Thank you for the list. Your refutation appears to be substantive. Perhaps Carrier will comment directly. Still it is at best a side issue.

Actually you are substantively misquoting Carrier. The actual quote is, "First, books for laymen rarely have footnotes or endnotes." The addition of "on the Bible" is entirely your own fabrication. Again this is a trivial point. If these are the two most important errors in Carrier's rebuttal, then he has indeed demolished Dever's review.

I'll stay; the difference in IQ and honesty more than compensates for the difference in education and scholarship.

SingleDad, it takes more than a little character to accept criticism. I'm impressed. Frankly, I expected to be consigned to Siberia. Pleased to see I was wrong.

First, you are welcome. Second, since Carrier appeared to believe it was an important issue, I will let him explain why he said it in the first place. From my own point of view, it merely demonstrates the sloppiness of his methods, and penchant for making broad based, and easily falsified statements. Considering the fact that Carrier was making a point within his own field of expertise, this sloppiness is even more inexcusable. Since demonstrating Carrier's sloppiness was why I offered my comments in the first place, I think it was very relavent.

Considering the fact that he and Dever were both talking specifically about a book about the Bible, and that Carrier's own field of studies is of the ancients, it is very reasonable to assume that he is referring to books for laymen about the Bible.

Further, as it is easily demonstrated that within this broad field of study, footnotes and endnotes are the norm, and not the exception to the rule, Carrier is being very careless in his argument here. If he has never read books written for laymen about the Bible, then this would be more understandable, and your point would be taken. However, given that Carrier's expertise is in ancient studies, and in this review of Dever's review he is commenting directly on a book about the Bible, I am still left to wonder how he arrived at his erroneous statement of fact.

No, there are other areas as well.

My point in my post was to show why I believe that Carrier is careless and sloppy in his work. Betraying an ignorance about Biblical studies in these two simple areas is very telling, and extremely troubling in my view. And if he was not ignorant of the facts that I have presented, then he has even less excuse for making these mistakes (actually, he would have none at all).

Given that Carrier would, no doubt, like to be taken seriously as an expert scholar in the field of ancient studies, it is incumbent upon him to show that he can present the facts (including simple ones like the examples listed above) in a clear, honest, and objective manner. His failure to do this will cast a pall on the larger points he will try to make, damaging his credibility with his fellows very seriously.

Brian

Nomad, your diatribe against Carrier is not justified by the facts you cite. For example, Carrier asserted that no book in a specific niche had been published, which you call a lie because there are books on the general topic. Not the same thing.

Likewise, the fuss over footnotes. What you're talking about is your personal preference, which is fine as far as it goes. But, general interest is a recognized publishing segment with different conventions. Ken Davis' Don't Know Much About The Bible and Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties are better examples of bible scholarship aimed at laymen. Neither, of course, has footnotes.

Can't you do any better than constantly slashing at the honesty, intelligence and methods of every scholar with whom you disagree? Not only is it inappropriate, after a while it ceases to be effective. Think of the boy who cried wolf.

I dont want to create the impression that I think Nomad did a crumy job. I think he did very good and I very much respect his knowledge. but I wanted to see him attack the Paul stuff more directly and I want to do that.

I guess I have to go ask D. to come right? Can I ask you to do that? I promise honest honest and swear on a stack of silver age Comics that I will debate the Paul thing!

What would be the point? I would be unsuitable casue I'd kick his ass, maybe he should debate his grandmother.

What the hell is wrong with "Meta?" I have a Masters degree in Theology and I know more about textual criticism than all of you put together. O see, that is the problem.

OK< I challenge you! You and I 1x1 in the speicial debate thingy. We'll see if you know you rass from a hole in the ground when it comes to textual matters!

come on!

OK I'll debate Carrier! Come on for God sake let me debate someone!

[This message has been edited by Metacrock (edited May 28, 2001).]

I agree the stuff he does for the sec web is rooted in enlightenment thinking and went out of fashion about 60 years ago. But I have a hunch he puts his real time in on his school work. He's probably pretty good when he's in corner so I"m not going to say anything derogatory about his work. But It does have an odd datedness about it. But than so do a lot my ideas.