To follow-up on this from last week:

Byron wrote:
Crucifixion was deeply shameful to Romans. I trust that this isn't in doubt. Jews also had the added shame from Deuteronomy 21:22-23, of Adonai cursing a man hung from a tree. So, for Jews to have invented a crucified messiah is doubly absurd: there's the general shame of crucifixion, and the specific shame of Deut.'s curse.

The idea that the Jews rejected Jesus as under a "curse" because of the manner of his death is entirely wrong. Many Jews died by crucifixion and were regarded as heroes and martyrs, not as under a curse. Paul's very individual use, in Galatians 3:13, of the biblical verse (Deut. 21:23) about hanging after death by crucifixion, as if it applied to a Roman crucifixion, was not based on any rabbinic source. Even a criminal dying by Jewish execution was not regarded as an atonement for his sin. But a Jewish patriot dying by Roman oppression was not regarded as a criminal in any way, but as a martyr.

While some scholars, in recent years, have stressed the alleged Jewishness of Paul's ideas, this is one area in which Paul is supposed to have rejected a rooted Jewish idea, the "curse" of crucifixion, and substituted something new and shocking -- especially shocking because of the alleged previous Jewish belief that he who died on a cross incurred a curse -- the redemptive power of the cross. There was, in fact, no "curse" or "scandal" of crucifixion in Judaism to exercise, the "curse" being entirely of Paul's own manufacture; what was new, however, was the concept of the cross, or any form of violent death of a savior-figure, as the central way to atonement and redemption for mankind ... the idea that Jesus's catastrophic failure was a success on the cosmic level was not part of Jewish thinking, and was therefore rejected; but his death on a Roman cross was cause for sorrow, not condemnation, like the deaths of other Messiah-figures before and after him.

(Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism, p. 75-76)

Blood wrote:

Ian Tattum wrote:

I missed the point where a list of brilliant biblical scholars evicted from their jobs, for saying Jesus probably did not exist, was cited. And where is the evidence that students of christianity are more irrational than those who study other aspects of history- the assertion that because they are seriously interested in such a subject, and may have once passed through a seminary won't quite cut it. I can agree with CDP on this one point- don't expect pure rationslism to lurk in the history faculty

Fatuous comparison. Nobody pursues the study of Greek history because they've been inculcated in an environment since childhood where Zeus is regarded as your "personal God," Dionysus was regenerated for ours "sins," and Hesiod and Homeric literature are taught as if they portrayed actual, historical events and figures.

Were you never a child? Any child enchanted by Greek mythology is likely to find the boundary between factual and fictional difficult to navigate. Remember the story of the discovery of Troy and what led to that?

Ian Tattum wrote:

Blood wrote:

Ian Tattum wrote:

I missed the point where a list of brilliant biblical scholars evicted from their jobs, for saying Jesus probably did not exist, was cited. And where is the evidence that students of christianity are more irrational than those who study other aspects of history- the assertion that because they are seriously interested in such a subject, and may have once passed through a seminary won't quite cut it. I can agree with CDP on this one point- don't expect pure rationslism to lurk in the history faculty

Fatuous comparison. Nobody pursues the study of Greek history because they've been inculcated in an environment since childhood where Zeus is regarded as your "personal God," Dionysus was regenerated for ours "sins," and Hesiod and Homeric literature are taught as if they portrayed actual, historical events and figures.

Were you never a child? Any child enchanted by Greek mythology is likely to find the boundary between factual and fictional difficult to navigate. Remember the story of the discovery of Troy and what led to that?

We know Schliemann discovered something in Turkey that he called Troy, but it wasn't where he thought it would be and no artefact has ever emerged indicating the name of the place, so we don't know if Troy has in fact been found or not.

Stein wrote:
Two thousand years ago, a preacher said that we should love our enemies. There have been plenty of studies showing that 99.9% of the Jesus sayings were sophisticated developments of dicta already found elsewhere in ancient Jewish culture -- except "Love our enemies". "Love our enemies" is the one thing for which no scholar has ever found a precedent.

I know very well the guffaws this post will cause. But a complacency at the notion that the real Jesus -- the Jesus that religion has stifled, has boxed in with its cheap conjuring tricks, has drowned in its sea of ludicrous stunts, has subverted -- can have no practical value to the historian who loves humanity, and who understands how precious the human heritage really is, becomes insufferable and is ultimately as destructive of the human spirit as religion ever was.

