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Post by sandwiches on Aug 11, 2013 18:04:24 GMT
Another devastating critique: www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/08/09/3822264.htmHow Reza Aslan's Jesus is giving history a bad name John Dickson The Jesus depicted in Zealot is certainly a figment of the imagination of a professor of creative writing, but he is likely to do concrete damage to the public's appreciation of a vast and worthwhile academic discipline. Aslan's Jesus is giving history a bad name.One might have hoped that the book might at least have a beneficial effect of provoking interest in Jesus and history?
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Post by sankari on Aug 12, 2013 15:56:43 GMT
Another devastating critique: www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/08/09/3822264.htmHow Reza Aslan's Jesus is giving history a bad name John Dickson The Jesus depicted in Zealot is certainly a figment of the imagination of a professor of creative writing, but he is likely to do concrete damage to the public's appreciation of a vast and worthwhile academic discipline. Aslan's Jesus is giving history a bad name.One might have hoped that the book might at least have a beneficial effect of provoking interest in Jesus and history? Dickson is a high profile Australian Christian, so it's not surprising that he takes issue with Aslan. But a quick skim suggests his criticisms are well founded.
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 12, 2013 16:44:23 GMT
Dickson is a high profile Australian Christian, so it's not surprising that he takes issue with Aslan.
I don't think being high-profile, or Australian , would necessarily cause him to take issue with the writer of a poor book on Jesus, though his PhD in ancient history and position as Senior Research Fellow in a university Department of Ancient History might cause him to take issue with one who keeps claiming to be a historian while apparently being qualified in sociology and who teaches creative writing?
As for his Christianity, would that affect his views anymore than being a Muslim or an atheist would affect one's views?
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Post by evangelion on Aug 12, 2013 23:18:06 GMT
This is sankari. James' forum has magically locked me out of my account for some strange reason, and refuses to acknowledge my email address so I can't get a password reset and had to create a brand new account. Dickson is a high profile Australian Christian, so it's not surprising that he takes issue with Aslan.I don't think being high-profile, or Australian , would necessarily cause him to take issue with the writer of a poor book on Jesus I didn't say it would. The operative word here is 'Christian', and being a Christian would necessarily cause him to take issue with the writer of a poor book on Jesus. Obviously. I specifically said Dickson's criticisms were well founded. Did anyone say it would? Frankly I don't see any reason to speculate about whose background influences them more. The bottom line is that it's not surprising to find Christians objecting to a book about Jesus in which he bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the NT. And again, I specifically said Dickson's criticisms were well founded. It's an excellent article.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 15, 2013 23:11:44 GMT
Two other interesting and relevant blog posts: NT scholar Larry Hurtado comments on Aslan's book, not to review it, but to discuss the general thesis. His main points are: "(1) For anyone who knows the literature in the field, there isn’t anything really new or shocking about the book; and (2) Aslan’s zombie claim has been put to death in appropriate scholarly fashion several times already (i.e., in evidence and method shown to be fatally flawed)." By "zombie claim" he means "the re-appearance of ideas and claims .... that are in fact simply re-hashings (or re-packagings) of previous claims that were quite adequately and convincingly discredited years (or even decades) ago". In support of (1) he lists a number of scholars over more than a century who have advanced the revolutionary thesis. As illustration of (2), he mentions a couple of works by Martin Hengel. He concludes: "So, before people get too lathered up about Aslan’s book, let’s all just take a breath. It isn’t new in its thesis. That thesis has been tried out a number of times previously, and it’s been judged in each case fatally flawed.", and he seems a little p'd off that a book based on what he sees as poor historical study can far outsell something more true to the evidence. But One Direction outsells Mozart these days I suppose, Mills and Boon probably outsells Shakespeare, and Paris Hilton earns more than a good nurse, so what else would you expect? Not so directly relevant, but interesting, is this blog post by OT scholar Peter Enns, which describes what Biblical scholars do as building models to fit the historical data. Models are very much a part of science, especially the area of environmental science that I am most familiar with, but I don't know if I've heard historical study described quite like that before. Thus we might say (perhaps) that Aslan's model doesn't fit the data as well as other models.
