Talk:Earl Doherty

message: It's been said on Amazon.com review section that Mr. Doherty died "last April." Any
truth to that?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.240.123.39 (talk) 02:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems unlikely. There is nothing about this on his website, and I doubt an heir would be unaware of the site or leave his passing unmentioned. If "last April" means April 2008, then the site has been updated multiple times since then, which would be even more odd. If it means April 2009, then although there have been no website updates since January 2009, I wasn't able to find a published obituary either. --RL0919 (talk) 03:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Death?

message: Are we defining "Biblical Scholar" as "someone who has published a book about the bible" or as someone with an
earned doctorate in a field of biblical studies? (because if the latter, then how does Doherty qualify?) If he has a relevant advanced degree in ancient history, then he'd be a historian.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.59.228.204 (talk) 19:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, The Journal of Higher Criticism was not peer reviewed. Anyone who asserts that it was should provide some evidence pertaining to that point; I doubt you'll find any. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Like peer reviewing prevented Science from engaging in that whole Hwang fiasco several years back.  Nevermind that aside from medicine peer reviewing has only come about in science within the last 100 years.  For example, Albert Einstein's revolutionary "Annus Mirabilis" papers were published in 1902 without peer reviewing.  Similarly, Anthropology and archeology developed what we would recognize as peer reviewing beginning c1910.  Furthermore, peer reviewed does not carry the same weight across journals.  For example, American Journal of Biblical Theology and International Journal for Creation Research are both presented as peer reviewed but one could hardly compare them to the peer reviewed journals like Human Evolution, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, American Antiquity, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, orAnthropology and Education Quarterly.  Looking through anthrosource to see if there were any actual peer reviewed stuff on Jesus I stumbled on this little gem: "There is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived, to give an example, and Christianity is based on narrative fiction of high literary and cathartic quality. On the other hand Christianity is concerned with the narration of things that actually take place in human life." Fischer, Roland (1994) "On The Story-Telling Imperative That We Have In Mind" Anthropology of Consciousness. Dec 1994, Vol. 5, No. 4: 16-18.  Anthropology of Consciousness is clearly stated as being peer reviewed so that should shut down the nonsense about no challenge to a historical Jesus.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:46, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Are anthropologists qualified to determine the historicity of a figure from antiquity? It's not that there's no challenge to the historical Jesus, it's that this challenge doesn't come from qualified historians. The point of this discussion was to determine if Doherty qualifies as a "historian." If he has no advanced degree in history and hasn't published in a peer reviewed journal on the topic (no matter if you think those things aren't important), then he's not rightly categorized as a historian. It's not whether you agree with him or not, it's whether the article puts him in the proper categories. Sort of like if we found out he believes in a God, we'd have to remove him from the "atheists" category.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.52.143.152 (talk) 07:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "Biblical Scholar"?

message: This is ridiculous. I am generally considered to currently be the world's leading Jesus mythicist. My books and website have had a huge impact on this controversial issue and are known around the globe. And this is not "notable"? Just who is this "an editor"? A Christian who would like to remove me from the Wikipedia's public eye? - Earl Doherty —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.29.88.35 (talk) 06:07, 18 May 2007
: Agreed. Earl has significantly advanced the mythicist argument and is largely responsible for its current popularity and strength. One rarely encounters a mythicist website, article, book or other that does not cite or otherwise recognize Earl's work. His case for there being no historical Jesus is the strongest one yet advanced. His book, his arguments, and his name are certainly notable and meet Wikipedia's related standards. His arguments as they are presented in his book and on his website have garnered much attention from notable scholars such as Richard Carrier and Robert Price, to name just a couple. It is unclear on what basis one would argue that this article (or The Jesus Puzzle article which I see has also been tagged) is not notable. (By the way Earl, just wanna say hello from Australia!) - Ian Tremblay —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ian1985 (talk • contribs).
::"I am generally considered to currently be the world's leading Jesus mythicist." By whom? Is it even possible to be a world leader in any field without relevant qualifications, academic recognition, or peer reviewed publications? Sankari Suomi (talk) 03:30, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your comments. It's worth noting that "notability" in Wikipedia terms means something fairly specific; see Wikipedia:Notability. In general, a subject is considered "notable" based not on its popularity, or its importance as judged by editors, but on whether it has received significant coverage from independent published sources. I presume the editor who tagged the article did so because it doesn't currently cite any such sources. This should not be interpreted as implying any comment on your work; it simply concerns the current state of the article. EALacey 18:43, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I've added several more external links to independent reviews and critiques of The Jesus Puzzle. There should now be no room for contention over the notability of this article, not that there ever was really. If there are no objections, let's remove this tag and the one on The Jesus Puzzle article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian1985 (talk • contribs) 00:24, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. I think "Acharya S" (Dorothy Murdock) is actually the world's leading Jesus Myther. Since both Mr. Doherty and Ms. Murdock are both amateur writers, I think we should go by "notability" based on their reader base and popularity. As such, Murdock is more notable. I agree that Doherty IS notable on the internet for his promotion of Jesus Mythicism, but he's certainly not the "leading proponent" or the most well known. Just think of "Zeitgeist the Movie" which came out back in 2007, was hugely popular in internet circles, and is based largely on the "research" of Acharya S. And she has probably a larger cult following than Mr. Doherty on the internet as well (though both, from a scholarly point of view, are fringe).  Just check Amazon.com rankings... her two most well known books (Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God) have sold more than Doherty's "Jesus Puzzle."
""This is ridiculous. I am generally considered to currently be the world's leading Jesus mythicist"" claims Doherty. Even if true that means very little. It's like being the world leading ‘young-earth creationist’ (whoever he is). 
The truth is that almost all serious scholars, find the Christ Myth Theory simply ridiculous, based on their serious research.
It would be nice to have some serious scholarship to take a look at Doherty’s highly questionable work.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.175.161.14 (talk) 09:17, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

