Jesus myth / James McGrath

[schillingklaus]

Mandeans are pro-demiurgist as they value marriage and procreation.

[Giuseppe]

Mandeans are pro-demiurgist

My point is that if McGrath thinks that a historical John the Baptist is connected someway with a sect who believed inter alia the following:

The false worship of Adunay among Jews is contrasted with the worship among Mandaeans of the true transcendent God, who is the Knowledge of LIfe. If Jews knew the true God, the Mandaean text says, they would not attend synagogue and read the Torah, which is all a lie anyway. Jews are viewed as credulous slaves to a God who is really a demon.

https://books.google.it/books?id=NjvEDw ... or&f=false

...then the same McGrath can NOT believe that John the Baptist baptized a pious Jew called Jesus and Christ in the real History.

[Paul the Uncertain]

Interesting given the dispute you mention, they think they go back to Adam, who cannot be considered a historical person

Couchoud was more coherent than McGrath: if you concede that John the Baptist was historically connected with the Mandeans, then accordingly you have to concede that the Mandean anti-demiurgism (=anti-YHWH) preceded at least the gospels, too.

Or: that there was a rivalry between Jesus' and John's disciples, requiring harmonization.

McGrath appears to assume the premise (given all his current enthusiasm for the Mandeans), but not the two logical implications above, and the reason is enough clear.

It escapes to me how can a "scholar" re-value the Mandean connection with the Baptist and in the same time ignore that there was a rivalry between the two sects, implying that a historical Jesus couldn't have been baptized by John in the real History.

Sorry for the delayed reply. I am told that McGrath is currently at work on a major John the Baptist project, contemplating a book. His views about the historical accuracy of the Mandaeans's claims that John was one of them and of their depiction of Jesus as an unattractive figure and nuisance to John may be subject to change or refinement as the research progresses.

I didn't follow your last point. Student-teacher relationships evolve, allowing the serious possibility that a student who was baptized could after a time go his own way and alienate the teacher or the teacher's friends. (There must have been a time when Ben16-2B and Thomas Thompson were OK with each other, for instance).

[Giuseppe]

I didn't follow your last point. Student-teacher relationships evolve, allowing the serious possibility that a student who was baptized could after a time go his own way and alienate the teacher or the teacher's friends.

My point is based on my strong suspicion that McGrath is the quintessence of a Christian apologist masked as 'scholar' (since only an apologist can compare mythicism with creationism et similia).

If he will come out with claims of the kind 'Mandean writings prove that John the Baptist was a historical figure', then his view will be the exact replay of what Couchoud had written about John the Baptist. Even so, I am sure that there will be no mention of Couchoud in McGrath's future book on the Baptist, despite of the fact that in this specific case the mythicist Couchoud may be considered the worthy precursor of McGrath.

Now, see what Loisy wrote against Couchoud about the Baptist (my bold):

Enfin il y a les fameux Mandéens, dont nous avons déjà parlé. Notre auteur les présente avec toute la solennité qui convient:

Sous le nom de religion mandéenne, c'est-à-dire gnostique, elle (la communaute de Jean) traversera les âges en conservant un trésor d'hymnes sacrées, écrites en langue araméenne, malheureusement tardives et prolixes. Aujourd'hui encore, non loin de Bassora, vers le bas Euphrate, vivent sans se mêler aux Arabes, quelques centaines de Mandéens, postérité abâtardie des Nazoréens de Jean—Baptiste dont ils ne conservent guère que le nom.

Au lecteur de se débrouiller dans cette notice où les contradictions à peine voilées, et nullement inconscientes, ne manquent pas. Authentiques représentants et descendants de la communauté (?) de Jean à travers les âges, les Mandéens sont... une «postérité abâtardie des Nazoréens de Jean-Baptiste dont ils ne conservent guère que le nom». — Dans ces conditions, comment furent-ils et ont-ils été jamais «la communauté de Jean»? En realité, quoi qu'on en ait pu dire, en aucun endroit de leurs Ecritures, les Mandéens ne présentent Jean comme ayant été le fondateur de leur religion; il n'en aurait été qu'un adepte, et l'on se garde bien de nous dire comment se fit la chose; le vrai, c'est que les Mandéens ont dérobé à la tradition chrétienne, pour s'en recommander eux-mêmes, le témoignage de Jean, que cette tradition avait la première confisqué à son profit; et le rapt s'est opéré sur les Ecritures chrétiennes, la tradition mandéenne n'ayant pas connu autrement Jean-Baptiste.

La religion mandéenne a traversé les âges «en conservant un trésor d'hymnes sacrées» qui sont... «malheureusement tardives». — Si elles sont tardives, elles n'ont pas été conservées de si loin. Si elles sont «écrites en langue araméenne», — Couchoud veut dire dans un dialecte araméen, — c'est que ce dialecte, avant qu'ils tombassent sous la domination arabe, était la langue des Mandéens et qu'il est resté celle de leur littérature religieuse, de leur liturgie, de leurs écrits canoniques. L'origine du mandéisme peut-être, à beaucoup d'égards, un problème, mais les affinités fondamentales de la secte ne sont pas avec la prédication de Jean-Baptiste, et la secte elle-même ne remonte pas si haut; le point réel de contact, j'entends la probabilité d'une origine commune pour le baptême de Jean, par conséquent aussi pour le baptême chrétien, et pour le baptême mandéen est en dehors de notre sujet. Ce qu'il est permis de dire ici, c'est que Couchoud, en se donnant l'air de mobiliser toute une arméen en faveur de son mythe, n'a guère mis sur pied qu'un régiment de fantômes.

