evidence? 
No, because it was hard for me to get past the atmosphere of conspiratorial melodrama. Can you tell me where he cuts to the chase?
The initial interviews seem to confuse two questions: âDid Jesus really exist?â and âDid the Christian religion incorporate many elements from pre-Christian apocalyptic Judaism, pagan thought and the various other currents of thinking flowing around the Roman world?â
I have watched it a few times. Watching it now. Its very watchable. 
It seems like one of those ancient astronaut-style fake archaeology pieces. Iâve watched 40 minutes now, and so far not a speck of evidence has been presented for their alternative Flavian conspiracy hypothesis.
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Well, I never asserted the video hypothesis is true. I only mentioned its possibility.
This is unlike Buddhism, where what is suffering & its cessation can be absolutely verified to conform with the suttas.
[quote=âDKervick, post:24, topic:5804â]
Iâve watched 40 minutes now, and so far not a speck of evidence has been presented for their alternative Flavian conspiracy hypothesis.
[/quote]Check out the wikipedia article on it if you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole.
It doesnât lead to wonderland.
I started to, but turned it off as soon as I saw that it was about Joseph Atwill. In the short piece that I watched I did notice that the movie-makers are resorting to exactly the same dishonest technique that one so often finds in American creationist propaganda movies. The method aims at trying to disguise the fact that the movie is basically about the thesis of some unqualified fringe loony. The way you do it is by including a soundbite every two or three minutes from some well-known and highly regarded scientist (or in the present case, academic biblical scholar). To an uncritical viewer it creates the illusion that the movie-makers are an honest bunch of guys who are sincerely trying to get at the truth. It doesnât matter if the soundbite is only tangentially relevant to the movieâs central thesis, or even if itâs utterly irrelevant, for all youâre after is some guy whose mere presence will lend your propaganda an aura of respectability.
Some critical reviews of Atwillâs thesis:
Richard Carrier, Atwillâs Cranked-up Jesus
Robert M. Price, The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus
Tom Verenna, No, Joe Atwill, Rome Did Not Invent Jesus
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Thanks for this, venerable.
It shouldnât need saying, but apparently it does: there is strong consensus among reputable professional scholars that Jesus of Nazareth was, indeed, a historical person. Arguments to the contrary are a stock in trade of fringe conspiracy theorists and should not be taken seriously.
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OK then, venerable. We will just have to follow your view, which is the alternate view.
Atwill posited a similar theory about the Beatles, who John Lennon said were: âbigger than Jesusâ
Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah [even though Joseph was not the father since Mary was a virgin).
Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
He then added, âVery truly I tell you, you will see âheaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending onâ the Son of Man.â
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
I couldnât care less. Do you have to beleive Edison to use a light bulb?
What matters to a Buddhist is to attain Nibbana so what matter is the teaching.
Many people such as Ananda could not attain Nibbana even when the Buddha was just in front of him on a day to day basis. If I die without realising Nibbana or entering the path it is either my fault or I am just chasing a mirage.
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Very interesting video and I have wasted countless hours watching these type of documentaries. I never doubted that the story of Jesus and the new testament is a fabrication of the Romans to establish their political power. However this video also another fabrication with a political agenda.
This what Buddha called the fabricate the fabricated.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.079.than.html
We have a semantic miscommunication. I was using the term âauthenticâ in the following sense, quoting from the Oxford dictionary: âbased on facts; accurate or reliable: an authentic depiction of the situation.â
I was not suggesting this as a realistic example at all. I was giving you a metaphor to illustrate the lack of logic of assuming a story is more true merely on the basis that it is nearer to the event in time. An old untrue story is still untrue. That goes back to the definition of authenticity which I shared above.
What? ECTs are fewer because 1) they were less far in the past, 2) erosion⊠what about erosion? they had less time to erode, is that your point? 3) they existed in a literate society, as opposed to Buddhism which arose in a society devoid of writing?
I canât see the sense in your argument.
