Turning and Turning in the Widening Gibberish

The late Professor GA Wells, at the beginning of his paper "The Historicity of Jesus," published in 1986 in the collection Jesus in History and Myth (ed by Hoffmann and Larue), notes that the question of whether or not Jesus existed was hotly debated early in the 20th century, and that those who were less than certain that Jesus existed -- a position now referred to as "mythicism" -- made mistakes in 3 major areas: 1) They over-emphasized similarities between the biography of Jesus and those of pagan gods; 2) they were overly ready to disregard as interpolations any passages in primary materials which were inconvenient to their arguments; and 3) they often badly erred in dating those primary texts. Besides these 3 classes of errors, the tone of the debate was regrettably polemical and lacking in the sober detachment necessary for productive scholarly inquiry of any sort. Because the mythicists argued their case badly, Biblical scholars concluded that it was certain that Jesus had existed.

And it's all happening again in the early 21st century: people who have doubts about Jesus' historicity are making the same kinds of mistakes, and the tone of the debate is usually deplorable, and Biblical scholars -- although, now just as 100 years ago, their tone often isn't any more dignified or productive than anyone else's -- are pointing to the mythicists' poor performance as proving that Jesus actually did exist.

I find it flabbergasting that so many people, including so many highly-trained experts, are (for at least the 2nd time around now) taking the fact that one side of a question is being ineptly arguing as proving the other side. If detectives investigating a crime listen to a raving fool who has one theory of the crime, do they conclude, because the man is a raving fool, that the case has been solved, and that the solution is the opposite of whatever the raving fool said? I certainly hope not. I would hope they would, instead, take a position such as that the statement of the raving fool, by itself, proved little or nothing about the case one way or the other, and continue to investigate.

Except that, carrying the analogy back from police work to New Testament studies, I still maintain that serious investigation of the question by the experts must begin before it can continue. Although the experts maintain that the issue has been thoroughly investigated, I still can't see where that investigation is, or when it was, let alone whatever it is which makes them all so convinced that the investigation is complete.

If you google bollinger paulkovich you will find many references, in news articles, blogs, discussions and what have you, to the particularly, spectacularly inept mythicist Michael Paulkovich, and to 2 of my blog posts about his ineptitude, the Open Letter, my first reaction to hearing that Paulkovich had claimed to have studied the work of 126 ancient authors looking for mentions of Jesus, and 126 Writers, written the next day when I had found the list of those 126 people. Most of these mentions refer to me as "atheist blogger Steven Bollinger," which is an accurate description: I am an atheist and I am a blogger. Occasionally some of these people -- including Paulkovich himself -- refer to me as a Christian, assuming, apparently, that only a Christian could have any criticism of any expressing any doubts that Jesus existed. Quite often, I'm referred to as supporting the historicist position, the position that Jesus certainly existed, which is also erroneous: I'm a mythicist, I'm far from convinced that Jesus existed.

But why should that mean that I think that everything said by everyone else who isn't convinced that Jesus existed is pure flawless genius?

Obviously it means nothing of the sort, unless you're a moron, or not paying attention, or both.

There are a lot of people out there spending a lot of time debating whether or not Jesus existed who are either morons, or not paying a lot of attention to the things they're spending so much time debating, or both. Even those references to me as "atheist blogger Steven Bollinger," although accurate, imply that it's amazing that any atheist would go to the trouble of criticizing a mythicist.

And look, I myself deplore harsh polemical tone, only to indulge in it just a few short paragraphs later. Except that I am not taking that tone in the conventional manner, which would be to use it only against those on the other side of the mythicist/historicist divide -- no, I'm potentially prepared to sneer at almost anyone who says anything at all about Jesus, whether skeptical or credulous. (The late Professor Wells still gets a pass -- for now. And it must be pointed out that he converted from mythicist to historicist, although his historicism remained so minimal that many of his readers and fans never noticed it.) It seems that most of the people debating Jesus's existence are not detached at all: they want the side they're arguing to turn out to be correct. Not so much with actually confronting the evidence with open minds, as if they were -- you know: scholars or something. I would feel great satisfaction if the question were ever definitively resolved one way or the other: I would feel great schadenfreude, directed at either one side, or the other.