Stein

To follow-up on this again, because it is very important: as far as the Jesus character's instruction to "love your enemies" being something powerfully original and intrinsic to the unsurpassed ethical teaching of the Galilean preacher man -- it is actually the opposite of that in context. Jesus and the apostles' "enemies" here are the Pharisees, and by extension, "the Jews" (as they are objectified throughout most of the gospels). Persecution by said "enemy" is to be welcomed, because it vouchsafes the authenticity of Jesus and the apostles' mission. "The Jews" and "their" ancestors have killed and persecuted all of "their" prophets; thus their continued persecution ensures a great reward in heaven to those who have secretly uncovered the true meaning of "the scriptures" -- that the Kingdom of God actually belongs to the Gentiles, not "the Jews" at all.


Luke 6:22-23 NIV
Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

Luke 6:26
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Matthew 5:11-12
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.


Christianity as we have it was an anti-semitic cult. This is not something to be hand-waved away. Anti-semitism was not an unfortunate by-product of the religion, or the racial attitudes of the day, but the very heart of the emerging proto-orthodox church's ideology. They had read ancient scriptures and figured out that since "the Jews" had "killed all their prophets," then the Most High God must have actually meant for the Gentiles to "supersede" the Old Covenant. All of the NT literature was written with this attitude. The anti-semitisms are not "later redactions" but were right there from the start.

Fatuous comparison. Nobody pursues the study of Greek history because they've been inculcated in an environment since childhood where Zeus is regarded as your "personal God," Dionysus was regenerated for ours "sins," and Hesiod and Homeric literature are taught as if they portrayed actual, historical events and figures.

Were you never a child? Any child enchanted by Greek mythology is likely to find the boundary between factual and fictional difficult to navigate. Remember the story of the discovery of Troy and what led to that?

Sure, nobody ever studies anything at a graduate level without some heavy emotional involvement, probably ultimately traceable back to childhood. The difference -- and it is a huge one -- is that no one is beginning with the social/familial/cultural inculcation that Greek mythology is "inerrant," and that by studying it at a graduate level, you will come to know how historical it all really is.
And therefore how relevant it is to today's theology. Which is precisely what happens with Christianity.

Theology is the study of religion. Could not a theologian undertake the study of Zoroastrianism? And if so, what conclusion would he/she arrive at? Like christianity, there's precious little to go on except the written word written by very fallible human beings.
Each one brings his own bias to his study, and looks for clues that reinforce his/hers pre-conceived ideas. We in reality have nothing but myths and fables. This is the main reason some search for a HJ. For if they think they found him, it leads to what they think are the origins of xtianity. But wasn't it Paul who got the show on the road? Paul's Christ came to him in a vision, so how the hell has christianity any credibility at all? Shouldn't it be next to the pagan religions as just a bunch of ancient myths ?

angelo wrote:But wasn't it Paul who got the show on the road? Paul's Christ came to him in a vision, so how the hell has christianity any credibility at all? Shouldn't it be next to the pagan religions as just a bunch of ancient myths ?

Because supposedly the Jews wouldn't invent a crucified messiah, as that noted expert on rabbinical Judaism, Paul of Tarsus, explains to us in Galatians. So that's settled.

The explanation that makes the most sense in light of the literature -- that a crucified messiah figure was exploited or simply invented by Gentiles, with no Jewish involvement at all -- is never considered.

Blood wrote:

Fatuous comparison. Nobody pursues the study of Greek history because they've been inculcated in an environment since childhood where Zeus is regarded as your "personal God," Dionysus was regenerated for ours "sins," and Hesiod and Homeric literature are taught as if they portrayed actual, historical events and figures.

Were you never a child? Any child enchanted by Greek mythology is likely to find the boundary between factual and fictional difficult to navigate. Remember the story of the discovery of Troy and what led to that?

Sure, nobody ever studies anything at a graduate level without some heavy emotional involvement, probably ultimately traceable back to childhood. The difference -- and it is a huge one -- is that no one is beginning with the social/familial/cultural inculcation that Greek mythology is "inerrant," and that by studying it at a graduate level, you will come to know how historical it all really is.
And therefore how relevant it is to today's theology. Which is precisely what happens with Christianity.

Good point, but you are understandably drawing on your context; in England hardly any people who study theology or religious studies come out of such a context. As both are highly critical disciplines the fundamentalists tend to go to independent bible colleges, which have no links with secular universities, to keep their dogmatic faith inviolate.