And I am glad to see my points echoed in those of the others commenting here.
The Buddha had hundreds or thousands of students and taught for ⊠what was it, 45 years? In a community trained in oral transmission and dedicated to preserving his teachings, while he was alive. Itâs not surprising thereâs far more material on him than on someone who lived as Jesus did, if he is indeed a real character.
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[quote=âSenryu, post:2, topic:5804, full:trueâ]
âŠnone of the Gospels were written by eye witnessesâŠ[/quote]
Excellent coverage of the progression and evolution of the writing of the gospels, with respect to all available historical sources, and the further evolution of Christian writings and movements through the next couple of centuries is found in the books of Elaine Pagels. Most of her career has been focusing on translating and interpreting the âDead Sea Scrollsâ . Her books focus on the gnostic traditions (âThe Gnostic Gospelsâ, 1979, through to âBeyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomasâ, 2004), but analyze in great detail the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the orthodox gospels (and other canonical works), as background to how they came to become canonical while the other, gnostic, versions were suppressed.
btw: Wikipedia on âBuddhism and Gnosticismâ: âCertain modern scholars, notably Buddhologist Edward Conze (1966) and, following Conze, Elaine Pagels (1979), have proposed that similarities existed between Buddhism and GnosticismâŠâ
There has been speculation (by Conze and others) that Jesus may have had contact with Buddhist monks in the undocumented period between his early teens and early 30âs when he began his âministryâ. Pagels, however, in the 1979 book (and private correspondence) notes that no historical direct evidence has been found for such contact.
(Disclosure: Elaine and I were classmates and friends back in undergraduate days. I ran into her this last January when she gave a talk at Stanford on âSatan â How a fictional being still shadows our views of gender, race, and politicsâ, an update on the themes in her 1995 book âThe Origin of Satanâ. Very interesting talk, relating the historical background to aspects of the current unfolding of cultural history, so to speak â aka the mess weâre in today.)
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[quote=âcjmacie, post:33, topic:5804â]
Her books focus on the gnostic traditions (âThe Gnostic Gospelsâ, 1979, through to âBeyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomasâ, 2004), but analyze in great detail the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the orthodox gospels (and other canonical works), as background to how they came to become canonical while the other, gnostic, versions were suppressed.
[/quote]Which strand of gnosticism could she be talking about?
Most gnostic literature dates from ~2-500 years after the Pauline Epistles. It is quite literally the MahÄyÄna of Christianity.
There is also âGnosticâ literature that gets called that because anything with the word âGnosticâ on it used to sell back in the day. Even today, a book on âearly Gnostic Christianityâ will sell more than a book on âGeneral Early Heterodox Christianityâ. Like the âGnostic Gospel of Thomasâ (a particularly early âSayings Gospelâ), which has no discernable gnosticism within it, as many scholars have pointed out, so it may well be the case that non-gnostic heterodox Christian literature is being called âGnosticâ despite having nothing to do with the Pleroma, the Archons, Sophia, or the Demiurge, like the Dead Sea Scrolls (once again, not (Christian) Gnostic literature, Essene literature, no mention of divine sparks resting inside the chosen, no mention of the Monad or the Aeons, nor even of the âevilâ of material/created existence- a very important point for almost all Gnostics) which are often called âGnosticâ to get people interested in them, piggybacking off of the big Gnosticism interest after the translation of text in the Nag Hammadi, etc.
For instance, going down the codexes discovered at Nag Hammadi (and only including some of them at present as it was a massive archaeological find) we have these texts from these dates:
Prayer of the Apostle Paul: 150-300 AD, core text from ~70AD (believe to perhaps be an authentic Pauline Epistle) with Valentinian Gnostic accretions (easily spottable late terminology inserted awkwardly: âthe psychic Godâ)
Apocryphon of James: ~2-300 AD, believed to be Gnostic, but unidentified with any Gnostic sect in particular.
