Styrofoamdeity

I would donate $250. Also I could help to get distribution for the book in stores around Japan and Asia, since I work in the publishing industry. My company already sells to wholesalers and distributors around Asia. University of California Press and the other academic presses are represented by a different company than mine, so I could not do more than make phone calls and send e-mails on behalf of the book and tell wholesalers, distributors, and bookstores to order it from Company Z.

Richard Carrier

Certainly. In fact the criteria of comparison often end up being also the criteria of relevance of comparison.

But what I'm talking about are the radical changes in culture, e.g. Christian hagiographies were generated in a relatively extreme environment of strict, government-enforced, nearly-unescapable orthodoxy-enforcement, where literary and ideological freedom were greatly restricted, in an environment that differed radically in its political structure and economy and even, increasingly, social organization and education system (both in its availability and in the nature and quality of its content).

In other words, medieval hagiographies were generated in a radically different environment, by a more (though never completely, of course) homogenized and controlled author base, with a completely different set of underlying assumptions (i.e. the Christian religion and the authority of its scriptures and god-appointed representatives on earth, plus only what philosophical assumptions those authorities deemed acceptabe), mostly (even if not entirely) for a radically different audience (i.e. Christians and non-Christians outside a Hellenistic cultural background), in a completely reversed power situation (hagiographies were generated, or preserved, by or with the endorsement of the dominant ideological order, whereas, for example, the Gospels were generated by groups that were largely excluded from the dominant ideological power structure, and who in fact were responding to that very marginalization with their stories).

In contrast, in the first century everyone who was literate (and thus could write a story) had had the exact same education, using nearly the exact same source texts, examples, values, procedures, and emphases, as Socrates or Aristotle or Alexander the Great or Plutarch or Lucian had had (the differences in their educations were trivial in comparison with their similarities). All would have read Herodotus, for example, and been told to regard him as a paradigm to follow. All would have been taught a variety of different and competing philosophical worldviews (and in fact almost the very same ones, with only refinements and improvements over the centuries) and the value and need of being able to debate and pick and choose between and among them on one's own (rather than being told, and ultimately forced, to pick one and only one by the dominant political and social order), which in turn influenced how historiography was perceived (since that, too, became a field of competing claims that required debate and thus rules of rhetoric and evidence to resolve, rather than a top-down authority resolving different claims by committee or fiat).

Before the middle ages, rhetoric (i.e. the skills of logic and debate and examination and independent reason) was the acme of education sought by everyone, and toward which the entire education system was geared. In the middle ages, rhetoric was replaced in this role by scripture, and then exegesis (towing the party line) took first place over the skills of free debate (where one has to actually stand on one's own to win an argument, through reason and evidence, rather than relying on force or tradition or appeals to orthodoxy or revelation). Similarly, the governing elite cultivated a model that encouraged religious freedom and diversity, within certain practical limits established by the (covertly secular) needs of the state, and so people could write their own sacred narratives about their own gods without interference from the state. And those in power embraced values that were (or were perceived to be) the contrary of those the early Christians wanted society to embrace (whereas those values were perceived as having triumphed in the middle ages, hence hagiographies of the time did not usually, or to as great an extent, challenge the dominant value system but sold or reinforced it instead).

And so on. I could keep going, pointing out all the fundamental and relevant ways the environment that produced medieval hagiographies differed from the Hellenistic environment (spanning from about 500 BC to at least 200 AD) and differed so greatly we would have a very hard time trying to locate parallels in motives and aims and even content between sacred stories in the two periods. Which is not to say there were none, only that the question is impossibly vexed for anyone who is not an expert in both periods.

It's already established in mainstream scholarship that the conventions they adhered to were more alike than different. Even when different they often believed they were pursuing the same goals and fulfilling the same historiographic values in their own particular way. Obviously there were differences (even differences in historiographic aims and values) among ancient writers, but those differences look nothing like the differences between them and, say, Nithard's Histories or The Life of Saint Genevieve.

It must be cautious. It need not be tenuous. And if it must be tenuous, then that in itself is a finding that needs to be driven home and accepted by the readers and scholars engaged in the debate. I agree with you any comparison must not be naive or overlook important differences. But like any argument from analogy, most differences actually don't matter--a false analogy is only produced when the differences do matter, and matter in a way that affects the logic of the argument the analogy is used for.

