Earl Doherty has compiled a top 20 list of silences with regard to the historical/gospel record of Jesus. Here is the introduction from his website at www.jesuspuzzle.com :
" "The Sound of Silence" begins with a selection of 20 missing references, chosen from the full spectrum of the epistles, silences which should strike any observer as being notably surprising and perplexing. Within this group of 20, I have tried to cover all the principal aspects of the Gospel story, while at the same time demonstrating what the epistles show us to be the true nature of the early Christian movement and its view of the Christ it preached. " Many, if not all of these have already been reviewed by J.P Holding at http://www.tektonics.org/doherty/doherty200.html , for those that are interested. Mr. Holding makes many excellent points. For this review I've relied very little on Mr. Holding's work, in order for the result to reflect my own thinking as much as possible.
Herein I am examining each of Mr. Doherty's references to determine how surprising and perplexing the silences are from my own perspective. I do not intend on commenting much on silences for which Doherty does not provide a relevant passage. A claim that no record of X is to be found in any of the early Christian writings does little to support a claim that X should be found. Rather, the specific references in which Doherty alleges X is expected need to be examined.
I also will look for related early writings elsewhere in Paul's 'authentic' epistles, Hebrews, the Didache, 1 Peter, 1 John, and 1 Clement. I have chosen these because Doherty uses them herein as examples of early writings that help his case. I will present some arguments, but not necessarily derive conclusions about them. My intention is to make the reader aware that there may be valid reasons for silence, or that the silence isn't quite as clear or loud as has been indicated. Many of the items I will mention are ones Doherty has looked at and interpreted differently than I. My intention is to not rehash those arguments (though I will not completely hold back on voicing my own opinions about some) but to make the reader aware of the ones that relate to the alleged silence in question. The reader can then use those to perform additional research as desired.
For each question I will do the following:
1. Identify the silences/challenge to a historical Jesus in the passages, according to Doherty
2. Examine the relevancy of the context to the claims
3. Examine other early writings for related information
4. State my conclusions I might note that if gospel events never happened, that fact alone may reduce the degree to which the context of a specific passage relates to the detail in question. As such I will attempt to give this due consideration in reviewing the contexts for Doherty's specific passages.
Another note: I see that Doherty uses 6 different translations plus 4 more hybrid translations for these 20 silences. It may be that the most accurate translation to use is something different that what Doherty has chosen. I am not a translation expert, nor do I know Greek. I have chosen to use the NASB for all references, for convenience (it is found online), and because it has a reputation for being fairly literal and unbiased.
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