G A Wells Is No Longer A Mythicist

Since this post has to do in large part with clarity and its lack, let me begin by explaining once again how I define historicism and mythicism, and by warning my readers that others may not always define these terms exactly the same way I do.

Historicism is summed up in the last 3 words of Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist, which would have made a much better, much less-misleading title for the book: "Jesus certainly existed."

Mythicism contains every other possible viewpoint on the matter: if you're convinced that Jesus never existed, you're a mythicist. if you're not sure whether he existed or not, like me and many of the most prominent mythicists, you're a mythicist.

In the 1970's and 1980's G A Wells was a mythicist, someone who said that it wasn't certain that the stories of Jesus were based on a real person.

In the 1990's he changed from a mythicist to an historicist, convinced that these stories began with an actual 1st-century Galilean preacher.

Many people have not noticed Wells' change from mythicism to historicism and continue to refer to him as a mythicist. Up until this post, I mistakenly referred to him as a mythicist, not having noticed his change. mea culpa. Last week, in the comments to my post 126 Writers Who, According To Michael Paulkovich, Should Have Mentioned Jesus If Jesus Existed, the irascible Tim O'Neill said to me that Wells has switched from mythicism to historicism, that he has become convinced that the hypothesized Q document, drawn upon by the authors of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, was based upon the life and teachings of a real person. I quoted a passage from Wells' 2004 book Can We Trust the New Testament? which, to me, seem to indicate that Wells had still been a mythicist when he wrote it.

O'Neill said, of the very same passage, that it demonstrated that

Wells abandoned the Mythicist position and admitted that the evidence is best explained by a historical figure.

That's right: I read a passage by Wells, and to me it seemed to say that he was a mythicist; O'Neill saw the very same passage and said it confirmed what he was saying: that Wells was now an historicist.

I decided that I had better read some more material by Wells before responding to Tim. So I read his book Cutting Jesus Down to Size, published in 2009, and sure enough, Wells not only said that he now believed that the Q document was based on an actual person. He also said:

"This is the position I have argued in my books of 1996, 1999, and 2004, although the titles of the first two of theses -- The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth -- may have mislead potential readers into supposing that I still denied the historicity of the Gospel Jesus." (Cutting Jesus Down to size, p 15)

Well, I had been, in fact, mislead. But I was hardly the only one: besides "potential readers," whoever wrote the book-jack blurb of The Jesus Legend, which begins: "Did Jesus actually exist as a historical personage[...]", as well as Wells' colleague R Joseph Hoffmann, who wrote the book's Foreword, which begins: "It is no longer possible to dismiss the thesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as the 'marginal indiscretion of lay amateurs,' (to paraphrase a sentence once imposed on Matthew Arnold’s biblical criticism by his theological critics). The direction of biblical criticism since Albert Schweitzer's day has circled back with dizzying regularity to the implied question of Jesus's existence but has sought without success to answer it." -- were either misled, or themselves seriously misleading, concerning Wells' place on the mythicist-to-historicist spectrum, or so it seems to me, harrumph harrumph.

In Cutting Jesus Down to Size, Wells repeatedly complains about both historicists and mythicists having misunderstood his position, and it would be hard, I should think, to read this most recent book of his and still be unclear on the matter. On p 327 Wells, complaining about P R Eddy and G A Boyd still thinking he's a mythicist, says that he belongs in their category 2: people who believe "that Jesus did exist but, as Bultmann argued, 'the reports we have of him are so unreliable and saturated with legend...that we can confidently ascertain very little historical information about him.'"

I apologize for my part in spreading the misconception that Wells has remained a mythicist, and I hope this clears that up.

