I have the Jesus Puzzle and will read it, but not today. DOGMA Doherty writes that Mark was written first and if his book is based on that dogmatic conclusion then I have a problem. DOGMA But, I will read it. I also have James the brother of Jesus and have run into the same problem (Eisenman is like wrong-way Corrigan ... um, the guy that flew the wrong way ... was it Corrigan?). However, as far as Eisenman is concerned, I will read his book more than once (this winter).

I would guess that Doherty is using deductive reasoning based on current evidence. DOGMA However, if his "given" facts are incorrect then his whole book is "fundy fodder".

The "Book of John" was written first because of the story of "the raising of Lazarus" and because Lazarus and Simon Magus were the same person. Jesus was born in 7 b.c.e. and celebrated his bar mitvah in A.D. 6. Death is a metaphor.

I replied a while back that Carrier would not be a good choice in debating Doherty because Carrier reads in "ideal language".


Where I am coming from is this, back in 1994 Newt Gingrich said, "I promised the American People ...". If you believe he promised the atheists or the union members what he promised the "American people" then you are wrong. The "American People" are solely Gingrich's coherts and I would be correct in calling them the "American assholes" but I would not be calling my fellow atheists "assholes". What I am saying is that what is assumed is not necessarily true.

thanks, offa

offa wrote:
"I would guess that Doherty is using deductive reasoning based on current evidence."

MW:
Shame on Doherty. He should know better than to use deductive reasoning and evidence in historical research.

Peter Kirby

On p. 50, Doherty makes the argument that the early Christians never refer to the parousia as a coming "again" and therefore that they did not believe that Jesus had come for the first time.

Mike Grondin states: "As I recall, it's often phrased 'coming in/with power', which I've always read as implying the writer's belief that the first time around, for all his miraculous acts, J didn't yet have the power to bring about the expected apocalypse that would change the nature of the physical world completely and forever. (That, of course, was a pipe-dream, but we're dealing with pipe-dreams here.) The point is, if the phrase typically used was "coming in/with power", then it's illegitimate to take the word 'coming' out of context and ignore the rest of the phrase. The "in/with power" must have meant something to the writer, and I suggest that what it meant was that the writer assumed that Jesus had come before, but not 'in/with power'."

Peter Kirby

On pp. 200-201, Earl Doherty notes that Seneca, Epictetus, Arrian, Martial, Juvenal, and Pliny the Elder didn't mention Christianity. Maurice Goguel points out (_Jesus the Nazarene_, p. 36): "So complete a silence is perhaps more embarrassing for the mythologists than for their opponents. By what right, indeed, should it be permissible to conclude from it that Jesus never existed, and not permissible to deny that a Christian movement existed in Palestine prior to the year 70?"

Earl Doherty states that it is not clear whether the Christians mentioned by Pliny the Elder held their Christ to be a man or purely mythical. Maurice Goguel again (_Jesus the Nazarene_, p. 39): "The expression 'Christo quasi Deo' appears to mean, however, that for Pliny, Christ was not a God like unto others. Was not the fact that He had lived on earth, that which distinguished Him from others?"

You may find other useful material in the Goguel's _Jesus the Nazarene_, which is book-length response to the mythicist hypothesis, particularly as expounded by Couchoud, whose hypothesis is similar to Doherty's.

lpetrich

PK:
On pp. 200-201, Earl Doherty notes that Seneca, Epictetus, Arrian, Martial, Juvenal, and Pliny the Elder didn't mention Christianity. Maurice Goguel points out (_Jesus the Nazarene_, p. 36): "So complete a silence is perhaps more embarrassing for the mythologists than for their opponents. By what right, indeed, should it be permissible to conclude from it that Jesus never existed, and not permissible to deny that a Christian movement existed in Palestine prior to the year 70?"

LP:
If the movement was small and obscure, then it would have escaped these writers' attention. Consider all the cults that become well-known only as a result of doing something spectacular: Jim Jones's People's Temple, David Koresh's Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven's Gate, ...

However, this means that if there was a historical Jesus who was equally little-known, then he would have escaped the notice of these historians. But the Gospels present him as someone who had been a big celebrity and someone who had attracted the attention of the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem. Which would have made him more worth writing about.

And such an obscure historical Jesus would still mean that the Jesus of the New Testament was largely mythical, thus supporting much of Doherty's thesis.

