yalla

Remember the TV mini series "Roots" based on the book by Alex Haley?
Broadcast in the 70's maybe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Haley

I never watched it but it was a blockbuster and you couldn't help but be aware of it.
From memory the premise was that a modern Afro-American [I hope that is the correct term, I'm not from the USA] decided to trace his ancestral roots and ended up with the story being of a slave from Africa named Kunta Kinte [great name] as the key ancestor.
I'm sure someone here could give a better precis of the theme.
Anyway the reason I mention this show/book is that it was pointed out that the ancestor the plot focused on was only one of many possible several gnerations back ancestors.
So for example I had, unsurprisingly, 2 parents.
Thats going back one generation.
Each had an ancestral birthplace, which happened in their case to be the same place.
They each had 2 parents, we are up to four persons now just going back to my grandparents who I remember, all 4 of them.
Each of them had an ancestral birthplace which was, in their cases, a different town/city/locality to each other, ranging from hundreds of miles apart [the closest] to the other side of the known world.
One in fact, my paternal grandmother did not know where she was born having been an adopted foundling.
Two of the other three were born in different countries on two different continents.
Only two of them, my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather [and maybe my paternal grandmother], was born in the country in which they came to live.
Going back one more generation, to my great-grandparents, we have [and I'm consulting notes here] six persons to locate now, cos two are completely unknown and if I wished to trace my 'roots' back through my paternal grandmother then I would hit a complete dead end.
Of those six again two were born in my country, two were born in one country in Europe [I have photos of them there. incidentally they were until their descendants got married unrelated to each other, never met, and from entirely different social classes] another in a different European country and the last was born in India but lived most of his life, apparently, in South Africa.
Going further back is a complete blank but we would be up to sixteen persons normally without the cpmplication of my foundling grandma.

So where are my roots?

Going back only 3 generations I have a choice of between 12-16 [if I haven't got too confused here] possible ancestral homes.
One more generation doubles that and so on.

Whoever wrote that bit in gospel "Luke' had not thought through the implications of the thought.

dog-on

Then why do you insist on using their lame arguments?

ApostateAbe

Why would it make a difference?

dog-on

Doesn't really. Just doesn't give me much confidence in you ability to pick the right horse, as it were...

ApostateAbe

Yes, you are right. I think it takes an unique sort of discipline to be willing to grant probability to some of the legitimate arguments and positions shared by rhetorical opponents. In an us-vs.-them way of thinking, anyone who shares a few key beliefs with them instead of us belongs to them and not us. I see it very often. It really is difficult to get out of that mentality, and I am being serious.

Toto

Your favorite scholar, Bart Ehrman, would flunk the last one, since a signficant portion of scholars in his field of NT studies get upset at his lack of faith and use of the word "forged" in his latest book

Carrier's opinions are not ridiculed or condemned by others in his field. You can even search the polemical McGrath's site and not find any ridicule of Carrier. You have still not produced any data on Carrier's source of income or how it affects his opinions. And the last is over the top. There is no hint of plagiarism or academic dishonesty on Carrier's part.

I know that you want to avoid losing any more arguments with me, but I feel the need to remove libelous comments like that if you cannot support them.

ApostateAbe

Toto, I am not aware of any accusation nor any reason to believe that Richard Carrier engaged in plagiarism or other serious forms of academic dishonesty. avi asked, "What parameters should be met, to attain the status of 'credible expert'?" And that is the question I answered.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Doug,

This is another good point showing the absurdity of taking the Luke passage as history.
As Yalla noted in post #6801409 / #11
"Going back only 3 generations I have a choice of between 12-16 [if I haven't got too confused here] possible ancestral homes.
One more generation doubles that and so on."

Apparently, Joseph went to the ancestral home in the time of King David, about 1,000 years earlier

If we assume four generations in each 100 year period, that would be about 40 generations back. If we give the best face to it, and just limit the ancestral decree to Jews, we have to imagine that millions of Jews could somehow trace their ancestry 40 generations back. Being from a Jewish background, I am able to trace my ancestral home back one generation to New York, where my parents were born. I know that my grandparents were from Europe, two from Russia and one from Poland, but I have no idea what city they lived in. I know nothing about the previous 38 generations. If tomorrow President Obama issued a decree that I had to return to my ancestral home of 40 generations ago, I would truly be screwed.

Fortunately, I think that the odds of President Obama issuing such a decree is exactly the same as the odds that Augustus Caesar issued such a decree.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Toto

And then you implied that the last four factors you mentioned, which appeared to include plagiarism or academic dishonesty made Carrier not qualify as a credible expert. Would you like to clarify that?

ApostateAbe

I am sorry, but there is a misunderstanding. I was actually referring to the four reasons that I listed in post #3. Those are specific to Carrier. It is easy to get the wrong idea if you are not part of the conversation.