Gospel of Truth: ~2-300 AD, Valentinian Gnostic literature
Treatise on the Resurrection: evangelization text designed to convert Pauline Christians (it is literally a letter to a Christian community, in the tradition of Pauline Epistles, mimicking them (sound familiar?), arguing that they convert to the Great Vehicle, I mean Gnosticism, as it was the âoriginal teachingâ (sound familiar?)), ~300 AD
Tripartite Tractate: Gnostic literature (sect unknown) ~450 AD
Apocryphon of John: ~180 AD (this is an odd date, I am looking into why this is claim to be so anachronistically early), earlier than most Gnostic literature, but contains all sorts of cosmology concerning archons, aeons, the monad, and other features alien to the earliest Christian literature extant.
Gospel of Thomas: not Gnostic literature, ~40-140 AD
Gospel of Philip: Valentinian Gnostic Gospel, ~400 AD
Hypostasis of the Archons: Gnostic commentary on the Jewish Torah (Genesis), highly anti-semitic (standard for Gnosticism), ~400AD
On the Origin of the World: this one argues that Satan (the Serpent) is the good guy (sent by the Aeon Sophia) and God is evil (the Demiurge). Does this seem like the spirituality of rural 1st century Palestinian Jews? Where on earth else are these beliefs substantiated?
Exegesis on the Soul: Simonian Gnostic literature, ~2-400 AD
The Book of Thomas the Contender: ~200 AD
Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit: Sethian Gnostic text arguing that Biblical figure Seth, not YHWH, created the illusion of a Jesus-body to spread his secret teachings. Check out Sethâs crazy emanation and manifestation tree outlined in the text that somehow intersects with the teachings and life of Jesus.
Epistle of Eugnostos: A letter from a Gnostic (to another Gnostic) containing conversation about various alchemical formulas, spells, summoning rituals for spirits, Hermetic practices are also alluded to, no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ, the cosmology of the text is similar to The Sophia of Jesus Christ.
The Sophia of Jesus Christ: ~2-400 AD, this text is an outright write-off, but conspiracy theorists looking to engineer some controversy in Christian textual criticism still make absurd claims about it (for instance, many claim that this text is from ~50 AD, if such is the case, it would be the only Christian Gnostic text that was dateable to so early a time. As such, no one aside from New York Times Bestsellers like the aforementioned author who made this clarification regarding Christian (and by extension Buddhist! Elaine Pagelâs claim is as absurd as claiming the Abhidhamma to be an EBT!) textual criticism. The wikipedia article is long enough and thorough enough that you can easily compare it with the accepted chronology and model of source-theory for ECTs (Google âQ sourceâ if you do not have a background in textual criticism of this field and would like to know more) and draw your own informed conclusions about if the content of this text is anything like any other ECTs.
Dialogue of the Saviour: Composite work containing many easily seeable layers of accretions, once again you can just check the wikipedia article and go to the sources there. Core text is believed to have been an early text.
Coptic Apocalypse of Paul: unknown date, very short mystical work about climbing the âSeven Heavensâ (this has precedent in Near Eastern mythology) to see Christ, ambiguously Gnostic in cosmology.
First Apocalypse of James: ~400 AD, full of demiurge-monad cosmology alien to Jewish thought of the time (ironically, later Medieval Jewish mystics will turn back to this wisdom tradition and start to re-incorporate elements of it into contemporary Jewish mysticism, at the time however, as evidenced by the dissimilarity of this literature with esoteric Jewish teachings, like the Markavah literature of the Essenes preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, many informed scholars believe the Gnostic movement was an outflowing of esoteric Greco-Persian religious culture).
Second Apocalypse of James: ~300 AD, claims to be written by Jesusâs brother.
Apocalypse of Adam: ~200 Sethian Gnosticism worshipping Seth, many believe this group comes from a pre-Christian Jewish sect with a strong tradition of venerating Seth, citations forthcoming once I finish this.
Acts of Peter and the Twelve: ~300 AD Gnostic commentary on Parable of the Pearl in the Gospel of Matthew.
