Ted Hoffman

You are right. I think I need to get some sleep and I was rushing and not thinking. The archaeological periods Finegan provides are:

Hellenistic 332-63BC
Roman 63BC - 323CE
Byzantine 323 CE - 638CE

This is alongside the Chacolithic, Bronze (I,II, and III), the Arabic and Turkish eras.

Amaleq13

That article was available online when it was first published but it doesn't appear to be any longer. I definitely recall (b) as a claim made in the article but I don't recall the specific number in given in (a).

Only if we had reason to date them before 70 CE. Otherwise, they would be consistent with the notion that round doors became common after the fall of Jerusalem.

Ted Hoffman

We have made a lot of progress. A number of things have changed so far. Right now, Carrier holds that Christianity was started by Cephas, not Paul and gang. I have shown that Doherty is not the only one that supports ~BBCh so now, we encounter the expression "Doherty and gang". Carrier has gone further to use Baye's Theorem to show BBCh is more likely than ~BBC. It is still unclear to what extent the following bar, which Carrier slammed against Doherty's theory, still applies:

"[Doherty's] assumptions [that] go against all mainstream scholarship and thus cannot be asserted as fact until the historical community is persuaded--and persuading the scholarly community will require the kind of evidence that Doherty simply does not have."

Because I do not know how many historians or NT Scholars believe that Christianity started at a certain place, because of a certain event, and was started by Peter. Perhaps Carrier will provide us with references to Scholars that do hold this.

Carrier says that I am misrepresenting his argument and creating a strawman out of it and falsely accusing him of comitting a logical fallacy. He has even threatened to terminate his participation in this debate if I do not address his ABE argument.

It is important to note that Carrier has not presented in any formal manner what he calls his ABE argument. His posts have been in the form of refutations to my claims and to Doherty's position. He has exposed weaknesses of the positions I present, while providing alternative positions. In the course of this exchange, I have tried to organize his arguments to represent a specific alternative which I took the liberty of calling BBC.

In most of his arguments previous to his last post, Carrier states why ~BBCh is less plausible and why BBC is more plausible. Why Doherty's logic is flawed, why it still has a chance, other alternatives, this cult, that cult etc etc.
Carrier's posts cover a lot of ground. The post I responded to when I came up with the post hoc flaw was 32 pages. He exposes the reader to several possibilities and explains several points. But his main thrust, his main point has been that BBC is more plausible than ~BBCh. At least that is what I thought.

There are several arguments Carrier has made that support his BBCh But that is what they are: several. He had not amalgamated them to form a battering ram with which to slam ~BBCh. So I looked at all the arguments, lifted each and peered under them and surmised that they are all underpinned by one argument. I zoomed in to that argument and took it out as a post-hoc fallacy.

Now, I may have been wrong to think there is a central pillar to BBCh. I may have ended up misrepresenting Carrier's actual position. And I may have addressed one pillar instead of addressing all of them.

But I do not think the fault is entirely mine and I believe that the brief history of this debate that I have given above, somehow exculpates me or mitigates the fault Carrier accuses me of. I did not know Carrier was actually providing an ABE. The ABE may have been there in his posts, but I had to fish it out. Maybe I am just a poor fisherman and my torn nets let off the big fish (which I hope Carrier will be charitable enough to lay out for us to harpoon) or the shoal of fish.

In any event, I regret the displeasure it has caused Richard and will endeavour not to incur his displeasure again. It appears that Carrier expected me to respond to his argument point by point while I thought it would be best to get the central plank and take it out. I will now address Carrier's last post. I will start with his refutations of the post hoc fallacy. I thought that this was better compared to a point-by-point response.

I will have Carrier's remarks indented and bulleted.

A Post Hoc is a fallacy with the following form:
A occurs before B.
Therefore A is the cause of B.

Note that, in this formal definition of a post hoc fallacy, the conclusion is not "Therefore A is the sole cause of B". The fallacy is committed because the evidence provided fails to justify acceptance of the causal claim. It is even theoretically possible for the fallacy to be committed when A really does cause B, provided that the "evidence" given consists only of the claim that A occured before B.
I arranged Carrier's reasoning as below:
Cephas' movement occurs before we see other various strands of Christianity.
Therefore Cephas' movement is the source (cause) of the various forms of Christianity.

In our case, Carrier stated (I emphasize to bring out his thought sequence):

• Those [sects] that don't mention a creed like 1 Cor. 15:3-4? Those aren't Christian. Those that do? They post-date Paul. Therefore, the first and natural inference is that they derive from there.

Now, this is a glaring instance of post hoc fallacy. The "therefore" is based solely on the premise that "they post-date Paul". At least in this example. This is undeniable.

Carrier's responded:

• Hoffmann accuses me of committing a post hoc fallacy. He seems to have a strange idea of logic. A post hoc fallacy is the fallacy of assuming causation solely on the basis of sequence--if, however, sequence is only part of an argument to the best explanation (ABE), there is no fallacy.

I have exposed an instance of the fallacy above. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc means "after the fact, therefore because of the fact", *not* "after the fact, therefore solely because of the fact".

The following examples also exhibit the thought that every sect that had a risen Christ must have derived from Cephas' cult - merely because they appeared after the cult of Cephas:

• The Odes say the Savior has already risen and atoned for our sins. It is thus just a Christian hymnal. There is no evidence it was not written by someone who derived his doctrine ultimately from the traditions originating with Cephas and Paul

• And for Hermas, since that was written c. 100 or maybe c. 140 AD by a member of the Roman Church, [then] independence is implausible.

Note that Carrier states that independece is implausible based on the sequence of occurence. He is not even sure Hermas met Clement. Wrt Hermas, Carrier even adds an emotive argument:

• how can anyone suppose that Hermas wrote completely independently of the Roman Church? That is simply absurd.

As for the ABE, I hope Carrier will formulate it. As it is, BBC has evolved since he presented it. This means that the idea itself has still not taken a concrete shape in Carrier's mind (for example, Carrier wrote that "Since BB theory is based primarily on Paul, and is corroborated by the earliest history of the matter ever written (Acts)").
Acts[1] and Timothy[2] are virtually out of the picture and now, and a nick-named person, Cephas, is the person who started Christianity. Formulating this ABE can help curtail any future misunderstandings.

• I have only ever advanced an ABE here. I have never argued for causation "merely" on the basis of sequence.

In my assesment, you made an assumption, then you plugged everything else into your argument using that assumption. I may have been wrong. A formal presentation of your ABE will leave no room for any such misunderstanding.

• I have never argued for causation "merely" on the basis of sequence.

That may be. But you will admit though, that in at least one instance, you did. And that, that instance is the one I have provided above.

• Therefore, calling my argument fallacious is wholly out of order. By "reducing" my argument to this bogus straw man, most of what Hoffmann argues ignores almost everything I actually said. I will not argue to a wall. If Hoffmann won't address my actual argument, this debate is over.

There is nothing I relish more than addressing arguments and dealing with elephants in the mythicist room. Perhaps the misunderstanding arose due to an absent formal presentation of the ABE.
Alternatively, to support this accusation, you could list the arguments you feel I did not address. Just copy and paste them since you are claiming you already posted them. Otherwise, yours remains an invalid accusation and an illegitimate complaint.
I addressed everything I thought was relevant.

We shall now start dealing with real issues.

In points (1) and (9) you express your new stand that it is Cephas that started the movement, and not Paul and gang.

Problems with this new position:

1. We do not know who the individual nick-named Cephas/Peter was. Especially since Paul states that he was not part of the twelve.

2. Paul does not state that Cephas started Christianity. (1 COR 15:5 states that Christ appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve). It is not stated anywhere that Cephas started Christianity.

3. Textual criticism shows that Peter and Cephas are not the same person (and both are nick names, not actual names). The passages where Cephas appear exhibit signs of tampering. And the texts indicate that Peter is supposed to have been "sent" to the circumcized while Cephas is well-known to the uncircumsized Corinthians. spin notes that "the Epistle to the Apostles is blithely unaware of the fact that the two figures are supposed to be the one, listing them as distinct apostles".

4. We therefore cannot know what Cephas did or did not do. Most of all, no text states that Cephas started Christianity. Paul states that the risen Christ appeared to Cephas. He doesn't state what Cephas did after the risen Christ appeared to him. Maybe he started a quiet cult. Maybe he went insane but a cult materialized around him and revered him as he approached his twilight. Maybe Cephas was the rock of the tomb that Jesus allegedly resurrected from. We do not know.
If Carrier wants to claim Cephas was an actual person, the onus is on him to provide evidence and follow it up with evidence that illustrates exactly what Cephas did to merit being designated as the founder of Christianity.

5. It is unclear why this Cephas cult should be regarted as bona fide Christianity as opposed to other cults that held that Jesus first appeared to the women - whether metaphorically or otherwise. It may have been the first cult to claim to have seen the resurrected Jesus, but maybe it was abandoned because Cephas and "the twelve" did not exist to claim a place in their mythology, so they instead replaced him with women as we see in Mark's gospel and twelve disciples, with one of them being Peter.

We don't know. All we know is that they were many. 1 Cor 1:12 states What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul�; another, “I follow Apollos�; another, “I follow Cephas�; still another, “I follow Christ.� .
This shows multiplicity, not unity. It supports ~BBCh not BBCh.

So Carrier has the task of presenting a clear case as to exactly how Cephas started the Church where, when and how. If he wants to claim that Peter and Cephas are the same person, he has to deal with the arguments made by spin I presented earlier.