If you are referring to his Historical Evidence and Argument, I agree with him in large part, and have made much the same points myself about the fact that real historians are comfortable with doubt and uncertainty, since that is usually all they get (rather than the black-and-white view of historical knowledge embraced by apologists and gate-crashers). I think Henige's position does far more harm to the historicists than the mythicists. Though some mythicists are over-confident, they don't need to be, since the mere (or more than mere) possibility that they are right is point enough to consider, whereas Christian apologists can't ride with such a conclusion, since they need Jesus to have actually existed and to have actually said and done certain things. To be in doubt of that is a problem for them in a way it will never be for mythicists, who can easily get along with doubting the Jesus myth theory just as much as they might doubt historicity.

This is revealed often in debates about the authenticity of Pauline letters and the ubiquity of interpolations in New Testament texts. Apologists need to downplay all this and thus pretend that if you can't prove something has been forged or meddled with, then we are entitled to believe it wasn't. That's as fallacious and wrong as assuming without argument that it's all forged and meddled with and thus shouldn't even be examined much less believed. There is a middle ground here, and it is painted all through with different shades of grey. A good method must take this into account and work with it, and not expect certainty to magically pop out at the end of it all. That will be one of my central points.

Richard Carrier

Please email me, with both your pledge, and a reminder of the rest which I can pass on to any future marketing department I sign up with.

Clutch

Thanks, Richard, for your thoughtful and informative reply. Aside from being unmoved by "already established in mainstream scholarship", and unconvinced of grounds to abandon the word "tenuous", I mostly agree with your more refined presentation of your approach.

In particular I agree that Henige's methodological scruples are very damaging to historicism. But I doubt that they are less damaging to mythicism -- an equally positive thesis, by contrast with (defeasible) agnosticism, and one equally dependent on fragmentary and fraught evidence.

andrewcriddle

Hi Richard

If you haven't already you really should read the early twentieth century Bollandist Delehaye .eg his semi-popular work The Legends of the Saints and his more technical works like Les Passions des martyrs et les genres litteraires.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

IMO this is a theological or anti-theological argument rather than a strictly and narrowly historical one. Again IMO, the question as to whether or not the existence of a historical Jesus can be demonstrated strongly enough to satisfy the needs of Christian apologists, should be kept separate from the narowly historical question of the most likely explanation of the origins of Christianity.

Andrew Criddle

Richard Carrier

Not only do I agree with you, but this is a point I intend to make carefully in the book.

For it relates to a common error on both sides, of conflating two different theories of historicity: the reasonable theory (Jesus was an ordinary but obscure guy who inspired a movement and abundant legends about him) and the hyperbolic theory (the Gospels are totally or almost totally true). Either side will engage in a fallacy of amphibole, citing evidence supporting the reasonable theory in defense of the hyperbolic theory (as if that were valid), or citing the absurdity of the hyperbolic theory as if this refuted the reasonable theory (which is no more valid).

There is an important distinction to be made (and it must be made and accepted by all mainstream scholars who want to be treated as anything but propagandists and dogmatists who have abandoned objective methods) between arguing that the historicity of the Jesus that Christians want and need to believe in is objectively tenable, and arguing that Jesus actually did exist. The latter can only be credibly done by those who reject the former. This is important because the same methods that show the hyperbolic theory to be incredible should also be able to show that the reasonable theory is incredible, too--if in fact it is. That over-simplifies what I'm actually going to argue, but it captures the gist of the point.

Hence we can't ignore what you call theological arguments. The scholarship is awash with covertly theological arguments in defense of historicity and covertly atheological arguments against it. This needs to be weeded out, and it can only be weeded out once it is pointed out, and then what's wrong with it made clear.

Styrofoamdeity

There are very few authors who do not need to raise money, or borrow money, to develop projects. People who think that Richard Carrier or any other atheist author, outside of perhaps Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, can simply propose a project to a major publisher and begin earning a hefty advance, are quite mistaken. Particularly academic books rarely make money, and academic presses are shoe-string operations.

What Richard Carrier is proposing looks open and democratic. He is not promising to return an investment. Your money will be gone, and he has not said otherwise. So why the criticism of a project which no one is promising will make money? It seems to be unnecessary negativity.

There are books that some of us would like to see in print. If we choose to spend our money on that rather than the latest X-Box, what's it to you?

Damask

You can't see it yet but you will.
He is not the first bright spark to finished his studies and think he has all the answers.

You'll like my 'told you so dance'.

Solitary Man

By all means, spend your money however you wish. But he'll place himself along with those Christian apologists who do the same thing. Richard Carrier and J. P. Holding - two sides of the same coin?