Richard Carrier

Brian,

I will not debate you any more. You are not even reading what I write.

I will cite one of many examples:

I said:

To which you responded:

Now, it is apparent to every objective reader here that I never said such a thing and what I did say did not even imply this. In fact, my sentence above outright contradicts such a view. So the fact that you attribute that view to me shows you are not even reading simple sentences and making no effort whatsoever to understand them.

To debate such a bull headed ignoramus would be moronic indeed.

The only thing I will add is something a colleague asked for: I will post an essay soon detailing all the relevant Jewish Laws in this case with full quotations and citations. That is more than anyone here will do. No one here apparently even made a single effort to go out and look these things up. Hell, all you had to do was look up "burial" in any encylopedia or dictionary of Judaism and seek out and read the sources cited. If you won't even do that, what good are any of your opinions? How dare you attack me for doing all the work, and then do none yourself!

Goodbye.


[This message has been edited by Richard Carrier (edited June 08, 2001).]

Here here, thanks Richard I've been waiting a long time to see that.

Can I use it as my signature?

Amen-Moses

MEta =>Here we encounter another odd phenomenon I've noticed; skeptics have no sense of humar. It's odd,I go to conferences, real professional acadmeics joke with each other all the time. Roy Porter was told by John Clark "you are invovled in a program of self education through your research?" To which he responded "I thought educating one's self throughout life was the point of being in the academy." They weren't trying to hurt each other, it was humar. Why are you so humarless? I've noticed a lot of others who just cannot understand when I'm joking. NOw granted my jokes are corny and my sense of human bends toward the whimzical but I can't believe that no one can see when it I'm joking. NOw it's not a game but neither is it a career move. This is not a preer reveiwed journal, and frankly I've seen more ability to joke and to take humar as it is offered in peer reviewed journals. It's a message board. As such, it's conversational. My carrer as a scholar is not on the line here, I'm sorry you feel that yours is.

As for the lecture in historical methods, why don't you reserve that for someone who isn't on the door step of a Ph.D. in history.


Meta =>No I'm afraid that you are the one who needs the help. Ramsay is old, but he is still respected, he's a classic. There is a place for quoting the classics of scholarhsip. And his findings have not been disproven. There are those who think they have, but the arguments were not presented to make it necessary to demonstrate that they are not. And he's not the only one I quoted. The New Advent article is only a couple of years old. And besides that is not a matter of theoretical methology. That is merely an issue in debate. I resrach from the net, you can't find much on the net. So I'm very limited in what I can do. But I did put the docs out there to demonstate the case and I saw no refuttation.


Meta =>No I didn't say that. You want to whine about how no quotes you properly but you aren't willing to be careful about the way you quote others. Moreover, I have read more about the Holy Seplechur than you have. You don't even know about the Corbo expidition or what he found. You apprently don't know about Biddle either. So that should indicate that you don't know it all, but you assume that your hackned 19th century know nothing skeptics must have the last word. None of the things you said about hte Seplechur were true. The site was not moved. It was not chosen by magic, there is a documented tradition back at least to the second century. The stie was marked by the Roman defilement and than by Pilgrims. The Jews being expelled doesn't matter because there was a Gentile Christian community form the Second century. You never even gave me a chance to show that I know anything about it. You just came out the shoot assuming that I know nothing. And your tone was totally condencending and rude.


You mispell very, very basic names, and cite ancient passages you clearly did not even read.


Meta =>Of course I do. You know why? becasue my brain translates what my eyes see into scramabled images. So for me a sentence looks like this:

I aveh dysxleia uoy ronmo! So that makes it rather hard to correct, becasue I can never be sure if I"m seeing the correction or another error. I did spell check it. If it were a paper I would get one of the proofers from my journal to proof it for me. But just being a message board I dont' have time for that. If I were crippaled you would put up a ramp. Is it really that much more trouble just to sound things out?

Meta =>Historians are not exempt from the injunction against imformal fallacies. The leaky buckets fallacy is still a fallacy even if a histirain uses it. You have no real issue that you can point to and show that I dont' understand historical method. I would imainge that certain people have told you their little theories about me and so you are just trying them out. I don't think you have an inkling of what I was talking about anyway. Histoirans also do not bet cart blanche on argument from silence. Just because you can express doubt and weight of evidence doesn't mean that you can make a gap in knolwedge into positive evidence for a position that has none. You cannot prove that Mark made up the empty tomb, period. No one ever could. To that you would have to actually be there. It's not logical anyway.

As for your judgment that I don't demonstrate all this deep knowledge of something that I studied long before I went to seminary got a Masters degree in it, let's just get into the blow by blow and we'll see.