PK:
Earl Doherty states that it is not clear whether the Christians mentioned by Pliny the Elder held their Christ to be a man or purely mythical. Maurice Goguel again (_Jesus the Nazarene_, p. 39): "The expression 'Christo quasi Deo' appears to mean, however, that for Pliny, Christ was not a God like unto others. Was not the fact that He had lived on earth, that which distinguished Him from others?"

LP:
I checked under "quasi" in some online Latin dictionaries at this online-Latin-dictionary site , and it is listed as having meanings "as if, as though", "as if, just as, just as if, as it were /a sort of", and "as if, just as if, as though; as it were; about" So a good translation might be "to Christ as if a god" or "to Christ as if god" [Latin lacks an indefinite article, which makes that phrase somewhat ambiguous]. Pliny's implication was that the early Christians were worshipping Jesus Christ as if he was a god, with no hint of anything special about him.

Richard Carrier

Send more of such examples, everyone--at least what you think are key points of contention on passages key to Doherty's argument.


<STRONG>In addition, I am not sure about Doherty's translation of the phrase "kata sarka" as "in the (Platonic) sphere of the flesh" rather than actually in the flesh.</STRONG>

He didn't exactly make this up--other, reputable and qualified, scholars have already argued something like it, and he cites at least one. But this is among those things I need to look into more deeply. Keep these coming.

Richard Carrier

There is a big problem here: First, Lucian was a satirist, so what he says about gods is often tongue and cheek. Second, this and everything else are examples of euhemerism: yes, many educated elites engaged in euhemerism to "explain away" religious myths. But that is not representative of how everyone understood them, as Plutarch admits when he discusses the myth of Osiris or writes a tract against Superstition. Indeed, Platonism and mystery cults like Mithraism very clearly did employ ethereal understanding of their own stories, using euhemeric tales only as metaphors to disguise the truth from non-initiates (the Gospels can indeed be such a genre--that is prima facie plausible, at least in the case of Mark). Thus, the story is more complex and this is another issue I will bring out in my review. Thank you for raising it.

Richard Carrier

Note to all: things like this, which don't appear in his book or aren't essential to his ahistoricist argument, I am not going to address at all in my review.

Richard Carrier

Considering that your book contains only a positive case, the deck was already stacked. I need to de-stack it. But more importantly, I have to make sure (a) I am not missing anything (as critical and knowledgeable as I am, that is always possible), (b) my review answers the concerns most troubling doubters, and (c) that your book as it now stands makes the case it purports to. Thus, any "extra" argument you can give outside the book is wholly irrelevant to my review of the book. Thus, there is simply no point in asking for additional positive arguments. As to the merits of the criticisms posted here, I will be the judge of that. I am not buying everything here, but it is all useful to see what people are tripping on.

<STRONG>This is a field where personal judgment and disposition, balance of probability rather than mathematical certainty, play a substantial role in determining the ‘conclusions’ adopted.</STRONG>

As I am an expert in historical method, you are preaching to the choir here.

<STRONG>I’m not going to defend my position or arguments here (something Richard has forbidden on this thread)</STRONG>

But please do so by creating other threads to discuss what is posted here. Though I am not interested in such debates (at least not yet), others certainly will be.

<STRONG>Focus on possible imperfections in every tree and you may end up cutting down the forest.</STRONG>

But if the trees are weak, then we want that forest down, don't we? Your theory must be able to withstand every criticism if it is to have any appreciable merit. But since I will be using the McCullagh test, you need not worry about the nitpicking fallacy with me. The over-all merit will be the issue, not flawlessness.

<STRONG>Someone put forward a ‘nuanced’ interpretation of Hebrews 8:4, for example, to discredit my observations on this verse. Technically possible, but an obscure grammatical usage.</STRONG>

As an adept in Greek linguistics, I disagree that it is obscure--it was chapter 30 in my intro Greek textbook, and only came so late because it was so complex, not because it was rare--it is actually common. But whether this grammatical point is relevant is another matter.

<STRONG>Still, I would have felt better if he had solicited positive comments as well, which might include arguments and considerations that might otherwise be overlooked.</STRONG>

If it is in the book, I will not overlook it. I have every single page diagrammed and annotated, and will be fact-checking much of it. If it is not in the book, it is not relevant to my review.

godfry n. glad

Mr. Carrier...

I look forward to your product with great anticipation. Can you give some idea as to when completion might be and in what manner it will be posted?

Thanks,

godfry