Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

outhouse wrote:

and if it does, he may have actually been a wandering preacher contemporary of Paul and the other 'disciples' - preaching about a Christ-savior.

Had that been the case, there would be no reason to use a Galilean baptized by John, living in an Aramaic community. This would need to be explained with credibility before we could give your sentence any weight what so ever.

MrMacSon wrote:

outhouse wrote:

and if it does, he may have actually been a wandering preacher contemporary of Paul and the other 'disciples' - preaching about a Christ-savior.

Had that been the case, there would be no reason to use a Galilean baptized by John, living in an Aramaic community. This would need to be explained with credibility before we could give your sentence any weight what so ever.

John 1 more than accounts for that.

outhouse wrote: Putting more historical weight on a more spiritual piece then one needs on that case. Cherry picking really.

junego wrote:Here's link to a pdf of a recent article by Dr. Zeba Crook titled "Matthew, memory theory and the New No Quest" published 11/20/14 in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 70(1), Art. #2716.

http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/art ... /2716/5202. (warning takes you to download of pdf)

He rejects memory theory as a viable methodology for uncovering historical kernals concerning Jesus. No startling insights, confrontation or "fringe" thinking. He surveys some general research on memory theory and the unreliability of human memory then talks about NT scholars who do and don't think memory theory is a new shiny methodology to discover real Jesus history (my characterization, not his) then applies some of the general research points to certain pericopes in gMatthew, finding that the method cannot sift wheat from chaff.

I was a bit surprised at how casually he says things like "If the New Testament Gospels are artefacts of memory, and they must surely be..." and "The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is, of course, not alone among ancient historians..." without any caveats or nods to the possibility that this document may not be a history or 'Matthew' may not be a historian. Dr. Crook is a purely secular scholar from my understanding.

Guess I'm just so used to Vridar, this board (and its predecessor), and other inputs that (rightly, imo) question the methods, 'evidence' and conclusions of modern NT scholarship that seeing one of those scholars not even acknowledging the possibility scrapes at my mind as I read. Modern scholarship really needs to take these criticisms on board.

• This article explores the effects of cognitive and social memory theory on the quest for the historical Jesus. It is not the case that all memory is hopelessly unreliable, but it is the case that it commonly is. Memory distortion is disturbingly common, and much worse, there is no way to distinguish between memories of actual events and memories of invented events. The Gospel of Matthew was used to illustrate this very difficulty. This article also draws attention to the fact that although numerous criteria have been developed, refined and used extensively in order to distinguish between original Jesus material and later church material, those criteria have long been unsatisfactory, and most recently, because of the effects of thinking about memory theory and orality, have been revealed to be bankrupt. Since memory theory shows that people are unable to differentiate accurate memory from inaccurate and wholly invented memory, and since the traditional quest criteria do not accomplish what they were intended to, this article argues that scholarship about Jesus has been forced into a new no quest,

• I must reject their hopefulness, and conclude that finding the historical Jesus is hopeless. Memory does not refine our previous positivistic and form-critical criteria, allowing us better to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic Jesus material. Neither does it provide a new means by which to discover authentic Jesus material. Rather, in my opinion, memory theory pushes us ever further away from certainty, from confidence in assessing authentic material, and in distinguishing it from inauthentic material.
  
  There are two reasons for this. The first is not merely that memory (both individual and group) is not entirely trustworthy, but how commonly it is untrustworthy. We know this because there are some means by which to assess the historical veracity of some sources (realism, common sense, the agenda of the author, competing versions, etc.). Seeing that some versions of a story are less reliable than others illustrates the dynamics of memory distortion.
  
  The second reason is far more serious: accurate and inaccurate memories (or, what I have called ‘manufactured memories’ elsewhere) are not qualitatively different. Memory might well work most of the time (Schacter 1996:98), but it also works poorly much of the time. I must make emphatically clear that I am not claiming that memory is always hopelessly unreliable, that none of your or my memories are reliable. I am also not saying that certain things from the past cannot be known with reasonable certainty. I am saying that all we know for sure is that our memories feel real and feel reliable, but often are not. But more to the point, too often we cannot ourselves tell the difference between our own reliable and less reliable memories.
  
  It is that last point that ought to push historical Jesus scholarship to a New No Quest. Questing for the historical Jesus can no longer be done because we do not have the means for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable memory, and because the traditional criteria, relied upon for so long, are now bankrupt.

ficino wrote:In his debate with Richard Carrier, Crook maintained that Jesus existed, but he appealed to Paul, not the gospels, for evidence.

toejam wrote:

ficino wrote:In his debate with Richard Carrier, Crook maintained that Jesus existed, but he appealed to Paul, not the gospels, for evidence.

I remember in that debate an audience member asked the question about oral traditions, and Crook was quite scathing of the prospect. I don't deny that the gospels were probably partly formed from the re-shaping of oral traditions (sayings and short pericopes).

junego wrote:Here's link to a pdf of a recent article by Dr. Zeba Crook titled "Matthew, memory theory and the New No Quest" published 11/20/14 in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 70(1), Art. #2716.

http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/art ... /2716/5202. (warning takes you to download of pdf)