Meta =>Look whose talking! your whole position is nothing but speculation. You can't prove that Mark made it up. That is total speculation. But, Brown states explicitely that we cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus could be given an honored burrial for that very reason. Now, I also quote Michael White who says that the curcifiction was a Roman gig, completley. Now why would the Romans crucify someone for blasphemy in Judaism? No difference in criminal charges and sedition that is where you are totally wrong. You want to pretend that I dont' do the digging, but I know you have read the Brown book and yet you miss the explicit argument, backed up with Talmudic statments that there was a distinction between one charged with sedition by a foreign occupational army and one found guilty of criminal charges under Jewish law. On page 1210 he says point blank a noble law biding Jew could be crucified for sedition agianst Rome and burried honorably by the Jews,and if that is not the case than how do you explain the Macabean martyrs?


MEta =>Here you are just plain mixed up about the nature of argument. Historians do most certainly have to obey logic, no matter what you think you can foist on the untrained as historical method, histoircal method does not licensce the kind of flagrant violations of rhetoric and hermeneutics that you are trying to pull. I don't have to prove anything. You are trying to prove that there was no empty tomb. I show the possibility that your only real argument might not apply. That is enough. To prove your thesis you have to demonstrate that it would apply. It may not.

Textual criticism and Biblical studies is not your field.You have no fromal training in it form what I can tell and I have.

I do in fact have formal training in palaeography and textual criticism (in classical texts), and have taken courses in the New Testament (and have read the entire thing in the original Greek), I also have formal training in papyrology, classical religions, and of course in historical source and text analysis and comparative methodogy, which is all I need here--for everything we are talking about now is squarely in the historical camp. Instead, here you act so petty, as if you have to respond to my observation with another in kind. This isn't a game: no one is keeping score but your conscience.[/QUOTE]

Meta =>After this unprofessional performance you have no right to call anyone petty. You began the debate with the tone that I know nothing you are the big authority. AT the slightest disagreement you immediately try this "you don't know anything" crap which so impresses the untained at the sec web but it does not impress me. I know some real historians I go conferences with them. I am not impressed with this rank pulling jazz. You guess what I've read it all in Greek too, big deal! There is a difference in textual criticism of the Bible and of calssical texts. And you apply the former badly.

so let's leave the ad homs out because I can' the same thing about skepticism.

First, I did not argue you were wrong because you were inexpert (even though, now I can justly call you a hypocrite, you said exactly this about me in regards the Big Bang).

Meta =>I'm sorry you are so insecure in your position as a shcolar that you have to brow beat others. But I'm not impressed and trying to demand that you have to be right is not gonig to cut it.

Meta =>I am not inexpert. I don't calim to be an expert in this filed. I told you in email My field is 18th century. But I do have some knowledge of it and you are not even willing to give my argumetns a chance. You are making assumption about "what I must mean" without even hearing the full argument and trying to read into every single thing I say some sinister insult or some incompetancy. That is totally unprofessional and demonstrates that you can't deal in a fair and balanced way with other views. That is what one must do to the a scholar.

Meta =>I think it's a lot simpler than that. You can't judge the truth of one
historical event merely by comparing the evidence for it to that for another,
Meta =>My you are just a child. You can't stand it when someone misinterprets you statments or your motives, but you will not accord anyone else the decensy of hearing them out.

I also doubt that you have considered all of the evidence for the empty tomb. My guess is that you are only familiar with Craig and few other Evangelical apologists' arguments.

You know what this is just a lot of long winded crap to have to wade thorugh. You are behaving in a very amaturish and unprofessional way. When real academics have disagreements they dont' start saying "You don't know how to be a historian" and "I knonw so much more than you>" Sketpical types are always so obcessed with who knows more. What a joke!

I'm unimpressed with your scholarhip as it were. I don't see anything big or cutting edge about it. All you do is dig up crap that dismissed in the 19th century. Mark made up the empty tomb o how original! that just explians it all. Than anything else the other other guy says doesn't go into it deepnly enough, they dont' know histoircal method they aren't giving you enough status, you aren't listening You never even gave the arguments a chance.

Ok so here it is short and simple. You can't answer the Koster stuff at all. Just telling me how many courses you took is not an answer. There is textual evidence of a prior tradition and that proves it and disproves your assertions. But even without that you just simpley can't prove it. You want to fault me for speculation but you are the one wiht the burden of proof because you are advancing the thesis.

I truely never meant to insult you. I am sorry you are so insecure.

You guys are the biggest bunch of children. whinning babbies who can't think and have to insist that only your view is intelligent. You are just not very bright. YOur greatest genisus the big historian is an idiot. I kicked his ass! He has nothing. He can't even tell the differnce in begging the question and appealing to historical probablity. He's an idiot, and he's the best one of you suckers.

If there are good reasons why Paul doesn't mention it, and in fact he may well allude to it, than why would it be prudent to view his silence as any kind of proof at all?

The fact of the matter is that his silence (and not just his, but all the epistolators--esp. 2 Pet. which is especially strange) is in some measure peculiar. To deny that would be an irrational refusal to face facts. You can adjust how far that weighs as you like, but you can't logically deny that it has no weight at all.

