Earl Doherty

[Calavera]

Who else thinks he's a shit amateur "scholar"?

For anyone who doesn't know him, he's some guy who has a website and a book supposedly showing that Jesus was a mythical character never intended to be taken as historical by Paul and his fellow Christians in his days. He claims that all the references in the "reliable" Epistles that are related to Jesus' crucifixion (and other events that are traditionally interpreted as historical like the Last Supper) to be events that Paul believed occurred in some sublunar realm (some ancient cosmological mythical realm between the earth and the moon) and NOT on earth (as traditionally thought).

Why do I think he's a shit "scholar"? Is it because he's a mythicist? No. I'm partially a mythicist myself (in the sense that I believe Jesus did exist but he may as well not have existed because he didn't have much influence on traditional Christianity anyway).

So what's my beef with him? It's that he uses a lot of unfounded speculations and personal interpretations in his work and counts them as good evidence, tainting ancient literature texts with his horrible interpretations. And when I pointed that out to him personally, all I got was ridicule by him and his fans and followers.

It's no wonder his work has yet to be peer-reviewed as the scholarly consensus has marked his theory as ridiculous and unscholarly. Only Richard Carrier, as far as I know, thinks relatively highly of his work (as Carrier is a mythicist himself but not necessarily agreeing with Doherty's work).

Here's his website:

http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/

[bodie]

Never heard of him!  Did have a look though
it looks like bollox,  and he is trying to peddle his own books

tbh i got a banging headache so couldn't read all of it - but will look
again later 

[renaeden]

Read a little bit. Even I know that if you write something down as fact, you have to reference it. Especially with things like this if you want to be taken seriously. He does reference parts of the bible but then he puts his own spin on it and you can't do that with scholarly articles, other people can't reference your writing if you do that. I have learnt this through writing essays and reports for uni.

[Calavera]

Read a little bit. Even I know that if you write something down as fact, you have to reference it. Especially with things like this if you want to be taken seriously. He does reference parts of the bible but then he puts his own spin on it and you can't do that with scholarly articles, other people can't reference your writing if you do that. I have learnt this through writing essays and reports for uni.

Exactly my point. He does reference, but when you look at the primary sources, they don't actually say what he claims they say. That's the issue.

And no matter how many times he has this pointed out to him by expert scholars or by lay men like me and others, he still doesn't want to get it. Probably because he's doing it more for the money he gets out of selling his books.

[Scrapheap]

Why does this shit keep comming up?? 

Wasn't there a simmilar line of shit in the movie "Zeitgeist"??

It gives the fundies ammunition they need to discredit their critics. 

[Calavera]

Why does this shit keep comming up?? 

Wasn't there a simmilar line of shit in the movie "Zeitgeist"??

It gives the fundies ammunition they need to discredit their critics. 

The Zeitgeist is worse, admittedly. Earl Doherty does argue better than Acharya S. Same with the fans and followers respectively.

But the scholarly approach is still just as crap.

You cannot proudly call yourself a skeptic these days, especially with ridiculous so-called "skeptic" theories spreading all over the Internet and being accepted by many who claim to be skeptics.

Bart Ehrman and Bernard Muller all the way!

[renaeden]

Read a little bit. Even I know that if you write something down as fact, you have to reference it. Especially with things like this if you want to be taken seriously. He does reference parts of the bible but then he puts his own spin on it and you can't do that with scholarly articles, other people can't reference your writing if you do that. I have learnt this through writing essays and reports for uni.

Exactly my point. He does reference, but when you look at the primary sources, they don't actually say what he claims they say. That's the issue.

And no matter how many times he has this pointed out to him by expert scholars or by lay men like me and others, he still doesn't want to get it. Probably because he's doing it more for the money he gets out of selling his books.

I wonder if he has been to uni? Because if you submit a piece of writing that references an article but twists what it says you can get into trouble for it.

[Calavera]

I think he's been to uni. But if I read him correctly, he doesn't have a degree in scholarship or whatever the relevant course is.

He's pretty much an amateur.