• (2) I consider complete mythicism (death of Jesus is solely mythic or celestial) as well as Ellegaard's thesis (an actual historical Jesus started things and was executed c. 100 BC, and only "appeared" mystically, perhaps under Pilate over a century later) both to be consistent with BBCh. I do not advocate any view that is "quintessentially orthodox" or "confined to the canon" and I don't know why Hoffmann would think this, since I reject the canonical theory of historicity completely (e.g. I have argued quite publicly and vehemently for the spiritual resurrection thesis and against the view of resurrection depicted in Luke and John). I have even said here that canonical historicist theories are a dead letter, and that only some other theory of historicity, one that would not please Christians at all, has any chance of being true. Nor have I even asserted historicity here, but allow complete mythicism to be true under BBCh--yet I don't see how any mythicist position can ever be called "quintessentially orthodox."

It is quentessentially orthodox because you define bone fide Christianity within the bounds of the Canon. Because you do this, Marcionites, to you are just "strands" from the real Christianity. It means you regard Marcionism as heretical. Heresy being "An opinion or a doctrine at variance with established religious beliefs, especially dissension from or denial of Roman Catholic dogma".

This is exactly how Eusebius would view Marcionites and the Gnostic Christ cults. You are therefore eating out of the hand of Eusebius and gang.
This is only wrt how you define Christianity: you do not accomodate other sects but narrow in to Cephas (who is regarded to be [St.] Peter). Just how the Catholic Church would want it.

Of course, wrt everything else, you are not orthodox. It is fallacious of you to conflate these issues.

Now, onto Baye's Formalisation of BBCh.

• Therefore, the prior probability that Christianity began via BBCh rather than ~BBCh is the frequency with which breakaway religious movements begin via BB rather than ~BB. That frequency is clearly much higher for BB than for ~BB (as causes of novel religious movements throughout history, even in antiquity, when we have access to the evidence needed to know, BB is common, ~BB is rare). Therefore, P(H/B) > P(~H/B). I see no case to be made against this fact.

Here is the case that can be made:
First of all, it is simplistic to compare religions in this manner because:

You have not rigorously defined "Bang" or Big bang in BBCh. Is Bang a person or an event or an event to a person? Or is it a movement that later splits up to various factions?
Which person? The founder of the religion or the person who inspired the founder?
For example, in Christianity as we know it (not as Carrier defined it), Jesus is a pre-existent being. He was there in the beginning and he was with God (GJohn). He is a cosmic saviour. You cannot therefore compare Jesus to Guru Nanak, who founded Sikhism, or to Mirza Ali Mohammad of Shiraz (the Bab), who started the Bahai faith - which emerged from the Shia branch of Islam.
The latter two were ordinary men who claimed inspiration and founded followers.
Guru Nanak for example, was one of the ten �Enlightened Masters� (gurus) - not a god. He was born in a Hindu family. He saw the Muslim fighting with the Hindus and rejected both religions, emerging from a path that encouraged meditation.
According to your theory, would Guru Nanak be the big bang, his original Sikhism the big bang, or the events that inspired him the big bang?
Jesus' salvific death and resurrection holds a central place in Christian theology. Was his death the big bang or his resurrection or his appearances after his resurrection?
Or was the Cult of Cephas the big bang?

You wrote:

• "...the movement that became the modern Church is clearly an evolution of the movement that began with the appearances under Pilate to Peter and Paul and gang. It began with a singular event, in a singular place, within a singular sect

What is this singular event?
Before you define it, we cannot factor in a comparison with other religions.

For example, Haiti's vodoo religion, which was sanctioned as a religion in 2003 by the Haiti govt, and has ceremonies like marriage with legal authority) is a good example of a religion that emerged through African syncretism in the Americas. It started in Haiti during European colonization of Hispaniolas. The enforced immigration of African slaves from diffrent regions created the melting pot for vodoo to be cooked. It is said that this Afro-Caribbean religion mixed practices from many African ethnics groups such as the Fon, the Nago, the Ibos, Dahomeans, Congos, Senegalese, Haussars, Caplaous, Mondungues, Mandinge, Angolese, Libyans, Ethiopians, and the Malgaches.

Would the big bang be the slavery that brought them together? Or is this an example of ~BBCh model?

Until you define this, you cannot validly formalize your position because P(H/B), the prior probability, is based on the frequency of cases for comparable evidence. You cannot compare without a standard for comparison.

Judaism for example is a religion that emerged from a "historical experience" a creation of a "suffering" people. It is not attributable to a single "event". God made covenants with their great men, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses etc, he made promises and helped them overcome their tormentors. It is like a love story as we see, the Hebrews at times rebelled and worshipped other Gods (the golden calf) and God got a way of winning them back, from polytheism to monotheism etc etc. It was not an event, but an experience that entailed evolving and syncretizing beliefs (henotheism, monotheism, polytheism etc etc).

Would the suffering the Hebrews underwent be the event? Moses' emergence from the top of the mountain? Would the "original" Judaism be the big bang?

• P(E/H&B) is the probability of all the current evidence existing as it is on the hypothesis that BBCh, whereas P(E/~H&B) is the probability of all the current evidence existing as it is if BBCh is false. On any plain reading of the text, our earliest and most reliable source, Paul, says BBCh is true.

No, he does not. 1 Cor 1:12 states What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul�; another, “I follow Apollos�; another, “I follow Cephas�; still another, “I follow Christ.� .
This shows multiplicity, not unity. It supports ~BBCh not BBCh. Carrier's statement above is therefore not correct.

In addition, Gal 1.2,1:11 says "Paul an apostle - not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ..."
Paul shows his independence from other alleged apostles. He is stubbornly asserting his independence throughout his epistles. His eindependence of all human authorities and the divine origin of his gospel and his office.

Paul went to see Peter 2-3 years after his conversion. Maybe he wanted allies. But this (his visit) does not entail that Cephas' sect was the true sect. Neither does it imply that Paul belonged to that sect.

Carrier is ignoring what Paul is asserting (his independence from everyone else - all men - including Cephas), and claiming exactly the opposite. A visit does not mean seeking endorsement as Carrier claims. Paul says severally that he was an apostle like every other apostle.
He also had visions like Cephas. It is bizarre that Carrier would think Paul considered himself as coming from Cephas' church and hence requiring Cephas' endorsement.

• All the evidence we do have of different movements not only comes much later, but most of it shows internal evidence of being aware of the movement described by Paul.

Incorrect as shown above.

• The only non-canonical texts that can plausibly be dated to the time of Paul or before are textually insecure (i.e. these texts as we have them cannot be confirmed to be what they looked like in his time, because we know Christians tampered with them) and contain no clear reference to any Jesus actually having died and risen and now offering forgiveness of sins.

The same arguments can be made with reference to the texts Carrier refers to. The Dutch radicals for example, believe that Pauline epistles are a fabrication of the Catholic Church.
This means that the above argument doesnt favour BBCh.

• The probability that this would be the state of the evidence on P(E/H&B) is nearly 100%, since this is exactly the way the evidence would look on BBCh (considering the fact that scant evidence survives at all).

Bart Ehrman, in Orthodox Corruption of the Scripture and The Lost Christianities explains why the evidence is as it is. We do not have to believe because it looks as such.
Scholars confirm whether verisimilitude is actually fact. Carrier wants us to use verisimilitude as fact.

• The point is not that all those improbable things are impossible, or that I know they didn't happen, or even that they are false. The point is that all the connected details, taken together, are altogether less probable on ~BBCh than on BBCh. Even if you think the margin is small, I still cannot see any reasonable way to deny that the evidence is at least slightly unusual on ~BBCh yet fits BBCh like a glove. To put it another way, this evidence has to be dressed up with many excuses to fit ~BBCh, but with fewer (if any) excuses to fit BBCh. Therefore, you must agree than BBCh > ~BBCh, even if by a small margin.

A small margin will hand victory to BBCh. With a small margin, Carrier can use Baye's Theorem to gain considerable leverage. Verisimilitude is not fact. Carrier's inability to "see any reasonable way to deny" his claims is an emotive appeal and is not proof that his claims are the fact.

The mythicist position argues for a riotous diversity, so there is no room for the "small margin" that Carrier is pleading for.

• As for my own estimate, I think P(H/B) is at least 0.66 (taking all historical examples together, for every breakaway religious movement begun without BB, at least two begin with BB), which entails P(~H/B) is 0.33;

You "think". Well, I think the opposite. All evidence points to the fact that there were competing factions and several different beliefs about Jesus so I put P(~H/B) to 0.65 and P(H/B) to 0.35.
I could go on and argue a different position, but I do not see the point.

• P(H/E&B) = P(H/B) x P(E/H&B) / [P(H/B) x P(E/H&B)] + [P(~H/B) x P(E/~H&B)]
  
  P(H/E&B) = 0.66 x 0.90 / [0.66 x 0.90] + [0.33 x 0.25]
  
  P(H/E&B) = 0.594 / [0.594] + [0.0825]
  
  P(H/E&B) = 0.594 / 0.6765
  
  P(H/E&B) = 0.878 = P(BBCh) = 88%
  
  Even if we believe P(E/~H&B) is as remarkably high as 0.8 instead of 0.25 (0.8 is as high as I think P(E/~H&B) could ever be credibly estimated), we get a result of 69%. In other words, even being as charitable as possible, I don't see any way to believe ~BBCh can be true. Even at my most charitable, in my opinion it has less than a 1 in 3 chance of being a correct account of the evidence, and my strongest instincts tell me it has less than a 1 in 8 chance of being correct.

It is not dependent on your charity but evidence. Your instincts also have no evidentiary value irrespective of how strong they are. I think you have to deal with my arguments before we reexamine BBCh in the light of Baye's formula.

• But I don't see any reasonable way to advocate premises in this formula that would ever get the probability of ~BBCh above 50%. Indeed, I am very doubtful any reasonable argument could ever get it above 31%

This is basically an emotive appeal. You are labelling your arguments as reasonable because you agree with them, and contrawise to those that do not agree with them.
There was a time when reasonable men believed that the earth was flat. It never made it so.
We must look at the evidence. The facts. Not what seems fashionable or "nice" or reasonable.