Meta =>Sorry, I can think of no reason why I should just accord you the privilege of being the big authority and add more weight to your speculations than to mine. I have showen good reasons why he wouldn't metion it. Your case is built totally upon argument form silence. Yes I know argument from silence can be valid, your's is not because there is nothing to settle the matter of the silence between one set of speculation and another.

MEta => No. That's an assumption that is stretching things a bit. Why should they know that Jesus' resurrection body was like the resurrection bodies they would someday have according to Paul's theology of the eschatological resurrection? That's not a foregone conclusion.

You are missing the point: they doubted the resurrection generally (whether they accepted that of Jesus or not), yet that is a fundamental piece of the Gospel. So "they knew about it already" is of no relevance in such a case, meaning it does not work as hard as you think in the case of the empty tomb either. And I'll keep repeating myself because I know you don't pay attention: all this only leads to a small weight of suspicion, but a weight nonetheless.

Meta =>You have just oversimplified and distorited my argument, but than you never intended to think about it anyway. And being "a weight none the less" is even a jump over a huge gap in logic. The basic fact of the matter is there was no reason to metion it. It wasn't an issue, they knew the basic stroy of the resurrection, and some of the things he says imply that he must have had the empty tomb in mind (why else does he talk about the resurrection body if he didn't believe in bodily reusrrection?)

you just use an aside to argue that he should have put in an aside for the empty tomb.

Only because you denied that such a thing could happen. The fact is the letters constitute thousands of words on a large range of subjects: the absence of even a passing reference to the empty tomb is in some measure peculiar. I do not say it is impossible (if I could, then I could settle the case on this point alone). You need to focus, Metacrock, and pay attention to what I am arguing, and stop arguing against some straw-Doherty that I am not.


Meta =>Why did you begin this debate with this condenscending attitude? Can you not see that that has illicited more hostility on my part? So when you add little things like "foucss" that just fules the fire. But than that's what you intened since atheits cannot play fiar. Atheists are without honor, without honesty, without brains and without the ability to seriously consider other view points. No, it is not very strange that he doesn't talk about the empty tomb. Why is that strange? He clearly did not believe that Jesus was a mere ghost. He doesn't talk about his boyhood, maybe he was never a boy.

That is still just argument from silence.

There is nothing wrong with an argument from silence: this is a valid component of any cumulative case. An argument from silence can even in some cases settle an issue, but, and I'll repeat this again because you don't pay attention, this is not one of those cases, and I agree with you that epistolary silence on the empty tomb alone does not entail it is fiction, so stop arguing against a position I don't even hold. Rather, silence is not a given, is slightly peculiar, and is consistent with fiction, therefore it supports an argument for fiction (however much, that can be your call, but surely you must admit it does to some extent). The case requires all the acorns, not just this one, and even then is not decisive, just enough not to have faith that there was an empty tomb just as I have no faith that there was a haunted house at Athens as Lucian's friend describes.

Meta =>The vast majority of historians and scholars have assumed an empty tomb for 2000 years. It's absurd to calim that there isn't enough to have faith that there was one. even an atheist can assume an empty tomb. That's just silly. And again, argument from silence can be valid, but much of the time, as in this case, it's just an excuse to fill the gap with whatever you want to be there. But that against real textual evidence and it's nothing. WE have textual evidence that there was a premarcon tradition. it's not subjective it's not just reding it in, it's in the text. It's basdically proven. It's a hell of a lot more tangible than your speculations.

For one who harps on scholarly methods so much, and who prides himself on scholarly caution I would think you would avoid argument from silence all the more.

Now once again you demonstrate that most basic ignorance of historical method I warned you about in the beginning. If you think an argument from silence is not a standard, accepted tool in every historian's toolbox, you are even more naive than I thought.


Meta =>AGain you desire to be the big cheese in historical scholarship and to be thought of as so so qualified to make pornoucements has led you to another insluting rash statment. I never said that argument from silence can't be valid, but against real conceter evidence like textual evidence it is not. And when you mistake valid argument form silence for wishful thinking its not. That's all you are doing. It's far more logical to think they had some kind of empty tomb, why would they even believe in Jesus in the first place? Becasue they saw a ghost? Hardly. Bail Mitchell has a good book making cumulative case, I'm quite familar with the cumulative case. Apparently you are not becasue you dont understand the basic difference in a cumullative case an leaky buckets. You can't build a cumulative case just by placing one failed argument against another.


Or are you merely issuing insincere objections, knowing full well that actual historians use arguments from silence all the time?

