tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post4735959741967279970..comments2024-03-19T00:26:30.753-07:00Comments on The Jesus Blog: Jesus before the Gospels: a serial review (pt. 3)Anthony Le Donnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282792648606976883noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-87440161267804987712016-04-25T08:11:21.754-07:002016-04-25T08:11:21.754-07:00Rafael
There further you go, the more I am convinc...Rafael<br />There further you go, the more I am convinced that Francis Watson would be incredibly frustrated reading Ehrman...😁Frederik Mulderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15196783247144695855noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-12161377513593868612016-04-14T05:22:50.173-07:002016-04-14T05:22:50.173-07:00"Ehrman continues to exhibit the obsession, t..."Ehrman continues to exhibit the obsession, traditional among historians of Jesus, with an Archimedean point from which to survey and assess the "accuracy" of the early Christians' texts (esp. the Gospels)."<br /><br />You are not the first to point this out. He seems so burned by the literalism of his early years, that he measures everything by, and against, that approach and standard. Literalism seems to be his Moby Dick, but he wants to poison all (or most) other aspects of the Christian faith with it.RDavidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-5725160929959308932016-04-14T01:07:47.786-07:002016-04-14T01:07:47.786-07:00From Dr G:
This summary looks really good. Thoug...From Dr G:<br /><br />This summary looks really good. Though I'm still worried by your occasional tendency to suggest that changes to or within the growing Jesus traditions, tend to inevitably be mostly, functional and good; since they are said to rework old ideas to very effectively meet, answer, later social problems. As per the Fuctionalist school in Sociology.<br /><br />The functionalist approach has its usefulness. And I use it all the time myself. However, when I speak of some new cultural production as "solving" some culture's problems, or cognitive quandaries, I keep in mind that these "solutions" are mainly still vague talismans, rather than firm or infallible solutions for us all.<br /><br />So I'm greatful for your noting two potentially distict outcomes to our later mythmaking: 1) possible and 2) possibly appropriate outcomes.<br /><br />I agree especially that Ehrman seems naive in positing or always assuming a single historically-reliable origin or stimulus, as an Archimedian point. Though here I myself retain a scientist's sense that there is a fairly objective physical reality behind everything: a fairly solid natural world.<br /><br />So for example, the resurrection might not have come from an historical Jesus. But it did come from the primitive observation that plant life lives on underground in the winter, in seeds and roots. To reappear in the spring, reborn on the surface. In the new foliage.<br /><br />Borrowing from the Science of Anthropology among others, I personally am no longer a Poststructuralist, or a complete subjectivist. As a post-Poststructuralist,I reaffirm a solid reality out there. Not historical Jesus to be sure. But all of say, Nature. <br /><br />I'm currently supporting the old Poststructuralism in this forum. But only as a stage to a kind of post-postpostructuralist realism, or science.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-69462680223354506452016-04-13T20:13:26.361-07:002016-04-13T20:13:26.361-07:00Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Raphael, you wrote...Gene Stecher<br />Chambersburg, Pa.<br /><br />Raphael, you wrote: "The gospel images of Jesus saying x or doing y are vehicles of meaning that carry forward the legacy of the past in order to frame the present, giving meaning to the chaotic flux of human experience and orienting people toward possible and possibly appropriate courses of action in the present." <br /><br />As one who is struggling to understand the language of memory scholarship, I am wondering about the following:<br /><br />What would be an example of a "vehicle of meaning,"<br />of "framing the present," of "a possible course of appropriate action in the present," and does "present" refer to the present of the gospel writer, the present of any reader, or both?<br /><br />And one does one do with a validity argument over NT material. For example, how should Paul's claim in 1:18-24 be handled, a two week visit with Peter and James in Jerusalem. Those verses are not attested to in the church fathers for Marcion's version (BeDuhn, The 1st NT, 262). Yet Ehrman chooses to treat the claim as accurate (p.74). This matter could actually have nothing to do with Paul's memory, and if not it is a manipulation of the memory of those who came after (by an interpolator?). Ehrman could have made the wrong diagnosis, and if he did, he's created a huge fiction that Paul knew enough to begin any story telling at all. How would the language of memory theory describe Gal 1:18-24 as a "vehicle of meaning" that "frames the present?" <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com