And in case anyone was wondering: although Wells is no longer a mythicist, and hasn't been for 2 decades, I still am. It still seems to me that the default position of academia regarding Jesus is to assume that he existed, and to take any fairly reasonable hypothesis about how this may have been the case as evidence that it was the case. It still seems to me that there is much special pleading and begging the question going on here. I still have not experienced anything remotely resembling an "Aha! it DOES make sense, what they're saying when they insist Jesus existed!"-moment.

Not even close. Not any closer when Wells says so than when anybody else says it.

So: Wells was the last mythicist known to me whom I felt was doing solid work, except that he wasn't doing what I thought since the 80's. Now it turns out he's just one more historicist doing solid work, and I disagree with him on this one issue. I am isolated and embarrassed here. This exhaustion I'm feeling right now: is this anything like what Hoffmann has referred to as "Jesus fatigue"? (No, probably not.) In any event, I don't really feel like throwing myself wholeheartedly and full-time into Jesus Studies, to straighten this all out once and for all if no-one else will.

For now I think I'd rather spend some time boning up on my Livy. Unlike Q, his missing 106.95 books are much more than merely hypothesized. They did exist, and some part of them may well exist still.

How To Diss Mythicists

On pages 5 and 6 of The Jesus Legend,the mythicist G A Wells lists 11 "guidelines for hostile writing" to be used against mythicists such as himself: 1) Question the mythicists' qualifications. 2) Avoid rebutting their arguments, and instead condescendingly describe their positions as already discredited. 3) Affix distasteful labels to them, as the label "Hegelian" was attached to Strauss and Bauer. 4) Lump one writer together with discredited ones, and if he himself has criticized the others, don't mention it. 5) Represent minor slips as indications of total incompetence. 6) Make objections to the mythicists' cases as if they themselves had not addressed them. 7) Falsely claim that the mythicists rely on a priori dogmas. 8) Call a mythicist's failure to mention a certain work a "serious omission." 9) Instead of producing arguments, appeal to authorities; also, accuse the mythicists of appealing to outdated authorities. 10) Misrepresent their work, being careful to avoid lengthy quotations which might tend to give your readers an accurate impression of that which you are misrepresenting, and 11) Discuss propositions irrelevant to their work. Wells describes each of these tactics at greater length than I have here; then he goes on, on pages 6 through 9, to show how they all have been used against him.

All in a book Wells published in 1996. It is downright depressing to see how current Wells' list is, and how accurately it describes the average downright rude dismissal of mythicists by most academically-credentialed biblical scholars and theologians who mention them today. And not for the first time, let me object to the very term "mythicist," even though some writers attach it proudly to themselves. I object to the term because it implies people who are asserting, positively, than Jesus was a myth, not a real person, while it is applied to just about every one who is less than certain that Jesus was a real person, and just about everyone who wants to investigate the question of Jesus' existence as if it were not already closed.

Although not every attack upon mythicists -- although I object to the term, I'm not going to act as if it is not the term being used -- follows all 11 of Wells' guidelines, it is depressingly rare to find a description of them --of us. I would like to investigate the question as if it were not already closed -- by a Biblical scholar or a theologian with a PhD, let alone tenure, which does not follow any of them. The latest depressingly crude and insulting such attack of which I am aware, Joel L Watts' screed published in the Huffington Post yesterday, follows a few of them, and invents the new one of not mentioning one single mythicist by name, as if we were not important enough for Watts to name any of us, and as if we were all the same anyway. Watts' article is a beautiful example of 2) and 9) : there is nothing in it even remotely resembling the suggestion of an argument, neither a mythicist argument to be poo-pooed, nor an historicist argument of any kind whatsoever. Jesus was real and mythicists are as stubbornly irrational as young-earth creationists. That is all ye know, and all ye need know.

Well, there's actually one more thing ye might be interested to know. It's something I already assumed, but I don't assume that all of my readers follow such publishing-industry details as closely as I do. It's the reason that Joel Watts is bothering to publish such crude and egregious insults of us in places like the Huffington Post to begin with: because he has a new book out.It's not just insults and intellectual dishonesty -- it's also advertising.

