Scotsguy44

I don't see this posted anywhere else so:

http://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/

Thanks
Matt

thief of fire

Unfortunately for Richard Carrier, all he has done with his criticism is allowed Ehrman to make him look like a dick.

Ehrman is able to calmly sit back and paint himself as an open minded scholar, who is keen to investigate and correct errors. (And Ehrman may indeed be this, I dont want to make a comment on him in that regard).

By contrast Carrier ends up coming across very poorly.

Steven Carr

To translate this into English, Ehrman has been reduced to claiming his book was never intended to be a work of scholarship, ' with extensive engagement with scholarship'

Carrier may point out until he is blue in the face that we don't have the sources Ehrman uses as 'evidence' and that even if they did exist at one point, we don't know what they said, but Ehrman has said that he was not writing for scholars.

Scotsguy44

I wouldn't give up your day job for translation work.

Steven Carr

And don't expect to be able to read any time soon the invisible documents Ehrman waves around as 'evidence' or his astonishing ability to be able to date Aramaic sources to within a few years of Jesus's death.

But hey, the book wasn't written for scholars.

Ehrman's claim that because the Gospels contain Aramaic words they are based on Aramaic 'traditions' dating back to within a few years of Jesus's death is not one he defended in his reply to Carrier.

Ehrman put up no defence of that.

Instead he chose to defend , inter alia, his not getting right where Pliny wrote about Christians (Hey, cut the guy some slack, he was not writing for scholars who actually expect people to get references right)

I wonder why he never defended the more outrageous of his claims.

Oh well, more fool all those people who paid money expecting a work of scholarship....

Scotsguy44

I guess your skills don't reach as far as reading English, let alone translating accurately:

" I will not answer each and every single point Carrier raises (on this, see my closing comments), but will deal with the most serious ones in which he charges me with scholarly incompetence. I am always happy to answer questions about any of the others, should I be asked".

" I have not dealt with all the myriad of things that Carrier has to say – most of them unpleasant – about my book. But I have tried to say enough, at least, to counter his charges that I am an incompetent pseudo-scholar. I try to approach my work with honesty and scholarly integrity, and would like to be accorded treatment earned by someone who has devoted his entire life to advancing scholarship and to making scholarship more widely available to the reading public".

" I like very much the idea of “intellectual charity,” and I think that it is a good idea to contact an author about problems that might be detected in her or his writing. I wish Carrier had followed his own advice and contacted me, in fact, rather than publish such a negative and uncharitable review. But I do hope, at least, that fair minded readers will see be open to the arguments that I make and the evidence that I adduce in Did Jesus Exist, and realize that they are the views, in popular form, of serious scholarship. They are not only serious scholarly views, they are the views held by virtually every serious scholar in the field of early Christian studies".

GakuseiDon

Steven Carr is the perfect ambassador for mythicism. He needs to be engaging Ehrman, Hoffmann and others more often. Steven, go get him! Show them what mythicists are made of!

MrMacSon

Self-praise is no recommendation.

All these guys are doing is arguing about arguing. It's pathetic.

Steven Carr

All Ehrman had to do was tell us why Carrier was wrong when he said we don't have those sources Ehrman claimed as evidence, we don't even know if they existed, and if they did, we don't know what they said.

Ehrman can claim his book popularises scholarship, (while simultaneously castigating Carrier for expecting it to be a work of scholarship, go figure).

But that doesn't make the invisible documents Ehrman waves around appear by magic.

And it certainly doesn't mean that a Greek work which contains Aramaic must be based on the words of Jesus himself.



The book is an epic fail, to the extent that Ehrman now has to castigate Carrier for not realising it was supposed to be a book for the general public, not for scholars.

Steven Carr

I wish I could.

But I can't read these invisible documents Ehrman uses as evidence - the ones Ehrman can date to within a few years of Jesus's death.

So how can I debate their contents or reliability?