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 16, 2013 12:56:18 GMT
Those were interesting articles. Re the model-building and the jigsaw with missing pieces analogy Paula Fredriksen once wrote something to the effect that trying to work out the events preceding the crucifixion was a bit like trying to work out how a football game went by examining the footprints on the pitch after the match. Even Richard Carrier has weighed in noting how bad the academic reviews are for Aslan's book and that Aslan is criticised by the experts for "ignoring evidence against his case or conveniently declaring it forged or fabricated…without any reason other than that it contradicts his hypothesis–" Carrier agrees with Aslan's view that the Testimonium Flavianum was an interpolation, though not with Aslan's acceptance of the reference to 'James, brother of the so-called Christ'as Aslan is apparently unaware that in his recent article,Carrier proved this also to be an interpolation. Carrier also notes in a reply to comments that Aslan overlooks the academic debate about the literacy of Jesus, before going into some depth as to why Jesus and his disciples may well have been literate (if Jesus had existed which of course he did not) - for example the learned Paul would have been 'constantly lording it over' the likes of Peter and James if they were illiterate and his social inferiors. freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/4391
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Post by unkleE on Aug 16, 2013 13:56:16 GMT
Aslan is apparently unaware that in his recent article,Carrier proved this also to be an interpolation. Carrier seems somewhat fond of proclaiming his arguments to be "proofs", even as the rest of academia remains less impressed. This is supposed to be a strong argument? Perhaps he should read 1 Corinthians 1:20-31 for Paul's views on this!
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 16, 2013 15:17:43 GMT
Aslan is apparently unaware that in his recent article,Carrier proved this also to be an interpolation. Carrier seems somewhat fond of proclaiming his arguments to be "proofs", even as the rest of academia remains less impressed. Obviously, he has calculated that the probability of his glorious theory is 1! (Presumably done by leaving out the alternatives.)
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 16, 2013 18:05:05 GMT
As Dr Carrier says of Aslan:
"... engaging in scholarship of convenience (ignoring evidence against his case or conveniently declaring it forged or fabricated…without any reason other than that it contradicts his hypothesis,... to oversimplifying facts, and other common foibles, he makes his case look stronger than it really is"
Can we think of any other people who do that?
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Post by fortigurn on Aug 19, 2013 9:52:01 GMT
Unless you can now make an evidence-based case that these formulas are the only way the euphemism was used, you're dangling a lot of assumption from a very slender thread of evidence. We only have a few uses of the euphemism in question - we simply don't know exactly how it could be used. I am not dangling any assumptions, I'm simply stating facts; we do not have the Talmudic phrases 'This is something that no carpenter, son of carpenters, can explain', or 'There is no carpenter, nor a carpenter’s son, to explain it', nor do we have the Greek word 'carpenter' used in the context in which the Aramaic word 'carpenter' was used euphemistically. So the passage in question has none of the characteristics of a passage where we would expect such an error to be made. This being the case, it does need to be asked why we would consider a misunderstanding of Aramaic to be a likely, probable, or even possible explanation for the text before us. It's certainly possible, in the same way it's possible Jesus was a highly educated and literate wealthy stone mason. What I'm objecting to is the fact that you are presenting it as equally likely as the possibility that the text should be understood simply as it reads. I do not believe these two propositions are of equal likelihood. I believe the 'confused Aramaic euphemism' proposition is so much less likely than the alternative, that it isn't viable. I understand that. But what I see you doing is taking a reading with no substantial evidence, and representing it as at least of equivalent likelihood as the natural reading, which has considerable evidence supporting it. I agree, and what differentiates scholarship from pseudo-scholarship is the critical use of criteria to differentiate between the likelihood of various alternative readings. Yes we can start with 'We don't know', but we can move on from there to 'We can know which is the most likely reading and which readings are so unlikely that they can't be taken seriously'. My main objections to the 'Aramaic misinterpretation' reading are as follows. 1. The 'Aramaic confusion' proposal does not follow the standard process and criteria used for detecting such linguistic confusions (a process Casey describes in detail over some pages). This is an immediate red flag. 2. The standard reading of the Greek makes perfect sense without correction; there is no 'problem', so the 'Aramaic confusion' proposal is a solution looking for a problem. This is related to point one, such 'Aramaic confusions' are typically identified by the problem they caused the Greek writer, but there is no evidence for this in the passage under consideration. 3. We have evidence that the Aramaic euphemism was used in a different context, we have no evidence that the euphemism was used in this context, and as Casey has pointed out in this context the Aramaic euphemism would not make any sense even if it was used here. The Greek makes sense here, but the Aramaic would not make any sense; this is the complete opposite of what we find when there is a genuine 'Aramaic confusion'.
