Fashions, Fallacies

[Adam]

Thank you, Bertie,
But I could not get farther than the abstract from my computer.
Can you answer MrMacSon's inquiry about the cited 2013 Baird?

[Blood]

Larry Hurtado in his retirement is not afraid to reveal various wrong-headed ventures in biblical criticism. His articles "Fashions, Fallacies..." in the June 2014 Journal for the Study of the New Testament laughs off mid-20th Century fads such as Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Deconstructionism. His biggest target is the Gnostic redeemer myth. This goes back to the start of the 20th Century, but along the way became a key feature of top scholars such as Bultmann, Bousset, Kasemann, Koester (even as of 2007), and J. M.Robinson. The idea of a pre-Christian Gnosticism generating Christianity is no longer tenable (Baird, 2013). Along the way it did much harm in fashioning (without being itself Nazi) the German Kultur of minimizing Judaism in ancient and current Christianity.
He also states that a previous "Son of Man" title was not adopted by Jesus. For Hurtado, "earliest Christianity...significant adaptations and 'mutations' ". I suspect Hurtado would ridicule much of what is presumed here in ECW.

"Minimizing Judaism in ancient and current Christianity" did not begin with a German "Gnostic redeemer myth" in the 20th century. It was mainstream Christianity in all Western cultures from the first century until a couple of decades ago. Hurtado, of course, will never admit or recognize that fact.

[Blood]

Hurtado: The basic problem for the notion of a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth always was that there never really was any evidence for it: nothing, nichts, nada, rien! It is amazing, therefore, to note how the idea was embraced and promoted so confidently, and across sixty years or more. It is truly one of the more spectacular fallacies of the field of NT studies.

I love it when Biblical Studies professors admit to how ridiculous their field really is, and how well-respected experts and scholars within it frequently commit "spectacular fallacies" based on wishful thinking.

[Blood]

"Baird 2013" refers to William Baird, History of New Testament Research: From C. H. Dodd to Hans Dieter Betz

http://www.amazon.com/History-New-Testa ... liam+baird

[Blood]

Hurtado: "So, once again, we have a notion ("Son of Man" as apocalyptic title in Judaism) that was confidently, even fervently, asserted over many decades, and was taken as established fact and the basis for wide-ranging claims about ancient Jewish tradition and, more to the point here, about Jesus and the NT, and yet has been shown rather clearly to have been fallacious, lacking sufficient corroborating evidence for it."

I'm getting a little confused here. I thought we peons could never question the experts in Biblical studies. Yet here is one of their own stating that a notion that was "confidently, even fervently, asserted over many decades" in the field was fallacious. What does that say about some of the notions in the field today, and the people so confident in asserting them?

[Blood]

Hurtado: "In short, the data of the NT writings were used to posit the pre-Christian traditions that were in turn used to account for the data of the NT writings! The circularity of the process should have been obvious."

Ah, but it wasn't obvious to those within Biblical studies, was it, Larry? Such circular arguments are the norm in your field, and they continue apace today.

[andrewcriddle]

Hurtado: The basic problem for the notion of a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth always was that there never really was any evidence for it: nothing, nichts, nada, rien! It is amazing, therefore, to note how the idea was embraced and promoted so confidently, and across sixty years or more. It is truly one of the more spectacular fallacies of the field of NT studies.

I love it when Biblical Studies professors admit to how ridiculous their field really is, and how well-respected experts and scholars within it frequently commit "spectacular fallacies" based on wishful thinking.

Although the pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth is almost certainly wrong, there were real reasons why scholars a 100 years ago believed it.

Ancient texts that are in reality Manichaean (post-Christian) were mistakenly but very plausibly interpreted as Zoroastrian (pre-Christian).

Andrew Criddle

[Blood]

Hurtado: "The notion of a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth originated in the work of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule of the early twentieth century, and was promoted especially in Richard Reitzenstein’s 1921 book, Das iranische Erlöserungsmysterium. In the texts of the Mandaeans (also known as Sabbaeans), a curious sect that arose in Mesopotamia (in part of what is now Iraq), Reitzenstein believed that he had found the origins of beliefs that came to be central parts of Christianity. Though these texts date from the seventh century CE and later, and it is now widely thought that the Mandaeans probably originated no earlier than sometime in/after the (late) first century CE, Reitzenstein took the Mandaeans and their texts as the key expression of a pre-Christian Gnosticism. Moreover, he also posited that these texts demonstrated a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth from which the sort of christology that we find in the NT, particularly in the Gospel of John, derived. His colleagues in the Schule, e.g., Wilhelm Bousset affirmed a similar view."

Since Reitzenstein’s Das iranische Erlöserungsmysterium was never translated into English, it's impossible to know how accurate this statement is.

The notion of Jesus as "redeemed redeemer" is clearly present in Gnostic texts. The only question is whether such an idea existed in Gnosticism prior to "Christianity" (as if that was one single concept!), and whether Gnosticism itself pre-dates "Christianity."

"Ho, too (Jesus), the son, who was appointed as a place of redemption for the all, was himself in need of redemption, in that he had become man." (Tripartite Tractate, cited in Rudolph, Gnosis, pg. 122)

"Again he (Jesus) was redeemed, again he redeemed." (Gospel of Phillip, cited in Rudolph, Gnosis, pg. 122)

[andrewcriddle]

Although the pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth is almost certainly wrong, there were real reasons why scholars a 100 years ago believed it.

Ancient texts that are in reality Manichaean (post-Christian) were mistakenly but very plausibly interpreted as Zoroastrian (pre-Christian).

Andrew Criddle

See http://www.academicroom.com/article/nar ... oman-egypt for an interesting account of Manichaean texts including those that influenced Reitzenstein.

Andrew Criddle

[DCHindley]

Although the pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth is almost certainly wrong, there were real reasons why scholars a 100 years ago believed it.

Ancient texts that are in reality Manichaean (post-Christian) were mistakenly but very plausibly interpreted as Zoroastrian (pre-Christian).

I found it interesting that Hurtado brushes off the concept of a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth without so much as mentioning the chief still alive proponent, Birger Pearson, who is in fact a qualified, accredited scholar who regularly publishes peer reviewed books and articles on the subject. He really likes to appeal to authority to wave away what he finds offensive.

I think that Simone Petrement's defense of the idea that all gnostic systems derive from Christianity (see A Separate God) is certainly wrong, "wronger" than Pearson. There are Coptic gnostic treatises in both Christian and non-Christian forms, and some with no Christian elements at all but with clear connections to Judean interpretations of Genesis and Platonism, and almost all of these contain some element of a redeemer myth. It is easier for me to grasp the idea of gnostics with a developed redeemer myth borrowing elements of the competing Christ redeemer myth, than to think that some gnostics who originated within Christian circles revised Jesus Christ completely out of their redemption myths, leaving no trace at all.

IMHO, both Jewish ("Sethian") Gnosticism and Christianity are kissing cousins in the ever evolving history of religions. It is not enough to point to ideas in Gnosticism that resemble Neoplatonism, for as Dillon notes, every Neo Platonic doctrine was previously expressed by Middle Platonists but had not become mainstream before the 2nd or 3rd century CE.

DCH (gotta go to a wedding reception an hour's drive away ... I sure hope the food is good )