text: Just a comment (for possible future readers). I find the claim "The truth is that almost all serious scholars, find the Christ Myth Theory simply ridiculous, based on their serious research." interesting in the sense that this  seems to be a popular myth itself. Where is any serious research that would not take the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth as the basic (supposingly self-evident) assumption, and would instead seriously address the pro's and the con's for the historicity claim, and finally give a scholarly demonstration that our evidence shows that the probability of non-historicity is almost null, and that the arguments and methodology of Price, Doherty, Carrier etc. are scholarly invalid? Is such the work of Bart Ehrman (seriously?), or of whom? (As I say, this is just a comment for the people who possibly want to think about this matter by themselves; it is clear that it make s no sense to do any arguing here.) Jelamkorj (talk) 16:59, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

text: Doherty claims that he is the "leading Jesus mythicist of the world " in this very page. His books are, so he claims, read "all over the globe". There's no real evidence of this world-wide influence.  </br>Doherty has no need for academic journals to grant him recognition, as he can produce his own self-consecration. </br>From a certain distance, the whole dispute about whether Doherty or Dorothy can qualify as "leading Jesus Mythicist of the "world" is indicative of the vanity of "independent researchers" and a sign that their reputations are constructed and based on clever self-advertising, not on genuine scholarship recognition.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 23:07, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: response to the "notability" question

message: Excellent discussion of key points by History2007 and RLO919. Doherty is not just self-published, he is also self-promoted. In addition, his basic initial ideas concerning Jesus denial, have been borrowed from G.A. Wells and Arthur Drews, as observed by R. Joseph Hoffmann. 
Doherty has borrowed, lifted, or paraphrased, the major ideas published by Arthur Drews in his Christ Myth (1909) and The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912), which climaxed the debate, Die Frage nach der Historizität Jesu, that raged in German/English scholarship in the 1890-1940 period, and entered the notion of an inexistent Jesus into the Western World's consciousness. </br>
G.A. Wells resurrected the old Jesus existence debate that had gone into recess after WWII, with his three books, The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971), Did Jesus Exist? (1975), and The Historical Evidence for Jesus (1982) and some ten books that have followed until 2009.</br>
Doherty's writings have never acknowledged those two pioneers as sources of his working ideas, neither at the very beginning of his text, as is the norm in authentic scholarship, nor anywhere in the body of his books. He tries to appear as if he were the very originator of those ideas already proposed by past scholarship but kept under silence by him.
 
Compare with the first page of the preface to the Christ Myth (1909) where Arthur Drews immediately mentions David Strauss, Bruno Bauer and John M. Roberston as his major influences. In the first 6 pages of  his preface, Arthur Drews mentions 37 names of key scholars, cites their books and their impact on the subject. David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Albert Schweitzer, all started their books with discussing the major scholars contributing to their subject. All German scholarship operated in this manner.
For the sake of differentiation, Doherty has added a concept of "World of Myth", also borrowed from the book World of Myth: An Anthology, by David Adams Leeming (1992). He claims that the early Christian documents show that Jesus Christ resided in a "spiritual," "celestial" sky (heaven), never having come down to earth. This angle, he claims, makes him "different"  from G.A. Wells.
Doherty is above all a popularizer of his own personal theories, not a critical scholar:
* He's never disclosed if he had gained any professional knowledge in the area of NT studies or established any kind of expertise in the field of NT criticism before the publication of his "Jesus Puzzle" article (1997) and follow-up Jesus Puzzle book (1999), to dispel doubts that he was an amateur weighing in late in life on NT topics outside any established area of expertise ever previously obtained by him.
* He has not openly identified, at the very outset of his 1997 article and 1999 "Jesus Puzzle" book, the original sources used in his compilation. In Germany this non-disclosure of sources is condemned as an absolute violation of critical scholarship rules and has led to the revocation of Ph.D. diplomas. Professional historians like R. Joseph Hoffmann have spotted in Doherty's writings the systematic use of  the scholarship of G.A. Wells and Arthur Drews.
* He never distinguishes for his unlearned reader the hard conclusions from the soft speculations, suppositions and imaginings. Everything is presented as unqualified fact, a guaranteed way to confuse the unlearned reader.
* Although claiming extraordinary novel findings, Doherty has never addressed the community of scholars in articles for the professional journals like Classical Philology (Un. of Chicago) or The Classical Review (Cambridge Un.), resulting in his claimed findings to remain on the fringe of established scholarship.
* Practically all scholars have preferred to stay away from a thorough critique of his books. Which is the usual rule followed by expert scientists and scholars towards the propagation of fringe ideas and theories, preferring not to get involved and just watching from the sidelines.
*Doherty's latest book resulted from incorporating all his rebuttals and refutals to the criticisms received over the last ten years since the publication of his first book, The Jesus Puzzle (1999). As a result, Neither God nor Man (2009), is a huge book of 802 densely-packed pages and 444,000 words, mistakenly addressed to the market of lay readers. 
* In debates, Doherty's vocabulary has, on occasion, switched to plebeian and proletarian expressions, never read or heard from an authentic scholar, or even a passionate professional polemist such as Christopher Hitchens.
* Overall, Doherty has not followed the fundamental rules of critical scholarship.
In his "Proving History" article, Feb. 2012, Richard Carrier, a Columbia Un. Ph.D. in ancient civilization, has labeled as a "tertiary source", a work that is "just repeating what "secondary sources" (actual experts studying the original documents, "primary sources") have already said". Carrier claims an authentic scholar should "just go to those sources directly".
 
