Raymond Joseph Hoffmann (born December 16, 1957) is a historian whose work has focused on the early social and intellectual development of
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. His work includes an extensive study of the role and dating of
Marcion in the history of the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
, as well the reconstruction and translation of the writings of early pagan opponents of Christianity:
Celsus,
Porphyry and
Julian the Apostate
Julian ( la, Flavius Claudius Julianus; grc-gre, Ἰουλιανός ; 331 – 26 June 363) was Roman emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek. His rejection of Christianity, and his promotion of Neoplato ...
. As a senior vice president for the
Center for Inquiry
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government.
History
The Center for Inquiry was established in 199 ...
, he chaired the
Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, CSER, where he initiated the
Jesus Project
The Jesus Project, announced in December 2007, was intended as a five-year investigation to examine whether Jesus existed as a historical figure. Plans envisaged that a group of 32 scholars from a variety of disciplines would meet regularly with ...
, a scholarly investigation into the historicity of
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
. Hoffmann has described himself as "a religious skeptic with a soft spot for religion".
Background
Hoffmann holds graduate degrees in theology from
Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in Christian Origins from the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. He began his teaching career at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
as assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies, where he developed the undergraduate and graduate program in Christian origins. From 1991 to 1999, he was senior lecturer in New Testament and Church History at
Westminster College, Oxford
Westminster College was a teacher training college and college of higher education in England. The college was founded in London in 1851 as a training institute for teachers for Wesleyan Methodist schools, but moved to Oxford in 1959. Before t ...
.
Hoffmann's academic positions include tutor in Greek at Keble College (1980–1983) and senior scholar at
St Cross College, Oxford
St Cross College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1965, St Cross is an all-graduate college with gothic and traditional-style buildings on a central site in St Giles', just south of Pusey Street. It a ...
. He was the Wissenschaftlicher Assistant in Patristics and Classical Studies at the
University of Heidelberg
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...
, the Campbell Professor of Religion and Human Values at
Wells College
Wells College is a private liberal arts college in Aurora, New York. The college has cross-enrollment with Cornell University and Ithaca College. For much of its history it was a women's college.
Wells College is located in the Finger Lakes reg ...
until 2006 and Distinguished Scholar at
Goddard College in 2009. He has taught at
Cal State Sacramento, the American University of Beirut and various universities in Africa (Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Botswana), the Middle East, the Pacific (Australia and Papua New Guinea) and South Asia, most recently as visiting professor of history at LUMS in Lahore, Pakistan and as Professor of Historical Linguistics at the Graduate University of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Hoffmann has also served as special lecturer in Liberal Arts at the
New England Conservatory
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on Hu ...
in Boston
As a fellow at the
Center for Inquiry
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government.
History
The Center for Inquiry was established in 199 ...
, he was chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion from 2003 to 2009, and a founding faculty member (1986) of the
Humanist Institute
The Humanist Institute is a training program for leaders within the humanist, and secular humanist movement.
Purpose and organization
The Humanist Institute offers several kinds of educational programs to the humanist community. These program ...
. Until 2016 he served on the faculty of Liberal Arts at the
American University of Central Asia
The American University of Central Asia (AUCA) (russian: Американский университет в Центральной Азии; ky, Борбордук Азиядагы Америка Университети), formerly the ''Kyrgyz ...
With Yasir Fazaa, he founded the Westminster School in Port Sudan while serving as deputy general manager for academic affairs (2013; 2016) of Cambridge International.
Scholarly work
Marcion
Hoffmann's 1982 doctoral thesis, ''Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity'', was published in 1984. Hoffmann proposed that
Marcion must be dated substantially before the dates assigned on the basis of patristic testimony. According to Hoffmann, Marcion possessed the earliest version of
Luke
People
*Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...
and preserved the primitive version of Paul's letters. He also attempted to discredit much of the early
patristic
Patristics or patrology is the study of the early Christian writers who are designated Church Fathers. The names derive from the combined forms of Latin ''pater'' and Greek ''patḗr'' (father). The period is generally considered to run from ...
evidence for Marcion's life and thought as being
apologetically driven.
Reviews of this work reflected its controversial nature. Writing in ''
Revue Biblique
''Revue Biblique'' is an academic journal published by the École Biblique, an institute of a French community of Dominicans based in Jerusalem. The journal was established in 1892 by Pierre Batiffol and Marie-Joseph Lagrange
Marie-Joseph Lagr ...