Blood wrote:To follow-up on this from last week:

Byron wrote:
Crucifixion was deeply shameful to Romans. I trust that this isn't in doubt. Jews also had the added shame from Deuteronomy 21:22-23, of Adonai cursing a man hung from a tree. So, for Jews to have invented a crucified messiah is doubly absurd: there's the general shame of crucifixion, and the specific shame of Deut.'s curse.

The idea that the Jews rejected Jesus as under a "curse" because of the manner of his death is entirely wrong. Many Jews died by crucifixion and were regarded as heroes and martyrs, not as under a curse. Paul's very individual use, in Galatians 3:13, of the biblical verse (Deut. 21:23) about hanging after death by crucifixion, as if it applied to a Roman crucifixion, was not based on any rabbinic source. Even a criminal dying by Jewish execution was not regarded as an atonement for his sin. But a Jewish patriot dying by Roman oppression was not regarded as a criminal in any way, but as a martyr.

While some scholars, in recent years, have stressed the alleged Jewishness of Paul's ideas, this is one area in which Paul is supposed to have rejected a rooted Jewish idea, the "curse" of crucifixion, and substituted something new and shocking -- especially shocking because of the alleged previous Jewish belief that he who died on a cross incurred a curse -- the redemptive power of the cross. There was, in fact, no "curse" or "scandal" of crucifixion in Judaism to exercise, the "curse" being entirely of Paul's own manufacture; what was new, however, was the concept of the cross, or any form of violent death of a savior-figure, as the central way to atonement and redemption for mankind ... the idea that Jesus's catastrophic failure was a success on the cosmic level was not part of Jewish thinking, and was therefore rejected; but his death on a Roman cross was cause for sorrow, not condemnation, like the deaths of other Messiah-figures before and after him.

(Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism, p. 75-76)

What were the circumstances of the crucified Jews lauded by other Jews? Post-AD 60s-70s Jewish war, or prior? Where and when were they lauded? The various talmuds, or earlier?

Maccoby made great play on the continuity between pre- and post-2nd Temple Judaism, and on the differences between gentile and Jewish Christianity. If he conducted a rigorous examination of the sources and made a compelling case that no Jews considered crucifixion a curse, I'm happy to change my mind on this. Perhaps you can summarize his position and approach in more detail, with particular regard to his explanation for why early Christian apologetic felt the need to refute the "curse" charge, and where Paul got the link from.

Ian Tattum wrote:

Blood wrote:

Fatuous comparison. Nobody pursues the study of Greek history because they've been inculcated in an environment since childhood where Zeus is regarded as your "personal God," Dionysus was regenerated for ours "sins," and Hesiod and Homeric literature are taught as if they portrayed actual, historical events and figures.

Were you never a child? Any child enchanted by Greek mythology is likely to find the boundary between factual and fictional difficult to navigate. Remember the story of the discovery of Troy and what led to that?

Sure, nobody ever studies anything at a graduate level without some heavy emotional involvement, probably ultimately traceable back to childhood. The difference -- and it is a huge one -- is that no one is beginning with the social/familial/cultural inculcation that Greek mythology is "inerrant," and that by studying it at a graduate level, you will come to know how historical it all really is.
And therefore how relevant it is to today's theology. Which is precisely what happens with Christianity.

Good point, but you are understandably drawing on your context; in England hardly any people who study theology or religious studies come out of such a context. As both are highly critical disciplines the fundamentalists tend to go to independent bible colleges, which have no links with secular universities, to keep their dogmatic faith inviolate.

Which explains how Rev. Professor Burridge (Dean of King's College, London) can say that the gospels are biographies and the Bishop of Durham (Chair of NT Studies at the University of St. Andrews) can say that it is historically provable that Jesus was the son of God and resurrected physically by God. Is that how the universities in England work?

Byron wrote:

Blood wrote:To follow-up on this from last week:

Byron wrote:
Crucifixion was deeply shameful to Romans. I trust that this isn't in doubt. Jews also had the added shame from Deuteronomy 21:22-23, of Adonai cursing a man hung from a tree. So, for Jews to have invented a crucified messiah is doubly absurd: there's the general shame of crucifixion, and the specific shame of Deut.'s curse.

