Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 941 Location: The Dominion of New England Karma: 11
Re: Ehrman's e-book "Did Jesus Exist?" « Reply #1 on Jun 21, 2011, 11:05am »
Is it worth emailing Bart and directing him to the massive 'What can we possibly infer about the historical Jesus' thread from the 'Rational Skepticism' forum ?- or maybe -instead of making his eyes bleed - you have some kind of list of the most common myther arguments he can look at or your review of Fitzgerald's 'Nailed'. My only worry is that he misses one of the major myther arguments.
Re: Ehrman's e-book "Did Jesus Exist?" « Reply #2 on Jun 21, 2011, 1:14pm »
- Ehrman hasn't really considered the myther arguments enough. - Ehrman is in an academic field so overwhelmingly biased toward Christianity that it's natural he'd retain some vestige of Christian belief. - Ehrman secretly has myther sympathies, but he knows the academic inquisition would come after him if he dared to question the irrational dogma of the historical Jesus, so he keeps his mouth shut about it and writes things like this for street cred. - Ehrman might be an agnostic, but he WANTS to believe in Christianity so much that he still holds onto this little bit of it. - Ehrman is an old-fashioned academic and real historians like Richard Carrier will destroy the brittle foundation of the historical Jesus (just wait till Carrier gets his book published!) - Ehrman is just doing this so Christians will take his other books more seriously. - Ehrman lives in a Bible belt state (North Carolina) and has had his mind poisoned by that climate so that he accepts the senseless proposition of the historical Jesus. - Ehrman is making this digital-only because he's ashamed of how weak his arguments are and doesn't want them subjected to too much scrutiny. - Ehrman is making this digital-only because he's not putting much effort into it. - Ehrman is a secret Christian just like Tim O'Neill. - Biblical studies aren't a real academic field, who cares what they say? Richard Carrier and Earl Doherty have shown just how pathetic New Testament scholars are. - Ehrman begs the question by assuming that "Paul" existed at all.
Did I miss any more of the likely myther dismissals?
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 298 Location: Glasgow, Scotland Karma: 5
Re: Ehrman's e-book "Did Jesus Exist?" « Reply #4 on Jun 22, 2011, 1:43am »
Fortigurn, don't be silly. The simplest solution is that Tim O'Neill does not in fact exist. He is an amalgamation of JP Holding, James Hannam and Bart Ehrman, existing only in the minds of the fanatical sect of O'Neillians. Anyone with a shred of freethinking can see that key features of all these three earlier characters have been blended together to make a more controversial, compelling character.
In fact, the O'Neill Myth has managed to attract a blog-full of followers, even though no-one has ever met him (conveniently, he lives far far away in Australia!!!). Those taken in by the myth point to blog and internet forum posts commenting on contemporary events; but the internet is a well known haven for pseudepigraphia, and that photo of him in a leather jacket staring pensively into the distance is so artifically posed and stylised as to make it completely unreliable.
The sooner we realise that O'Neillers everywhere are deluded fantasists, the sooner we can ignore these subversive rants eminating from the worst of fundamentalist cults and get on with reading Freke and Gandy!
Did I miss any more of the likely myther dismissals?
Ehrman is Tim O'Neill.
I am surprised that an image like this one below has not appeared with the head of Tim O'Neill, James Hannam and J.P. Holding attached. Of course it would have a banner,
"The Attack Dog of Orthodox Apologetics" above it.
In fact, if I had the time, the knowledge and the software I would do it myself.
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 164 Location: Lancashire England Karma: 3
Re: Ehrman's e-book "Did Jesus Exist?" « Reply #9 on Jul 1, 2011, 9:43pm »
Contrary to popular opinion, a close analysis of "Tim O'Neill" proves that he does exist and that he in fact has his own TV show. Tim O Neill is, afterall, an angram of "I'M ON TELLI"
Joined: Jul 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 607 Location: Sydney Karma: 40
Re: Ehrman's e-book "Did Jesus Exist?" « Reply #10 on Mar 21, 2012, 10:14am »
Amazon.com was good enough to inform me this morning that my hardcover edition of Ehrman's book is winging its way toward Sydney and I should have it in a week or so.