Meta =>Yes, but they don't use them as badly as you do. Clark's argument that the Lock was not influential to social contract theory until the middle of the 18th century is basically an argument from silence. But there is works because there is no counter evidence and the lack of any mention of the Treatses on Government is daming to the counter claim. But this is not the same thing.It is perfectly logical to assume a prior tradition. There is good reason to think that the whole Christian movement would not have even been born without the claim of the empty tomb. it is implausible that it could have been introduced so long after the foudnation of the sect and by one obscure writer. Mark wasn't even alluded to much or read much into the middle of the second century. And GPete offers an independent source for the Tomb that is not Marcan redation and that is proven by Brown and Koester. That disproves your case right there and your silence isn't worth anything. Paul is totally irrelivant at that point. Maybe Paul didn't have the empty tomb so what? Someone did.

(Or is your reading life so restricted you've never read any works of history outside of Christian subjects?)

Meta =>You really think I'm laying when I say I'm a Ph.D. candidate don't you? HOw do I know you are one? You are just a guy who badly misunderstands argumentation. You aren't even trying to listen. What a childish stunt. And you are so ignorant you just let the references to Leslie Stephen fly right by. Now if I had never read anything but Leslie Biblical history how is it that I can refur to old historians that only history students would read?

An argument from silence needs to be properly constructed (there are at least six kinds of evidence that support it, for example (absence, context, peculiarity, analogy, implausibility, and unreliability), and its strength is measured by the strength of all six available for any given case), but it is by no means invalid as you seem to think (or dishonestly assert, I don't know).

Meta =>See this is the kind of crap that I'm objecting to. You demonstrate that you really have only a passing knowledge of argumentation and becasue I point out that your arguments are bad you decide that I don't know anyhting. I don't need your simplistic lecture. I know about argument from silence. I know enough to see that your's is not well constructed at all, but you assume that I must not know anything about it when in fact it's just that yours sux.

When some of these six arguments apply, and only weakly, against no real positive evidence apart from the story itself, there is not enough confidence to have faith (but not enough confidence to deny it either). In contrast, none of these factors applies to the Library case. That is why the story itself is believable--indeed, it instead has five small positive weights, making it more believable than the empty tomb is unbelievable.

Meta =>I have presented postive proof that there was a premarcan tradition and you have done nothing more than say you dobout it and you didn't even give a reason. Or do you think that argument form silence answers real positive proof?

Thinking that he had reason to mention it is not proof that his silence means anything. It's just supposition.

It does mean something--maybe I should not criticise you for careless hyperbole? It is not supposition: the silence of all the epistolators is a fact, not a supposition, whereas it is not a fact (though I admit it is a plausible conjecture)

Meta =->The silence is a fact, the reason for it is your little fantasy. I gave my own reasons and you have not answered them.

that they would never have mentioned it or would never have benefitted from doing so in any of their counter-heretical arguments or apologetics, etc. Therefore, silence here not only is consistent with no empty tomb, it adds some small weight to a case for it.

Meta =>No, it doesn't add jack shit to it because there are reasons other than your fantasy why he would not mention it, and there is good reason to interpret his allusions to certain things as assuming it. Why speak of resurection bodies if he did not believe that resurrection was bodily?


What would be supposition is to assert that Paul implied an empty tomb in 1 Cor. 15 (that is completely ad hoc: it is based on nothing but the bare possibility). In contrast, it is not supposition to assert that 2 Peter's argument would have been stronger and made more sense if the empty tomb were mentioned there.

Meta => Again, Paul clealry believed that resurretions were in bodies. That's why he speaks of a resurretion body. Now if resurrections are in bodies than Jesus' resurrection was probably in a body. And if a person resurrects from a tomb than he must ipso facto leave an empty tomb. but Paul doenst have to point that out. That would be like walking to the store and saying to your companion "we are friends, we are two freinds walking to the store. When we get to the store we will be at the store."

Meta =>nobody resurrection concept, which was totally unJewish and ignores most of what Paul says. (OK now I guess we have to call in Doherty to debate with him).

Actually, I agree with Doherty on this one point, and this is one issue I have studied very thoroughly (though I need to dive even further into it when I get the chance), and most of my arguments on it are a matter of public record.


MEta =>Hey if you say that's your position than I believe you.


Others have backing in other scholarship (for example, the "non-Jewish" charge is not only fallacious--baptisms for the dead is non-Jewish, but Paul felt no compulsion to defend it--it is false: a product of Evangelical word games and omission of sources, but that's off-topic).

MEta =>Offer some documentation that baptism for the dead is unjewish? I dont think we know enough to assert that. This is a limiation of argument from silence. It only works if we should not expect a silence. If the silenc is natural and logical than it's not an argument. WEll we know the Jewish concept was bodily resurrection. We know Paul agreed with that because he says he does. So why would they tahn turn around and nix that where Jesus is concerned? We should expect a silence about the empty tomb because there is no real reason to bring it up. No one made it an issue, they all knew about it. But there is no reason to assume that when Paul speaks of Jesus' reusrrection that he is talking about non-bodily res. Why should we assume that? If you read something like Cesar Augustus believed in yin and yang wouldn't you suspect something was odd here? He may well have but that's not what one should expect.

It's merely arbitrary as to why the tomb must be mentioned in an epistle when no one ever denied it and no alternate version of the story ever existed.