The idea that the Jews rejected Jesus as under a "curse" because of the manner of his death is entirely wrong. Many Jews died by crucifixion and were regarded as heroes and martyrs, not as under a curse. Paul's very individual use, in Galatians 3:13, of the biblical verse (Deut. 21:23) about hanging after death by crucifixion, as if it applied to a Roman crucifixion, was not based on any rabbinic source. Even a criminal dying by Jewish execution was not regarded as an atonement for his sin. But a Jewish patriot dying by Roman oppression was not regarded as a criminal in any way, but as a martyr.

While some scholars, in recent years, have stressed the alleged Jewishness of Paul's ideas, this is one area in which Paul is supposed to have rejected a rooted Jewish idea, the "curse" of crucifixion, and substituted something new and shocking -- especially shocking because of the alleged previous Jewish belief that he who died on a cross incurred a curse -- the redemptive power of the cross. There was, in fact, no "curse" or "scandal" of crucifixion in Judaism to exercise, the "curse" being entirely of Paul's own manufacture; what was new, however, was the concept of the cross, or any form of violent death of a savior-figure, as the central way to atonement and redemption for mankind ... the idea that Jesus's catastrophic failure was a success on the cosmic level was not part of Jewish thinking, and was therefore rejected; but his death on a Roman cross was cause for sorrow, not condemnation, like the deaths of other Messiah-figures before and after him.

(Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism, p. 75-76)

What were the circumstances of the crucified Jews lauded by other Jews? Post-AD 60s-70s Jewish war, or prior? Where and when were they lauded? The various talmuds, or earlier?

Maccoby made great play on the continuity between pre- and post-2nd Temple Judaism, and on the differences between gentile and Jewish Christianity. If he conducted a rigorous examination of the sources and made a compelling case that no Jews considered crucifixion a curse, I'm happy to change my mind on this. Perhaps you can summarize his position and approach in more detail, with particular regard to his explanation for why early Christian apologetic felt the need to refute the "curse" charge, and where Paul got the link from.

Byron I'm more interested in your theology. Is there any difference between the effect of the historical Jesus on your theology and the effect of the historical Socrates, Zoroaster or Buddha on your theology?

Socrates, Zoroaster and Buddha have jack all to do with the Christian tradition. I've not tried to build theologies for other systems -- I've nothing against it, it's a practical choice -- and this seems way off topic for a thread about a Jewish folk preacher.

Byron wrote:Socrates, Zoroaster and Buddha have jack all to do with the Christian tradition. I've not tried to build theologies for other systems -- I've nothing against it, it's a practical choice -- and this seems way off topic for a thread about a Jewish folk preacher.

Well it seems to me then that the remaining HJ supporters can't seem to make up their minds. To Stein Jesus is part of a long tradition of wise men whose historicity the future of western civilization hangs on. To Byron, Jesus is just a Jewish folk preacher who happens to impact his theology.

So to return to the Jewish folk preacher, what texts from antiquity describe a Jewish folk preacher who was not a miracle worker and didn't rise from the dead?

MS2 wrote:

spin wrote:

MS2 wrote:

spin wrote: ...

Not worth responding to.

I should have known you weren't. You crapped on here without ever doing anything useful. What the fuck do you think you've done in this thread? Nipped once too often, boyo.

So you too want someone to give you a bible on how to do history. I recommend you start with History 101 and work your way up.
...

Failure to respond with anything substantive noted. I actually wondered if you might have something useful. At least now I know for sure you don't.

You can note whatever the fuck you like. You're not going to talk to the thread topic, ever. You may as well go and start a thread to discuss methologies for how to infer things about Jesus if you assume he's historical. After all there's no need to demonstrate historicity. Perhaps you can say something relevant there.

It seems we can at least empathise. That's certainly my feeling.

Stein wrote:

spin wrote:

Stein wrote:

proudfootz wrote:
Will we get long impassioned screeds about how the future of humanity is at stake if we 'lose' Boudicca as an historical person? Or Hannibal?

If we "lose" any of the following 22 figures, then we will: Mesalim, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Hesiod, Solon, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus Christ, Ulpian, Mohammed, James Naylor, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Bahá’u’lláh, Alexander II, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela.

Absolutely and utterly no quality control here, folks. Just dominoes flying. Stein demonstrates that you don't need to do history to get a historical Jesus. Just include him with a bunch of names that you assume are historical and voila', Jesus gets tarred by the same brush. See, no history necessary. Fucking hilarious.

But let's play spot the odd man out: Erica Jong, Sappho, Mary Stuart, Amelia Earhart, Hypatia, Jesus, Indira Ghandi, Emmaline Pankhurst, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, Sarah Palin, Susan Sontag. You may notice the similarity with Stein's list.

