Toto

Some posts that were a bit over the top have been split off here and locked.

spin

Then why for example do christians talk of Jesus as the messiah when he has no signs of the Jewish messiah? The first extant gospel was written in Greek for a Roman audience and it advocates a titular and non-Jewish usage of "son of man", a usage accepted by all gospels. This literature is our major source regarding Jesus and it clearly disagrees with your view above.

As I put it in another thread christianity is a cuckoo in the Jewish nest.


spin

No Robots

Anyone desiring further discussion of the Jewish origins of the Gospels may post on the Constantin Brunner thread.

spin

I'd rather talk about Judaism and christianity based on primary sources. It's not nice to attack someone saying that their view was "totally preposterous" and then make such a strategic withdrawal. It might have been better had you not made your comment in the first place.


spin

manwithdream

Why is Richard Carrier planning to write a scholarly book on this subject? Wouldn't it make more sense to write a non-scholarly book that can be read by many average people? If he writes a scholarly book, then only a relatively few people will be able to even understand what he is saying, and his book might have very little impact.

the_cave

Spin, what do you make of things like the Two Powers in Heaven heresy and Jewish angelology--figures like Meta(t)ron, Gabriel and Michael, the Books of Enoch, etc.?

You would not categorize these subjects as in any way "messianic", or having to do with a "son of man"?

I am not talking about the orthodox Judaism of the time (if one can speak of that)--I'm talking about the heterodox Judaism of the time.

Solitary Man

Josephus knows of the Messianic prophecies, the Talmud know of the Messianic prophecies, the Dead Sea Scrolls know of the Messianic future - only Philo, an Alexandrian, seems clueless. Oh, and spin.

spin

Metatron is quite a late figure, outside the timeframe I work in, so I'm not really up with him. I think the one like a son of man in Dan 7 is in fact Michael, though he is not messianic, he is simply the divine protector of the Jews. (Daniel is eschatological, not messianic.) In Jewish literature a son of man is a mere human being the child of the human with even a slightly disparaging flavor to it, as can be seen in Ezekiel.

(A situation of orthodoxy excludes heterodoxy, for one view has established its hegemony, making anything else equivalent to heresy. Heterodoxy indicates several competing positions.)


spin

Toto

First of all, Richard Carrier is a professional historian, so he is writing about what he knows. Secondly, history is not like physics - non-scholars should be able to read the book.

If you read his proposal, he hopes to advance the field, so that further discussions among scholars are more productive. This should then trickle down to popular literature.

Damask

Richard Carrier is the rich man’s David Icke.

Stop begging for money and get on and write the book.

Other starving authors have managed it. What makes you so different?!!!