Same with the transfiguration, yet 2 Peter has call to mention it nonetheless, but not the empty tomb.

Meta => That's just absurd. If he finds a reason to mention it and does so, that's logical enough, but if he had not would that mean he didn't believe in it?

MEta =>ahah, wait a minute. What you are saying now is 1) the mere fact of silence has to prove your point...

Once again I will repeat myself because you do not pay attention: nowhere have I ever argued this. Stop wasting words arguing against something I have never said. Pay attention. Think. Make some effort to understand where I am coming from and stop trying to play some sort of childish score game. I outgrew that decades ago.


MEta =>O borther! Every line of your posts says "I am so a big big historian, I'm smarter than you and I know more than you and I'm a really big cheese and some day you'll see how important I am" and yet I'm the one playing the games? And what's pathetic is it was toally uncalled for. I did not insult you I was merely responding to your condecending attitude. You have no right to assume from the outset as you did that I am not as much an histoiran as you. But than that probably a callculation. I have no doubt that it is a strategy that your mentions breifed you on. PRobly empiracist saying "O that Metarock is so egotistical." Now stop trying to make the poitn that you are such a big cheeze and answer the argument. Of course you deny it but that is exactly what you attitude says "you must accord me the status of knowing all becasue I'm the big deal."

because no argument can be made to counter it since the silence is there and must be taken in this way and this way only; 2) only you can speculate.

Wrong. I have never said you can't speculate at all. Rather, no speculation can stand on thin air.

Meta =>Well you think yours does. Anytime there is a counter argument you pull out the old "I know histoircal method" routine. You dont' even listen the arguments I'm making casue you are too busy trying to tell me how academically up to speed you are. You begin assuming I can't know anything, so of cousre you don't need to listen to the other view point.


Speculations can be made when reasons can be advanced for them (other than more speculations),


Meta =>It is hardly a reason to supposse that Paul didn't believe in the bodily resurrection when he says he does. If there is a bodily resurrection than there is an empty tomb. that is just a priori. And for you to assert that it is evidence of no tomb at all is just totally speculative. See when Clark says no mention of Locke's treatese on government before 1750 that is hard evidence because if people were reading it they would talk about it (in fact they did but not the press). But to try and fill in a motive of an individual in hsitory, to try and peer into his mind and determine his beliefs based merely upon silence, and than to project that to the whole Christian movement is totally speculative.


and those speculations will only carry as much weight as the reasons advanced for them. Once again, you betray your naivety, and you seem totally incapable of escaping a black and white view of things.

MEta =>You are far too busy telling me what big wheel you are to notice any sort of depth in anyone's arguments. Anyone who automatically assumes his opponent must be an idiot before they even debate is not up to noticing the depth in other view points.

And instead of trying to understand my point of view, all you look for is any trivial way to force my words to contradict each other--which prevents you from ever seeing how they in fact harmonize with eachother instead.


Meta =>No that's what you are doing to me.


You will never learn an important thing in your life so long as that is how you approach the world. In fact, you do not even seem to be trying to learn something about why I believe what I do. You seem intent on winning and nothing else. Why?

MEta =>O yea right like you really give a shit about what I believe or why I believe it. I think you are totally insecure in your status in life and completely obcessed with an imiagined improtance.

But it still remains the case that we have no alternate stories, not until several centuries later.

And I have never denied this. Since when do we need alternative stories to doubt a story?


Meta =>ahahahahah, you dont' even understand the argument! Another amuzing thing, you are so unconerned about what anyone else has to say that you don't even notice that that is argument from silence! ahahhahahahahahaah, the big wheel. O you are so full historical method! But the thing about this argument from silence is there is good reason not to expect it. Because we know that most myths have multiple versions. The most logical reason why this one wouldn't is becasue too many people knew the facts of the case and couldn't deny them.


It is unreasonable to think that no other version would survive anywhere.

Yet it is reasonable to think this if there was no tomb--in fact, it is necessarily the case that there would be no "other" stories if there was no story at all. Until you get that, I can't help you.

Meta =>ahahahahahhaah, you are totally confussed! Try to pay attention now man. My argument is,

1) myths usually proliferate into more than one version.

2) Jesus story only has one version

3) therefore Jesus story not conform to usual type of myth

So the reason why it doesn't? Because the public in Jerusalem knew the facts. They knew that Jesus was crucified and that his followers at least claimed to find his tomb empty. So no one tried to invent to believe other versions. I am not saying that disproves your silence or the reaosn you give for it, that is a competing claim. Yes, you are right it is logical that if there wrere no story there would be no other versiosn. But that is not to say that the fact of silence proves there was no story. Now you know that so I'm not trying to say that you calim that is proof ok? I understand that I understood it all along you aren't trying to give your oppoent the benifit of a doubt. What I am saying is that the rasons I give explain the silence so we dont' need to worry about that but here is a cometing argument about how we can know there was a tomb.