• (5) Hoffmann wants to redefine the word "Christianity" so broadly as to render the word meaningless (rather like Laupot, who wants it to refer to any and all messianic movements with Davidic pretenders!). I see no point in such semantic games. There are only two senses of "Christianity" that matter here: the sense used in the earliest ancient sources (e.g. what did Tacitus or Pliny mean when they spoke of "Christians"?) and the sense in modern use for the movement that became the contemporary complex of Christian sects.

All "senses of Christianity" matter here. You yourself claimed we have to adopt a holistic approach. Plus, Tuckett for example, defined Christians as "Jesus followers". That is not me. That is a reputable NT scholar.
Tacitus and Pliny do not define who Christians are so it is unclear why you mention them here. Their passages regarding the persecutions of Christians have been found unreliable by a number of scholars including Prof. Darrel Doughty, Gordon Stein and Keresztes.
In any case, your "sense" of Christianity is different from the above two.

• So far, for ~BBCh, all I have seen are conjectures heaped upon contentious reinterpretations of ambiguous evidence. That does not fly. I know. History is my job. So if you want to convince actual historians of your thesis, I am telling you here and now: you are guaranteed to fail. Until you start using our methods, instead of your inventive nexus of assumptions.

Provide three examples please. BBCh is based on one unorthodox definition of Christianity.

• (6) Hoffmann says I "quite unjustifiably define Christianity under the narrow confines of Romans 16:25-26 and 1 Cor 15:3-5" even though this is "inconsistent with what we know." Know? Inconsistent with what some conjecture, maybe. But it is not inconsistent with anything we are justified in claiming we actually know. Hoffmann seems to be playing fast and loose with the definition of "knowledge." Indeed, he makes the very curious claim that my definition is not consistent with "Marcionism (who believed Jesus' presence on earth was an illusion)." I have no idea where or how he sees a contradiction. Where in Romans 16:25-26 and 1 Cor 15:3-5 does it say Jesus' presence on earth was not an illusion? Romans 16:25-26 and 1 Cor 15:3-5 are consistent with any kind of presence on earth, real or illusory, and also consistent with no presence on earth at all! Marcion not only agreed with Romans 16:25-26 and 1 Cor 15:3-5, but was deviating from sects unmistakably deriving from Paul and Cephas (Marcion, for example, was certainly fully aware of even the canonical gospels as well as Paul's letters). So Marcion fully corroborates my view, and offers no support to Hoffmann's.

Your theory is that Marcion derived from the Cult of Cephas. ~BBCh has it that Marcionism represents a divergent Christian cult before Constantine and company amalgamated the various cults and dispensed with wtaht they did not like.
It can therefore be argued that. Marcion supports both ~BBCh and BBCh.

• Hoffmann says "the fact is that the Lost Sayings Gospel Q was used by the evangelists" but so was Daniel and the Psalms and Enoch, none of which are Christian texts. He is simply putting the cart before the horse and assuming Q represents a pre-Christian sect instead of a mystical sayings tradition shared by many Jews that was later "reinterpreted" as being the voice of "the" Jesus "seen" by Cephas and gang. Hoffmann's assumption is no more demonstrable than the other. And unproven theories cannot be used as "facts" to argue a case.
  
  Nor even if Q came from Christ-believers (which is an unproven theory, not a fact) can Hoffmann establish what he wants--that the text derived from any sect that did not derive from Paul or Cephas. He says Q never uses the term "Christ" and excludes a creed, but why does that permit assuming its author did not believe in Christ or the Creed? A list of sayings of the lord is just that: a list of sayings of the lord. It cannot be assumed that such a list would necessarily include a creed, when its very genre is to include moral debates and apocalyptic wisdom instead. Likewise, an author could certainly choose the style of starting each declamation with "Jesus said," and that stylistic choice would not entail the author did not also believe this Jesus was the Christ, or that he hadn't died and risen again. Again, that the author of Q did not believe such things is a theory, not a fact. Again, you can't use theories as if they were facts in need of explanation.

I yield to this.

• (8) I have tried to make clear that I am not challenging the claim that "the Jesus movement was already on the scene in another form, several other forms" which were "not resurrection-centered." Hoffmann seems to keep ignoring me every time I try to point this out. Yes, certainly, as I said before, these movements may well have existed. "Jesus" is simply code for Savior, and there is no doubt there were numerous Jewish Savior movements awaiting the messiah or perhaps even claiming to communicate with a divine or mystical messiah. But these movements are not Christianity. Not a single one of them could be mistaken as Christianity in the sense of the word used by Tacitus or Pliny or anyone else in antiquity. Hence the ancient word "Christian" did not refer to these Jesus movements, nor does any current sect of "Christianity" derive from them--except through the breakaway movement started by Cephas and boosted by Paul.

This I have dealt with above. Plus, by the definition "Jesus followers" Gnostic Christ cults are Christians proper. So are Marcionites. So are the members of the cult of Naasenes.

• (9) I never said Paul "started" Christianity.

Carrier had stated earlier in this post :

• Since BB theory is based primarily on Paul, and is corroborated by the earliest history of the matter ever written (Acts),

Perhaps he can explain what he meant.

• (10) I see no evidence that there was any "Jamesian" church that did not derive from the Church of Cephas.

What would that evidence entail? You already constructed your definition of Christianity to engulf all possible cases. So that wouldn't prove your formulation of BBCh as correct, but convenient.

• Each of the gospels represents a different way of interpreting the basic core gospel begun by Cephas and sold to Paul, whether they knew this or not.

We have no reason to believe that the theological similarities are based on dependence. The Josua/Jesus (Yah-saves) cults were many.Cephas' cult was not the only one, even if it was the only one recorded and or preserved by the Church.

• Unless Luke was supernaturally psychic, he must have been relying on a genuine historical tradition.

False dichotomy. There are several other possible explanations. He could have relied on a genuine historical tradition but twisted it. He could have made up 90% of Acts easily because he was familiar with its geopolitical make-up etc.
He does not state he was relying on any tradition. That is jumpint to conclusions. He does not even identify himself as Luke.

• And, again, this is not the only argument for historical truth in Luke (e.g. Luke is incredibly knowledgeable of obscure local details in several parts of his story--especially for his narratives of the coastal Greek-Asia region, suggesting either that Luke comes from there, or was relying on a source who did; other arguments are advanced by Hemer, whom I don't always agree with, but often do).

Maybe so. It can also be argued that he placed Paul in the places he was most familiar with.

• (14) Hoffmann advances methods no historian accepts. For example, he says "I maintain that the only sections of Acts that are to be accepted as historical are those that have been corroborated with external, independent sources." Sorry, that's too black and white. Yes, without external corroboration, reliance drops--but it is a drop in degree, not "all or nothing." Indeed, most ancient history has no corroboration (consider almost everything we know about the reign of Trajan--almost no detail is found in more than one source). We assess the trustworthiness of a historical text holistically: for example, an uncorroborated statement in Polybius has a high probability of being true, because we know Polybius used very good methods and have confirmed him as reliable in many respects (though not in every respect). Conversely, an uncorroborated statement in Suetonius, though still afforded a better chance of being true than 50%, still does not rise to the probability afforded a comparable claim in Polybius. And so on. Thus, the weight of historical claims in Acts is not 100% or 0% but somewhere in between, depending on what is being claimed, why it mattered, and so on. Moreover, we do not decide solely on that, but through an ABE regarding all relevant evidence--in other words, Acts corroborates BBCh by agreeing with the basic account in Paul, and the two facts taken together increase the probability that Acts is telling the truth on some other related details, not just where they agree. Again, it does not increase this probability to 100%. But it increases it all the same. This is how historians really work: they weigh and consider evidence on a scale, and in light of the whole body of relevant evidence, and not with some black-and-white hack-and-slash technique like Hoffmann employ's.

I have shown that AActs had an agenda. I have shown that AActs lied about Paul. AActs presents fictitious examples as real. Therefore AActs cannot be trusted except in cases where external sources support this.
I maintain this. And IMO, it is consistent to the Historian's methods that Carrier explains above.
"black-and-white hack-and-slash technique" is just rhetoric.

• (15) Hoffmann says "We cannot assume, on the basis of degree of supernaturalism of the events, that Luke is attempting to write history" -- since Luke says he is writing history (Lk. 1:1-4), it is an established fact that he was attempting to do so

How he intended his work to be regarded is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether Acts can be relied on as accurately presenting the events as they happened.

• "A viper bites Paul and injects a whole fangful of venom. Paul shakes it off uselessly. This naturalistic enough?" Yes. Not only because there is no mention in the text of it "injecting a whole fangful of venom" (why do you add this?), nor does the text give any technical designation (it simply says "snake," using a word also applied to constrictors, so we don't even know what kind of snake it was), but also because snake bites are often naturally survivable (I know of people who have been bit by rattlers many times with no ill effect). Moreover, the circumstances are scientifically realistic (in a way Luke or his source understood: the snake was drawn out by the heat of the fire Paul just built). Contrast this with talking snakes and dogs, for example, or the bedbugs that obey the commands of the Apostle John, which are reported in the Acts of Peter and the Acts of John.

Acts of John is a red herring. We are discussing Luke. Besides, in Acts we have passages where voices come from heaven as I explain in my footnotes.
Several translations say "viper". A viper is a poisonus snake, not a constrictor. And wild boas don't fasten on people's hands.
Since the viper 'fastened" on his hand as opposed to strike it, we can assume it injected a whole fanf ful of poison.
The context of the passage assumes that Paul should have got poisoned.
I deal with Luke's other miracles at the footnotes.

• Ask yourself: Why is it only the lame who are healed by Peter's shadow? Because science has confirmed psychosomatic and placebo cures for apparent paralysis in cases without a confirmed injury or lesion.

