blastula

Price discussed the criterion of embarrassment with biblical scholar David Instone-Brewer in a podcast last week.

The Easter Scandal - David Instone-Brewer & Bob Price - Unbelievable? 7 Apr 2012

Unbelievable is a weekly podcast program of informal debates between a Christian apologist and a heathen.

Say what you will about Price, nobody is more engagingly brilliant in their skepticism/denialism. He's a living Bible Wiki.

sotto voce

He's not a scholar, anyway. Nobody who uses the word 'Easter' can be. Treat this as propagandistic pap.

But then the word 'Wiki' is a pretty severe indictment.

blastula

He is a scholar, though mainly in rabbinic literature.

Dr David Instone-Brewer - Senior Research Fellow in Rabbinics and the New Testament | Tyndale House

Oh OK, sure. Who said he used it though?

No, thanks.

Why?

jdl

I listened to most of this. Instone-Brewer sounded like a real lightweight. It was hypertypical apologist tripe and next to Price he sounded like a rank amateur diligently reciting his talking points without any comprehension of what was going on.

Instone-Brewer says people were extremely sceptical in the 1st century and that you'd only claim that Jesus had done miracles if he actually had. His proof is that Philo and Josephus seem to cringe at the idea of miracles. Price retorts that Philo and Josephus belonged to the intellectual elite and it is precisely in contrast to a common belief in miracles that they try to demonstrate their superiority.

Instone-Brewer says everyone would have been embarrassed by a crucified messiah. Price retorts that everything is inoffensive to someone, and everything preserved by tradition must have been deemed useful. Instone-Brewer says he agrees that some people are crazy.

blastula

Yes, he came off as a straight apologist when talking about how they were so skeptical back then. As if anyone from any age who joins a religion gives it due skeptical diligence.

But I don't think anyone could answer Price's form of objection and knock it down, where he has a historical or literary parallel for everything. You would have to do some kind of Carrier Bayesian analysis, if it's even possible.

la70119

Instone-Brewer did come off as an apologist. Before listening to the debate, I thought, maybe there's some new information why Xtians think their early forebears had to deal with a scandle of a Son of God, but after listening through, I realised it would be the same old, same old.

And this jaded guy actually winced when he described his idea of a crucifixion scene and what to expect there.