Meta =>So how would that work?

I will not repeat myself. I already gave several generalized examples above.

Meta =>No you didn't. I dont see them. I am saying how could one introduce a new belief into the cult once the story was set in stone? You never answered that.

I know Ignites does and that is about 110, and that's really the only other writing outside of the NT to even compare to.

I hope that is a type-o. I can't believe an M.A./M.Div. could possibly make that bad a spelling mistake or have so poor a memory about so basic a fact in his discipline.

Meta =>Now which are you refurring to? The datee on Ignatious? Fairweather put his works at 110, some say 120. Whatever. Yea I'm making lots of typos because I'm so inscensed by your attitude that I'm not going to spell check.

As I pointed out before, most scholars leave the res claim in the core Passage of Joseph's, so that's not really a fair statement.

Yet there is no empty tomb there. One can import it, but one can also import a "resurrection not of the flesh or the dust of Adam but of the Spirit," so this tips the scale neither way.

Meta =>It's so surpizing how the sketpical crowd gets away with asserting stupid bull shit like that for so long. No one would be impressed with a ghost. No one bought a nonbodily res at that point in time. No one documents a docetic belief at that point in time. No one has the evidence to prove that any sort of Gnsotic belief which dened the reality of Jesus' flesh was even in the chruch at that point in time. Now as for Josephus, the same is generally ture. The end of the century, we are getting closet to an era where the concept of docestism is spreading. But it's highly doubtful that Jospehus was refurring to that. Because why would he even call it resurrection? The very term implies a bodily return to life.

Meta =>Here my worthy opponent displays a lack of research familiarity with the topic and the material. This is not guess work, it is far from that.

Assert what you like, I have in fact studied the case quite a bit. I am speaking from experience. I stand by my statement.

Meta =>I was studying this stuff when you drolling over the next episode of romper room. I've studied it for decades.

It is well proven and well documented;

!!!

Knowing the very arguments you are discussing, I find this an appalling hyperbole. If this is the way you intend to debate, I shall see no point in continuing. Tone down the rhetoric.

MEta =>I can't remember what "It" is talking about, the way you chopped up the quote. I notice you don't bother to document anything.It that refurs to the pre marcan tradition you are totally wrong.

but one must have some familiarity with textual criticism.

As I do. More than mere familiarity in fact.

MEta =>so do I you had no call to say that. you said it first I am just giving you your own medicine. you assumed form the outset that I didn't know anything so when you don't understand what I'm saying you just assume it is meaningless and refuse to think about it.

It is textual matter that involves the Diatesseron as well as Egatron 2 and
some other documents.

Which if you really know anything about, you cannot have such blind and excessive confidence as you are putting on here.

Meta =>Yea now let's just look at this. you don't have any evidence. I quoted several passages from Danker, Koester, Brown and maybe someone else. you have nothing but you assert I must be wrong. Now Koester presents passage after passage where the reasdings differ from the Marcan redaction in all of these works; direct evdidence of an older reading. Not just in one Ms but several. And that is totally indpendent of Brown who establishes the independence of the PN in GPet. So those are two independent sources and methods either one of which proves the point.


MEta =>Ah! I see the ugly specter of "My discipline is the best" raising its head. I'm from an interdisciplinary program so I have learned to respect most disciplines. This is a matter for textual criticism and the evidence for the Passion narrative is just as strong or even stronger than for Q. Scraps of it can be found in the diatesseron and in GPete and Egatron 2.

Which again, if you know anything about, you would know this is not so hot a recommendation.

Meta =>Q is pretty strong now, stronger than it used to be with the new work being done on GThomas. The major alternative to Q is Greisebach. Surely you don't buy that? I was at Perkins when Bill Farmer was there. I know quite well. I respect him but I can't buy his arguments.


Once again you refuse to read what I write and even this time get some strange idea out of it about what I said that doesn't even remotely resemble my words. The evidence for Q is weak. It is nevertheless stronger than any evidence for any particular Pre-Markan passion narrative


Meta =>Man you just really think that wahtever you say is right and Im just supposse to accept that merely because the great big cheeze said it. Have you read the Koester book? Unless you have you have reason to say that. I know what you are thinking. This is not about Craig. What Koester is talking about is something totally differnt. Craig, to my knolwedge, doesn't use the Diatesseron to prove that. You are wrong! Read the book. It's pretty well grounded. There is compelling evidence for it. Granted it's not totally proven, it's still limited in all the ways that any textual critical argument would be, but its pretty strong in its way and its positive evidence, and against a mere argument from silence it carries a lot more weight.


(as opposed to an unspecified narrative of uncertain content--I will grant that: in fact I am fairly certain some passion narrative existed in Paul's day, we just don't know what). Therefore, I cannot conscionably believe in the one as much as I do in the other, and I do not hold that much faith in the other to begin with. And don't act like I haven't read the arguments. I have. I know the methods and arguments and materials well. My judgement remains what it is.