Wrong. Acts states that all of them were healed.
Acts 5:15-16 ((NIV)

15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil[a] spirits, and all of them were healed

• (17) Hoffmann says "I am not persuaded that Acts was written to narrate history, but to create a history that served certain agendas." Why assume these are different things? Ancient histories were routinely both. Even Polybius and Thyucidides wrote their histories to "serve certain agendas" and they certainly selected and altered things to suit that agenda, and it is all downhill from them to every other historian of antiquity. Luke is certainly changing and adding to his sources. For example, Luke is certainly writing or rewriting the speeches in Acts to sell his agenda, and recrafting other narratives to carry a moral or a point of dogma or symbolism--as did most other historians of the day. You can't take every text and every claim and treat it as black or white, as 100% true or 100% false. History doesn't work that way. If it did, we could claim to know nothing about the ancient world of any great importance.

I agree with this. But it doesnt matter much since you don't need Acts for BBCh.

• (19) Hoffmann dismisses Hippolytus as unreliable--yet he is the one who was relying on Hippolytus to make his case! Maybe Hoffmann was unaware of the fact that the only source that exists for the Naasene hymn he quoted was Hippolytus. I merely pointed out the context of that hymn as it appears in Hippolytus, in which Hippolytus cites and discusses several source texts, not just that one hymn. Hoffmann can't just arbitrarily cherry-pick what he wants from Hippolytus. Why are we to trust he got the hymn right, but erred in every other quotation and paraphrase? I am not saying we can't so argue--but we have to have a good reason. Evidence must confirm our selection as apt. But if the only source we have on the Naasenes says these Naasenes derived from the Cephas sect, it cannot be argued that we have evidence they "didn't." What kind of method is that? Either we have evidence they did, or we have no evidence whether they did or not. At no point do we get out of Hippolytus evidence that they didn't derive from the Cephas sect.

We know Hippolytus was an apologist therefore he had a motive and was therefore biased. He was also fanciful and uncritical. What favours his Cult in his writings must be weighed carefully

The Naasenes could not have derived from the Cephas sect because:
1. They worshipped the Serpent.
2. They hold that knowledge, not faith or salvific death, is the principle of perfection and salvation.
3. They hold that the Kingdom of heaven is to be sought within man.

These are very incompatible beliefs to the ones of the Cephas cult. Therefore, the Naasenes, even though they had a Jesus/Joshus/Yah saves idea (which was common at the time), could not have derived from the cult of Cephas.

• (22) Hoffmann says "Carrier assumes that the sect he refers to as 'Christians' (Paul, Peter and gang) had monopoly (or copyright) over the use of 'Jesus' and the earthly salvific act and therefore, all other sects that clearly use the same ideas have ipso facto borrowed those ideas from Christianity." That is not what I argued. To the contrary, it is precisely because there was no way for them to assert control over doctrine that the religion so quickly fragmented into multiple sectarian views.

Why would they have asserted control unless they owned it - or claimed to own it. It is the same. Arrogating themselves the task of "controlling" the use and application of the doctrine would be similar to holding copyright in modern context.
That is what I was arguing. But your statement below shows I was not clear so you may have missed my point.

• This is the exact opposite of being able to claim any kind of monopoly.

I meant monopoly in the sense that "only" Cephas' cult were capable and did conceive the idea of a risen Jesus. In the sense that only they could and did imagine the ideas therefore all the other cults copied from them. I did not mean to convey the idea of monopoly as in control.

• As to my conclusion that all later movements stem from theirs, that is not based on this straw ipso facto reasoning, but a complete, and logically valid, ABE. We do in fact have many direct reasons to believe BBCh, yet no direct reasons to believe in ~BBCh, and very few indirect reasons to believe in ~BBCh, and even those are specious at best, requiring too many groundless assumptions.

This is using verisimilitude to imply fact. The fact that it looks like BBCh does not mean therefore BBCh. We need evidence to establish this.

• I was not making an inference--I was stating a material fact. No document dated before Cephas contains any doctrine that anyone in antiquity called Christian or would have called Christian (as opposed to merely messianic or mystical or both).

As I have indicated, Scholars do not subscribe to this narrow definition of "Christian".

• (24) I also did not argue that "if it is post Peter Paul and gang, and contains ideas of a saviour dying on earth, it is Christian (influenced by Christianity) even if it does not say so" as a direct inference, but as a conclusion from an ABE (i.e. considering all the evidence, probably that is the case--since it is at present the most probable explanation of the facts, and there is no actual evidence for the contrary).

Maybe so. I hope we will see a formal presentation of this ABE.

• (25) As to the statement that "if it post-dates Peter Paul and is being used by Christians, but doesn't contain ideas of a saviour dying on earth for salvific purposes, it is still not Christian" is not anything I claimed, but obviously just as the Christians used the OT, without the OT being Christian, so could they use other documents in the same way. There is no plausible reason why Christians would only ever use texts that came from themselves--even supposing they could tell where texts came from in the first place (a particular difficulty--a Christian could "assume" a text has a Christian pedigree simply because it sounds agreeable).

This is a sound argument. I think we only disagree on your definition of Christian. You have moved it back to the vanishing point, past Paul, to a nicknamed individual the Catholics believe is St. Peter and is represented by the Pope on earth.

• (26) Hoffmann says "Carrier needs to remove Pilate from the requirement because Paul doesn't mention Pilate in his epistles." Yes, if you assume 1 Timothy is not Pauline (I am agnostic about that--the arguments against authenticity are not very convincing to me). I did not intend to make this a requirement, but a suggested possible element of a historicist theory (which can be interpreted in different ways, not just as orthodox Christians think).

Okay, so Timothy goes with Acts.

• There is no direct evidence for ~BBCh. That is a fact. There is direct evidence for BBCh. That is a fact. The evidence there is for ~BBCh is highly speculative and open to multiple interpretations and doesn't really prove anything. The arguments against the evidence for BBCh are weak and tendentious and even if believed, get us only to agnosticism, not to ~BBCh. Finally, the evidence from the history and sociology of religion lends a higher prior probability to BB, not to ~BB. In the end, that leaves us with a higher final probability for BBCh overall. No matter how much you might debate how much more probable BBCh is than ~BBCh, BBCh is still the most probably correct theory of Christian origins. And so far I have seen nothing at all that would challenge that conclusion.

These are assertions and assumptions and they are an accurate representation of your own, personal, point of view. However, they need evidentiary support. For example, you cannot correctly claim "There is no direct evidence for ~BBCh. That is a fact", after I have shown that several scholars believe Christianity's formative years comprised a number of competing Christian sects. You are just making declarations. And your conclusion is based on a narrow and orthodox definition of Christianity. Your definition, Ascension of Isaiah for example, is not a Christian document. This is radical and against mainstream NT scholarship.
I look forward to a formal construction of ABE for BBCh that can be meaningfully tested via Bayes' Theorem.

Footnotes

[1] As much as carrier wants to explain away the miracles in Acts and shoehorn them into naturalistic strait-jackets, Acts is an unreliable document for several reasons. We have already seen that Acts was an attempt to create an orthodoxy among the competing sects and meant to sideline those outside the Jerusalem assembly. Paul was cobbled up into Acts but the effort was not meticulously executed. Luke contradicted Paul in several ways. Acts was exhibits a Judaisint tendency. For example, it denies Paul the status and title of apostle and reserves that designation exclusively to the twelve. Gunther Bornkamm says in Paul that "This primitive Judaistic tendency regards the apostolic office as instituted by Jesus on earth confined to the 12 eyewitnesses and guaranteeing the correct tradition. Paul, on the other hand, is not an apostle but the great missionary of the gentiles legitimated in Jerusalem"
Bornkamm adds that Paul abandoned the Pharisaic zeal for righteousness and counted everything as a "loss" and "refuse" and found salvation only in faith. In contrast, Acts represents Paul as the convinced Pharisee, continuing faithful to the law of his fathers and to the belief in the resurrection of the dead, a belief held particularly by the Pharisees and now confirmed by Jesus' resurrection.
There are no sources cited for the claims in Acts. This is in contrast to Luke 1:1-4 which mentions literary predecessors. The author of Acts does not identify himself at all and this makes one question the sincerity of the effort.
The author of Acts told outright lies. For example, the author of Acts (AActs) made up the story of Paul being present at Stephen's stoning (Acts 22:4).

Nowhere does Paul himself speak of any persecuting in Jerusalem. Bornkamm also argues that Luke made up Acts 7:58; 8:1. Paul could not have been present in the scenes as portrayed because we see in Galatians 1:22 that Paul was unknown to the Churches in Judaea and therefore, before that, to the Churches in Jerusalem: they only knew of him when the antagonist of the past had changed to the successful missionary in Syria and Cicilia.

Paul's appearance in Damascus was also made up by the AActs. Paul allegedly went there with authority of the high priest to drag the Christians in bonds before the Sanhedrins in Jerusalem. Under Roman law, Bornkamm writes, the supreme court never posessed such a sphere of jurisdiction. Damascus is far beyond the frontiers of Judaea!

We all know that psychosomatic diseases can be cured miraculously. Carrier claims that the healings were successful because the lame and demon-posessed were ill due to psychosomatic reasons. This is a weak argument because it assumes that all the lepers, madmen, and cripples are suffering from psychological problems. This is obviously false. Leprosy is not psychosomatic. I am sure there may have been cases of sick people due to Bilharzia, smallpox, congenital diseases and so on. It is therefore false for Carrier to imagine that all the ill people suffered from psychosomatic diseases.

Carrier gives examples of healings done by televangelists like Benny Hinn. It is a false analogy because he is comparing a literary creation presented as history, with stage-managed commercial activities which are punctuated with a few instances of psychosomatic cases. If they relied on psychosomatic cases alone to line their wallets, they could have been out of business a long time ago.

Besides, Acts does have highfalutin miracles. For example:

Suddenly there was a noise from the sky which sounded like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 2: 2-4

This wild-eyed miraculous claim with noises from the sky and strong winds clearly shows that AActs was not keen on being realistic or on reporting accurately. Maybe Carrier will now claim that noises from the sky (besides thunder) were common those days?

