Doug Shaver

Indeed. It makes one wonder about the possibility that he didn't expect anyone to imagine he was trying to write a factual account of Christianity's origins

aa5874

But, there is no real evidence to show that the accusations of the body-snatching were before the story was invented in gMatthew.

And, the body-snatching scenario may have been gMatthew's resolution to why no-one outside of the disciples ever saw Jesus after he was buried.


Do you mean Matthew, and not Mark, since the body-snatching accusations are only found in gMatthew?

Solo

Or.....he was actually very smart and has pulled nearly everone's chain - especially those obssessed with themselves - by creating a biting, straight-face, parody of the idiocy of religious idolatry and empty theism. It would appear that this parody now includes idiocies of the atheist variety.

...but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Cr 1:24-25

Can you figure what Paul meant by the foolishness of God when talking about Christ ? I have read scores of exegets and have yet to find one who has a clue what Paul was talking about. They simply repeat that God chose to make the gospel look like foolishness.

Here is a clue: The earliest believers in Jesus Christ, starting with his inventor Paul, looked themselves foolish, or very, very dumb to people who had no reference to what was happening inside them when they became possessed by the Spirit. So, those people, like Dr. Carrier apparently now, prefered to read everything literally, because that was the best way to mock it as stupid. Now, consider it possible that Mark did not have church universal and triumphant in mind when he wrote his parody. He wrote it for mystics like himself who would on one day saw things in heaven and on another struggled to keep control of their sphincter when the terror struck. It was a therapy of sorts. It was a way to to assert that they were not the dumbest and most gullible people around, and that the things they experienced have meaning.

So, think it possible that Paul and Mark were right: the idiocies of God by which they were possessed are still smarter than the smartest and most educated men. Think it possible they succeeded in doing the impossible: they restored from historical oblivion to a Godhead status a poor, crazy prophetic idiot from some Jewish backwater who -like them- was made to think by his esctasy-prone brain that he was THE ONE, and got himself killed for making a scene about it in the Holies. And not just that mind you: they somehow managed to lay a foundation to a body (they did not themselves plan for) which is the longest continuous surviving organization on the face of the earth. Bad as it sometimes appears, it's there - a witness that these guys had something that was found useful and uplifting to many, reprocessed as the original message may have gotten in the process.

So, in the bowels of Christ I beseech you, let's keep a perspective on things and a some tolerance here.

Jiri

jgoodguy

" Think it possible they succeeded in doing the impossible: they restored from historical oblivion to a Godhead status a poor, crazy prophetic idiot from some Jewish backwater "

or more likely just merged several stories AKA oral traditions into one.

Doug Shaver

A great presentation. Thank you very much.

I was gratified by his discussion, during the Q&A, of the proper attitude for skeptics to take regarding the academic consensus. I could not agree more with his position.

mountainman

From the cited video ....

Steven Carr

Of course,2000 years ago Carrier would have been instantly stoned for such blasphemy.

Unlike the Christians of that day who were persecuted on the issue of circumcision, rather than claiming dead people had risen.

lpetrich

I enjoyed Richard Carrier's satirical burlesque of the New Testament.

I liked how he described Acts as changing gears from from Jesus Christ's ascension to the early church, and how JC's family dropped out of the story entirely. In fact, an earthly JC had little presence in Acts.

I also liked his take on how nonchalant the authorities sometimes seemed about the followers of some subversive, and how the Gospel of Mark made no mention of the Gospel of Matthew's claim that JC's disciples had been suspected of stealing his body.

And I like how RC described the reaction of one of his colleagues to the Epistles. Imagine someone gushingly describing the teachings of some favorite teacher, then saying next to nothing about what that teacher was like in person.

I would have liked something on the Gospel of John, but RC may have wanted to save time by skipping that.


I'd quarrel with his burlesque of the Star of Bethlehem. He used the modern meaning of "star", not its ancient meaning, any small-looking celestial object. So he could have chortled over that flying saucer hovering over Bethlehem that only those Iranian gentlemen had seen.


I enjoyed his descriptions of various Sons of God like Osiris and Hercules and Romulus -- Jesus Christ was far from alone.


He did state what he considered the strongest evidence for a historical Jesus Christ: the Talmud states that someone named Jesus ben Stada had been stoned to death in Lydda (Lod) by the Jewish authorities.

lpetrich

He also slammed part 1 of Zeitgeist, something which well deserved that slam.

He also described how he had once been a skeptic of the Big Bang, and how mainstream scientists like Victor Stenger had convinced him that it was real. He also noted that mainstream ones had converged on the same overall concept of the Big Bang, complete with the same arguments, while Xian apologists not only vary all over the place with their arguments, they sometimes use different arguments at different times.

hylidae

What was part 1 about? I forget.