Posted: May 08, 2012 5:06 pm
archibald wrote:http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/scandia/article/viewFile/1078/863
An interesting article from Alvar Ellegard in 2008. Yes, yes, I know. He was 'only' a linguist.
Following the article there are few measured responses from notable Scandinavian scholars and historians.
For example, Rolf Torstendahl (Professor of history at Uppsala University) says:
'...the historian in this case, as in so many others, will say neither "The evidence is that he lived there and then" nor "The evidence is that he did not live there and then". The logical possibility of the existence of Jesus (at the religiously assumed place and time) cannot be denied, but the evidence seems to be too weak to give such a statement a minimum probability'
and, in conclusion:
'It has always been difficult for people to accept that historians have to leave some questions open. We cannot decide (with rational arguments) on everything we would like to know something about, and this is very true of history. The thick web of myth which is naturally connected with religion makes it difficult to sift historical arguments from mythical. Only when it is urgent for the solution of other problems the historian cannot avoid the effort to weigh imponderabilia in favour of one or the other hypothesis. It is difficult to see that this is needed for questions about founders of religions.
Worth comparing with what E. P. Sanders said (see above) IMO, and with what Bart Ehrman said about powerful reasons for assuming.
Ah the Scandinavians! Old Testament study is littered with the corpses of fashionable theories from the land of the myth! I think I see what he is getting at, but he does seem to be one of those scholars whose interest in the past transcends the old stables of what happened, why and to whom. To place the origin of religions into its own category seems to me to go too far. For example ponder the differing challenges of reconstructing the histories of Moses, Zoroaster,Plotinus, St Francis of Assissi and Ron L Hubbard.