spin wrote:
I find myself in the lonely category "Traditional", unable to know if Jesus existed and without any hope of the evidence yielding clarification. The sources which are accumulated traditions seem to me to be terminally opaque.
I'm not sure how your position differs in practice from that of Price. I'm also sure that, in the end, it's clear for most people here that we cannot know the answer to the historicity question and most probably never will.
Of course, there's also those people who will always overestimate the evidence for historicity because they don't see the intrinsic problem that any evidence for non-historicity does not have the same chance of being present than any evidence for historicity, just from the simple nature of the question.
Maybe a better and more nuanced question would be to ask - whether early Christians thought or were meant to think he was a historical person? But even that would be diced and sliced into abstraction.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
The Pauline interpretations do not cover how I feel. 7 attributed epistles are from a Pauline community early to mid 50's with slight interpolation and redaction, the other Pauline text pseudepigrapha
spin wrote:
I find myself in the lonely category "Traditional", unable to know if Jesus existed and without any hope of the evidence yielding clarification. The sources which are accumulated traditions seem to me to be terminally opaque.
I'm not sure how your position differs in practice from that of Price. I'm also sure that, in the end, it's clear for most people here that we cannot know the answer to the historicity question and most probably never will.
Due to the nature of tradition there is no way to analyze the sources, so tradition does not allow historical investigation. I think Price works with the simpler position that currently the literature is unhelpful in deciding, but if new info or analysis comes along, he's open to being swayed one way or the other. I think tradition precludes new approaches.
Ulan wrote:Of course, there's also those people who will always overestimate the evidence for historicity because they don't see the intrinsic problem that any evidence for non-historicity does not have the same chance of being present than any evidence for historicity, just from the simple nature of the question.
My aim was to list all possible viewpoints regarding a real Jesus as inspiration for christianity. I believe all of them have been touted on this forum or its previous incarnations. I personally don't see how any rational person free to think in depth on the issue could take a position other than that of the Jesus agnostic. (My view on tradition puts me in as a Jesus agnostic with a caviat!)
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
As an acquaintance and off and on correspondent with Dr. Detering, I can say that Detering only subscribes to the characters in the NT writings being legendary fictions. He does not subscribe in the least box that says the writings were "A tool for deceiving & manipulating people." These came about from pious understandings and readings of legends, and did not come with mal intent. I think you need to make much clearer on your chart that those positions are Atwill's. Detering is very close to the position that when you strip away the literary legends there is no there left to even catch sight of the historical persons the literature fictionalized.
I'll happily take Detering's name out of the category. (It'd probably require more effort than I currently have available to accommodate him without adding a new category and making the gamut even more complicated.)
Stuart wrote:"Accreted" can apply to both fictional and historical. It is the process of legend built up upon foundation. But even if the foundation is legend, that would have no impact upon the process of layering additional legend. This element is not rejected by Price or Detering. I think what I am trying to say is the lines are not near as solid as you make them out in your chart, and many people pick elements of various categories. Individual elements within theories hold truth even if the grand theory in which they are lumped is not solid,
I have "accreted" in quotation marks because the title was provisional and hadn't found a better description in a word. I'm open to suggestions for the position of Wells. I might consider something "minimalist historical", though the "minimalist" part would raise too many red flags.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
Several years ago on the previous incarnation of this forum I put this table together to show the various positions people hold regarding Jesus
I don't see so much difference about what Doherty and Detering say about the ''Value of the Gospels''. To my knowledge, the Doherty/Carrier paradigm may well require that (at least the first) Gospel was ''A tool for deceiving & manipulating people''.
The aim of the table is to clarify the different approaches to Jesus. Doherty and Detering have quite different approaches. I don't know about your second sentence. I'm open to suggestion, given enough support for change.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
Surely Doherty and Detering have quite different approaches about the epistles, but about the first Gospel - ignoring for a moment the Doherty's approval of Q and assuming the minimal-Doherty-thesis proposed by Carrier - both recognize the possibility that the first Gospel was a ''a tool for deceiving & manipulating people''.
For example, so Carrier:
People who want only atheists to make use of euhemerization are inexplicably annoyed by the fact that theists can euhemerize their gods, too. They are further annoyed (just as inexplicably) by the fact that euhemerization can be a ploy (to conceal a cosmic truth under a historicized allegory) rather than a sincere maneuver.
Giuseppe wrote:Surely Doherty and Detering have quite different approaches about the epistles, but about the first Gospel - ignoring for a moment the Doherty's approval of Q and assuming the minimal-Doherty-thesis proposed by Carrier - both recognize the possibility that the first Gospel was a ''a tool for deceiving & manipulating people''.
For example, so Carrier:
People who want only atheists to make use of euhemerization are inexplicably annoyed by the fact that theists can euhemerize their gods, too. They are further annoyed (just as inexplicably) by the fact that euhemerization can be a ploy (to conceal a cosmic truth under a historicized allegory) rather than a sincere maneuver.
Ben C. Smith wrote:Are you sure, spin, that you have Gundry in the correct category? He argues for the historicity of many gospel details.
I was a bit taken aback regarding Gundry when I reproduced the table. I don't remember the consultation process regarding people supporting categories, but Gundry got there through that process. I'd either have to go back to the original thread which seems too much for my brain at the moment, or I could just scratch him.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