The Thunder, Perfect Mind: ~3-400 AD, long esoteric poem about Gnosis.
Authoritative Teaching: ~400 AD, Gnostic treatise on the spiritual life/liberation, etc.
Concept of Our Great Power: ~550 AD, Gnostic text containing prophecies for the future, depicts the God of the Jews as the evil Demiurge.
The Republic: by Plato, this is a Gnostic recension of the text, with Gnostic accruals mentioning Jesus, and Archons, etc.
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth: not Gnostic, âmagikalâ Hermetic literature.
The Prayer of Thanksgiving: a prayer to Hermes with annotations.
Asclepius 21-29: a Hermetic grimoire containing various magical spells.
Paraphrase of Shem: undatable, very fragmentary and mysterious heterodox (early, possibly) Christian writing linking the resurrection of Jesus in the NT (New Testament) with Shem in the OT.
Second Treatise of the Great Seth: more Seth-worshipping Hellenic Jews want to be Christian but still want to believe all of their pre-Christian Sethian beliefs too, and they contradict each other but they refuse to acknowledge this (to be fair, the modern Jews, and Jews of the time, took/take issues with Christian innovations to monotheism as well).
Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter: this one is really cool, Iâve read it. Not a lot of Gnostic cosmology flying around, but a lot of cool mysterious miracles and ominous sayings.
Teachings of Silvanus: anti-Gnostic text from ~150-200 AD.
Three Steles of Seth: also from the Sethian Gnostics.
Zostrianos: damaged to near-unreadability, believed to be Sethian.
Letter of Peter to Philip: ~3-400 AD, claims to be a Pauline Epistle confirming that Jesus definitely taught of the Pleroma, Aeons, Archons, Monad, and Demiurge.
Melchizedek: Jewish mystical text.
Thought of Norea: ~ 300 AD, Sethian Gnosticism.
Testimony of Truth: almost too fragmentary to read, commentary on Genesis framing the Serpent as the Bringer of Gnosis.
Marsanes: more esoteric Sethian Gnostic cosmology about emanating aeons.
Interpretation of Knowledge: Gnostic treatise arguing that Gnostics should not view themselves as superior to those without the indwelling of the divine spark of the Monad (i.e. non-Gnostics).
Allogenes: a few of these were found in fragmentary form, it is a genre of Gnostic Gospel that features a saviour/prophet figure other than Jesus Christ outrightly, but who does the miracles and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Hypsiphrone: esoteric Sophia-venerating text.
Sentences of Sextus: Hellenic Pythagorean text.
Trimorphic Protennoia: more Sethian Gnosticism preaching the same Docetist (Jesus was not a human) position common to Sethian Gnosticism.
also The Gospel of the Lord: a heavily edited (mangled?) canonical Gospel of Luke possibly prepared by Marcion of one of this followers ~200 AD.
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[quote=âSenryu, post:32, topic:5804â]
I canât see the sense in your argument.
[/quote]I am very sorry, but its simply the fact of the matter. The simple fact of time, furthermore, also plays into why Mohammed is more historically demonstrable than either Buddha or Christ.
[quote=âSenryu, post:32, topic:5804â]
We have a semantic miscommunication. I was using the term âauthenticâ in the following sense, quoting from the Oxford dictionary: âbased on facts; accurate or reliable: an authentic depiction of the situation.â
[/quote]That is also the description I was using, as in, these texts are authentically Buddhist texts (that is, they are not Jain texts pretending to be Buddhist texts, and furthermore the claim that they are âBuddhist textsâ is âbased on facts; accurate or reliable: an authentic depiction of the situation.â), and they are authentically early (that is, they are not later writings claiming to be older, and the fact that they are early is "âbased on facts; accurate or reliable: an authentic depiction of the situation.â).
The same goes with stratifying and analyzing the layers of Christian literature. Many of the textual critics that worked on building our contemporary narrative of Christ werenât even Christians, and have no stake in the matter on terms of whether or not Christ is ârealâ or whether or not his teachings are âtrueâ (this is true up to today, when many scholars of religion and Christianity are atheists).
