Toto

From the way you type, I don't think you really understand what is involved in the ABE. You seem to just be fitting your foregone conclusions into something that looks like the ABE and claiming victory. But Carrier reaches the opposite conclusion. What does that tell you?

The ABE is the "best explanation." Why would I not accept it? I was the one who told you about it. The ABE is a bit subjective, of course, and it is not for finding the TRUTH - just the "best explanation."

ApostateAbe

Answer: I have no idea, and you may have missed the point. The point is that we can make a judgment of the intentions, not the actual truth of the claims, based on that initial statement. I will judge that the storyteller intended his or her story to be interpreted as truth, even if he or she is spouting a series of deliberate lies, and we can rule out entertainment.
That point about the extra epicycle of mythmaking is a good one. It is probably a better mythicist objection than the one that claims that James should have been much more of a hero within Christian myth. My tentative explanation is that James, a faithful Jew, initially opposed Jesus and his weird cult, but then he really did change his position after the death of Jesus to take advantage of the potential power of leadership of the cult. He didn't make it far as a leader, however, which is often the case when leadership roles are passed on through family ties. It is something of an ad hoc explanation, but I think that roughly follows historical patterns, and I don't think mythicists do any better. I think they may do even worse. They will also have to explain how James somehow went from the opposing camp to a leadership position in the myth. The changing positions of characters is something that happens in actual human events, especially in families and cults, but not so much in myths.

I need to go get some caffeine. :-P

ApostateAbe

Then allow me to apologize for believing that you would not accept ABE. I am sorry. I thought you told me about it because you were doing me a service after I needed to know about such a methodology much like the one I had in mind. I made the judgment that you would not accept ABE, because you seem to treat all possible explanations based on text as essentially on the same level, but I might be wrong about that, too. If you accept ABE, then would you accept some possible historical explanations based on text as more probable than other possible historical explanations based on text?

show_no_mercy

This is what's wrong with NT scholarship. In non-biblical historiography, the NT would not be considered "primary evidence". It would be secondary evidence. Primary evidence is something like "WWII" happened. Things that are more objective. This would include battlefields, military factories, artillery, hard data like statistics on employment, etc. Secondary evidence would be things like personal letters/writings, personal anecdotes, etc. This secondary evidence explains things that are more subjective like individuals' cause for participating in WWII and what their reactions were.

In the case of an individuals' historicity, the primary evidence would be things like personal letters written by the person, first-person accounts of interactions with that person, contemporaneous busts/portraits of the person, etc. Along with this, we would have to establish that different accounts of this person are indeed independent. That Tiberius was a Roman emperor is corroborated by independent secondary sources; sources where there is no question whether they are truly independent. That Jesus caused a ruckus in the temple does not share the same quality of secondary evidence.

NT scholarship doesn't have the luxury of havinig the type of primary evidence that other fields of history have. At best, the primary evidence in NT scholarship would be "Christianity (or Christianities) happened". The secondary evidence is what these Christianities wanted us to believe about their own history. However, NT historians skip a step and promote what in reality is secondary evidence to primary evidence. Even worse than this, they arbitrarily select one particular Christian community's sacred books for their "primary evidence" and disregard the rest.

Almost no NT historian has addressed this sort of sleight of hand. That they're "cheating", for want of a better word.

Old Testament scholarship actually got on the ball and started following the historiography of other fields of history instead of biblical historiography. Using archaeology as primary evidence and Jewish writings (i.e. what certain communities of Jews wanted to believe) as secondary evidence. This has gotten the description of "Biblical Minimalism", which if I recall correctly you've used in a derogatory manner.

Biblical minimalism is trying to follow the basic methodology of how history is done in other fields of study. NT scholarship has yet to catch up. And instead of acknowledging the flaws in their methodology, NT historians compare the amorphus "mythicists" to creationists and holocaust deniers.

Toto

Then you have missed the point. You can't even know what the intentions are from a simple declaration. You can't rule out some combination of story telling, entertainment, mythmaking, or appeal to some "higher" truth that turns out to be all myth.

You can compare Luke to some of the standard histories of the time. None are anonymous. Ancient historians usually gave some idea of why they think something happened, not just stories handed down from the earliest days...


Who makes this objection?

Except that it appears he did make it to the top of the organization, with no discussion or explanation. This is not just ad hoc, this is a non sequitur.

Here's a better explanation: James was never a Christian. He was always a practicing Jew and was the head of a gathering in Jerusalem before 70 CE. Later Christians adopted him and turned him into an early Christian. Even later, a different faction of Christians downgraded him by making him Jesus' brother in the gospels, and had Jesus reject his family.

So he didn't start out in the opposing camp and move to leadership - he started out in the leadership and was fictionally portrayed as in the opposing camp much later.

