Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
outhouse
Posts: 3577
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by outhouse »

neilgodfrey wrote:
Um, I did not quote Young at all. I clearly said it was my own addition to what Young said.
.
You did add it below his two, almost like sneaking it in as #3 of Youngs 2 points.

You even stated it was your opinion. Guess I didn't like the perversion to his work somewhat disguised as his.

some other piece of writing of his where he spoke about something else.


Not just "any" piece of writing Neil. This is a piece your familiar with, being I found the link at your cite.


The whole point is we have Hanges using a 1984 source, to quote as to what he thinks scholars associated with the Church apologetically posit. He really is no credible source here.

The fact he is outsourcing this, shows his limit of knowledge


I am saying that that method is a bad thing.


I agree.

I've even seen bible scholars declare that historians study myths to try to peel away what is mythical to discover the historical core behind them. As far as I am aware the only "historians" who do this are the theologians studying the gospels to try to find some history about Jesus behind them.
Well paint me purple and call me a theologian.

Been following mythology for a long time watching the evolution of mythology within different cultures, all from obscure minute historical core.

I've never seen a historian apply form criticism to Homer's Iliad to try to find out what Achilles really said or did. I've never seen a historian apply memory theory to Suetonius to try to find out what Julius Caesar did or said.

The idea would be laughed out of the academy. But if you're studying the Bible and Jesus and the Church then it's considered a "good thing".

I don't think anyone would be laughed at. I think there's little to no interest in finding a different hypothesis.
outhouse
Posts: 3577
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by outhouse »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sorry, Hanges actually REJECTS the "typical apologist view of Paul's revelation". He rejects it.
.
Not what Im saying. Don't be an idiot.



Im saying he is wrong in stating what scholars associated with the Church posit.
Paul’s “law-free,” faith-based gospel to the non-Jews has been traditionally assumed by the Church, and with most scholars associated with the Church, to be the product of specific revelation

Read the article.



This is his "apologist" context, and this is an example of his misuse of apologist and scholars . Not only that he is quoting Seyoon Kim from lack of his knowledge.



Now if you would like to tell me another opinion of his context instead of name calling, im open.


But don't claim he wasn't selling his postcolonial, lens horse crap.
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by Clive »

all from obscure minute historical core.
I haven't the precise quote in front of me, but Michael Woods In Search of Myths and Heroes quotes a professor about being very careful about historical cores.

This is an important point.

If it is accepted we are a story telling species - it is being argued that our language abilities and the structure of our brains co-evolved with grooming, ritual, music and story telling, what is this assumption of historical cores about?

What if the historical core is a story?
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Sheshbazzar
Posts: 391
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2014 7:21 am

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by Sheshbazzar »

Historical core. :D

Damn how I miss that ROFLMAO icon.
User avatar
Blood
Posts: 899
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 8:03 am

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by Blood »

It is always useful to know where the stupid and childish term "parallelomania" came from, and why.
Samuel Sandmel wrote:I encountered the term parallelomania, as I recall, in a French book of about 1830, whose title and author I have forgotten,1 in a context in which there were being examined certain passages in the Pauline epistles and in the Book of Wisdom that seem to have some resemblance, and a consequent view that when Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans, a copy of the Book of Wisdom lay open before him, and that Paul in Romans copied generously from it. Three items are to be noted. One, that some passages are allegedly parallel; two, that a direct organic literary connection is assumed to have provided the parallels; and three, that the conclusion is drawn that the flow is in a particular direction, namely, from Wisdom to Paul, and not from Paul to Wisdom. Our French author disputes all three points: he denies that the passages cited are true parallels; he denies that a direct literary connection exists; he denies that Paul copied directly from Wisdom, and he calls the citations and the inferences parallelomania. We might for our purposes define parallelomania as that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction.
This must be one of the most ill-advised revivals of an old neologism that one could possibly think of. That "Romans" copies from "The Wisdom of Solomon" should not be a controversial theory. It may not be correct, but it does have strong textual support. Hence, it was inappropriate to apply the term in 1830, and there was no need to revive it in 1962, particularly in a supposedly scholarly context.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
Robert Tulip
Posts: 331
Joined: Thu Nov 28, 2013 2:44 am

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by Robert Tulip »

neilgodfrey wrote:From James Constantine Hanges, Paul, Founder of Churches, p. 455
We saw that with respect to method, the vigorous push-back against the search for continuities practiced by the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule at the end of the last century redefined the comparative enterprise by using comparison specifically to identify differences that could be deployed to protect the essential the uniqueness of Christianity. [Kummel, New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, 206-25]
. . . . . . . .
But what we can now see, especially with the aid of contemporary culture studies, is that despite the methodological "red-herring" known as, "parallelomania," thrown into the arena by apologists, the fundamental theoretical proposition of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule was, despite certain missteps, true to its target - religions cannot be isolated from the historical, social, and environmental forces that shape all cultural forms; religions, including Christianity, belong to and are always shaped by history.
Noting here that “last century” refers to the nineteenth century, this is an immensely valuable critique of the false argument from Richard Carrier that anything valuable from the nineteenth century in study of religion will have been incorporated in more recent work. Much good older work has been swept under the carpet and forgotten by dismissive arguments which often have unconscious apologetic or careerist assumptions.