In the meantime, Ehrman has written this rather weak piece in the Huffington Post as part of his pre-publicity. It's pretty hopeless and the Mythers are having a field day. I hope the book is a bit better than this feeble effort or I will be panning it along with the Myther fanclub.
In the meantime, Ehrman has written this rather weak piece in the Huffington Post as part of his pre-publicity.
It comes across as a bit of a rant, which is not really his style. If one was being generous, one would describe it as 'provocative', I think...
Also, I'm not sure about his point that it is denouncers of religion who make up the Jesus-myther ranks - no doubt there are a lot of atheists there, but in my experience there are also a lot of New Age-y people and also neo-pagans in there too.
In the meantime, Ehrman has written this rather weak piece in the Huffington Post as part of his pre-publicity. It's pretty hopeless and the Mythers are having a field day. I hope the book is a bit better than this feeble effort or I will be panning it along with the Myther fanclub.
"I am puzzled especially because this HuffPo article as written makes several glaring errors and rhetorical howlers that I cannot believe any competent scholar would have written. Surely he is more careful and qualified in the book? I really hope so. Because I was expecting it to be the best case for historicism in print. But if it’s going to be like this article, it’s going to be the worst piece of scholarship ever written. So stay tuned for my future review of his book. For now, I will address this brief article, not knowing how his book might yet rescue him from an epic fail."
Seems this article is the best thing that has happened to the mythers for a long time. What has gone into Ehrman's head, doesn't he know how these guys think?
Or is it a symptom of how superficial and little carefull he can be in his popular works where he according to some critics tends to overselling and sensationalized statements not quite backed up by the data or the rest of the books? (I must admit I have read properly his scholarly ones only, and there he is far better).
In the meantime, Ehrman has written this rather weak piece in the Huffington Post as part of his pre-publicity. It's pretty hopeless and the Mythers are having a field day. I hope the book is a bit better than this feeble effort or I will be panning it along with the Myther fanclub.
"I am puzzled especially because this HuffPo article as written makes several glaring errors and rhetorical howlers that I cannot believe any competent scholar would have written. Surely he is more careful and qualified in the book? I really hope so. Because I was expecting it to be the best case for historicism in print. But if it’s going to be like this article, it’s going to be the worst piece of scholarship ever written. So stay tuned for my future review of his book. For now, I will address this brief article, not knowing how his book might yet rescue him from an epic fail."
Seems this article is the best thing that has happened to the mythers for a long time. What has gone into Ehrman's head, doesn't he know how these guys think?
Or is it a symptom of how superficial and little carefull he can be in his popular works where he according to some critics tends to overselling and sensationalized statements not quite backed up by the data or the rest of the books? (I must admit I have read properly his scholarly ones only, and there he is far better).
The reviews of the book above indicate that the HuffPo article isn't really an indication of the detailed arguments in the book. And let's face it, if Ehrman had produced a book which shows we have Jesus' birth and death certificates and a photo of him wearing a t-shirt with 'Yes, I existed.' the Mythers would still find reasons not to agree with him. He is only ever going to produce arguments that those of us have presented to the Mythers hundreds if not thousands of times, and they always have a reason to remain unconvinced, a counter-argument or some contrived ad hoc excuse (usually their favourite: "interpolation!!!"). So he was never going to produce anything they wouldn't instantly dismiss.
Though I did love the bit in Carrier's blogpost where ol'Artie Ziff, like a woolly-haired Harry Potter, waved his Bayer Theorem magic wand and - evidencio transformio! - changed the reference to "the brother of the Lord" in Galatians. He managed to use his pseudo mathematical jiggery pokery to transform it from a reference to one of the siblings of Jesus (multiply attested, in both Christian and non-Christian sources) into a reference to some early initiatory level of the Jesus sect (totally unattested and unknown to any except Jesus Mythers).
Perhaps this is just a taste of his amazing upcoming book, in which he completely rewrites how history is done and makes the work of every historian from Thucydides onward redundant. Another (self-described) tour de force from this marvel of a man. He's a wonder indeed. Strange that he can't get a university job.
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