption" rather than a historical conclusion, Thompson is either siding with the mythicists, or trying to have his cake and eat it too, or ignoring what Ehrman wrote, or some combination of the above. In writing about this topic, Thompson had a wonderful opportunity to clarify his own position and distance himself from those internet crackpots sometimes referred to as "mythicist" who comment on matters of history about which they are inadequately informed, engage in extremes of parallelomania which seem like a parody of the worst examples of scholarship from a bygone era, and in other ways do something that would be helpful in relation to this subject. That opportunity seems to me to have been squandered.
#4 - Thomas L. Thompson - 07/10/2012 - 09:11
Dear James McGrath,
In an article ('The Historiography of the Pentateuch: 25 Years after Historicity' Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 13, 1999, 258-283) I have discussed why I think it is very difficult to establish the historicity of figures in biblical narrative, as the issue rather relates to the quality of texts one is dealing with. I work further on this issue in my Messiah Myth of 2005. Here I argue that the synoptic gospels can hardly be used to establish the historicity of the figure of Jesus; for both the episodes and sayings with which the figure of Jesus is presented are stereotypical and have a history that reaches centuries earlier. I have hardly shown that Jesus did not exist and did not claim to. Rather, I compared our knowledge about Jesus to our knowledge of figures like Homer. As soon as we try to identify such an historical figure, we find ourselves talking about the thematic elements of stories.
I do not distance myself from 'mythicists' as I do not see this term as referring to any scholars I know.
Thomas L. Thompson
Professor emeritus, University of Copenhagen
#6 - James F. McGrath - 07/10/2012 - 15:19
Thomas, I am happy to hear that you do not place any scholarly views, including your own, into the category of the internet-based and self-published mythicists, and likewise do not consider the views of the latter scholarship.
You perhaps do not recall us having a conversation on a list-serv about the differences between the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible when it comes to matters of history and oral tradition. The amount of time that passed between when the events allegedly took place and their first being mentioned in writing is much shorter in the New Testament than in the case of the Hebrew Bible. Already in Paul's letters, we learn that he had met Jesus' brother and was aware of at least some key details about him - that he was Jewish (born of a woman, like all other human beings, and born under the Law), that he was crucified, bled and died, and was buried. We do not have a comparable situation with respect to the Hebrew Bible, in which we have good reason to conclude that an author was in contact with a relative of a key figure within a decade of his death, do we?
The point I took away from your book is that Jesus is presented through the lens of and in stereotypes derived from the already-existing mythology related to the Davidic anointed one. No mainstream historian should deny that, and to my knowledge none of them do. But this point seems to me relevant to the present discussion precisely because one of the major reasons that for thinking that there was a historical Jesus, other than those I've already mentioned, is the fact that those sources which narrate stories about him contain things which it is hard to imagine anyone concocting if their aim was to tell a story of someone who fit the expectations about precisely such a Davidic anointed one.
#9 - Thomas L. Thompson - 07/10/2012 - 19:01
Dear James McGrath,
You misuse my remarks about your presentation of mysticism. I do not deal with it --and am neither negative nor positive about it. Normally, I work with what is going in biblical scholarship and generally do not have any opinion about bloggers--whether or not you disagree with them.
You are quite right that I do not recall our previous discussion, but I am aware of the difference of such a question in regard to the New Testament and it is therefore that I have been involved in publishing the book with Thomas Verenna Is This Not the Carpenter? which takes up the issues you refer to.
In choosing elements which might deal well with questions of whether the narratives reflect historical realities, I purposely chose elements which New Testament scholars saw as unequivocally historical--taking up the Jesus seminar's certain ipsissima verba of Jesus. I think I have shown that they are obviously not what these scholars have claimed.
Now you suggest that there may be other things. Please give me references and the publication references for your discussion.
Thomas L. Thompson
Professor emeritus, University of Copenhagen
etc
(iv) a book as a response to Ehrman's book*: T.L. Thompson and T.S. Verenna (eds.), Is This Not The Carpenter?: The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (through the Copenhagen International Seminar) (Sheffield: Equinox, July, 2012). Various authors.
* Just as other biblical scholars also responded to another book of Ehrman's with another book: How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. -- Michael F. Bird, Craig A. Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles E. Hill, & Chris Tilling wrote How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature—A Response to Bart D. Ehrman, and published it on the same day!!
Ehrman argues Jesus's followers elevated him to deity status after his death, and says there is no reliable evidence to support belief that Jesus was ever resurrected from the dead. Instead, Ehrman says Jesus's followers had "visionary experiences," or hallucinations of Jesus after his burial that led them to determine that Christ was alive.
