stephan huller

I know but I read all these emails and comments at my blog and people here which tell me 'oh you got to read this review, Ehrman is made into mincemeat' and so instead of getting some much needed sleep I read this article and I have to admit - I don't get it. I was expecting an argument for why Ehrman's evidence wasn't as compelling as the mythicist arguments. Instead I got essentially a list of more or less inconsequential mistakes.

I still consider myself a friend of Bob Price but I could point out similar 'mistakes' in his research.' One could do the same with my published work quite easily. Just the other day I was reading the article I published in the Journal of Coptic Studies and I thought to myself 'damn, I should have changed that.'

The bottom line is that I think it was worth reading the article. But at the same time we have to stop acting as partisans. Carrier did not 'decimate' Ehrman in the article. He merely pointed out that Ehrman didn't take his job very seriously. I would have preferred to see why Ehrman's historical Jesus argument isn't as strong as Carrier's or someone else's published work. This would justify the 'decimated' claim IMO.

And don't tell me that because it was a 'review' he couldn't get into all of this. A 'review' implies (again IMO) that the person who is doing the review is objective - not a partisan. Very few reviews I have read use 'useless' five times in the review to describe the book that is being 'reviewed.' There is no summary of Ehrman's arguments. No attempt at explaining to the reader what the strong points of Ehrman's case are.

I know that it's a post at a blog. I just think that the tone generally of the mythicists has been too emotional. Like a bunch of women who have been 'insulted' by 'inappropriate' statement(s). Show me some meat.

The bottom line for me is that we should all be flexible enough to admit that we aren't unreasonably tied to our opinions. We should admit that under the right circumstances - if the argument was compelling enough - we might be willing to change our opinions about a given subject matter. I get the opposite feeling with regards to many of these comments of mythicists.

dog-on

True in that Carrier does concentrate more on what Ehrman got wrong regarding mythicist arguments than he does regarding what's wrong with Ehrman's HJ arguments. Carrier also spends a lot of ink pointing out Ehrman's factual mistakes.

But, in truth, did you find anything new in Ehrman's actual HJ arguments that haven't been addressed, by many other scholars, before?

mountainman

The phallic 'Savior of the World' hidden in the Vatican

stephan huller

No one ever thought that there was a reason to make explicit what seemed universally agreed upon by authorities - i.e. Jesus's existence. No one has ever written a book entitled - Being Alive (Why It's Better than Being Dead). Of course if a movement came along advocating the benefits of suicide such a book would draw from a number of writers who have made positive references to the experience of life.

GakuseiDon

Then QUOTE him to that effect. It is CARRIER who is reading into this that Ehrman denies the existence of such a statue. But Ehrman said no such thing.

And so? How is that relevant?

dog-on

The second answers the first.

GakuseiDon

Even Carrier appears to believe that Acharya S is interpreting the statue to be about Peter. So just quote Ehrman saying that the statue that Acharya S refers to doesn't exist. That's what Carrier is suggesting Ehrman claimed. All you need to do is quote Ehrman to that effect. So please quote him.

dog-on

By answering the the first question.

The fact that we are even arguing about this just goes to prove the point that Ehrman was sloppy.

Toto

GDon - we had a whole thread on this, which you participated in. Have you forgotten?

I don't have the time to split this thread and move the posts, so please take your arguments back to that thread (that Pete linked to, if you have forgotten.)

tanya

Is the girl in the wheelchair, holding a pistol, aimed at the gladiator's head?

Overall, despite many objections, some of which I highlight below, I enjoyed reading Carrier's review.

This passage was very impressive to me:

My first objection to his review, concerns those last two sentences, above. I appreciated his historical explanation, I fault his polemic "Which is really bad", etc....
Further, his English is quite surprisingly mediocre, given his reputation as a scholar: "Which is ...." --can we commence a sentence with "Which is...", "eats his foot"??? perhaps he means, "eats his words", or, perhaps, "sticks his foot in it"?

Apart from such quibbles, I am also disappointed in the tenor of Carrier's discussion. Here is an illustration:

ok, same quibble re "Because" . We cannot commence a sentence with "Because". I do it all the time, myself, perhaps that explains why I am not a university professor....(yeah, ok, you are correct, that's not why.)

But, really, here's the point of my objection. We don't require Ehrman to write a book which brilliantly exposes the flaws in mythicism. What we do require from Ehrman is a brilliant essay illustrating the veracity of the contention made yesterday by Stephan Huller:

I cry nonsense. I know of no witness, not even one, for an historical Jesus.

Am I a witness to Sacagawea, one of my heroines?

No. Why not? I like her accomplishments, but there is the little matter of space and time. Right?

There is no witness to the ministry of Jesus. There is no evidence of an historical Jesus. Ehrman doesn't need to refute "mythicists". Ehrman needs to defend and explain the concept of an historical Jesus.

So what else bothers me, about Carrier's critique of Ehrman's book:

Carrier is dead WRONG. The evidence clearly demonstrates interpolation. Chrestus is NOT the same as Christus. How many copies do we possess of Tacitus Annals? Where was the copy found? In what language was it written? Unlike Carrier/Ehrman, "I am sure the passage is NOT authentic and HAS been relevantly altered." Changing one little letter, is quite enough for my simple tastes.

Acted like a real scholar? Why would Carrier write that? Hack mistake, to have read only one author? What is he thinking?
wo xiang ta yinggai nian zhe ge kewen (LunYu)One author, or a thousand authors is irrelevant. What counts is the EVIDENCE, not the quantity of people who claim that the UFO landed in Roswell, N.M.