Carrier claims that because earthquakes were common (he offers no support for this claim), one earthquake could have immediately followed the prayer of Paul and Silas to open the prison doors for them.

Please. Since there were noises those days, how about this: Evil spirits came out from many people with a loud cry, and many paralyzed and lame people were healed. So there was great joy in that city. (Acts 8:7 - 8)

Carrier offers no methodology that we can use to pick the corn from the crap in Acts. He is just emphatic that Acts is not 100% fiction. Until Carrier comes up with a rigorous methodology, Acts is useless to this discussion. But this is okay because Carrier says BBCh does not need Acts.

[2] Timothy is not reliable in terms of authorship and content. Timothy 16:3 for example portrays Paul as one who is faithful to the law and who even circumcizes. Yet Pauline epistles (Galatians 3:23-25) have Paul state that the law has run its course and should be suspended. This means that Timothy was not faithful to representing the facts as they were. So, Timothy goes with Acts.

It appeared you started this post with a duplicate of everything from "We have made a lot of progress" to "...represented by the Pope on earth." I have removed this duplicate text and placed it in storage in case there is anything missing that needs to be replaced. Let me know. - Amaleq13

andrewcriddle

FWIW the linguistic argument and the historical/archaeological argument are somewhat separate.

It could in principle be true both that

a/ There was a small town called Nazareth in 1st century CE Galilee at the 'traditional' location and known about by the Gospel writers..

and b/ NAZWRAIOS (as distinct from NAZARHNOS) does not come from the name of the town but has some quite other meaning.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Two points:

• The tomb of Caiaphas has been found and in it the name is represented as QP( and QYP(, which could just as easily yield the name Cephas in Greek (Khfas, usually thought to be from the Aramaic, KYP)), the major difference being the initial Qof and not a Kaf, but both are reduced into Greek as kappa.
• Paul is quite vocal about other gospels in circulation that he doesn't approve of, eg Gal 1:7ff "any other gospel than the one we have preached...", 2 Cor 11:14, "if he that comes preaches another Jesus...". These are contemporary with Paul and I think exclude Cephas, whose message is apparently accepted by Paul.

spin

badger3k

Is it just me, or did Mr Hoffman's last post duplicate itself? Just wanted to point out that some editing may be needed. Otherwise, very interesting, even if it's beyond my present knowledge.

spin

That neither explains the mention of Nazara, nor how you can derive nazarhnos from Nazareth. There is no reason to have Nazara if there was a town called Nazareth, known to the gospel writers.

Ted Hoffman

I have spent some time immersing myself in the deep waters of postmodernism and literary theory and can now respond meaningfully to Joel now that I have soaked in what I could.
It is important to note that this is not in any way a defense of Levi Straus' view of myth. My effort is directed at demonstrating that critiquing Doherty's work from a structuralist standpoint is futile since Doherty's work does not lend itself to such criticism.
I also clarify a few related issues in the Ebla thread that Joel started.

This is not entirely correct Joel.

Carrier conceded that he was wrong to:
1. State that Inanna was incarnated in hell.
2. Employ a Platonic interpretation on Sumerian texts.

But he (Carrier) maintained that:
1. "The parallel between the Inanna tale we have and Doherty's theory consists solely of the death and resurrection not taking place on earth"

2. "Hoffman is right on the money regarding the methodological issues in this debate. It is not necessary for Doherty to prove Jesus is a carbon copy of some prior deity, or that he was even intended to be such"

Doherty maintained that:
"Carrier's claim of parallel is still valid, and Joel's criticism is too severe, not to mention misguided."

Correct. But this is in an internet discussion and is not available in his book. It shows that, in a way, Doherty found Levi's general idea appealing. It does not show that The Jesus Puzzle is based, or derives from Levi Straus' work.
Correct.

The structures said something both about the anthropologist and also about the culture he/she is studying.
Derrida also criticised Levi Strauss' binary oppositions as failing to account for the normative agendas they conceal.
Lessons from Strauss' work (and the demise of structuralism) also include the idea that there is no priveledged vantage point from which one can objectively view theories of myth as a phenomenon because they exist essentially at the same level as their object.

1. Doherty does not undertake structuralist approach in his analysis of Pauline epistles. He does not structurally delineate Paul from his writings so as to warrant the expression "the words relate to the author". At least, not in a fashion similar to Umberto Eco's Addresser-Message-Addressee model, or Riffaterre's intertextual structural matrix of hypograms, retroactive and heuristic reading, lexical semes and so on.
Joel is making a structuralist judgement (or assesment) regarding a work that does not employ a structuralist approach. Joel's criticism can only be justified in examining for example, Elam's semiotic analysis of Hamlet or Eco's analysis of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels to bring out narrative combinatories. Or the triadic Peirceian model Joel introduces of "the sign-object-interpretant"

For Joel to criticize Doherty on the grounds of how "the words relate to the author", Joel would have to synthesize Doherty's work and come up with a model of objects (signifieds), signifiers, narrative and interpretants, that is derivable from Doherty's approach. He would then be able to criticize that model. As it is, Doherty's methodology is fluid and consistent with historico-critical methods and textual criticism as employed in NT scholarship.

Doherty does not at any time engage in structural linguistics when analyzing the texts.

But Joel does try to construct a structuralist model from Doherty's writings, even though very limited and somewhat strained:

Celsus' assertion that "kata sarka and kata pneuma can also be understood as a juxtaposition of opposites" is not, IMO, an "alternative reading" but an analysis of the interpretations provided. An analysis that brings out the dichotomy.

First of all, Doherty's interpretation is not based on a [presupposed] dichotomy. It is Paul who offers two elements about the son: kata sarka and kata pneuma in Romans 1:3-4.
And Doherty offers a grammatical and conceptual interpretation. At best, Celsus can fault Paul for introducing binary oppositions in Romans. Not Doherty.
If he wants to include Doherty (the interpretant) in his analysis, then it is Joel himself who is constructing a structuralist model that includes the interpretant (Doherty), the interpreted (kata sarka / kata pneuma) and the author (Paul).

Secondly, my reading is not consistent with the idea that Lévi-Straussian paradigm of binary opposition was employed to "elucidate" meaning. Instead, I understand that Strauss argued that the "deep structure" behind myths was based on binary oppositions and that he used these binary oppositions not to elucidate myth, but to explain the origins of myth, or the concepts underpinning most mythical superstructures. Thus, for example, God and Satan (characters) would represent good and evil (functions) and God would then be linked to Adam and Satan linked to Eve with Adam and eve based on the binary oppositions of male and female. Thus an entire cosmology (e.g Genesis) is derived from the synchronic universe where we find male and female.

Straussean myths were also concerned with describing "origin' entities (as opposed to folktales and epics) and this, I believe, is partly why he (Strauss) felt justified in employing his mythemes universally. But kata sarka has got nothing to do with mediation between the individual and the extra-individual (like myths do), and neither does it have anything to do with establishing a basic system of values (as epics and folktales do). It is a simple expression and Doherty is trying to find out what Paul meant when he used it, not what it meant.
If there are any binary oppositions, they are from Paul, and not introduced by Doherty in an effort to elicidate.

2. Generally, structuralist linguistics employ a Saussurean model of the application of the sign to the study of language. Of course, Semiotics, or semiology has shifted theoretical gears several times and undergone a lot of change even beyond Peirce's trichotomies and cover lots of areas like Gerard Genette's work on the boundaries of narrative and the distinctions between diegesis and mimesis, narrative, discourse and description, Greimas' modal syntax that attempts to develop a discursive syntax underpinned on aspectualities, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's proprioception and Rene Thom's perception saliency and so on, Barthes' hermeneutic, semic, symbolic, proairetic and cultural categorizations of signifiers just to name a few.
We have semiologists like Ubersfeld who see semiotics of theatre texts as made of relationships between dialogue and didascalia (stage production techniques). But I digress.

The upshot of this is that Doherty's work can hardly be regarded as an effort in semiotics or structural linguistics. Doherty's work does not lend itself to a structuro-linguistic critique and therefore, any such criticism is off the mark.

3. Doherty's work emerges from a very different epistemological context and tradition compared to Levi Strauss' for example, or Desmond Morris. Doherty covers issues regarding the dating of texts, reliability of the texts (e.g. Papias), historical issues (Christian History, Hellenistic era, Josephus, Apostles and Ministries...). He examines cults like Docetism, Marcionism, Shepherd of Hermas etc. He examines texts like Isaiah, Daniel, Apocalypse of Adam, Ascension of Isaiah, Mark, Gospel of Thomas just to mention a few. And throughout, he doesn't break down the texts to any structure in the manner we can compare to the ones semiologists engage in.

Doherty examines the history [of], the texts, and uses historico-critical methods to come up with an argument for the best explanation regarding the emergence of Christianity. He argues, based on the balance of probabilities of what the available evidence points to, that the Pauline Jesus was an heavenly saviour figure who underwent salvific death in a sublunar realm and was later euhemerized by writers like AMatt and ALuke.

This is a very different kettle of fish from, for example, Barthe's breakdown of narrative analysis to multiple levels that have hierarchical, distributive and integrative relationships. Or Jan Mukarovsky's semiotic framework that breaks down arts of work to a perceivable signifier (the artist's creation), signification (aesthetics) and the relationship with what is signified (social context). Based on these congruous examples, I have great difficulty understanding how one can expect a reading of The Jesus Puzzle to bring out "how the words relate to the author" because the remark presupposes a theoretical divide between the words and the author and thereby requiring a linkage.

Doherty's intent is not to explain the interactions of objects in the texts, but to tie together all the evidence to provide a veritable explanation regarding the origin of Christianity and its central character of Jesus.

On the contrary, Doherty embraces a diachronic interpretation of Pauline epistles (which have had the interpreting commentators who are heavily influenced by gospel tradition - except for a few like C.K. Barrett - and even then, in unique cases like in interpreting kata sarka), not a synchronic one like Strauss.