Against the Carrier line, we can explore examples such as the Pan-Babylonian school as presenting a valuable analysis of the cosmic dimension in mythology, with parallels analysed comparatively, such as between the flood stories. The shallow critique of such work by influential scholars such as Neugebauer was enough to create an apologetic straw man to defend Christian historicism against rational critique. As well, the excessive speculation within theosophy made it easy for apologists to hint that all analysis of parallels is akin to witchcraft, tarring comparative religious analysis with the brush of magical hermetic thinking. This dogmatic stratagem of rejection by bluster had powerful roots in the relatively recent phenomena of the witch-craze and the Inquisition, and led to broad ignorance of how hermetic thinking is in fact at the root of scientific method.

Perhaps one of the greatest analysts of comparative religion in the nineteenth century was Gerald Massey. His application of the method proposed by Hanges in this insightful quote from Neil Godfrey, exploring how “religions cannot be isolated from the historical, social, and environmental forces that shape all cultural forms”, led Massey to a comprehensive and largely compelling analysis of how Christian myth evolved from Egyptian myth.

For example, the close parallel Massey described between the trope Osiris-Horus-Isis-Nephthys and the trope Lazarus-Jesus-Mary-Martha is one of many that are at the basis of Tom Harpur’s analysis in The Pagan Christ, AB Kuhn’s Who Is This King of Glory?, and the works of Acharya S. This whole valuable comparative area of study languishes in obscurity because of the corrupt power of the church, which trades on mythical assumptions imbibed in Sunday School and internalised across the vestiges of Christendom, including with unconscious influence on pervasive academic beliefs.

If you think about it from first principles, the influence of the large ancient adjacent cultures on Jewish and Christian ideology must have been massive. Civilisations from Egypt, Babylon and India provided major evolutionary memetic precedents, providing many of the cultural forms that were adapted for Biblical purposes. The blanket denial of these influences was part of the heresiology of Christendom, which presents a deep cultural pathology. Identifying and articulating the nature of religious pathology is a key ethical objective arising from the observation that Jesus Christ is a fictional character in a political myth. A psychological diagnosis is needed of the roots of cultural pathology in denial of parallels, in order to provide any healing prognosis.

The simple obvious scientific principle of the expectation of cultural parallels between adjacent long standing societies is rejected out of hand by those who use the racist assumption of classical modern imperialism, described by Bernal in his great book Black Athena. This false widespread racist assumption is that ancient Judeo-Greek culture can in fact be isolated from the historical, social and environmental forces that shaped it. This false belief in an isolated privileged western set of traditions is sustained by dogmatic apologetic insistence on textual authority and inerrancy.

Inerrantism is not a legitimate intellectual method, but rather in fact is a deeply racist and alienated ideology, based on an unprincipled isolation of selected traditions from their context to serve political motives of asserting cultural superiority. Inerrantism, privileging tradition above evidence, deserves to be exposed and rejected from all rational discourse as an irrational and misguided influence on scholarship.
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by Clive »

Several years ago I read chunks of CG Jung's Collected Works and there are many similar themes there!

Jung discusses authenticity. I think the churches and their institutions are able to lose their institutionalised responses and be open that they are working in the worlds of dream and story.

They have precedents like St Francis and the mystic traditions.
Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, All praise is Yours, all glory, all honour and all blessings.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong, and no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather's moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks,
And serve Him with great humility.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by Clive »

Most High
Ahura Mazda (/əˌhʊrəˌmæzdə/;[1]), (also known as Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hourmazd, Hormazd, and Hurmuz, Lord or simply as spirit) is the Avestan name for a higher divine spirit of the old Iranian religion (predating Islam) who was proclaimed as the uncreated spirit by Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda is described as the highest spirit of worship in Zoroastrianism, along with being the first and most frequently invoked spirit in the Yasna. The literal meaning of the word Ahura is light and Mazda is wisdom. Zoroastrianism revolves around three basic tenets - Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds.
Wiki
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by John T »

The O.P seems to be trying to create a false debate between apologetics and radical criticism.

The canard being: Apologetics = Christian = inerrancy = fundamentalism and thus Christians by nature are disqualified from engaging in higher criticism.

IMHO, Radical criticism has been hijacked by atheists/mythicists and is not about finding Biblical historical truth but about destroying Christianity. I commend Outhouse for trying to sort it all out but frankly, he is wasting his time with Neilgodfrey.


*****************************************

Radical criticism

At the end of the 19th century, there have been advocates of higher criticism who strenuously tried to avoid any trace of dogma or theological bias when reconstructing a past reality. This has led to the branch of Radical Criticism, pursued by historical critics most skeptical of ecclesial tradition and dismissive toward sympathetic scholarship. Radical criticism has projected the concept that Jesus never existed,[1] nor his apostles. Radical critics have also attempted to show that none of the Pauline epistles are authentic; that Paul is nothing more than a controverted (conflated) authorial token.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_criticism
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
outhouse
Posts: 3577
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Red Herring of Parallelomania & 3 shades of Apologetics

Post by outhouse »

Clive wrote:
all from obscure minute historical core.
I haven't the precise quote in front of me, but Michael Woods In Search of Myths and Heroes quotes a professor about being very careful about historical cores.

This is an important point.

If it is accepted we are a story telling species - it is being argued that our language abilities and the structure of our brains co-evolved with grooming, ritual, music and story telling, what is this assumption of historical cores about?

What if the historical core is a story?

Are you discounting the possibilities of all historical cores in mythology ?
Post Reply