Historical Jesus Agnosticism

[david2011]

I know that there are a lot of historical Jesus threads here, but, I just wanted to ask for peoples views of this article:

www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Response.pdf

It's by someone called Thomas S. Verenna, I just found it today, but, don't know what to make of it. Personally, I'm not convinced by the Mythicist arguments that there never was a Jesus (in part because most of the Mythicists I've seen always have another agenda - to discredit and destroy Christianity, Jesus not existing is just a means to an end for them, which, to me, automatically puts a flaw in their arguments, as they've set the goal they want to reach (i.e. for them, Christianity is BS, so, they find anything that seems to match that POV they have)). That said, I don't know much about this Verenna guy, or Thomas Thompson, who he seems to be a student of or something (I think Thompson and him wrote a recent book on historical Jesus agnosticism or something similar).

Personally, while I'm quite young, and not historically trained (I'm just interested in the subject out of curiousity), I didn't really buy into his arguments, it's just he said we have a lot of evidence for Alexander the Great (like monuments, statues, coins, etc), but, those were made long after his reign, weren't they?, so, that's not really direct evidence for Alexander's existence (I'm not saying he was Mythical either).

Anyway, I just wanted to ask peoples views of this article, and/or the guy in question.

Thanks for any help.

[sankari]

Tom Verenna is a university undergraduate with a mildly over-inflated perception of his own knowledge and abilities. The fact that he believes himself equipped to offer a serious and credible critique of Bart Ehrman is evidence of this.

In Verenna's defence, Ehrman's latest rhetoric on the historical Jesus has been somewhat overblown. But the case he presents is soundly academic and reflects the scholarly consensus.

T. L. Thompson is a legitimate biblical scholar of some renown, but he subscribes to minimalism (a minority position) and his field of expertise does not include the New Testament or early Christianity.

I have not read the rebuttal to which you have linked, but I suspect it involves a considerable amount of hand-waving and name-dropping.

[ignorantianescia]

Verenna is a history student at Rutgers, a fan of atheist polemicist and stay-at-home historian Richard Carrier and also a follower of the Old Testament scholar Thomas L. Thompson, a leading figure in the Copenhagener school. He edited a book about historicity, mythicism and "historical Jesus agnosticism" with Thompson. If you want to know more about his recent background, check his blog. If you want to know more about his less recent background and dig up some dirt, search on Google for "Rook Hawkins".

I only skimmed a bit of the article, but the appeal to emotion here is a little overdone:

One is left to wonder: is there no room left for doubt in the field of New Testament concerning the historicity of the figure of Jesus? Has the field become so static and immovable that to even doubt that Jesus lived is to warrant the label of insanity? And should academic freedom be sacrificed? Should the academy limit a critical position by intimidating and ridiculing those few scholars who do not believe Jesus existed historically into submitting to the consensus of the majority? Or, as Ehrman implies, should scholars who doubt the certainty of historicity be fired from academic posts or just denied work in academia?

Only the first rhetorical question has something to do with what Ehrman wrote and even that's arguable. The latter questions are so over the top, he might as well have added: "Should academic scholars form posses and lynch mythicists in academic positions? Will mythicists be denied human rights in the near future?" At least then it's clear this passage is just parody.

Then there's the straw man that Ehrman lumped Richard Carrier together with Murdock (Acharya S). Ehrman might very well do that now after his brief on-line exchange with Carrier, but he made a clear distinction between them in both his book and on the Bart Ehrman blog.

So the article isn't impressive so far.

[sandwiches]

The article also seems to ignore the Letters of Paul?

I think Larry Hurtado (a much-published and peer-reviewed and qualified academic) gives a good summary here of why mythicists are not taken seriously and what they would need to to do to be treated seriously:

larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/the-jesus-discussion-lets-move-on/

He gives some good examples of figures probably less well-attested than Jesus but accepted as historical.