Every single word in these texts could be corrupted, they could all be outright lies, but that wouldnât really effect whether or not they are authentically EBTs (or ECTs for that matter), if we want to go further down this rabbit hole. But it is far more likely that these texts are speaking about historical personages, not fabricating lies for the most part. The wikipedia article Ven @sujato linked tohas some good links at the bottom. [quote=âsujato, post:28, topic:5804â]
It shouldnât need saying, but apparently it does: there is strong consensus among reputable professional scholars that Jesus of Nazareth was, indeed, a historical person. Arguments to the contrary are a stock in trade of fringe conspiracy theorists and should not be taken seriously.
[/quote]To which I would add: conspiracy theories about the Buddha should be taken similarly, but that (should) go without saying, provided we are not entertaining conspiracy theories and âtryingâ to disprove X figure.
[quote=âCoemgenu, post:34, topic:5804, full:trueâ]
[quote=âcjmacie, post:33, topic:5804â]
Her books focus on the gnostic traditions (âThe Gnostic Gospelsâ, 1979, through to âBeyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomasâ, 2004), but analyze in great detail the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the orthodox gospels (and other canonical works), as background to how they came to become canonical while the other, gnostic, versions were suppressed.
[/quote]Which strand of gnosticism could she be talking about?[/quote]
Why donât you take a look at her books and articles?
Or perhaps just read the Wikipedia article on âGnosticismâ, which cites her research in various areas of the field some half-dozen times.
[quote=âcjmacie, post:37, topic:5804â]
Or perhaps just read the Wikipedia article on âGnosticismâ, which cites her research in various areas of the field some half-dozen times.
[/quote]I am very sorry but I do not consider her at all qualified to be engaging in the work she does and making the (largely unsubstantiated) claims she makes about these very late Gnostic Gospels, and, in my experience, neither do serious scholars of Christian textual criticism that do not specialize in latter fringe material, their opinions (much more relevant than mine) forthcoming shortly (in addition to the above survey of extant Gnostic literature, which I will be adding citations to once the entire Nag Hammadi library is accounted for there).
Obviously those are some very strong words from me, and I will be expected to back them up (I am in the process of rewriting some old posts I have made on the matter elsewhere and making sure the hyperlinks still work), but suffice to say, many âexpertsâ in the field of Buddhism claim all sorts of things about âEarly Buddhismâ. Elaine Pagels is more of a Michael Baigent of Early Christianity than a Marcus Bingenheimer of Early Buddhism.
Paul Mankowski of the Pontifical Institute, a brilliant scholar of Christian literature and textual criticism, says it better than I:[quote]Two weeks ago, at the height of the Gospel of Judas mania, a Google News search of âElaine Pagelsâ plus âexpertâ scored 157 hits; she was the mediaâs prime go-to person for a scholarly read on the import of the Coptic manuscript. Pagels was most often cited in stories such as the following from the NYT:[quote]Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton who specializes in studies of the Gnostics, said in a statement, âThese discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse â and fascinating â the early Christian movement really was.â[/quote]
I am going to demonstrate that Professor Pagelsâs media reputation as a scholar is undeserved, her reputation as an expert in Gnosticism still less so. The case for the prosecution will require some careful reading. Those who want to follow along with the sources at their elbow should find a copy of Pagelsâs 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels (NY: Random House). Those who have some Latin and a library handy may want the Sources ChrĂ©tiennes edition of Irenaeusâ Adversus Haereses (ed. Rousseau & Doutreleau, Paris: Cerf, 1974, 1982) and can bookmark page 278 of Vol. 211 and page 154 of Vol. 294.* Others can get most of the gist from the translation available in Vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), with a finger in pages 380 and 439. OK, to work.
