GakuseiDon

This is a comment from another thread that made me wonder, so I thought it might be worth its own thread. Does Ehrman mock mythicists, or does he mock their arguments?

What bad things does Ehrman say about mythicists like Carrier, Dr Price, Doherty, Wells and others in his book "Did Jesus Exist?" I'm not talking about comments about arguments, but comments (or inferences) about the persons themselves. Also, I'm personally only interested in quotes from the book, though feel free to add others from other sources.

So what comments in the book are there, if anything, where he says bad things against individual mythicists?

thief of fire

Maybe nothing. I haven't read the book, but I have seen claims that Ehrman mocks mythicists, which is why I said .."Anyone who reads the book will apparently see a scholar mocking mythicists,"

Vorkosigan

Why don't you read it? Ehrman is playing the game that ToF correctly identities -- first he hacks on mythicists and constantly accuses them of bad faith and denial of reality. Then when people respond in kind he cries that he is the wounded one. The book's success depends on its social appeal. It's a clever book.

Vorkosigan

MrMacSon

"Clever book" or clever strategy to muddy-the-waters?

Ehrman's book is not a clever argument for a historical Jesus.

Vorkosigan

Since Ehrman has to know how awful the arguments are, he's shifted the ground to exploit the powerful social support for Jesus.

Vorkosigan

aa5874

That is NOT all. You see loads of logical fallacies based on presumptions, unreliable sources and ad hoc stories.

In fact, Ehrman, as it were, let's the cat out of the bag, he documents the worthless arguments that HJers have been spouting for years.

Diogenes the Cynic

I've read the book. He says that mythicists are mostly non-credentialed, that they make things up and that (here he is a little too sweeping) they are driven by atheist agendas.

His tone is consistently dismissive, often arch with some of the worst ones and he is probably a little too categorical in denying that it has any credentialed supporters or that it's an entirely new area of scholarly inquiry, but he is nowhere close to as abusive as Carrier was in his review or as many of the responses on this board have been (the appelation of "Errorman," etc).

aa5874

He says more than that in his book. Please, other people have the book so we know all what he wrote. The book is indeed a disaster and exposes the logical fallacies associated with the HJ argument. It's bad.

Grog

I don't have the book, so I will have to "add others from other sources."

Let's just say that Ehrman set the tone with Huffington Post blog which he begins with:

If that doesn't poison the well, then what possibly would? Maybe Ehrman doesn't outright say it, but he immediately equates mythicists with Holocaust deniers. Why not just call us Nazis?

we're still in the same sentence. Holocaust deniers, birther wingnuts, let's see what else we can load up here:

Oh right. Mere amateurs. Why even bother, one wonders?

unconvincing extremists...

denouncers of religion...a separate breed of human!

Either you are a despiser of established religion or you agree with Ehrman. Not poisoning the well? Not a false dichotomy? I am not a despiser of religion, in fact, I am a bona fide member of an established religious tradition. Yet, I do not believe that Jesus Christ ever walked the earth.

ok, now add to that "insane." So, wouldn't this one apply directly to Carrier?

No, Ehrman didn't shell it out at all. EDIT: By the way, these are blanket statements equally applicable to all mythicists. So the "individual" qualifier doesn't save you here. Carrier, unlike Ehrman, addresses Ehrman's arguments and finds them flawed. He might go over the top in describing the arguments as "crap" or Ehrman's work in this book as "incompetent" but he does not poison the well like Ehrman did. Not even close.

mountainman

What sort of a credential is a graduation certificate from a recognised Christian Theology College, other than a mastery in dogma?



More to the point, doesn't he say somewhere that mythicists are like holocaust deniers?