Toto

No, not too sides of the same coin. Have you actually read Carrier's description of what he intends to do?

youngalexander

Does not read that way to me.

Solitary Man

Two sides, not too sides, and yes.

Damask

Richard Carrier

The more I read about this the more annoyed I get. Richard Carrier isn’t asking for this money. At least I don’t think he is. It seems there are some people with a book idea who want him to write it. But he is working on another project in order to pay off some debt. Now these other people seem to think that if they could get enough people interested in this other book to give some cash towards paying off the debt quicker allowing Richard Carrier to put his present project to one side and take up this other book idea.

-----------------------

I have just read a brief biography of Richard Carrier on the net. I don't have all the facts yet but I will read some more later. But I have to say that this smacks of the types of pleading for funds that little churches or little sects and little causes do. I know how strong a lot of you feel about your non-religious beliefs, but do you really need to pay someone to write a book about them?

This 38 year old guy has big ambitions but he wants you to pay for them.

Sorry, Sonny Jim, but you’ll have to go get a piece at someone else’s door.





If you are at all interesting in where this guy is coming from check out the interview he gave -

An Exclusive Interview With Richard Carrier Author, Philosopher, Historian, and Avowed Atheist Richard Carrier Talks to Associated Content About His Beliefs, His Personal Life, and His Latest Books.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...h_richard.html


Okay back to me. I'm like a dog with a bone here. I have to let go.

youngalexander

Perhaps if you sat down quietly, had a good scratch - and went soundly off to sleep.:love:

Styrofoamdeity

This is getting rather ridiculous. He is NOT promising anyone that they can make money on this. There is no false premise here, so calling it a "scam" shows more about your emotions than your logic. Look, I've worked in publishing for the past 24 years and authors have to raise money. Many of them go deeply into debt (including bankruptcy) due to having no income while they are writing. There is nothing terribly odd about an author looking for ways to NOT GO INTO DEBT. The only difference is that he is asking individuals instead of corporate sponsors, and I can't see why that would bother anyone. If you don't want to donate, then don't.

By the way, in two weeks I am running in a 100 kilometer running event in the mountains in order to raise money for OXFAM. I have asked individual contributors to sponsor me, as I have not yet received corporate donations. The money will go directly to where I say it is going, to OXFAM. Richard Carrier is asking for individual donations. The money is going exactly where he says it is going- towards his costs of writing a book. There is no difference. Charity is NOT a scam if the money is used for exactly what the person says it is for, and if the person is not promising to deliver some sort of profit or benefit that he can't deliver. I am quite confident that Richard Carrier can indeed deliver a good book on the topic of the historicity of Jesus.

Solitary Man

For being a publisher, surely you know that academics who write books get large grants from their university in order to do so, not to mention a teaching gig. Why would Carrier abandon academia in order to just write?

Clutch

Some academics get some grant from their universities -- some get none, few get a "large" one.

Often such grants are provided by institutions only to cover the costs of publication, when these outstrip the book's profit potential in the eyes of the publisher. Other research expenses for the book may be the responsibility of the researcher, who must apply for external grant money.

And who said anything about "abandoning"?

The confidence of your claims does not square well with their thin grasp of the realities.

James Hannam

Let me make three points while I’m here.

Firstly, I can see nothing whatsoever wrong with Richard asking his public to support his research. It is tough starting out on an academic career, so tough that even though I have just got my PhD, I’m working for a law firm. That situation is unlikely to change even if my book on medieval science is published and sells reasonably well.

Secondly, as a medieval historian, I don’t recognise the picture Richard paints of the education system in the Middle Ages. It was consciously based on the Roman antecedents and used most of the same textbooks. Logic and rhetoric were absolutely central in the schools after about 1000AD and became increasingly dominant until humanists ditched the whole syllabus in the sixteenth century. It is true that there was little by way of formal education between 500AD and 1000AD, but that was due to the collapse of the western empire under the weight of the Germanic tribes, not Christianity. This essay on the medieval universities that I wrote as part of my PhD application a few years ago may help correct the picture.

But, thirdly, the medieval historiographical tradition of the Middle Ages had nothing to do with the schools. It was largely a monastic enterprise. As such it was divorced from the classical models, not just the Greek Herodotus but also Tacitus and the other Roman historians. This is why so little classical Latin history survives.

Medieval history was based on biblical models such as 1 2 Kings and especially 1 2 Chronicles. The chronicle is the archetypical medieval source for what happened when to whom. The saints' lives, meanwhile, were modelled on the Gospels which were, of course, read on both literal and allegorical levels. I would suggest that of the Gospel writers, only Luke would have been educated in the classical tradition. The other authors were Jewish and/or not very well educated outside the OT. When considering the existence of Jesus, it is unnecessary to look much beyond Mark and possibly John so Luke is not in point.

For this reason, I don’t think classical figures like Caesar and Socrates are very good people to consider with respect to Jesus’s existence. The saints’ Vitae are better because they are part of the same tradition as the Gospels with a similar relationship to the OT. Also, many date from late antiquity which is no more removed in time from Jesus than Alexander or Socrates (although this wouldn’t matter if Richard’s other points about classical models had been valid).

So, I still think the saints’ are the way to march on with this if you are looking for a test bed for methodology.

Best wishes

James

http://jameshannam.com

No Robots

This is totally preposterous. The Gospels are part of the same tradition as the rest of Jewish literature. Your position is really akin to that of Doherty, who writes:

As Price has said, New Testament scholarship has done it's best over the last 60 years or so to completely skewer the mainstream 'take' on the origins of Christianity *away from* its non-Jewish roots and precedents.

Traditional Christianity aids and abets mythicism to the extent that it does not assert the wholly Jewish origin of the Gospels.