hjalti

I predict that Carrier will mention the epistles of Paul and that what we have is an edition of them (and maybe point out to the view that some of them are believed to be made up of many letters),.

Switch89

Or that "something suddenly comes up" and Holding won't be able to make it. I.e. Holding will come to his senses and chicken out before doing the debate. You know it has to happen. A debate as juicy as this one will never actually come to pass, it's too good to be true.

John Kesler

I doubt that the "debate" will be cancelled, because according to Holding, there will be only two rounds, and there will be no interaction between the participants:

Here's a prediction for the debate:

Carrier: There are X number of variants in the N.T. manuscripts...
Holding: Tacitus, Tacitus, Tacitus
Carrier: Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11, et al are known to be added later...
Holding: The fact that these are so readily identified proves that there's no need to "push the panic button." Tacitus, Tacitus, Tacitus.
Carrier: All we have are copies of copies of copies of copies...
Holding: Tacitus, Tacitus, Tacitus

Frankly, I don't view this as a great topic for Carrier to debate, because I'm actually inclined to agree that by comparing manuscripts, using context and the "more-difficult-reading" criterion, etc., we can recover what was probably original. Many variations are minor, such as spelling errors.

My view is that Holding, despite his misgivings about live debates, realizes that he needs to do them to get more exposure and solidify himself as an apologist. Given the brevity of the debate, and the lack of interaction, I'd say that Holding sees this as a toe-in-the-water experience that will lead to more debates if all goes well.

blastula

Only if the standard is "perfectly the same as they had." They'll have to establish what qualifies as having what they had.

aa5874

And the very first verse.

Diogenes the Cynic

Textual reliability is not the same as historical reliability. If was about historical reliability Holding would never go anywhere near it. Textual reliability is just an argument about whether the manuscripts we have are what was originally written. Their historical veracity doesn't come into it. It's a cherry-picked topic for Holding. One which is actually debatable and not an out of the gate win for Carrier. It's also fairly meaningless in the long run, since textual reliability is not relevant to the historical claims of Christianity anyway. Holding will still lose, but it's a topic he can ofuscate enough in front of a friendly audience to be able to declare himself a winner on his blog.

aa5874

If you think about it "textual reliability" is DIRECTLY related to "historical reliability".

If there are texts that differ textually about an event then the historical reliability of the text themselves are affected.

The textual variants in the short-ending and the long ending of gMark do AFFECT the historical reliability of gMark

Doug Shaver

Nonsense. That's what the apologists want everyone to think.

Of course, if the text is unreliable, then the history will be unreliable, too. However, a perfectly reliable text could be historically worthless.

thedistillers

The topic is far too wide and complex for a 2 round debate. I don't know why people predict an easy win for Carrier, I don't even think it's possible to "win" such a debate. They could debate longer than the time allowed just to introduce textual reliability.

I don't have much respect for people who engage in such activity, when we all know it's nothing more than a show.

aa5874

Oh my GOD! "OF COURSE, IF THE TEXT IS UNRELIABLE THEN THE HISTORY WILL BE UNRELIABLE, TOO".

JESUS CHRIST!!!!

THINK ABOUT IT. THINK ABOUT IT.

"TEXTUAL RELIABILITY" IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO "HISTORICAL RELIABILTY".

Jesus Christ!!!!!!!!!!!!