Meta =>I am betting that you have read Brown and Craig but not Koster or Danker. Have you read Koester? I doubt it. If so why aren't you aruging the evidence?

I don't claim that we have a document, but we do have good evidence that there was such a document and it is textual evidence.

Perhaps this is a lack of familiarity with jargon. When we say document we do not necessarily mean a physical text (that is called a manuscript). I did not say you claimed to have a mss. As one trained in textual criticism, you should know these terms, surely.

Meta =>yea that's really something I should take for granted, that you know that. After all the other bs you've spread out here I should really read your word as though written by big textual criic. I've known world famous textual critics you ant one! Can it. I have a masters from perkins I have been trined by the best you don't know what you are talking about. You give me no reason to grant you the authority you crave. I'm sorry you are insecure but you don't have the goods. You jsut don't have it. You are not a big world historian and you don't have our doctorate and there is just no reason I should assume that your word alone is good enough. You have not proven anything here. document your claims.

Regarding your quotations, nothing new. None of those arguments even suggest a date, nor establish what existed at any particular date.


MEta =>IN a huge post that takes hours to get through I hardly have time to copy the whole Koster book. So naturally that was by way of introduction and we could get into specifics if you were willing to continue. But for the moment I will point out that Koster, Brown, Danker and othes have the goods and are the experts and they do put it at 50. Maybe it's a little latter, but the point is that with an independent tradition which is clealry preMarcan there should be some tradition behind that which steaches back even furhter. It's abusrd to assume that what we have is the very first enstance of it ever being mentioned.

I should not have to educate you on the basics of textual analysis, but just in case you are forgetting them: textual analysis can establish dependency or mutual relationship, but a specific relationship (without error statistics or objective dating) is generally impossible.

MEta =>Your attitude is so unprofessional.. real academics dont' go "I shouldln't have ot explian the basics to you" just because they disagree. That is your mistake and your foolishness to assume that because I can't say everything I know here and now in one sentence that I must not know anything. and that is typical of the little stupoid tricks that sketpics have to employ because they cannot argue fairly. You didn't come into this with good will. You came into it with the assumption that I'm idiot and I can't know anything. and you willfully read everything I say in that way. and did Empriacist tell you to harp on the spellling? Is that part of the little stragegy. when did you realise your getting your ass kicked and you have to fall back on the tactics of the highschool debater? YOu dont' know anything about textual cricitism. All the things you say about it are badly general knowledge that anyone whose taken one calss would know. What you dont' know is how to deal with that in such a way as to make further use of it.


Moreover, comparative textual analysis does not produce a date. Dates require other measures (internal or external). Moreover, because of the problems of cross-contamination, retrodiction, and normalization, among other things, reconstructed documents are rarely established with much confidence in categories where these phenomena are highly frequent--such as Christian texts: the rate of these phenomena is in fact remarkably higher in the Christian genre than in any other, with the possible exception of the vulgate Homeric texts and some similar examples. The Diatessaron is especially plagued with these problems. In fact, in documents for which only a few parts or exemplars exist, these problems are far more vexing--it is only because of the huge number of families of texts and the lucky coincidence of a split between Eastern and Western traditions, that as much confidence in the canonical texts can be established as we have been able, though even there there are countless headaches.

MEta =>STop showing off. I'm not impressed. This is all basic elementry bull shit. You haven't read the book and you don't know. You are singing and tap dancing your way thorugh ignornce rather than reading the book.

But despite your hyperbole, you know all this. So are you being dishonest with me? Are you being insincere?

Meta =>Your assumptions trap you in a morace of silly arguments because you can't deal honestly with your oppoent. Koester demonstrates that the tradition is pre Marcan. It is not Marcan redaction. It doesnt' come after because if it did it would show traces of the Marcan redaction. The date is arrivd at as speculative but who cares? It shows there is a pre Marcan tradition. Not the one Craig talks about becasue Mark shows dependence on it too.

The unknown Gospel of Egatron 2 was discovered in Egypt in 1935 exiting in two different manuscripts.

Ummmm....you are aware that this is in fact only one mss., comprised of four scraps of papyrus constituting only thirty to fifty legible lines (about ninety in all), clearly bits of two leaves in the same codex? You didn't even seem to notice it contains no part of the passion narrative. It is therefore wholly and utterly irrelevant here. Why, then, bring it up? Why do you think it has anything to do with reconstructing a pre-Markan passion narrative?

Meta =>YOu just aren't listening. I'm not saying that PEg2 is the PN. It's evidence of a pre Marcan tradition. So we know that Mark was not the first to write a Gospel. Now Mark and John both show evidence of reliance on the same common source. that same source shows up in places in all five Gosples (Gpet included) and in all of those it is found in the PN but not limited to it. Of course it coudl be different traditions coming together but the point is, there is a pre Markan tradition and it includes the PN. PEg2 is just an example where it's very clear.