'',
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor called attention to the radical nature of Hoffmann's theory while asserting that it was "unlikely that a book of equal importance will appear in this generation." J. L. Houlden commended Hoffmann's skill in "reading between the lines" of Marcion's ancient critics and called the book "a model of how doctrinal history should now be written", while George E. Saint-Laurent concluded, "
reafter Marcion's positive contribution to the mainstream tradition of Catholic-Orthodox Christianity so far as the decisive role of Paul is concerned will have to be acknowledged." Other reviewers thought that Hoffmann's examination of the evidence was valuable but that his conclusions could only be regarded as speculative. The book received a very negative assessment from
C. P. Bammel, who accused the author of numerous historical errors and misinterpretations of patristic texts. In a book published in 1993,
Bart D. Ehrman
Bart Denton Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including t ...
noted that Hoffmann's ''Marcion'' had "not been well received".
Hoffmann responded to critics of the ''Marcion'' in a special issue of ''The Second Century''. His thesis has since been revisited by New Testament scholars including
David Trobisch
David Johannes Trobisch (born on August 18, 1958) is a German scholar whose work has focused on formation of the Christian Bible, ancient New Testament manuscripts and the epistles of Paul.
Life
Trobisch grew up in Cameroon where his parents ...
, Joseph Tyson and
Robert M. Price.
Ancient critics of Christianity
Hoffmann has also published English translations of three early pagan opponents of Christianity. In each case, the original work has been lost but the arguments have survived through contemporary works written to refute them. The first, ''Celsus: On the True Doctrine'' was published in 1987. Hoffmann recreated the arguments of
Celsus using the work
Contra Celsum, written by
Origen of Alexandria
Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theolog ...
. Theology professor William Weinrich commented that Hoffmann "wisely forgoes any attempt to restore the original order of Celsus' work, opting rather to present Celsus' writing thematically." Others have criticized Hoffman's recreations of
Celsus as
misrepresentative.
In 1994 Hoffmann published ''Porphyry: Against the Christians (the Literary Remains)''. Hoffmann's work is a new translation based on a 15th-century manuscript preserved by
Macarius Magnes
Macarius Magnes ( grc-gre, Μακάριος Μάγνης) is the author of an apology against a Neo-Platonic philosopher of the early part of the fourth century, contained in a manuscript of the fifteenth century discovered at Athens in 1867 and ed ...
. The author of the criticisms in that manuscript is not known with certainty. The argument that the critic was Porphyry was first advanced by the historian
Adolph von Harnack, though his theory been disputed. In a recent translation of the contemporary works citing
Against the Christians
''Against the Christians'' ( grc-gre, Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν; ''Adversus Christianos'') is a late-3rd century book written by Roman-Phoenician Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre, criticizing the writings of Christian philosophers a ...
, Robert M. Berchman notes that Hoffmann's translation is "an important contribution to the study of the text."
In 2004 he published a translation of ''
Julian: Against the Galileans'', a work by the last non-Christian Roman Emperor,
Julian
Julian may refer to:
People
* Julian (emperor) (331–363), Roman emperor from 361 to 363
* Julian (Rome), referring to the Roman gens Julia, with imperial dynasty offshoots
* Saint Julian (disambiguation), several Christian saints
* Julian (give ...
. Julian's arguments survived through the work ''Contra Julianum'' written by
Cyril of Alexandria
Cyril of Alexandria ( grc, Κύριλλος Ἀλεξανδρείας; cop, Ⲡⲁⲡⲁ Ⲕⲩⲣⲓⲗⲗⲟⲩ ⲁ̅ also ⲡⲓ̀ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ Ⲕⲓⲣⲓⲗⲗⲟⲥ; 376 – 444) was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444 ...
.
The "Jesus Project"
In 2007 Hoffmann, together with New Testament scholars
Robert Price and Gerd Luedemann, announced the formation of a colloquium to re-examine the traditions for the existence of a historical Jesus. The initial meeting of the so-called "
Jesus Project
The Jesus Project, announced in December 2007, was intended as a five-year investigation to examine whether Jesus existed as a historical figure. Plans envisaged that a group of 32 scholars from a variety of disciplines would meet regularly with ...
" took place in Amherst, NY, December 5–7, 2008 and included fifteen scholars from a variety of disciplines including
James Tabor,
Robert Eisenman, and
Bruce Chilton
Bruce D. Chilton (born September 27, 1949 Roslyn, NY) is an American scholar of early Christianity and Judaism. He is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, former Rector of the Church of St John the Evangelist and formerly Lil ...