(Histoire et mythe à propos de Jésus-Christ, p. 41—42)

«Agitateur», Jésus ne le fut pas au sens où Couchoud voudrait le faire entendre; il ne le fut pas plus que Jean le Baptiste, à qui Couchoud a bien voulu accorder la vie, — il est vrai, pour une mauvaise raison, à cause des Mandéens, qui seraient sa progéniture.

(ibidem, p. 247—248, my bold)

So, in conclusion, my point is this:
If the Loisy's words are true for Couchoud:

Ce qu'il est permis de dire ici, c'est que Couchoud, en se donnant l'air de mobiliser toute une arméen en faveur de son mythe, n'a guère mis sur pied qu'un régiment de fantômes.

...then, even more so the same Loisy's words will continue to be true for McGrath:

What can be said here is that McGrath, by giving himself the appearance of mobilizing an entire army in favor of his myth [=that real historical memory about John the Baptist is preserved in the Mandean writings], has only set up a regiment of ghosts.

[Paul the Uncertain]

Thank you for expanding on your position, Giuseppe.

As to McGrath, based on his comments about the evidentiary foundation for Jesus's historicity, I think he would accept Josephus's received remarks about John as sufficient for him to consider the threshold question (Was John the Baptist a historical figure?) settled. Mandaean material would be mainly useful to him in developing perspective on a figure whose historicity McGrath was confident about anyway.

I wouldn't infer too much from occasional recourse to comparisons with Holocaust deniers, young flat earthers, etc. It's a prevalent criticism to throw at skeptics in a variety of domains, a staple of life on the wild, wild web. Rather than covert apologetics, I think McGrath has an overt devotion to a "cult of expertise." As if the reason skeptics usually aren't Holocaust deniers is because they rely on experts to tell them what happened. That there're mountains of evidence about what happened, much of it amply accessible to non-specialists, apparently doesn't enter into it. That there are no such mountains for the existence of Jesus is treated as of no account. As it would be if expert opinion were what mattered to skeptics in both cases, or should be what matters in both.

[Secret Alias]

McGrath is a great scholar. Learn to respect those who disagree with you. Kinda important.

[Giuseppe]

Once an apologist, always an apologist.

[Giuseppe]

Thank you for expanding on your position, Giuseppe.

As to McGrath, based on his comments about the evidentiary foundation for Jesus's historicity, I think he would accept Josephus's received remarks about John as sufficient for him to consider the threshold question (Was John the Baptist a historical figure?) settled.

only partially true, I fear. McGrath reproached Rivka Nir (famous denier of the authenticity of the entire Baptist Passage in Josephus) for having not mentioned at all Mandean evidence in her book on the Baptist, implying so that part of the McGrath's reasons to be JtB historicist is based on Mandean writings too.

[Secret Alias]

Why does one's psychological motivation negate whether someone is right or wrong?

[Paul the Uncertain]

Thank you for expanding on your position, Giuseppe.

As to McGrath, based on his comments about the evidentiary foundation for Jesus's historicity, I think he would accept Josephus's received remarks about John as sufficient for him to consider the threshold question (Was John the Baptist a historical figure?) settled.

only partially true, I fear. McGrath reproached Rivka Nir (famous denier of the authenticity of the entire Baptist Passage in Josephus) for having not mentioned at all Mandean evidence in her book on the Baptist, implying so that part of the McGrath's reasons to be JtB historicist is based on Mandean writings too.

Looking over the Enoch Seminar review of Nir's book, here, apart from noting that Mandaeans practice repeated baptism (as might relate to whether John did), McGrath's remarks on the omission of Mandaean material begin:

Those who are familiar with the reviewer’s work on the subject will be unsurprised to learn that I am disappointed by Nir’s failure to make use of or discuss of Mandaean sources. On the one hand, given the way Nir treats the Pseudo-Clementine and other such Christian literature from centuries after John’s time, this omission might not be surprising. However, given Nir’s willingness to treat later Rabbinic sources as representative of something like a Jewish orthodoxy or mainstream in the first century, the possibility that Mandaean sources might have something to contribute ought at the very least to have been discussed.

To my eye, this doesn't betray any concern about the threshold question of John's existence, but rather promotes the possibility that Mandaean material may help better understand what an established historical figure said and did.

The quoted paragraph continues with some remarks about Josephus's John:

And if Josephus is to be judged a source of knowledge only about a Christian interpolator’s view of John, then the possibility that Mandaean sources might preserve the only information about John not filtered through a Christian lens makes a consideration of them all the more essential. If nothing else, however, they deserved at least a mention, if not more substantive attention, in a work whose conclusion makes a claim about “all our available sources”

This seems to me to be a straightforward acceptance of an opponent's position arguendo, and with the usual result: the speaker's recommendation would still be a good idea anyway.

Obviously, like everybody else, McGrath's confidence in any uncertain proposition would reflect whatever bearing evidence he knows of. The Mandaeans are a people of ancient roots who aren't Christians but who share McGrath's belief in a historical John. While I agree that that happy circumstance can only provide McGrath comfort in his conclusion, it also seems to me that he was already comfortable enough based on other evidence to consider the threshold question settled for him.