Somebody's Missing Something (Might Be Me)

For years -- decades, actually -- I was unable to read Immanuel Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft. In most attempts -- in the more merciful cases -- I would simply fall quickly to sleep. When I stayed awake I quickly became very annoyed, and wondered when Kant was going to stop prattling about next to nothing and get down to the critique of this thing he called pure reason. Finally, recently, I gritted my teeth and read the whole thing, and I didn't merely hate it. I've enjoyed and felt greatly edified by some other of Kant's works, especially the ones written before the famous Critiques. But I not only hated the Critique of Pure Reason: I wondered whether I was way past everything he said in this, his universally-acknowledged masterpiece. I came to an agonizing, Kierkegaardian Either/Or moment: either I didn't understand what Kant was driving at, and never would, or Kant and his fans were wrong in their belief that he had surpassed Hume. If I'm right, then an awful lot of very smart people who feel that Kant has helped them past certain mental points where Hume had left them stumped are wrong. A third possibility, that I will eventually understand Kant's Critiques as an advance past Humeist (Humean?) impasses, does not strike me as realistic at this point, after I have read so much earlier philosophy to which Kant refers, and so much later philosophy which refers to him. (Nietzsche is one of the few philosophers who refer to Kant negatively, but he does so in passing, in not enough detail for me to know whether his reasons for rejecting Kant resemble mine at all.) (And yes, I do realize that I have not explained my objections to the Critique of Pure Reason at all.)

I say all of the above as preamble to a more recent Either/Or moment of mine: either theologians are writing way above my head almost all of the time, and I will very probably never even begin to understand what they are saying; or I, and Goethe, and not a few others, are thinking at a level way above that not only of the theologians themselves, but of anyone who finds any theologians to be brilliant or finds any reward in reading them. Somebody is missing a whole lot here. Might be me. Might be me and Nietzsche and Goethe and a lot of others. Then again it might not. R Joseph Hoffmann has written many things which I have found to be insightful, witty, profound -- and then he starts writing admiringly of someone like Aquinas, and he's lost me. Somebody's missing something. Might be me. (Might not.) And I might be missing a whole great big bunch of stuff when it seems to me that Hoffmann -- like Ehrman, like Crossan -- has begun to make illogical leaps which I can only describe as theological, in his recent comments on the historicity of Jesus. He is not strictly historicist now, but in several recent posts on his blog The New Oxonian, Hoffmann presents his current take on historicity, which is similar to the current mainstream position of New Testament scholars and authorities in related fields: first they assert that very little, if any, or what the New Testament says about what Jesus said or did can be relied upon as historical. And they add that neither the earliest non-Christian references to Christianity: Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, etc, nor any of the non-canonical Gospels, with the exception of the Gospel of Thomas in the opinion of only a minority of scholars, can be regarded as primary sources, or make up for the deficiencies of the New Testament as an historical record.

And then they add that it is however certain, or close to it, that he did exist, which is where they completely lose me. And they place all sorts of requirements on mythicist arguments before they will consider any of them to be reasonable, requirements which seem to me to be utterly unreasonable, not applied to their own historicist arguments, and basically pulled out of their fundaments.

I expect to be thoroughly puzzled by Hoffmann's upcoming book on the historicity of Jesus, or to have lost all faith in the soundness of his reasoning by the time it is published. I have not given up on ever finding what looks to me to be reason in historicist arguments, but I have taken a step in that direction, and that makes me sad. Not because I want Jesus' existence to be proven -- I continue to maintain that I am actually objective here, and wish simply for understanding to increase, in whatever direction that greater understanding may lead us -- but because it seems Either that there is precious little sound thinking going on concerning the Jesus question, (Don't even get me started on the non-academic mythicists.) Or that I am not particularly bright when it comes to understanding ancient texts and ancient artifacts related as evidence to those texts.