. The Project, according to Hoffmann, was designed to determine "what can be reliably recovered about the historical figure of Jesus, his life, his teachings, and his activities, utilizing the highest standards of scientific and scholarly objectivity".
The Project was seen as a continuation and modification of the
Jesus Seminar
The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 50 critical biblical scholars and 100 laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk that originated under the auspices of the Westar Institute.''Making Sense of the New Testament'' by Craig Blomberg (Mar 1, 2004) ...
, founded by
Robert Funk and
John Dominic Crossan.
In 2009 the
Center for Inquiry
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government.
History
The Center for Inquiry was established in 199 ...
de-funded the Jesus Project and discontinued CSER. In 2012, Hoffmann announced a new consortium called "The Jesus Process" to further investigate Christian origins.
Humanist and atheist criticisms
Though Hoffmann self-identifies as a humanist, he has criticized many aspects of contemporary humanism and atheism. In 2007, following comments from
Greg Epstein
Greg M. Epstein (born 1977) is the president of the Harvard Chaplains Organization and Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an ordained Humanist Rabbi, and has been influential in American ...
, the Humanist Chaplain at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, suggesting that atheist authors
Sam Harris and
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...
were "atheist fundamentalists", Hoffmann wrote a publicly posted letter that called Epstein confused and accused him of abusing the Harvard name to stake out his own divisive position.
He further criticized Epstein's "New Humanism" as "Gen-X humanism for the passionately confused".
Hoffmann has also criticised the tactics employed by the
New Atheist
The term ''New Atheism'' was coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in 2006 to describe the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not si ...
movement. In a 2009 blog post discussing the
Center for Inquiry
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government.
History
The Center for Inquiry was established in 199 ...
's
Blasphemy Day, he wrote that New Atheism is "really nothing more than the triumph of the jerks". Commenting about the
American Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism.
The American Humanist Association was founded in 1941 and currently provides legal assistance to defend the constitutiona ...
's selection of
P.Z. Myers
Paul Zachary Myers (born March 9, 1957) is an American biologist who founded and writes the ''Pharyngula (blog), Pharyngula'' science-blog. He is associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM)[Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...]
,
Sam Harris and
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
as being historically naive in a 2006 ''
Free Inquiry'' article.
Hoffman has criticized the documentary film ''
The Lost Tomb of Jesus'' (2007), rejecting the filmmakers' conclusion that the
Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
and his family. He has also criticized the sensationalism attached to ''
The Da Vinci Code'' as a confusing blend of history and fiction. Hoffmann has also criticized supporters of the
Christ myth theory
The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact". Alternatively ...
, a theory which he as called "fatally flawed".
Selected works
*''Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity'', author, (Scholars Press, August 1984,
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1995),
*''Celsus: On the True Doctrine'', translator, editor, (
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, February 19, 1987)
*''Jesus Outside the Gospels'', author, (Prometheus Books, February 1987)
*''What the Bible Really Says'', editor, with Morton Smith (
Harper and Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
, May 1993)
*''The Secret Gospels: A Harmony of Apocryphal Jesus Traditions'', editor, (Prometheus Books, April 1996)
*''Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains'', editor and translator, (Prometheus Books, July 1994)
*''Julian's Against the Galileans'', editor and translator, (Prometheus Books, November 2004)
* "Myth and Christianity: A New Introduction," in Karl Jaspers and Rudolf Bultmann, ''Myth and Christianity: An Inquiry into the Possibility of Religion Without Myth'', (
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, May 6, 2005),
*''The Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam'', editor, (
Prometheus Books, January 2, 2006)
*''Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History?'', introduction, (Prometheus Books, April 21, 2006)
* "Beyond the Discontinuity Paradigm: Towards a Pan-African Church History", ''Journal of Religious History'', 21 (2), 136–158.
Blackwell Publishing
Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...
*''Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth'', editor, (Prometheus Books, November 2010)
References
External links
The New Oxonian - R. Joseph Hoffmann's BlogOpen Salon BlogCenter for Inquiry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffmann, R. Joseph
American historians of religion
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Alumni of St Cross College, Oxford
University of Michigan faculty
Living people
Critics of the Christ myth theory
Wells College faculty
Place of birth missing (living people)
1947 births
Academics of Westminster College, Oxford
People from Deer Isle, Maine
Marcionism