Bird et al argue that "the exalted place of Jesus in belief and worship is clearly evident in the earliest Christian sources, shortly following his death, and was not simply the invention of the church centuries later." "The idea of formerly devout Jews sliding into the veneration of Jesus as some kind of intermediary figure and then as God are simply not consistent with what we know about Jewish or early Christian beliefs and practices" (Bird, pp. 31-34).
Last edited by MrMacSon on Mon Jan 09, 2017 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"..invites us to suspend all 'knowledge' we already have about the history of the New Testament's development ..."
In review, Tom Dykstra (who has a PhD in History) wrote -
"This is a landmark book in biblical studies, not so much because of its proto-Luke hypothesis, as because of its first 9 chapters that present and justify the author's methodology ... this is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive and effectively argued attack on the idea of oral tradition that has yet been published anywhere, and it should be read by anyone who is inclined to take that idea seriously.
"These nine chapters offer an account of the incredible variety of ways that people in the ancient world created new works of literature by copying old ones; they refute the idea that the Old Testament or New Testament were unique exceptions to this pattern; they create and defend a series of criteria that scholars can use to determine when one literary work is dependent on another; they provide a brief history explaining how the process of creating literary works worked in the ancient world; they refute the idea that the New Testament authors could have been so isolated that each could somehow write in complete ignorance of the others' works; and they reach a well-substantiated conclusion that much of the New Testament - even including the epistles of Paul - was produced by a single far-flung community rather than by isolated individuals.
" ... I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about the foundations of biblical scholarship, especially with regard to the Gospels or attempts to find "the historical Jesus." At the very least, read the first nine chapters. Those chapters alone are worth the cost of the book."
"Everything hinges on 'Proto-Luke', a history of Jesus using the Elijah-Elisha narrative as its model, which survives in 10 chapters of Luke and 15 of Acts.
Mark then uses Proto-Luke, transposing its Acts material back into the life of Jesus. Matthew deuteronomizes Mark, John improves on the discourses of Matthew. Luke-Acts spells out the story at length. Add the Pauline corpus, the descendant of Deuteronomy via the Matthean logia, and the New Testament is virtually complete.
This is a totalizing theory, an explanation of everything, and its critics will be numerous. But even they will be hugely intrigued, and have to admit that Brodie's myriads of challenging observations about literary affinities demand an answer." https://www.amazon.com/Birthing-New-Tes ... 1905048661
Tom Dykstra also wrote
[Beyond the first nine chapters] The remainder of the book presents Brodie's application of his methodology at some length, including his Proto-Luke hypothesis. I personally found this rather more of a mixed bag than the first nine chapters. In particular, Proto-Luke seems little different from Q or oral tradition insofar as it amounts to an attempt to explain by appealing to an unknown quantity for which there is actually no hard evidence. Nevertheless, this does not reflect negatively at all on Brodie's presentation of his methodology. The very fact of "authorial complexity", which he so forcefully defends in the first part of the book, means that no criteria -no matter how well thought out and applied- will reliably tip the hand of an author who was not inclined to tip his hand.
The book is very long, and is written largely by a scholar for scholars; nevertheless. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about the foundations of biblical scholarship, especially with regard to the Gospels or attempts to find "the historical Jesus." At the very least, read the first nine chapters. Those chapters alone are worth the cost of the book. Regardless of whether you agree with everything you read there, when you're done you will be less inclined to blindly accept statements by other biblical scholars that are presented as fact, but are actually highly questionable.
Does Brodie's "Mark used a proto-Luke" hypothesis, outlined in the The Birthing of the New Testament, align with the more-recently published views of Markus Vinzent and Matthias Klinghardt (and possibly the views of Joseph Tyson) that the synoptic gospels are post-Marcion writings?
MrMacSon wrote:
Instead, Ehrman says Jesus's followers had "visionary experiences," or hallucinations of Jesus after his burial that led them to determine that Christ was alive.
I have a problem with Bart here to.
Why cant it be he was spiritually resurrected which later transformed into a physical one ?
To sum it up he is butthurt Bart ignores his opinion, and Bart over attributes historicity. I agree.
And that the only credible position regarding possible historicity is on minimal grounds [which I also follow]
I think he may underestimate how much Bart and modern scholars understands the NT was heavily plagiarized from OT text, he has a point against apologetic scholars that embarrass the study.