--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 15:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doherty is not just self-published, he is also self-promoted

message: It is bizarre for a biographical article that aims at high quality to occupy five lines of the 18-line section “Reception” with the quotation of Michael Licona, devoted to mentioning the Holocaust denial of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
Introducing the Iranian president and his campaign against Israel and Zionism in this section devoted to critique of Doherty's far-flung speculations is an error of judgment. This kind of analogy is used only for the shock value of its images, and is usually acceptable mostly in the tabloid popular press. </br> But here, it only undermines the scholarly value of Licona's critique. Licona must have more solid arguments in his article “Licona’s Reply to Doherty” as examples of his acumen than this arbitrary, and artificial comparison to Holocaust denial.
In a scholarly article, this analogy seems arbitrary, meaningless, and irrelevant. This  adds nothing to the substance of the "Reception" section and only detracts from its scholarly intent. 
It’s wasted space which could be used for better founded critical quotes, like for instance,  Bart Ehrman's evaluation of Doherty’s Neither God nor Man, where Ehrman dismisses its unfounded speculations: "It is an 8oo-page book that is filled with so many unguarded and undocumented statements and claims, and so many misstatements of fact, that it would take a 2,400-page book to deal with all the problems...Not a single early Christian source supports Doherty's claim that Paul and those before him thought of Jesus as a spiritual, not a human being, who was executed in the spiritual, not the earthly realm." (Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, p. 252 -58) "
There is a real debate about the existence of Jesus that has been going on for more than 200 years just because the documentation about Jesus's life is not comparable to that of the Holocaust.  </br>
The Licona reference should be removed and replaced by a substantial and relevant criticism of Doherty’s work like Bart Ehrman's. Similar criticisms could be found in the writings of R. Joseph Hoffmann, or Richard Carrier (all solid Ph.D.s).
In this section, it also should be noted that practically all professional scholars have preferred to stay away from Doherty's writings altogether. Since 2009, no thorough, complete, critique has been presented by any academic scholar. </br>By comparison, when Arthur Drews published his Christ Myth back in 1909, a tidal wave of nearly 80 scholars worldwide published violently negative reactions, the bulk until 1914,  resuming after 1918 until WWII, and a trickle afterwards. (According to Peter De Mey, a professor of "Systematic Theology" at the Catholic Un. of Leuven, Belgium, in a comprehensive paper "On Rereading the Christ Myth Theological Debate", ca. 2004, which has exhaustively tabulated the extraordinary number of refutations by "fundamental" academic scholars and theologians in Germany, Britain, the USA, and France, selected from the immensity of the literature sparked off worldwide by the Christ Myth.)
And, so far, this section could add, Doherty has never proposed an article to the American Classical Philology (Un. of Chicago), or the British Classical Review (Cambridge Un.), which both cover all aspects of Antiquity society and culture.
--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 14:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Almost a year has passed since this valid complaint has been lodged, with no attempt to deny it. The quote is not noteworthy in importance or encyclopedic in tone. Consider it taken out. --Peter Kirby (talk) 09:39, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The Licona material violated WP:BLPSPS and should have been removed for that reason if nothing else. ROO's tendency to produce long abstract rambles sometimes obscured more basic problems. --RL0919 (talk) 18:21, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Licona's comparison of Doherty to Holocaust Denial is irrelevant and a waste of valuable space 

message: The lead should summarize the topic. One of the most important points on this topic is that the ancient texts don't support Doherty's claim, so that should go in the lead. I put it in the lead and it was eliminated. Fans of Doherty might not want to see this information in the lead, but our readers deserve an informative lead. Here's the text that was cut: "Doherty says that Paul thought of Jesus as a spiritual being executed in a spiritual realm, a claim not supported by early Christian texts." Jonathan Tweet (talk) 12:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  lead should summarize topic 

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thread_title:  External links modified