[ignorantianescia]

I'm slowly starting to wonder whether it is a too early/late April Fool's Day prank after all. Check the first footnote, especially the final sentence:

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mark Elliot and Bible and Interpretation for their fair attitude towards this discussion and continuing to allow this dialog to build, despite the controversial status of the subject. It is truly to their credit. In addition, I’d like to thank those scholars goodly enough to review this paper prior to submission to help me vet out my ideas; Thomas L. Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, James Crossley, Ingrid Hjelm, Thomas Bolin, Mark Goodacre, and Richard Carrier. When I felt their advice warranted a change in my draft, I complied. When I was not convinced, I left it the same. Therefore any and all faults with this paper are my own, though if the reader is feeling generous, they are encouraged to blame someone else.

[sankari]

Nov 21, 2012 15:40:52 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I'm slowly starting to wonder whether it is a too early/late April Fool's Day prank after all. Check the first footnote, especially the final sentence:

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mark Elliot and Bible and Interpretation for their fair attitude towards this discussion and continuing to allow this dialog to build, despite the controversial status of the subject. It is truly to their credit. In addition, I’d like to thank those scholars goodly enough to review this paper prior to submission to help me vet out my ideas; Thomas L. Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, James Crossley, Ingrid Hjelm, Thomas Bolin, Mark Goodacre, and Richard Carrier. When I felt their advice warranted a change in my draft, I complied. When I was not convinced, I left it the same. Therefore any and all faults with this paper are my own, though if the reader is feeling generous, they are encouraged to blame someone else.

Incredible. How was this even published?

[jamierobertson]

Verenna is Rook Hawkins? Eh, you learn something new every day!

[sankari]

Nov 21, 2012 15:56:19 GMT jamierobertson said:

Verenna is Rook Hawkins? Eh, you learn something new every day!

He's been out of the 'Rook Hawkins' closet for at least three years now.

There's a spectacularly brutal thread on the Richard Dawkins forum (here) in which his true identity is confirmed. He makes the mistake of turning up to defend himself. It doesn't end well.

[ignorantianescia]

Nov 21, 2012 15:49:19 GMT sankari said:

Nov 21, 2012 15:40:52 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I'm slowly starting to wonder whether it is a too early/late April Fool's Day prank after all. Check the first footnote, especially the final sentence:

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mark Elliot and Bible and Interpretation for their fair attitude towards this discussion and continuing to allow this dialog to build, despite the controversial status of the subject. It is truly to their credit. In addition, I’d like to thank those scholars goodly enough to review this paper prior to submission to help me vet out my ideas; Thomas L. Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, James Crossley, Ingrid Hjelm, Thomas Bolin, Mark Goodacre, and Richard Carrier. When I felt their advice warranted a change in my draft, I complied. When I was not convinced, I left it the same. Therefore any and all faults with this paper are my own, though if the reader is feeling generous, they are encouraged to blame someone else.

Incredible. How was this even published?

Well, I hadn't heard of Bible & Interpretation, but seeing this article by Avalos on the front page, it doesn't look too promising as a soapbox.

Nov 21, 2012 17:19:05 GMT sankari said:

Nov 21, 2012 15:56:19 GMT jamierobertson said:

Verenna is Rook Hawkins? Eh, you learn something new every day!

He's been out of the 'Rook Hawkins' closet for at least three years now.

There's a spectacularly brutal thread on the Richard Dawkins forum (here) in which his true identity is confirmed. He makes the mistake of turning up to defend himself. It doesn't end well.

Another source is the "Thomas Verenna is a lying idiot" blog.

[david2011]

Nov 21, 2012 18:32:24 GMT ignorantianescia said:

Well, I hadn't heard of Bible & Interpretation, but seeing this article by Avalos on the front page, it doesn't look too promising as a soapbox.

I saw that article too, and definitely wasn't impressed (it seemed like the guy was trying to say the Nazi Holocaust wasn't "so bad" and that Jews have done "far worse", which I found quite offensive, even though I'm not, technically, religious).

He's been out of the 'Rook Hawkins' closet for at least three years now.

There's a spectacularly brutal thread on the Richard Dawkins forum (here) in which his true identity is confirmed. He makes the mistake of turning up to defend himself. It doesn't end well.

Another source is the "Thomas Verenna is a lying idiot" blog.[/quote]

Thanks for the link, and thanks to everyone for the info, I think I'm much better informed about this Thomas Verenna guy.

Thanks again.

David.