Doherty's disagreement with the idea that "Hebrew and Roman myth with Sumerian is a mistake" was not based on the notion that [the] myth in question is/was universal.

It was based on something totally different. Doherty's chastisement was driven by his perception that Celsus was letting the failure of Levi Straus'universalism of mythemes blind him (Celsus) from seeing that parallels help us see what myths qualify as ideal types. Celsus' preoccupation with a post-structuralist take on Levi straus was preventing him from seeing that ideal types are "yardsticks distilled from common features, yardsticks employed in turn to measure and make sense of the features the phenomena do not have in common", as Price pointed out.

Doherty's mention of Levi Strauss in his mudball example must have led Celsus to believe that the methodology behind The Jesus Puzzle was same as the one employed by Levi Straus. Doherty's approach is a case-by-case basis that attempts to tie up all the evidence.

Unlike Levi Strauss, Doherty is very sensitive to socio-historical context. That is why he talks of Platonism (middle), Epicureanism, Stoicism and other rationalist philosophies when examining Paul's the cultural milieu that was Paul's background.

You employ a meaning of deconstructionism that I am unfamiliar with. I understand deconstructionism to involve examining a text and providing multiple interpretations to it and thereby show that meaning (or language) is unstable (or arbitrary). Deconstructionism show that meaning is not in a fossilized by an author, but is a reflection of the reader, who picks the interpretation that appeals to them. Doherty does no such thing. And if he did, he would only be showing us that his interpretation is arbitrary and therefore an excercise in futility.

Doherty instead offers an alternative, or competing interpretation of the texts against historical Jesus theorists. To state that "Doherty's own project is a deconstruction of New Testament texts" is comparable to stating that a detective arguing for murder in the case of a dead person is "deconstructing" the murder scene and ditto one arguing for suicide.

Celsus' usage of the expression "totalising paradigm" is also puzzling. In the context of the discussion (Levi Strauss' binary oppositions to explain a universal phenomena), Strauss sought to uncover universal patterns or truths regarding the human mind itself.
Christianity, which is what Doherty's work is about, was at the time restricted to Palestine. And his focus is mainly on Paul - wrt archons and kata sarka. With such a clear boundary, its unclear what "totalising paradigm" is all about.

Doherty does not argue that kata sarka has only one interpretation. He knows it has a semantic range. He does not construct any denotative system for interpretation, or derive a taxonomy based on hermenuetics (which is less "practical" compared to exegesis). Rather, he attempts an exegesis. He argues that his interpretation is more sensible compared to the other interpretations. Carrier agrees and states that the conventional reading is "barely intelligible". C.K. Barret agrees too. As for archons, over eight scholars agree with Doherty's interpretation of Pauline usage of the expression.

Very interesting observations.
Whether or not the texts in question are subject to multiple interpretations is debatable. Semantic range does not equal multiple interpretations. What appear as multiple interpretations can be shown to include "barely intelligible" meanings when contextual issues are factored in. Once a framework of Pauline Christology has been fleshed out, the loose multiple-interpretations viewpoint falls off like a dead tick. Absent an interpretive framework, trivial multiple interpretations can be posited but they have no substantive exegetical force orvalue in the real scheme of things.

About underdetermination of data, well, it depends on what one wants ultimately. Some people choose, or are satisfied, to withold judgement (agnostics). Others want to come up with explanations of whatever is available, even if it is little. Even law courts talk about "reasonable doubt". It is always "doubt", never certainty. Even Popper viewed scientific theories as tentative conjectures. It does not stop scientists from coming up with new theories everyday and spend resources investigating them (GUT, superstring theory etc).

I am personally for seeking ways of passing the reasonable doubt barrier. Who needs certainty anyway?

Maybe HJ agnostics .

Ted Hoffman

In the final instalment of his response to Muller, Doherty tackles his challenger and, with studied patience, brings to bear his analytical skills upon Muller's critique like a blowtorch on butter. Reading through the response, one is forced to admit that Muller failed to live up to the task and his challenge was below the mark: he makes it too easy for Doherty because Muller's logic is internally inconsistent (showing poor or incomplete thought), his presentation sometimes obscure or downright grotesque, his logic flawed and often, he charges off blindly in the different direction from the one of scholarship, like a bull. Convinced of his infallibility. And in the process, he steps on several mines and the ensuing explosions often leaves the wincing readers covering themselves as the smithereens fall from the sky.

As he treads the thin rope of agnosticism between Muller and Doherty, Carrier occasionally (3 times) end up contradicting himself and this further shows how untenable it increasingly becomes to remain agnostic when one evaluates both sides of the divides with an objective eye as Carrier does.

Some illustrations of these slips that occasion walking on the agnostic tightrope:
Carrier:
Doherty notes: Carrier is somewhat contradictory in his final statement above. If there was no necessity to demonstrate that Jesus had died, presumably because everyone knew and accepted it, why would Paul even bother to "prove it by scripture"?

Another example of Carrier slipping off the agnostic tight-rope:
Carrier:
Doherty notes: Carrier constantly emphasizes the fact that my evidence is *consistent* with my theory but doesn't thereby prove it, and I'll of course agree to that. But this very consistency speaks volumes. When each explanation of a passage or problem inherent in the record enjoys consistency and agreement with all the others, when each makes good sense while those of the other side make less so (as Carrier implies by his use of descriptives like "strange" and "bizarre"), when together they form a logical paradigm that covers every aspect of the evidence, whereas the other side's picture does not (giving me the "win" in the Argument to the Best Explanation, as Carrier has admitted), then we are definitely not dealing with two equally weak "ad hoc" theories, between which there is no basis on which to make any kind of choice.

And another.
Carrier:
Doherty notes: First of all, his statement about "historicists" is hardly accurate, and contains a contradiction. I'm certainly not aware of all historicists (which presumably includes New Testament scholars) agreeing that Paul found the content of his gospel in the Old Testament. In fact, they are usually at pains to claim that he "received" it from previous apostles, those who had known the historical Jesus. They hardly agree that the kata tas graphas of 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 conforms to my own suggested meaning, that scripture was the source of Paul's doctrines about the Christ rather than a prophecy of them.

I think that when a sharp mind like Carrier's starts running into contradictions, it is a sign that there could be a problem with the position he is occupying. It is interesting to see how the confusion between "allegorical" and "mythical" creates a thicket into which both Carrier and Muller get entangled in.

I see two problems with Doherty's response. The first, a nitpick. To counter the common argument that Paul didn't mention historical details about Jesus because they were common knowledge, Doherty writes that Ignatius repeatedly insists that Jesus had been crucified by Pontius Pilate and born of Mary. Whereas I agree with the main thrust of his argument on that point, I suspect that "insists" may be a hyperbole on what Ignatius is actually doing.

Doherty also writes "Carrier calls for some explication on my part of the meaning of Davidic descent in Paul's mind, but I can't supply it. ...Thus, I am not going to venture to say how Paul understood his scriptural-based idea that the divine Christ he believed in was related to David."

This, IMO, was the lowest point in the write-up. It was as if, at that particular point, Doherty gave up trying to explain. The reader gets the impression that somehow, Doherty has lost his thunder at that juncture...

Other than these and a few fomatting errors, it makes interesting reading. Doherty manages to make very fine points on Hebrews 8:4, born of woman and other common banana peels that are often flung in the path of the mythicists.

Carrier's analysis of Doherty's thesis has served to help Doherty tighten up his arguments while at the same time dispel the erstwhile impression that mythicism is not respectable. Critiques from keen and objective people like Celsus, I am sure, will help clarify issues on JM hypothesis and we hope to see them in future.

Richard Carrier

Well. No one listens. This is why I don't waste my time in these forums. There is no real effort to understand or dialogue here. It's like talking to a wall. This is the last post I will make here. The reasons why will become quite clear below. I apologize for the rash tone, but it reflects my exasperation. It is my intention to convey the limits of my patience and, hopefully, knock some sense into people here. I mean no ill will by it. It's just the only way it seems I have any chance of getting through, having otherwise repeated myself politely several times.



A permanent structure is a permanent structure. Changing the meaning of the phrase has no effect whatever on the point: Nazareth existed. It was an inhabited place. End of story. Why you don't get that this ends the argument astonishes and amazes me. Do you seriously wish to continue denying that Nazareth was not a settlement in the early 1st century? If so, then you are a lost cause. If, on the other hand, you want to maintain something "other" than that Nazareth did not exist, don't waste your time, for I am not interested in anything else than whether it existed and could have been as the NT texts describe.



You did not read a damned word I wrote, did you? The evidence is of workrooms, storerooms, ritual baths, and inhabited spaces--all carved from the rock. Here you are <edit> assuming the evidence consists only of tombs cut from the rock. <edit> If you cannot read what I write, why should I write anything at all? Again, I am obviously wasting my time here.



Correct. Composed of marble. Only some of the column bases and capitals and other fragments survive as rubble, the structure itself does not survive. The fact of their elegant carving and the fact they were marble, and the evidence of mosaic work, entails this synagogue was very expensive, indicating a tremendous increase in wealth and status in the Jewish town.

If you would actually read what I write, you would notice I am not talking about an expensive marble synagogue, but a cheap calcite synagogue. If you aren't going to actually learn or do any of the research I have done, then please just get out of this business altogether. To go on pontificating in ignorance can only make things worse, not better. You are not helping our cause at all.



Yes, we do. The calcite column-bases almost certainly predate the War (i.e. 66 CE) and probably date from Herodian times, since they are marked in Nabataean by the building's workmen, and Nabataean workmen would most likely be building things in Nazareth under Aretas IV, when Nabataean success and influence was at its height, especially in Galilee, since Herod Antipas was then married into the Nabataean royal family.