Each of my figures kept up an uncomfortable dialogue on how we treat our fellow man. Nothing like that ties your group together.

You have your rationale, but I wasn't talking to you at the time, merely about your list, which features a number of people who have direct claims to historicity--whether valid or not--, with the exception of Jesus, who was only written about.

As I pointed out there is no effort at history when you string together a bunch of names as you did, with pseudo-philosophical, rather than historical, criteria. Whether Jesus existed or not changes nothing about the religious message that attracted you. You are simply not engaged in the pursuit of history.

spin wrote:

Stein wrote:

spin wrote:

Stein wrote:
If we "lose" any of the following 22 figures, then we will: Mesalim, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Hesiod, Solon, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus Christ, Ulpian, Mohammed, James Naylor, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Bahá’u’lláh, Alexander II, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela.

Absolutely and utterly no quality control here, folks. Just dominoes flying. Stein demonstrates that you don't need to do history to get a historical Jesus. Just include him with a bunch of names that you assume are historical and voila', Jesus gets tarred by the same brush. See, no history necessary. Fucking hilarious.

But let's play spot the odd man out: Erica Jong, Sappho, Mary Stuart, Amelia Earhart, Hypatia, Jesus, Indira Ghandi, Emmaline Pankhurst, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, Sarah Palin, Susan Sontag. You may notice the similarity with Stein's list.

Each of my figures kept up an uncomfortable dialogue on how we treat our fellow man. Nothing like that ties your group together.

You have your rationale, but I wasn't talking to you at the time, merely about your list, which features a number of people who have direct claims to historicity--whether valid or not--, with the exception of Jesus, who was only written about.

As I pointed out there is no effort at history when you string together a bunch of names as you did, with pseudo-philosophical, rather than historical, criteria. Whether Jesus existed or not changes nothing about the religious message that attracted you. You are simply not engaged in the pursuit of history.

I think you know fucking damn well that it's not the "religious" message that attracts me. Looking at my list*, does Solon have a "religious" message? Does Ulpian? Does John Locke? Does Alexander II? Does Nelson Mandela? Jesus's message has much in common with Solon, Ulpian, Locke, Alexander II and Nelson Mandela. And it's not because they each have some "religious" message that "attracted" me. The message they all have in common is not a "religious" message; it's a ___________ message instead. You will either fill in that blank correctly right now, or I will bring this UMPTEENTH falsification of yours of an HJ posting to the attention of the Feedback, Site Suggestions & Bug Reporting forum.

Your move,

Stein

*Mesalim, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Hesiod, Solon, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus Christ, Ulpian, Mohammed, James Naylor, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Bahá’u’lláh, Alexander II, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela

spin wrote:

MS2 wrote:

spin wrote:

MS2 wrote:
Not worth responding to.

I should have known you weren't. You crapped on here without ever doing anything useful. What the fuck do you think you've done in this thread? Nipped once too often, boyo.

Failure to respond with anything substantive noted. I actually wondered if you might have something useful. At least now I know for sure you don't.

You can note whatever the fuck you like. You're not going to talk to the thread topic, ever. You may as well go and start a thread to discuss methologies for how to infer things about Jesus if you assume he's historical. After all there's no need to demonstrate historicity. Perhaps you can say something relevant there.

It seems we can at least empathise. That's certainly my feeling.

Stein wrote:

spin wrote:

Stein wrote:

spin wrote:
Absolutely and utterly no quality control here, folks. Just dominoes flying. Stein demonstrates that you don't need to do history to get a historical Jesus. Just include him with a bunch of names that you assume are historical and voila', Jesus gets tarred by the same brush. See, no history necessary. Fucking hilarious.

But let's play spot the odd man out: Erica Jong, Sappho, Mary Stuart, Amelia Earhart, Hypatia, Jesus, Indira Ghandi, Emmaline Pankhurst, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, Sarah Palin, Susan Sontag. You may notice the similarity with Stein's list.

Each of my figures kept up an uncomfortable dialogue on how we treat our fellow man. Nothing like that ties your group together.

You have your rationale, but I wasn't talking to you at the time, merely about your list, which features a number of people who have direct claims to historicity--whether valid or not--, with the exception of Jesus, who was only written about.

As I pointed out there is no effort at history when you string together a bunch of names as you did, with pseudo-philosophical, rather than historical, criteria. Whether Jesus existed or not changes nothing about the religious message that attracted you. You are simply not engaged in the pursuit of history.