Worse, this makes three times now you have spelled it "Egatron." I thought the first time was a type-o. The second, maybe. But not a third (and more: even in an exact quote from Daniels no less! And the title of his dissertation as well).

Meta =>Like I said, when you see sentence like this: alj a;ldkjf[aei alkdja a;lkndf;akjdf;lank. When you see the letters in a certain arragement all the time it's hard to train yourself not to trype that arrangement. So I fall into patterns.

How can a scholar be making this mistake?


Meta =>No one to proof it. this is not a journal. this is a mesage board with very stupid people ran by very stupid people. You don't deserve the effort.


You have nothing. apaloia hipotzugion.

Very scholarly professor MegaCrock, methinks you may be due a diaper change.

Amen-Moses

Meta =>No one to proof it. this is not a journal. this is a mesage board with very stupid people ran by very stupid people. You don't deserve the effort.

Meta, this requires an apology. None of us are stupid, and if we didn't deserve the effort, why did you post two excrutiatingly long posts on it.

MEta =>Your attitude is so unprofessional.. real academics dont' go "I shouldln't have ot explian the basics to you" just because they disagree. That is your mistake and your foolishness to assume that because I can't say everything I know here and now in one sentence that I must not know anything. and that is typical of the little stupoid tricks that sketpics have to employ because they cannot argue fairly.

Yes, it reminds me of your comments about how I knew nothing about myth, just a "smattering." Only later we found out who hadn't read what. In fact, in the next sequence of quotes, you write:

MEta =>STop showing off. I'm not impressed. This is all basic elementry bull shit. You haven't read the book and you don't know. You are singing and tap dancing your way thorugh ignornce rather than reading the book.

This, of course, is doing exactly what you accuse Mr. Carrier of doing.

Also, it is not a response to the rather substantive remarks Carrier made. In fact, you would have to refute his point:

• Moreover, because of the problems of cross-contamination, retrodiction, and normalization, among other things, reconstructed documents are rarely established with much confidence in categories where these phenomena are highly frequent--such as Christian texts: the rate of these phenomena is in fact remarkably higher in the Christian genre than in any other,...

But you don't even address it; you just say it is basic knowledge and accuse him of not reading.

MEta =>O yea right like you really give a shit about what I believe or why I believe it. I think you are totally insecure in your status in life and completely obcessed with an imiagined improtance

Projecting now are we, Meta?


Michael

The guy couldn't make good on his calims. he had to save face, so as so often happens he turned the issue to my personality rather than the issues, than he pretended to be outragged and ran away. All to keep form taking his medicine.

Notice he just alludes to the age of the Ramsay evidence but he doesn't even bother to document any contraidctory evidence himself. IN fact he didn't document anything in the whole "debate" (squabble) all he did was assert on his own authority (which he doesn't yet turely have) that he has to be right becasue he knows best.

Meta =>Yea? than why is it that everytime the sketpic always answers facts and documentation with personal insults? Look at the thread I started on Josephus. Rosemary's cute little babby says "shut the F____ up! Idiot!" When I had said nothing at all insulting. You an see it there blanently. I just give factual answers, the skeptics start with the name calling. Why do they always assume that they have no culpability in anything they say and Chrisitans are suppossed to just lay down and get stopped,and if the Christian even hints that they are wrong than it's time to break out the four letter words?

yea, I probably do owe you an apology. There are some damn bright people here. You, Physics Guy, many others. Carrier is not an idiot. I called him that out of anger. I don't know why you can't understand that when you attack someone on the thing they define themselves by you are just basically rapping them. When you smash a pionists hands you are crippeling him and taking away his identity. When you say to a scholar "You don't know anything and I will not see you as anyone who knows anything" you are striking at the basic idienty of who that person is. That is as brutal as physical violence, and it is also callculated move. I've seen it too many times not to think they do it on purpose, merely becasue they can't afford to say "O well maybe you have a good point, maybe I should read more." NO they would rather destory someone's inner self than to do that.

But maybe it is that in this deterministic secular age you have forgotten the concept of an inner self?

Carrier began the debate with the assumption that i am not an historian. I emailed him and told him my educational level, and yet he insisted on speaking as though I know nothing even before I had a chance to develop my arguments. He doesn't know what I had to say. he's just assuming he does because he can't answer the arguments.

All of you owe me an apology. Each and every one of you do and not one of you has ever even come close to admiting that.

Just tell me this, I have the same level of degree that he does. I have a Masters degree in Theology, he has only taken some classes. Now why should I accord him any sort of presumption for being a big authority? I have known world famous textual critics and world famous theologians whose names are in all the text books and will be remembered for a long time, and he's not known in the acadmeic world beyond a small circle. Why should I just cow tow and allow him to have the presumption as the big authority?

he began with condecention and put downs and he never did anything to prove his case, he saw he was losing and he ran away,and turned it personal to save face.