One does well to consider, here, how the scene, with its pivotal motifs of the craftsman and his wonderful hands, readily evokes the figure of the Greek god, Hephaestus,2 who was the god of craftsmen, who, himself, had forged the magnificent equipment of the gods and almost any finely-wrought metalwork imbued with powers that appears in Greek myth. He too was—though crippled by Zeus—strong-armed.
I think they are reaching into the absurd at this point.
In Mark it was meant more ion context of a low life displaced peasant, doing hand work. The later authors in Matthew and Luke tried diminish.
Not only that it ignores the prose being used here, if Marks authors were going evoke a Greek like god carpenter, they would have made it obvious.
Sorry calling it like I see it, pitiful work INHO above making me wonder how poor his books sales were.
.
A couple of other interesting books by Charles Freeman look interesting:-
A New History of Early Christianity (2011)
"..Charles Freeman’s meticulous historical account of Christianity, from its birth in Judaea in the first century AD to the emergence of Western and Eastern churches by AD 600, reveals that it was a distinctive, vibrant, and incredibly diverse movement brought into order at the cost of intellectual and spiritual vitality. Against the conventional narrative of the inevitable “triumph” of a single distinct Christianity, Freeman shows that there was a host of competing Christianities, many of which had as much claim to authenticity as those that eventually dominated. Looking with fresh eyes at the historical record, Freeman explores the ambiguities and contradictions that underlay Christian theology and the unavoidable compromises enforced in the name of doctrine.
"..Charles Freeman shows how freedom of thought was curtailed by the development of the concept of faith. The imposition of "correct belief," religious uniformity, and an institutional framework that enforced orthodoxy were both consolidating and stifling. Uncovering the difficulties in establishing the Christian church, he examines its relationship with Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman society, and he offers dramatic new accounts of Paul, the resurrection, and the church fathers and emperors." https://www.amazon.com/New-History-Earl ... 0300170831
AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State (2009)
"In 381 AD, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman Empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christianity; all other interpretations were now declared heretical. Moreover, for the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization, free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Yet surprisingly, this political revolution, intended to bring inner cohesion to an empire under threat from the outside, has been airbrushed from the historical record. Instead, it has been claimed that the Christian Church had reached a consensus on the Trinity which was promulgated at the Council of Constantinople in 381.
"This groundbreaking new book shows that the Council was, in fact, a shambolic affair, which only took place after Theodosius’s decree had become law. In short, the Church was acquiescing in the overwhelming power of the Emperor. Freeman argues that the edict and the subsequent suppression of paganism not only brought an end to religious and philosophical diversity throughout the Empire, but created numerous theological problems for the Church that have remained unsolved. The year AD 381, Freeman concludes, marked 'a turning point which time forgot'.” https://www.amazon.com/AD-381-Heretics- ... 1845950070
Does anyone have any comments on these books, or the others I have listed in previous posts above? -viz. -
Thomas Brodie's 2006 The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings(New Testament Monographs)
Thomas L Thompson's 2006 'The Messiah Myth: The Ancient Near Eastern Background of David and Jesus'
.
Another author who seems to have written some interesting books is David Charles Parker; Professor of Theology and the Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. His interests include New Testament textual criticism and Greek and Latin palaeography.
His books include in descending chronology (ie. most recent first) -
Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament, Oxford University Press, 2012
Codex Sinaiticus. The Story of the World’s Oldest Bible, London: British Library and Peabody MA: Hendrikson, 2010
An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008
The Living Text of the Gospels, Cambridge University Press. 1997 (excerpt in this forum here)
He has published on the Codex Bezae -
Codex Bezae. Studies from the Lunel Colloquium June 1994 (New Testament Tools and Studies 22) (with C.-B. Amphoux), Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1996
Codex Bezae. An Early Christian Manuscript and Its Text, Cambridge University Press. 1992
"Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of their Origins and Early Development" (1992) edited by Hershel Shanks
Chapters include:
LOUIS H. FELDMAN | Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism in the First Century
E.P. SANDERS | The Life of Jesus
JAMES D.G. DUNN | Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome: 30–70 C.E.
LEE I.A. LEVINE | Judaism from the Destruction of Jerusalem to the End of the Second Jewish Revolt: 70–135 C.E.
HAROLD W. ATTRIDGE | Christianity from the Destruction of Jerusalem to Constantine: 70–312 C.E.
SHAYE J.D. COHEN | Judaism to the Mishnah: 135–220 C.E.
ISAIAH M. GAFNI | The World of the Talmud: From the Mishnah to the Arab Conquest
DENNIS E. GROH | The Religion of the Empire: Christianity from Constantine to the Arab Conquest
JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH | Christians and Jews in the First Six Centuries