Yes, the evidence is not iron clad (provenance has been destroyed by their reuse). But it cannot be asserted that "we know there was no synagogue there at the time" when evidence is sitting in a museum of a possible synagogue being there at the time. Maybe you are incapable of grasping the logic of historians, but there is absolutely no rational sense in trying to insist that "we have no evidence of a synagogue" when we do have evidence of a synagogue. Not proof, but still evidence. It is invalid reasoning to claim "we can't be sure it was there then, therefore we can be sure it wasn't there then." Yet the mere fact that you keep making that illogical leap of reasoning is reason enough for me to stop talking to you. A man who cannot reason is not worth the effort of reasoning with.



Golly. You mean evidence of quarries...like large rooms cut from the calcite rock of the hill? Where on earth do you think the calcite removed from the hill went? <edit> I just told you about iron clad evidence of extensive pre-Christian quarrying in Nazareth. Had you actually studied this stuff as I did, you would know the rock that was quarried is calcite. Moreover, had you actually read what I wrote (and you consistently fail to do that), you would have noticed that I said calcite columns are by nature cheap material--thus a synagogue built from calcite is a cheap structure, no more "advanced" in architecture than the cut rooms already there (indeed, the decoration of the calcite bases is also crude, suggesting cheap workmanship). Thus, the calcite synagogue is not inconsistent with a poor community. To the contrary, it is entirely consistent with it, and exactly what we should expect from a community that was already cutting calcite rooms into the hill--and in fact that is one reason to date the work prior to the increase in Nazarene wealth and status after the War (when priests moved there--no doubt taking their considerable wealth with them).



What does illiteracy have to do with it? The role of a synagogue was to allow a literate rabbi to read to the illiterate people. Indeed, the building may well have served a circuit of itinerant rabbis, but it could also have had at least one literate rabbi in residence. Any reasonable man should know that evidence that the town was illiterate is not evidence that no one in the town was literate.



As I wrote before, and as you ignored again, this is unsound reasoning: anyone who knows archaeology knows that stones in buildings are reused, thus the absence of superstructure does not entail the superstructure was mud and thatch, since the same evidence can be explained by the stones being reused in later structures (as in fact happened to both synagogues--so we know for a fact reuse was at work, and yet in contrast we have no evidence of working in mud or thatch).

<edit> Tons of calcite were quarried to produce those "caves" Reed refers to. Where do you think it went? Do you really think they were so stupid as to just toss tons of quarried calcite aside into the garbage and then build their houses out of mud--or waste hours hunting around for fieldstones? <edit> Think. Please. It begs all credulity to imagine they didn't use the stone they quarried to mount the walls of the town's buildings. These stones were no doubt later reused in later structures, and possibly much of it was looted for use in other towns (we know for a fact that happened quite a lot). The bottom line is that they may have sold some of it, but they certainly would have used some of it, too--as you, too, would make good use of the priceless product of your own blood and sweat.


This is astonishing. Will you please actually read the archaeological reports themselves and not the weak and shallow misreporting of these poor scholars? I can't believe I have to waste my time explaining to you what's in those reports: the evidence of habitation is so extensive, that this is one of the reasons we know for certain that the Byzantine graveyard was not a graveyard before that. In the non-tomb rooms cut from the rock, the use of pottery, wine pressing, food storage, lamps, baths is well in evidence. In every place in town besides the Byzantine graveyard, the lamps and pots and cookware can be securely dated to pre-Christian times.

The rest you attempt to argue above is simply bizarre. Where the hell do you think the people lived who carved out tons of rooms into the hill? Where the hell do you think the people lived who stored all these pots, used this cookware and these lamps, bathed in these immersion pools they cut from the rock? Any reasonable man can see this is clearly evidence of habitation. Indeed, it is shear insanity to suppose any people would invest tens of thousands of man-hours cutting all these workrooms and baths and chambers from the rock and then go and live in less secure thatched houses somewhere else! Why am I even wasting my time pointing out something so obvious? Can you be any more exasperating?



The only relevant issue is whether the NT texts say anything that is false about Nazareth. They do not. End of argument. That you still don't see that the argument is over is one of the many things that bewilders me here.



Oh my Lord. I cannot believe it. You still haven't grasped the argument and I've written it twice! Okay. Preschool time:

Crosson says the town was bordered by X and Y in the first century.

But X did not exist in the first century.

So how could it have bordered the town in the first century?

It couldn't have.

Therefore Crossan is wrong. Period.

What did exist there in the first century? We don't know. It could have been empty. But it could have been part of the town that was erased by later, newer structures built to expand the burial area. Or the very rooms used in the first century for habitation and work were converted to use as tombs in the Byzantine period. In either of the latter two cases, the town was NOT bordered by X at all, but actually continued over X. Crossan cannot know that this was not the case. The archaeological reports make this completely clear. Therefore, Crossan is a lousy scholar. That this has been my finding before regarding the quality of his work only supports my certainty of it.

But if you still don't understand what I am saying, then I simply give up. There's no point in trying again. And I won't.



There is no contradiction. That the Byzantines would have converted rooms that were already there is indeed probable. But, as I said, that does not permit us to claim to know the rooms were already there--as I said in that very place, we cannot date when rock is cut, while the very act of clearing them to use as tombs destroys all evidence of habitation in previous eras. My point is, was, and remains that Crossan cannot claim to know that the town did not exist over this area in the first century. The fact that it might not have is completely irrelevant, because "maybe, therefore probably" is invalid argument. Period. Again, that you fail to grasp this again and again simply bewilders me to no end and has brought me to the end of my patience.



I am judging him wrong to say that the town ended there. That is, he cannot claim to know this, and therefore his claiming to know this is wrong. Indeed, not only is it wrong, it is incompetent. In other words, I am not claiming that Crossan is wrong in the sense that his claim contradicts the facts. I am claiming that Crossan is wrong in the sense that the facts do not support his claim. He is wrong, in other words, to tell you that the facts support his claim, as he clearly does. That is inexcusable in my opinion. Because if you had not checked the actual reports, as I had done, you would have believed things about the archaeology from Crossan's claims that are in fact completely false (such as that the two cemeteries were there in the first century--which is definitely not true, since the Byzantine cemetery shows no signs of use before the Byzantine period).



When scholars say things that plainly contradict or find no support in the only primary sources they could possibly have (in this case, the archaeological reports themselves) then scholarly status counts for absolutely nothing. I make this point clear in my chapter on method in my book Sense and Goodness without God. The facts trump expert claims every single time. We are not talking about "interpretation" here but actual, hard, undeniable, photographic facts. That your scholars fail to accurately represent what their own primary sources actually say is enough to reject them as incompetent and unreliable as scholars on this issue, and probably all issues (for if they cannot get this right, they probably have gotten a lot else wrong, and we can no longer have confidence in anything they say.). Just like Kersey Graves, their credibility is shot, since the only way we can know now if anything they say is true is to do all their work over again, which makes referring to them quite pointless: once you've done the work yourself, you no longer need their commentary, for now you have in hand the actual facts themselves.

Doherty's situation is categorically different, because there I was not speaking of the facts (I make clear there that he has essentially all the actual facts correct) but theories about the facts. With regard to theories, Doherty does need to persuade the scholarly community. But as far as facts goes, they stand regardless of what anyone says about them. In other words, facts always precede scholarly consensus in epistemic priority.




Holy crap. How on earth could you possibly have not read everything I said about this? I simply can't believe you said this. I discussed the very point you raise here in exquisite detail in my previous post. The answer to your question, the very clarity you ask for, is there already. If you cannot see it, then there is no way I can ever help you. <edit>



As I explained in careful detail (and you, once again, completely ignored) the problem lies not with Mark. And we were talking about Mark. There is no problem with Mark. His vocabulary is acceptable, and the context of his use of Nazareth is exactly as I have said, and is fully and unremarkably consistent with an actual historical fact.

Later Gospel authors do indeed raise difficulties, but since they follow Mark chronologically, that offers no argument against Mark, nor against the historicist theory that Jesus really came from Nazareth. The simplest explanation remains that Mark says Nazareth and Nazarene because Jesus really was from Nazareth and really was a Nazarene. This does not mean that is the case (a point you again keep failing to grasp). It only means just what it says: that this is the simplest explanation, and, therefore, that it remains a possibility, if not the most likely possibility (only when taken in isolation from other facts--another point I made, and which you keep ignoring).

Again, I am sympathetic to efforts to prove otherwise, and I tried to help you by offering some possible avenues of research (not conclusions, but prospects--get that straight). Yet I clearly expressed dissatisfaction with all of them, and I was very clear on my position: to date, no one has presented me with a convincing argument that Mark invented Nazareth. Yes, he may have done. And yes, if Doherty's case wins the day with scholars generally, then we will have sufficient grounds to conclude that Mark invented Nazareth even if we don't yet know why. But neither condition has yet been met. I keep repeating myself on that point. No one hears me. So why should I bother? I won't anymore. As I said, this post shall be my last.



As I have already answered that--more than once--and you have yet again ignored everything I have said on the point, I will not bother repeating myself. Clearly you will just ignore me again.



If I grasp what you are trying to say, the answer is yes: every archaeological report emphasizes that current human habitation (residential, commercial, and religious) has prevented any archaeological exploration of the town, beyond more than a tiny percentage of the old town's prospective area. Translation: MOST OF NAZARETH REMAINS UNEXPLORED. That is not a theory. IT IS A FACT. Get it. Learn it. Live it.



You said there was nothing before 120 years ago. I presented something over a thousand years ago. Thus, you were wrong. It does not matter whether the source is Christian. It is still older than you claimed. Furthermore, I agree the Christians could invent the town in a Gazeteer. But they could not have invented the town on a Jewish inscription, which predates all Gazeteers and refers to a Jewish event immediately after the War (c. 70 AD).

