Toto

The content is good, and answers all of the questions that have been raised here.

Unfortunately, the sound and the picture are off track. Best to just listen.

outhouse

The content was great, and he flat makes a better case for a mythical Jesus then anyone else, unfortunately I don't find it as plausible as a martyred man at Passover.


One of R.C's points in the Hellenistic religions was this.


"They all have stories about them set in human history on earth."


I'd like to bust this right now.

One we know little to nothing about Mithra's to make any comments on their deity with little written records. What we do know is he was never seen as "human", but he was viewed as divine who "see's all" "hears all" and watches over cattle like any other 100% deity. "Never rests" as well.

Second, most of the other deities listed were written in as deities who did not live a human life. They effected human lives, but were not human.

The only reason they were "set in human history" is because all deities mirror the cultures writing about them.


RC states we would need some good evidence as to why Jesus existed but none of the others didn't in these other religions. Then used Mithras as a example. Again, what do we even know about Mithras to make a claim like that? Very little is known on the exact view of their deity, a man who walked the earth he was not. The two deities are not even comparable as written. Yet he lays out similarities that are a weak reflection of most religions from this period.


The Jesus legends differences are night and day different from these other deities. Jesus was a exaggerated human who paralleled the Mortal Emperors divinity. Not a 100% deity who mirrored other Hellenistic deities.


The "son of god" was also a mortal phrase given to real men, that really doesn't help him as a comparison.






RC also places to much faith in Philo's statement of a pre existing Jesus. He takes this literally. When the legend was already in place for a hundred years before Philo wrote anything, it makes no sense to place faith in this. When he claims it is a fact, for two Jesus, one pre existing, I instantly discredit his methodology as he uses way to much faith in Philo. We already know there were many different views and different mythologies in place in Philo's time regarding attributes to Jesus, for him to have any idea that a spiritual one existed first. We don't know a pre existing Jesus ever existed based on Paul's Epistles which can only be perceived as evidence if one perverts their imagination to force fit the evidence.

When he references Galatian's as Paul claiming his source for what he knows about Jesus as being a invention [revelation] It is very confusing knowing Paul also admits hunting this sect down, thus would not be ignorant to its beliefs prior to ever writing Galatian's.

RC gets hung up on "appeared" in Paul's epistles, which wouldn't be strange at all, being Jesus was dead before Paul ever wrote about him.

I would also like to note what RC is not, Visions and dreams were perceived as real events to these ancient primitive people.


end 34 min, to be continued later.

outhouse

34: ish

He talks about Paul and the last supper, he states this is key because its the only time Paul references a story about Jesus. He quotes 1Corinthians 11:23 "I received from the lord" as Paul hallucinating for its origins.

Poor work on RC's part in my opinion. Paul was just showing them that it was of divine authority more so then explaining where he really obtained the material, that was not Paul's emphasis. Why R.C relies on a literal reading is beyond me.


He also claims Paul states he gets his information from revelation from a dead Jesus, and never from oral traditions. I find this weak. Again how many years was Paul hunting this sect before he tells us he has a feeling within himself and changed his heart regarding the movement?

Paul would have factually learned about the movement, hunting the movement. Paul tells us differently then these facts. Does this mean Paul is to be taken literally as always truthful? RC is doing just that.

Yes Paul claims he received his sources from revelation and scripture. If he claimed he picked it up from oral traditions, campfires and while he was killing Christians, would this make him less of a apostle? or teacher? Paul couldn't tell the truth.

Adam

Two surprises to me: Pretty good video by Carrier, Good review by outhouse. Carrier basically accepts Earl Doherty and works with the epistles of Paul and explains how Paul could have been basing his sublunar Jesus upon Scripture, private revelation, and Philo.

So that got me interested in whether he had a case in his other video, Why the Gospels are Myth. Like our Vorkosigan (Michael Turton) he diagrams the triads and chiasms in Matthew (not Mark) as proof the gospels are literary inventions. Whatever. But in any case Carrier has nothing here that in any way lessens the import of the SOURCES of the gospels that I have been presenting here in my many threads in FRDB. There must be other explanations for what I see as evidence for seven written eyewitness records underlying the gospels, but I have not seen anything from the atheist perspective that tries to explain it away.

Onias

When one asks if Jesus existed, one much define Jesus. Was Jesus a miracle-worker? Did a historical Jesus have all of the attributes attributed to him in the gospels? Well then, most of us would say that this hyperbolic Jesus did not exist.

OK, but then did a more ordinary Jesus exist, even perhaps a person who was not even named Jesus and did not even live in the time period described in the gospels?
Onias

maryhelena

I can't really comment on the Carrier video. I find it difficult to follow American speak when it is pretty fast - and Carrier is pretty fast with it......So, I gave up very early on. I did notice that Carrier had Doherty's book, the first one, in the top of his chart. If Carrier is going to be presenting a modified version of Doherty's ideas in his forthcoming book - I'm beginning to think I'll be very disappointed with it. Carrier needs an historical argument re the gospel composite JC. If he is not going to be offering this - his book will be unable to move forward the historicist/ahistoricist debate over JC. It is one thing to knock down the arguments of the JC historicists - it is another thing to offer something to move the debate forward. Demonstrating error is not the same thing as creating something of value for the HJ/MJ debate.

I'm beginning to think what is needed in this debate is a scholarly counter-attack upon the ahistoricist/mythicist position - particularly that of Doherty. The faults in the ahistoricist/mythicist position need to be identified and exposed - just as the ahistoricist/mythicists do with the JC historicist position. Yes, Ehrman failed to do the job. Hoffmann's forthcoming book might be a step in that direction. Both sides in this debate have their errors - and both sides need to acknowledge their own weak positions.

Bernard Muller

I hope I do not misrepresent Carrier. This is what I remember from the video:

Carrier is now recommending for reading Doherty's latest book as the sequel of the "Jesus Puzzle".
Carrier is also flipflopping on Heb 8:4, which he considers as evidence for Jesus never been on earth.
Carrier enlists 2 Samuel 7:12 to counteract Romans 1:3 with its "seed of David".
Carrier said, concerning 1 Corinthians 2:8, that the demons would not have crucified Jesus if they had known God's hidden wisdom but (the leaders among) the Romans & Jews would have done it regardless.
Carrier said that privately Osiris was told to have died in heaven, but the public at large believed it was on earth.
Carrier has Philo of Alexandria saying Jesus was the name of the firstborn Son of God.
Carrier has Jesus dying in the lower heaven in the Ascension of Isaiah.

Of course, Carrier has the early Christians believing their Jesus was crucified between earth and moon.
Carrier also takes Paul and seven of his epistles as authentic.
Carrier dates the canonical gospels in 70 to 100 AD range. He said that 1 Clement could have been written as early as 60 AD.

Cordially, Bernard

stephan huller

Carrier is probably only interested in making Jesus go away. The logic of an activist.

Duvduv

And yet NO ONE dares to consider a third possibility based on analysis of CONTEXT and CONTENT: that the "Jesus" elements in dispute were interpolated by our friendly neighbor archivist scribes in the empire of emerging Christianity to pre-existing material that had nothing to do with Jesus, (i.e. as found in the case of Titus and Romans) but were simply Judeo-monotheistic friendly writings.

Horatio Parker

I was struck by that, too.

But he's making a historical case, not a theological or philosophical one.

To impart a sense of reality to visions would muddy the issue.

I notice too he has no problems with the sub-lunar realm that some here have trouble accepting.