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Post by timoneill on Aug 19, 2013 10:43:15 GMT
What I'm objecting to is the fact that you are presenting it as equally likely as the possibility that the text should be understood simply as it reads. Where are you getting this "equally likely" stuff from? Not from me. Given the uncertainty of the evidence and the wispy fragments we're dealing with here, I'd never be so bold as to assign likelihood to any of the several ways this stuff can be spun into stories. IN fact, that's pretty much my primary point.
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Post by fortigurn on Aug 19, 2013 11:48:16 GMT
Where are you getting this "equally likely" stuff from? Not from me. Then I've misunderstood you. If you don't believe it's as equally likely as the natural reading, then why even raise it? That's precisely what I object to about Godfrey's behaviour, and it's what you objected to when criticizing Worthington. But professional historians do exactly that, and they have the tools with which to do so. The fact is that the natural reading is substantiated by evidence, and stands without controversy.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 19, 2013 13:19:19 GMT
I don't know from where the phrase "carpenter" or "son of a carpenter" originates from, but there is a rabbi Abin Naggara from the Amoraic era, who had two sons (Idi and Hiyya) both also being scholars.
Judging from Carrier's blog, amateur hour has begun. SO I might as well post my thoughts on the book:
Modification: changed square brackets for triangular ones because of weird syntax.
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Post by sandwiches on Aug 19, 2013 20:59:13 GMT
An interesting Jewish perspective by the professor of Religious Studies and director of Jewish Studies at Drew University.on Aslan's efforts: jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/449/reza-aslan-what-jesus-wasnt/The core thesis of Zealot is that the “real” Jesus of Nazareth was an illiterate peasant from the Galilee who zealously, indeed monomaniacally, aspired to depose the Roman governor of Palestine and become the King of Israel.... Finally, is Aslan’s insistence on the essential “Jewishness” of both Jesus and his zealous political program not also a way of suggesting that Judaism and Jesus, no less than Islam and Mohammed, are religions and prophets that share a similarly sordid history of political violence; that the messianic peasant-zealot from Nazareth was a man no more literate and no less violent than the prophet Mohammed?
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Post by ignorantianescia on Aug 21, 2013 6:24:32 GMT
An interesting Jewish perspective by the professor of Religious Studies and director of Jewish Studies at Drew University.on Aslan's efforts: jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/449/reza-aslan-what-jesus-wasnt/The core thesis of Zealot is that the “real” Jesus of Nazareth was an illiterate peasant from the Galilee who zealously, indeed monomaniacally, aspired to depose the Roman governor of Palestine and become the King of Israel.... Finally, is Aslan’s insistence on the essential “Jewishness” of both Jesus and his zealous political program not also a way of suggesting that Judaism and Jesus, no less than Islam and Mohammed, are religions and prophets that share a similarly sordid history of political violence; that the messianic peasant-zealot from Nazareth was a man no more literate and no less violent than the prophet Mohammed?
Certainly it's interesting, but was it necessary for him to devote between one fifth and a quarter of his review to Aslan's credentials? And though he chides Aslan for his exaggerations, he seems no stranger to overstatement either.
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