I don't know why you think that myths don't involve changing status of characters. Have you looked at any of the Greek myths?

ApostateAbe

Yes, I can. You can't, and I think your objection is best for those who share your deconstructionist philosophy. I don't share it, but there may be other superskeptics who accept it or are willing to accept it. In my way of thinking, if someone tells me that he has investigated something so that I may believe it, then it is a very good guess that he or she isn't intending that I take it as like a joke or an entertaining tale. There is no plausible alternative. At best, he could be lying, and I am willing to allow that.
OK, that sounds agreeable. What follows from that pattern?
It was spamandham. He objected:
Yeah, they don't fall off the face of the Earth, do they. :-P Your objection is better.
I suppose you would be correct if we were to accept the "James" who is one of the three "reputed pillars" is the same "James, the Lord's brother." I have a different interpretation, which I understand may be a minority position, but oh well. I take the reputed-pillar James to be the disciple James, not the brother James. Under that hypothesis, the brother James seems to have a minor role in the Christian religion at best. Paul says that he met him, and he doesn't say anything else about him. Josephus reports on the Christian myth of 90 CE that he was martyred, which because of its lateness doesn't much reflect on his historical status, except that he was respected as a brother of Jesus, as we may expect. There was an epistle with his name attached to it, which has the same problem.
That's certainly an explanation, but I am not sure what makes you count it as a better one. There seems to be a bunch of new propositions without evidence. Does it even fit within your model of Christianity? Can we trace the factions of those who upgraded and downgraded James, and do the elements fit together? I am asking because I am curious--maybe this theory is already well-developed. I try to make my explanation of James consistent with my general model, which is what is needed for any good explanation.
I have only a facile familiarity with the Greek myths, so maybe there are some good examples of a character changing from one camp to another. I know that it can happen in fiction. Like, you see it in Pride and Prejudice or in His Dark Materials. Let me know if you think you have a good comparison to the shifting position of James.

Toto

Only by ignoring everything we know about literature, myth, history...

The title of Richard Pervo's analysis of Acts is "Profit with Delight." You might want to try to find a copy. His thesis (based on his PhD work on the book of Acts, which has the same intro as gLuke) is that Acts is very much like a historical novel, intended to sugar coat its theological message with some entertaining story telling.

The gospels and Acts are not history, and were not written as history or read as historical sources.

Yes - it is consistent with the idea that Christianity evolved out of diaspora Judaism and adopted some earlier Jews as proto-Christians.

Most of this evidence has been lost or erased. It's a problem for any theory of Christian origins.

ApostateAbe

Yes, I have used "minimalism" in a derogatory manner. But, they are not always wrong. In fact, they actually won the Old Testament debates. They won because their explanations actually have probability in their favor. They explained the Pentateuch stories in terms of tribal interests and moral religious lessons with evidence. They found older non-Jewish myths that closely resemble the Jewish scriptural tales. They found patterns within the texts that make their explanations elegant. Their explanations have explanatory scope, explanatory power, and so on.

That is the sort of things they need to win the New Testament debates. When I used the phrase, "primary evidence," I didn't mean it in any technical sense. I only meant to say that the New Testament has the best evidence available to find the best explanations for the origins of Christianity. Minimalists and mythicists must also rely on the New Testament to make their judgments. None of us have any choice, because the New Testament contains most or all of the earliest documents that pertain to the origins of Christianity.

To rely on the New Testament is to rely on the best evidence available. You may not judge the New Testament to be good enough evidence to make conclusions of any sort, and I think Toto and Robert Price and R. Joseph Hoffman may agree with you, but, if we are talking about the way normal history is done, then it is done using the best evidence available, which means relying on the contents of the New Testament. It is almost never appropriate to throw up your hands and claim that all analysis and all conclusions are useless. That may be appropriate when we genuinely have no relevant knowledge of a particular topic. In this case, we do have relevant knowledge. We have detailed Christian myths and letters of Paul from the first and second centuries. It is not the evidence we would really like, maybe not what you would call "primary evidence." But, it is the best evidence, and it is our duty to make the best sense of it. That is the way history is done.

ApostateAbe

OK, perhaps you would like to give me a few relevant examples from myth.
Cool. I may be able to get it on WorldCat, though that may no longer be an option since I have graduated.
Is that what the book claims? I would love to know the arguments. Thanks for referring me to that book.
That is good to know. Too often, explanations are simply pulled out of the air.
Bummer. I expect, at least, that the sources that claim a downgraded James (synoptic gospels) should follow patterns that are a little different from the sources that claim an upgraded James (Paul). Is there a scholar or set of publications who you would say best represents your own model for the origins of Christianity?

ApostateAbe

Toto, if it isn't too much trouble, I would love to know if you accept some possible historical explanations based on text as more probable than other possible historical explanations based on text.