I Mean This in the Friendliest Possible Way

It's odd for an author to inform the reader that he means something in a friendly way. If someone is behaving in a friendly way, generally speaking, it's apparent, and he doesn't need to point it out. If he mentions it several times within a few pages, suspicion is definitely called for, and if he says it twice in the same sentence you're a damned fool if you believe anything he says without reliable independent confirmation.

In the collection of scholarly papers Jesus in History and Myth, edited by R Joseph Hoffmann & Gerald A Larue, published in 1986, John Hick craps all over the inquiry into whether or not there really was a Jesus of Nazareth, as opposed to the standard position of assuming that Jesus existed, however much or little he may have resembled the descriptions of him in the New Testament. He writes: "The idea that there never was such a person [as Jesus] goes back, I suppose, some one hundred and fifty years and has not been persuasive to more than a very small minority of those who have studied the matter carefully. Its status among historians is no higher than, and I would think in fact lower than, the theory among Elizabethan historians that Francis Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. And if I might offer a piece of friendly advice -- and it is meant as genuinely friendly advice -- to the secular humanist movement, it would be; Don't identify too closely with this kind of eccentric view. For the theory that Jesus never existed is not really a very probable one, and further, the issue is, to say the least, not at the cutting edge of research regarding Christian origins." (p 212). (Emphases mine).

The other scholarly papers in this collection come with many footnotes. Hick's condescending little lecture has none. He doesn't seem to think he needs any. Apparently he believes that you simply will trust in the breadth of his knowledge and the depth of his wisdom, and believe that his avuncular advice really is friendly. And probably some of you will; after all, Hick held more than just a handful of the very most prestigious positions in academic Christian theology.

But if you're more like me, you may have noticed that besides insisting that he is friendly and that his opponents in this little matter are very few and probably -- although of course he just hates to say such a thing, being the big friendly teddy bear that he is -- eccentric, he hasn't really said much about the actual question of the existence of Jesus. (You will find that he has this much in common with Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Morton Smith and many others who dismiss doubts about Jesus' historicity. Because if you look at it more closely, what is often presented as a scholarly debate between those who think Jesus was a myth and those who think he was an actual person looks more like a professional conflict between those who want to examine the question and those who don't want anyone to entertain any doubts about the matter. Historians versus obscurantists might be a more apt term than mythicists versus historicists.) Hick has accurately described the cutting edge of practice in theological seminaries and departments of New Testament studies when it come to the question of Jesus' existence, namely, that it is treated as if there were no question. And it is the cutting edge in those places just as much today in 2012 as it was when Hick said so in 1986. The question is how much this cutting edge resembles anything which could be legitimately be considered an academic cutting edge. How much does it even resemble the way in which the very same theologians and Biblical scholars treat every single other historical question?

Not at all, is the answer. And by the way, Professor Hick, on page 42 of the very same volume, Jesus in History and Myth, G A Wells addresses your comparison of doubts of Jesus' existence with the theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, by mentioning that J M Robertson, who early in the 20th century gave "the complete and knockdown answer to" Oxfordianism, "was at the same time the most powerful contender of his day against Jesus' historicity."

Ouch, John! I mean, just, ouch! But of course Robertson may have been firing on all mental cylinders when writing about Shakespeare and Bacon, and quite eccentric when writing about Jesus. And I mean that in a genuinely friendly way, of course.

And what on Earth do you mean by "identifying too closely with a view"? We just want to investigate the matter of Jesus, with open minds, open as well to that one possibility to which your mind is so tightly shut. You want us to identify ourselves with your view that Jesus certainly existed, and take it from there. I suppose that that might be genuinely friendly advice to anyone with the ambition to follow in your career footsteps, into academic theology. But the rest of us have steadily less respect for you and those who would be like you. We want to look into Galileo's telescope, read that awful book by Darwin, listen to Einstein and Heidegger and Feynman and Greene stray ever farther from Newton and into reality -- you do too, I know. Of course you do. Because you're a thoroughly modern enlightened person. Except when it comes to that one question most closely associated with your career. And I mean that in the friendliest possible way, you smug bloated obstacle to learning.