Ignoring, for the moment, the utter lunacy of calling either of these issues “basic,” it was, as my subsequent citation of numerous scholars demonstrates, Diogenes, and not myself, who misunderstood these “basic” concepts.
No critical discussion of either issue would term these “basic,” and much scholarly ink has been spent on understanding them. I’d be delighted to see Diogenes falsify that claim.
Yet E P Sanders cites Cicero, De Divinatione 2.28
Sanders goes on to note of this passage “The view espoused by Cicero has become dominant in the modern world, and I fully share it.”(The Historical Figure of Jesus, p.143)
In the greatest of irony, Crossan–who Diogenes lauds–has this to say of the miracle on Emmaus: “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens.”(Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p.197). The irony, of course, is that Crossan is doing exactly what Diogenes has just condemned–finding a deeper, more meaningful sentiment behind Emmaus, rather than condemning it as the fiction it obviously is. This is characteristic of Crossan, who has observed more than once that he never distinguishes between the “jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith”–a dichotomy integral to any serious look at the historical Jesus. Schweitzer would be disgusted.
This, as seen in Diogenes’ condemnation of Sanders, Meier, and Brown–none of whom he’s read, save Brown’s Death of the Messiah (and I doubt he’s read that except in the excerpts carried in Crossan’s response)–is his ad hoc response. Don’t agree with me? You’re theologically biased.
Even more ironic, in a later thread he miscited the page he had just stated he’d read–he claimed that Mark Goodacre argued for an interpolated Lukan nativity. Goodacre does no such thing.
Origen mentions Thomas as well, but it’s really unnecessary to find more than one to falsify this nonsense. Eusibius, Ecclesiastical Histories, 3.25
Farrer was apparently supposed to be Goodacre. It doesn’t matter, neither makes this claim. As noted above, he obviously hasn’t read the Case Against Q webpage.
Were it just one or two occurrences, one could easily conclude that they were simply mistakes, or cases of getting caught up in the heat of the moment. Taken together, these move one ineluctably to an obvious conclusion: Diogenes is interested not in discussion, but in dazzling us with research he hasn’t done, on topics he’s scarcely familiar with.
Further discussion is thus a waste of my time.
Regards.