[unkleE]

I didn't read all the Verenna article, but I thought he overstated the whole thing. He suggested that scholars were claiming certainty when they should be more open. But my reading of Ehrman, Sanders, et al is that they never claim certainty, only probability. Take this quote from Sanders:

Historical reconstruction is never absolutely certain, and in the case of Jesus it is sometimes highly uncertain. Despite this, we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. ….. the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism.

So I can't help feeling Verenna has set up a straw man.

[noons]

Tom Verenna aka Rook Hawkins is one of the founding members of the "rational response squad", a now mostly defunct group that tried to be the edgiest anti-religion group in the world. And the Jesus myth theory was their official position. Here's the post explaining it further:

www.rationalresponders.com/forum/rook_hawkins/the_jesus_mythicist_campaign/2901

And they even have Jesus Mythicist banners! "Show your pride for your mythicism!"

[jamierobertson]

Nov 21, 2012 17:19:05 GMT sankari said:

There's a spectacularly brutal thread on the Richard Dawkins forum (here) in which his true identity is confirmed. He makes the mistake of turning up to defend himself. It doesn't end well.

Apparently, this is the text of a letter sent to Verenna/Hawkins by Thomas Thompson.

Dear Rook,

Before I received your letter this morning, I had never heard of Frank Walton and, as far as I can recall no one with that name has ever written to me. I did receive a letter from a certain Tim O'Neill, who, after asking him to identify himself, replied that he was an amateur researcher, interested in questions of the historical Jesus, a claim which I credited as, among other things, his assumptions about academic credentials were, at best, naive. I receive such letters frequently and so, after a cursory check of the name on Google, I responded.

He reported to me that you had made a public claim that your book was to be published in the Copenhagen International seminar, a monograph series for which I am responsible. Since, as you know, I am in fact currently reviewing your monograph and considering it for publication, I wrote you immediately and asked you to remove any such claim from your web site, which you immediately agreed to do, without objection and without questioning my request. With that I was satisfied. Such misunderstandings frequently occur, I felt, and are easily corrected.

However, I must thank you for referring me to the criticism you have received on Frank Walton's blog, which I have just read. Dated September 14, this person claims that he had written to me--apparently, I now assume, posing as Tim O'Neill to prevent me in identifying him or his blog. In Frank Walton's blog, following a rather scurrilous description of your academic interests, he accuses you of lying regarding a claim that the book you now have in progress is to be "peer reviewed" for the Copenhagen series. This statement of yours, however, is true and I hardly have any objection to this description--as it accords well with our discussions in the past.

In quoting my letter (without my consent or knowledge), not only has Frank Walton deleted the name of Tim O'Neill in the address and claimed that the letter was to himself, he also has deleted the question he in fact had asked in his letter to me--not whether your book was to be "peer reviewed" and under consideration for publication in our series, but rather, whether the book had been already accepted for publication. That he has switched his questions is, of course, unknown to the readers of his blog and thoroughly dishonest.

If you consider it useful to cite this letter in responding to Frank Walton's slander, you have both my permission and best wishes.

I hope the blog-storm that the unethical misuse of my letters has created will not effect your consideration of our series for your monograph and that you will allow me to continue with my review of the book as heretofore planned.

Yours sincerely,
Thomas

Thomas L. Thompson
University of Copenhagen

It's a small world, after all...

[ignorantianescia]

Nov 23, 2012 13:01:11 GMT jamierobertson said:

Nov 21, 2012 17:19:05 GMT sankari said:

There's a spectacularly brutal thread on the Richard Dawkins forum (here) in which his true identity is confirmed. He makes the mistake of turning up to defend himself. It doesn't end well.

Apparently, this is the text of a letter sent to Verenna/Hawkins by Thomas Thompson.

Dear Rook,

Before I received your letter this morning, I had never heard of Frank Walton and, as far as I can recall no one with that name has ever written to me. I did receive a letter from a certain Tim O'Neill, who, after asking him to identify himself, replied that he was an amateur researcher, interested in questions of the historical Jesus, a claim which I credited as, among other things, his assumptions about academic credentials were, at best, naive. I receive such letters frequently and so, after a cursory check of the name on Google, I responded.

