Richard Carrier, on Sources of the Jesus Tradition:
Trobisch … discussed numerous kinds of physical and textual evidence in the manuscripts that only makes sense if the New Testament was published, all 27 books, in codex form, near the end of the 2nd century. He made a pretty convincing case, adding to the case made in his CSER article (issue 2.1, possibly the same as published in Free Inquiry 28.1), which is actually more worth reading than this chapter, as is his book on this subject (The First Edition of the New Testament)….
A.J. Droge’s “Jesus and Ned Lud[d]: What’s in a Name?” both as presented and pre-circulated was one of the most important papers in the field of Jesus myth studies ever produced, and its loss here is a disaster. Even just its inclusion alone (when added to the other good material retained) would have made this book’s list price just about warranted. In it Droge thoroughly documents and analyzes the case of Ned Ludd (“founder” of the 18th-19th century Luddites), providing source citations and scholarship, demonstrating that he did not exist, and yet an entire movement was credited as having been founded by him, complete with biography, tales, and teachings, within a generation of when he was supposed to have lived (about thirty years of his supposed techno-sabotage, and thus within his very lifetime, had he lived, and lived to a commonly reached age). This establishes a useful case to compare with Jesus, to ascertain how likely the same may have unfolded for him (and, of course, it refutes the claim that such a thing can’t happen)….
Hoffmann discussed how the nativity stories were invented to make a point (as is proved by their being completely contradictory, but also by the obvious symbolic and propagandistic elements in them), and not constructed from historical sources or analysis (as neither sources nor analysis appears in them), and if the Gospels can invent such elaborate historical narratives, we can have little hope anything else in them is any more factual. Similarly, the process of deciding the canon proceeded according to circular and dogmatic criteria rather than any objective method of determining document reliability.
Hi Geoff, I admire your work! This comment really relates to “Stripping the Gurus”, but I couldn’t find any other way to contact you, so I’m posting it here. Have you done any research on Ashayana Deane aka Anna Hayes? I have a family member caught up in this cult.
Hello Geoff,
I’ve only today discovered your work and found in it – notably in “Science Of The Soul” – what I take to be a kindred spirit. I especially concur with your skepticism/mistrust toward gurus, having myself investigated multiple movements and traditions and, in the end, discarded all except two: Rinzai Zen as taught/practiced by Joshu Sasaki Roshi and the Headless Way of Douglas Harding which is also Zen clad in English tweed.
Finding no references in your work to Douglas Harding, I must earnestly recommend to you the website http://www.headless.org maintained by Douglas’s pupil/friend Richard Lang. I spent one evening with Douglas in 1970 (in Vancouver) during which I learned what I needed to know – i.e. that I am no mere mortal but boundless Capacity for everything and everyone.
I love Droge’s thesis re Jesus, Ned Ludd and possible others! However I put more store by Jesus than Ned.
Notwithstanding his very probable non-historicity, Jesus gets it right whenever he’s quoted (purportedly) verbatim.
As for traditional Christian dogma, I find more authenticity – and far less hocus-pocus in Eastern Orthodoxy than in Roman Catholicism. The Orthodox are the older and less perverted tradition. Though not lacking in veneration of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) they have no truck with theological whoppers like the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption.
But the form of the OHG and Gothic words suggests it is also a borrowing, perhaps indeed directly or indirectly from Greek “ἐλέφας” (elephas), which in Homer only meant “ivory”, but from Herodotus on the word also referred to the animal.
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