Spin is being misled on this by some scholars who mistake the date of the event as after the Bar Kochba revolt, but those scholars are wrong: the temple was destroyed in 70 and thus the priestly migration had to be then, not seventy years later. And the inscription comes from a Jewish synagogue and is a list of towns that took in priests after the temple was razed. There is simply no way a Christian legend could be responsible for the town's name in this inscription. Clearly the Jews regarded the name of the town as Nazareth in 70 AD, and surely they would not have allowed a town to be "renamed" to suit the dogmatic fancies of an illegal sect of heretics, much less a town honored with the residence of priestly families. Nor is a Christian domination of the town before 70 at all plausible, nor is it in evidence, nor is it a component of any serious, objective theory of historicity.

Likewise, I have answered the Capernaum claim: there is no contradiction in Mark, who never says Jesus was from Capernaum. Even if he "lived" there at any time in his life (and Mark never says clearly that he did--only that he visited and stayed there), that would be no more remarkable than anyone else in antiquity who traveled: name anyone and I guarantee you the odds are good that they lived somewhere in their life that was not where they were born or held formal citizenship. As to the rest, I've said enough in my previous post and have given up repeating myself. If you guys won't read it, what the hell can I do?



You must mean War 3.43, which reads (Whiston's translation): "Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here are every where so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above fifteen thousand inhabitants[/url]." The "very least" I suspect refers to the word "cities" not "villages." In the Greek, "crowded cities and a plethora of villages everywhere full of people" is the subject, not villages--villages is subordinate to the actual secondary subject "plethora" so the only feminine subject in the sentence is cities. Since the adjective "least" is feminine, it probably is meant to pick up the nearest feminine subject, which is cities, not villages. This is the most likely meaning since all villages were legally subject to their parent cities, and Josephus is talking about military manpower and agricultural production (cf. 3.41-42), and he was the general and governor of Galilee, so he probably means that the official manpower and food sustainability available from the smallest district (which constitutes a city and its "plethora of villages") amounts to fifteen thousand men, which is very probable if his description of the region's fertility is correct. At any rate, he makes no mention of the 240 here, and that number certainly does not reckon cities, but includes the "plethora of villages" attached to them as well.



Once again, and for the last time: I do not give a rat's ass what Christians want or claim. What I am concerned with is what serious, objective scholars can or do claim. And serious, objective scholars do not and cannot claim that Jesus fed 4500 people near Nazareth. Though you ridiculously try to claim that when scholars use the word "crowds" they mean "thousands," once again I live in reality and not fantasyland, and in the real world scholars do not mean "thousands" every time they say "crowds." And the bottom line is that in no sense whatever does historicity require positing thousands thronging around Jesus near Nazareth, nor does any NT text claim that thousands lived in Nazareth (even the feeding pericopes do not say where the people came from or that they all came from the same place).



It is not an option. The law of stoning requires the hurling off a platform "twice the height of a man," and only if the convict survives the fall are stones first placed on top of him (to crush him, as was done at Salem) and only then, if he still lives, the community hurls stones down upon him to finish the job. Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6.4 gives the details. Had you actually looked, you would know this. That you didn't even look is why I see no point in continuing this discussion. I am not your servant. If you won't do the research, why should I do it for you? Can you see why I feel like I am wasting my time? I do all the work, then you make assertions contrary to the facts, even contrary to what I have just said, without having done any real work at all. What kind of crazy arrangement is that? I am done. I will not put up with this any more.



Once again, why not actually do some work and get the articles and follow their bibliographies? I cited Kloner. Go check. And follow his sources.

Kloner says there are only four tombs known with round stones that predate the war, and all are elaborate concoctions of the ultra-rich (he surveys them). In fact, I have seen photographs, from his article and several others that discuss tomb finds: these are gaudy monstrosities that required elaborate mechanisms to be carved and arranged at what must have been unglodly expense. The giant round doors rolled into slots actually cut into or built into the wall, and were probably moved with the aid of a mechanical device, like a Flintstone's version of a Star Trek door. And these stones are all cylindrical, i.e. they roll along a flat outer edge and are thus very thick (like giant stone hockey pucks). It would be impossible for a lone man to move them, even to roll them, without a good lever and fulcrum. And these tombs were huge, housing numerous arcosalia, and all have been traced to use by royal and prestigious families (the most famous is the tomb complex of the Herods).

Basic logic: if there are four elaborate complexes with round stones in pre-war Judaea, does that mean there were no elaborate complexes with square stones? No. Whether there were or not is irrelevant, and accordingly Kloner wastes no time answering the question.

Basic facts: the round stones that post-date the war are not at all like the ones that pre-date it. The post-war stones are discs with a fine edge (shaped like a lens), they are crudely made, very small, and simply lean over entrances (i.e. there is no elaborate construction involved). They can easily be pitched and rolled by a single person. Again, there are photos in Kloner and elsewhere. There is no evidence such stones were used on any tombs before the war--all pre-war tombs with known doors have square doors cut from the same rock as the tomb's entrance or walls, which slide in and out along a flat doorway. These stones are also small, but considerably heavier than the disc doors, and I am certain several men were needed to move them (although they could be "knocked over" by a single man, righting them again would be even harder than if several men had slid the door open instead, which I imagine was the usual practice).



None of the pre-war round stones Kloner discusses are in Nazareth. There are no elaborate tomb complexes there like those Kloner discusses. There may be post-war round stones there. But if there are pre-war round stones in Nazareth, I have yet to see any mention of this in any of the archaeological reports for Nazareth.



No one makes such a claim. To the contrary, the post-war round stones were obviously cheaper and more convenient: they were easier to make, smaller, and required less workmanship to fit the door--i.e. contrary to the speculation of Diogenes the Cynic, less material means less cutting, while less precision--to fit a door to a doorway--means less time and less skilled labor (but note: the pre-war round stones, which are fundamentally different than the post-war ones, are exactly the opposite in all these regards, per above). That these cheap stones started to be used on tombs after the war was probably just a change in fashion or perhaps a response to the economics of a region devastated by war.

As to dating, as far as I can tell they are dated by the contents of the tombs themselves. Square stones were inherent to the tomb (i.e. you can see that they fit the tomb or that a tomb was cut or built to receive a square stone) and all such tombs contain at least one pre-war burial. Round stones are not inherent, but just lean over entrances, so the entrances do not have to be square or well cut or appropriately built at all, and so it is easy to tell when a tomb has been built to receive a round stone. Likewise, in both cases, evidence of tracks and grooves and scratches provide evidence of the kind of door used at any particular place.

As far as I know, all round-stone tombs contain only burials post-dating the war. This, at least, is what I have gleaned from Kloner and other reports, but I am relying on Kloner to have the sum picture right, i.e. I didn't double-check all his claims. I welcome anyone who does the legwork to fact-check him and Finegan. I'm not sufficiently interested myself, since the point is so trivial as to hardly be worth the bother (e.g. even my one use of the fact in an argument online is overtly tentative). But if anyone here takes the bother, by all means let me know what you find.




Rather, I hold that it could have been started by Cephas, and that, even if it didn't (e.g. if it started in 100 BC per the Ellegard thesis), it almost certainly existed with Cephas before Paul converted. These are decidedly different positions than you are alleging for me. Remember, I am an agnostic. I do not believe we can know the facts in this case. All is speculation--some speculations are more securely evidenced than others, but none are adequately proven to my satisfaction. Thus, it is incorrect to say that I "hold" anything about the origins of Christianity. I have my theories which I assign only a moderate probability to, and I see merits in numerous alternative theories, and other alternatives I see much less merit in. That's the extent of it. Please get it right.

Likewise, it is one thing to have a theory that is more probable than any other yet on the table--and an entirely different thing to establish that this theory is the one true theory. Historians are and must be comfortable with uncertainty, because most of history is uncertain. And this means that when I say Doherty has not proven a point I am not saying the opposite is true. Almost everything you say in your posts assumes that when I say Doherty cannot establish X, that therefore I am asserting ~X. That is utter, babbling nonsense. Doherty can show that X is possible, even advance evidence in favor of it, but that does not suffice to prove that X is true--and to point this out is not to say X is false. Do you get that? So far, you don't. Oh well. I see I shouldn't bother. If you can't grasp this, there is no point in my even speaking to you.

Likewise, even if one can show X is more probable than ~X, that is insufficient to establish X as a fact in history or science. Science has the highest standards (a minimum of 95% certainty is the weakest standard employed--and Doherty is nowhere even remotely near that). History is comfortable, in my experience, with a minimum standard of maybe 80% (unlike science, history does not usually work in exact figures, but I am going with the analysis of C. Behan McCullagh in his several books, which I find to be quite apt), though even that would still warrant qualifications of uncertainty. Again, Doherty hasn't reached that mark either. I would put his theory at maybe 60%. If you had only a 60% chance that stepping on a stone in front of you wouldn't trigger a land mine, you can bet your ass you would not step on that stone. That's the status Doherty's theory has right now. Intriguing, plausible, quite possibly true, but not proven and not at all certain, while alternatives remain a very real possibility, even if not an equally good possibility.

You consistently fail to grasp all this. I will no longer try to explain it to you. If you don't get it by now, you never will.

Another thing you fail to grasp time and again is my distinction between the Doherty mythicist theory (DMT) and his Big Bang Christianity theory (BBC). You repeatedly conflate my positions on these. Since my insistence that you stop doing this has been ignored, I give up. Maybe some day you will grasp my point that DMT does not require ~BBC, that DMT without ~BBC is on present evidence more probable than DMT with ~BBC (no matter how probable DMT with ~BBC may be), and--most importantly of all--that DMT without ~BBC is sufficient to call historicity into question (and therefore ~BBC is an unnecessary theory for anyone whose objective is to challenge historicity).

I have by now wasted several more hours writing the above. I simply cannot justify wasting several more addressing any of your other flawed arguments, which consistently misrepresent or misunderstand what I say or simply, outright, ignore what I have said, and in every case so far, almost never derive from an examination of the required primary evidence, and as a result, often get the facts wrong. I am sorry, but this is a complete and utter waste of my time. I am done here. Good health to you. But good bye.