First, the biting humor –
In his talk, Fitzgerald says that if you don’t like the talk, you won’t like the book. And so rather than looking at it as having wasted an hour from my life listening to the talk, I have saved myself the longer amount of time I would have wasted reading the book.
And so begins…
Let me sum up the essence of my criticism, before elaborating in detail. Fitzgerald makes frequent errors of fact, and when he doesn’t, he is largely presenting information that is common knowledge to scholars and those who read their works. And so he is very much like a creationist – not having any expertise in the area in question, utterly dependent on experts for the information that he does have, misunderstanding some of it, and ridiculing experts when he thinks he has reached a more plausible conclusion. And so, in a nutshell, this is a work of pseudoscholarly apologetics (or counter-apologetics) and not something that will consistently provide accurate information, much less offer plausible interpretations of that data.
Anyway, you can save your time listening to the lecture or reading the dime store novel and just read James’ post here.
Related articles
- James McGrath on responsible blog ownership (westernthm.wordpress.com)
I agree with James’ assessment of Fitzgerald, but I would be hesitant to make the generalized claim that, because his book is not a satisfactory explanation of the evidence against the historicity of the historical Jesus, that, ergo, the probability of UFO’s (or the evidence for them) is more substantial than evidence against the historical figure of Jesus. While you may believe that, and while I am agnostic on the issue, I believe that such statements cause confusion and limit dialogue and send the wrong message. The truth is, the discussion, academically, of the evidence for the historical figure of Jesus is just starting. It is really quite premature to claim victory before the conversation even starts, don’t you think? 😉
pssst… Tom…. that’s not even a real picture of McGrath 🙂
Wait, wut? o.O You mean, James doesn’t wear a lab coat and carry a hammer around at work?
…
Are you sure?
I’ve heard he has the actual hammer.
Oh! Have you been keeping up with my blog lately? I think you need to step in and make a few announcements like, you know, the world isn’t ending because a few thousand birds (out of, what, countless millions?) fell from the sky; people listen to you. You’ll have to read through the comments on some of my blogs on the subject. Chances are you’ll laugh out loud and, probably, if you’re like me, cry.
I’m still blaming the GOP takeover
Haha!