Pagelsâs The Gnostic Gospels is in large measure a polemic against St. Irenaeus (approx. 130-202 AD), Bishop of Lyons and a Father of the Church, and is aimed in particular against the defense of ecclesial orthodoxy offered by Irenaeus in his work Against Heresies â which was written in Greek but which survives, for the most part, in an ancient Latin translation.
In a chapter called âOne God, One Bishop,â Pagels is concerned to show that the doctrine of monotheism and the hierarchical structuring of the Church were mutually reinforcing ploys designed to consolidate ecclesiastical power and eliminate diversity â specifically, the diversity that Pagels finds in the Gnostics whom Irenaeus was at pains to refute. Pagels claims that Valentinian Christians (disciples of the Gnostic Valentinus) âfollowed a practice which insured the equality of all participantsâ and put the bishop Irenaeus in a double-bind situation by ignoring his orders. Says Pagels (page 43: brackets, ellipsis, and emphasis are Pagelsâs):
What Irenaeus found most galling of all was that, instead of repenting or even openly defying the bishop, they responded to his protests with diabolically clever theological arguments:
Pagelsâs quotation of Irenaeus is tagged by an endnote reference which, on page 162, reads âIbid. [Irenaeus AH], Quotation conflated from 3.15.2 and 2.16.4.â To put it mildly, an interesting method of citation. Letâs look at the sources.
The first part of Pagelsâs quote comes from Book III, Chapter 15 of Against Heresies, where Irenaeus is arguing for the genuineness of the whole of the New Testament, here against the Valentinians:
[quote]> Hi enim ad multitudinem propter eos qui sunt ab Ecclesia, quos communes et ecclesiasticos ipsi dicunt, inferunt sermones, per quos capiunt simpliciores et illiciunt eos, simulantes nostrum tractatum, uti saepius audiant.
They give speeches to the crowd about those from the Church, whom they call âcommonâ and âecclesiastic,â through which they entrap the simple and entice them, counterfeiting our teaching, that they might listen to them more often.[/quote]
From this sentence Pagels takes only the words communes et ecclesiasticos ipsi dicunt, omitting the larger context. Note that the â[us]â which Pagels inserts in her quotation refers not, as her context requires, to bishops, but to all the Catholic faithful: those who belong to the Church. After the ellipsis, her quote resumes midway through a sentence found in Book II, Chapter 16. In this chapter, Irenaeus is primarily concerned neither with the authenticity of Scripture nor with the Valentinians, but with the doctrine of creation propounded by another Gnostic heresiarch named Basilides. Once more, letâs examine the text:
[quote]Etenim hoc quod imputant nobis qui sunt a Valentino, in ea quae deorsum Ebdomade dicentes nos remanere, quasi non adtollentes in altum mentem neque quae sursum sunt sentientes, quoniam portentiloquium ipsorum non recipimus, hoc idem ipsum qui a Basilide sunt his imputant.
For that which the followers of Valentinus impute to us â claiming that we remain in the lower Hebdomad, as if we could not lift our minds on high or perceive the things that are above, since we reject their own extravagant discourses â this very thing the followers of Basilides impute to them.[/quote]
We note that the last phrase is omitted and the order of the preceding clauses reversed to disguise the non sequitur â and for a very good reason: Irenaeus actually says that the same allegations made against the orthodox by the Valentinians are made against the Valentinians by their fellow Gnostics, the disciples of Basilides, and thatâs an embarrassment to Pagelsâs notion of the Gnostic-Catholic divide. To recapitulate: Pagels has carpentered a non-existent quotation, putatively from an ancient source, by silent suppression of relevant context, silent omission of troublesome words, and a mid-sentence shift of 34 chapters backwards through the cited text, so as deliberately to pervert the meaning of the original. While her endnote calls the quote âconflated,â the word doesnât fit even as a euphemism: what we have is not conflation but creation.