I think you know fucking damn well that it's not the "religious" message that attracts me.

You can call it whatever the fuck you like. It's the message of the people that has you in its thrall and plainly nothing to do with history. In this thread the message of any of those people is irrelevant--except when it can be directly related to the historicity of Jesus.

Stein wrote:Looking at my list*, does Solon have a "religious" message? Does Ulpian? Does John Locke? Does Alexander II? Does Nelson Mandela? Jesus's message has much in common with Solon, Ulpian, Locke, Alexander II and Nelson Mandela. And it's not because they each have some "religious" message that "attracted" me. The message they all have in common is not a "religious" message; it's a ___________ message instead. You will either fill in that blank correctly right now, or I will bring this UMPTEENTH falsification of yours of an HJ posting to the attention of the Feedback, Site Suggestions & Bug Reporting forum.

Your move,

Stein

You've gotta be kidding me, Stein. You have got to be fucking kidding me. You are so far off the track, you've lost your way. Go and whinge to whoever you like, but please, please don't come back with this bug still in your system. I'd love you to deal with the topic of this thread and its direct relationship with history. This drivel about Mesalim etc. and ad nauseum was tiring the first time you flooded the thread with your wall of text. I doubt if anybody trying to deal substantively with this thread cares a hoot about your zeal for their achievements, real or otherwise.

Stein wrote:*Mesalim, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Hesiod, Solon, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus Christ, Ulpian, Mohammed, James Naylor, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Bahá’u’lláh, Alexander II, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela

...Noddy, Peter Pan, Astroboy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Parker, Harry Lime, Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, Bilbo Baggins,... all just as relevant to this thread.

Ian Tattum wrote:

Blood wrote:

Fatuous comparison. Nobody pursues the study of Greek history because they've been inculcated in an environment since childhood where Zeus is regarded as your "personal God," Dionysus was regenerated for ours "sins," and Hesiod and Homeric literature are taught as if they portrayed actual, historical events and figures.

Were you never a child? Any child enchanted by Greek mythology is likely to find the boundary between factual and fictional difficult to navigate. Remember the story of the discovery of Troy and what led to that?

Sure, nobody ever studies anything at a graduate level without some heavy emotional involvement, probably ultimately traceable back to childhood. The difference -- and it is a huge one -- is that no one is beginning with the social/familial/cultural inculcation that Greek mythology is "inerrant," and that by studying it at a graduate level, you will come to know how historical it all really is. And therefore how relevant it is to today's theology. Which is precisely what happens with Christianity.

Good point, but you are understandably drawing on your context; in England hardly any people who study theology or religious studies come out of such a context. As both are highly critical disciplines the fundamentalists tend to go to independent bible colleges, which have no links with secular universities, to keep their dogmatic faith inviolate.

Yes, well, things are quite different here in the USA. The kids who are sent to seminary schools usually come from fundamentalist type familial-social situations. Their families think that it's still the 1700s, and by sending their kids to seminary schools, they will be learning exactly how there is a good historical basis for everything in the Bible. Now, to their credit, most seminary schools apparently do teach some aspects of the historical-critical method, and this is a shock to incoming freshmen, because they had no idea from their familial inculcation that such a thing existed. Bart Ehrman is a typical example of such a student. As he writes in Jesus, Interrupted:

"Most students expect these courses to be taught from a more or less pious perspective ... (they) are in for a rude awakening. A very large percentage of seminarians are completely blind-sided by the historical-critical method ... nothing prepares them for historical criticism. To their surprise they learn, instead of material for sermons, all the results of what historical critics have established on the basis of centuries of research. The Bible is filled with discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable contradictions ... some students accept these views from day one. Others -- especially among the more conservative students -- resist for a long time, secure in their knowledge that God would not allow any falsehoods into his sacred book."

Stein wrote:
Each of my figures kept up an uncomfortable dialogue on how we treat our fellow man.

Not that it is relevant in this thread, but you're letting a theory of history precede evaluation of tentative historical conclusions. You leave out of this remark your notions of 'progress' in this dialogue, but they are always present as your subtext. In fact, you seem to be promoting the idea that human ethics is a 'technology' (with attendant notion of 'progress', and by analogy, ethics must have its 'inventors'). Elevating structuralism to these lofty heights is hindering your interest in considering the evidence. Letting ideology drive its conclusions is the bane of so very many historians (and would-be historians, too).