He reported to me that you had made a public claim that your book was to be published in the Copenhagen International seminar, a monograph series for which I am responsible. Since, as you know, I am in fact currently reviewing your monograph and considering it for publication, I wrote you immediately and asked you to remove any such claim from your web site, which you immediately agreed to do, without objection and without questioning my request. With that I was satisfied. Such misunderstandings frequently occur, I felt, and are easily corrected.

However, I must thank you for referring me to the criticism you have received on Frank Walton's blog, which I have just read. Dated September 14, this person claims that he had written to me--apparently, I now assume, posing as Tim O'Neill to prevent me in identifying him or his blog. In Frank Walton's blog, following a rather scurrilous description of your academic interests, he accuses you of lying regarding a claim that the book you now have in progress is to be "peer reviewed" for the Copenhagen series. This statement of yours, however, is true and I hardly have any objection to this description--as it accords well with our discussions in the past.

In quoting my letter (without my consent or knowledge), not only has Frank Walton deleted the name of Tim O'Neill in the address and claimed that the letter was to himself, he also has deleted the question he in fact had asked in his letter to me--not whether your book was to be "peer reviewed" and under consideration for publication in our series, but rather, whether the book had been already accepted for publication. That he has switched his questions is, of course, unknown to the readers of his blog and thoroughly dishonest.

If you consider it useful to cite this letter in responding to Frank Walton's slander, you have both my permission and best wishes.

I hope the blog-storm that the unethical misuse of my letters has created will not effect your consideration of our series for your monograph and that you will allow me to continue with my review of the book as heretofore planned.

Yours sincerely,
Thomas

Thomas L. Thompson
University of Copenhagen

It's a small world, after all...

It's even smaller than you'd think at first glance:

equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=504&keyword=

That book has been out for some time.

There have been a number of discussions related to this on these forums, one is in the "Did Jesus Exist" thread (history), then there's another one in the "Center for Inquiry" topic (philosophy) and there have also been a few older ones.

Also, notice that of the article previewers Thompson, Lemche, Bolin and Hjelm are OT scholars. Mythicism and "Historical Jesus Agnosticism" (or burden-of-proof evading Mythicism) remarkably gets the attention of a disproportionate amount of OT scholars over NT scholars for a subject that belongs in NT scholarship (though not all previewers endorse Mythicism Light).

[sandwiches]

Re the article linked to in the original post, just curious, but picking out a few sentences, do they make sense, or is it just my untutored eye? e.g.:

With the increasing number of scholars dedicating themselves to the theory of reception in Biblical Studies, and with the accessibility of literary criticism steadily becoming a major contender in the field of New Testament, older scholarship in the form of historical criticism—once ingrained in consensus—is being challenged in favor of a more literary approach, and the new approach is gaining ground.

Eh? what does the above mean? The "theory of reception"? "the accessibility of literary criticism steadily becoming a major contender"? "the field of New Testament"? " ingrained in consensus"? "a more literary approach"?


Is the following an actual sentence (e.g.what "contributes"?)?:

This contribution argues, hopefully persuasively, that by dismissing the position of ahistoricity, or by not taking into account its possibility, contributes directly to the problems associated with historical Jesus studies.

Is the following logical?:

If Tacitus is receiving his information about Christians and their Messiah from hearsay, then he isn’t providing information that is independent of that tradition.
(What tradition? ((Christian?)) Is all "hearsay" Christian? How much history is not "hearsay" in the sense that most of it is not written by eyewitness of the events described? How many eyewitnesses do we have of any events from beyond a century ago?)

Re footnote 26:

An independent witness means something beyond the Gospel tradition in this instance, and if Tacitus did not get his information from Roman records, as Ehrman admits, then from where did he receive it? The Pilate story had to come from somewhere and we only know if (sic) it from the Gospels.

We only know "it" (Pilate?) from the Gospels? The writer is ignorant of Josephus? Where did Josephus get "it"? Josephus was a contemporary of James the brother of Jesus. Josephus was probably in Jerusalem when James was killed. He did not need to rely on Christians for his knowledge of Christians or Pilate. The Christians had their sources, so did Josephus, but the Romans could only know of Pilate through Christians?

A very odd article and very poorly-written.