Re-reading Pagelsâs putative quotation, you may have noticed that the word âunspiritualâ corresponds to nothing in the Latin. It too was supplied by Pagelsâs imagination. The reason for the interpolation will be plain from the comment that immediately follows (page 44 in The Gnostic Gospels). Remember that she wants to argue that Irenaeus was interested in authority and the Valentinians in the life of the spirit:
Irenaeus was outraged at their claim that they, being spiritual, were released from the ethical restraints that he, as a mere servant of the demiurge, ignorantly sought to foist upon them.
Put simply, Irenaeus did not write what Prof. Pagels wished he would have written, so she made good the defect by silently changing the text. Creativity, when applied to oneâs sources, is not a compliment. She is a very naughty historian.
Or she would be, were she judged by the conventional canons of scholarship. At the post-graduate institute where I teach, and at any university with which I am familiar, for a professor or a grad student intentionally to falsify a source is a career-ending offense. Among professional scholars, witness tampering is no joke: once the charge is proven, the miscreant is dismissed from the guild and not re-admitted.
The Gnostic Gospels, like those portions of Pagelsâs later work with which I am familiar, is chock-full of tendentious readings and instances where counter-evidence is suppressed. The example of âcreativityâ here discussed may fairly be called a representative specimen of her methodology, and was singled out not because itâs the worst example of its kind but because itâs among the most unambiguous. No one who consults the source texts could give Pagels a pass, and that means she forfeits the claim to reliability as a scholar. Attractive as her ideological sympathies may be to many persons â including many academics â she does not deserve to be ranked with serious textual scholars like Claremontâs James Robinson, and her testimony on the accuracy of inventions such as Dan Brownâs The Da Vinci Code cannot be solicited without irony.
I am not calling for academic sanctions but, more simply, for clarification. Pagels should be billed accurately â not as an expert on Gnosticism or Coptic Christianity but as what she is: a novelist. Her oeuvre is that of fiction â in fact, historical romance. Had New York Times reporters sought Barbara Cartlandâs views on discoveries in Merovingian religion or paleography, most of us would find it odd, but weâd expect them to make it plain that was romance, not history, in which she had the right to an opinion.[/quote]There are positive mountains full of similar critiques of Pagelâs highly questionable methodologies and claims.
But, for instance, this:[quote=cjmacie]Pagels, however, in the 1979 book (and private correspondence) notes that no historical direct evidence has been found for such contact.[/quote]Is an example of good work going towards debunking a tragically common held âhistorical factâ (i.e. Jesusâs alleged visits to India)
Why is this tragic or not possible?
[quote=âDeeele, post:39, topic:5804, full:trueâ]
Why is this tragic or not possible?
[/quote]Not possible? It is possible, but nothing corroborates it, even the similarities some have noted between elements of Jesusâs ministries and the Buddhadharma do not mean that Jesus necessarily went to India (or that correlation = causation, i.e. "if the Dhamma and the Church correlate, it is because the Church has âsecondhand Dhammaâ, if one will).
Furthermore, if Jesusâs ministries were substantially informed by the Dhamma, Jesus would not have needed to go all the way to India to be exposed to the Dhamma, Jerusalem or Antioch would have been far enough to go to to hear something that vaguely resembled the Dhamma or another related âDharmicâ tradition from India, as we know the Near East and India have seldom been strangers.
Tragic? I guess I called it tragic because so many believe that it is a âhistorical factâ that Jesus definitely went to India.
Who? Where? It is as tragic to deny as to affirm.
Jesus, if real, was an enigma. That is why there were so many different Xtian schools soon after his departure from his 3 year teaching career.
The teachings are often in parables & metaphors. Of all gospels, Thomas is the most sound. Yet its language is obtuse.
Apocryphon of James is also very logical & is close to Buddhism it is distinction between spirit, soul & body and its description of salvation.
For me, the Biblical Gospels are obviously composed for ordinary people, similar to Jataka.
Unusual how Paul does not mention any gospel stories. If these gospel events were so marvelous, they would have been renowned. Yet Paul is silent on them.
In fact, Paul himself is gnostic; yet in a very subtle manner. âChristâ for Paul appears often to be a state of mind.