Steven Carr

There is a fascinating interview with Richard Carrier at http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=10150


CARRIER
I’m just following up on what other Scholars have done, demonstrating that the current methodology is bankrupt, it’s invalid. It’s this what they call “criteria of historicity that they’re using.

LUKE: You’re saying it’s hard to blame historians for not taking the Jesus myth theory correctly when all they’ve had to read are poorly argued Jesus myth theories.

CARR
If historians are good at spotting 'poorly argued' theories, why does peer-review allow so many articles through that use methods that are 'bankrupt' 'invalid', to quote Carrier?

CARRIER
The one chapter I have refuting all the historicity criteria is like the deconstructive part of the whole project, because once you see that their methods are wrong they don’t have any valid basis....

CARRIER
That’s the problem with criticism that I’ve made before about pro-myth community: that they’re outside of academia.

They act like outsiders and mavericks and accuse historians of all these awful things.

CARR
What sort of 'awful things'? Pointing out that every single criterion used is wrong?

CARRIER
...the historians today assume that “Oh, that (the myth theory) was refuted 80 years ago.”

CARR
What qualifies somebody as an historian? Is it an ability to use these 31 or so criteria , all of which are logically invalid?

To choose a name, Bart Ehrman has a BA from Wheaton (an evangelical college) and 'At Princeton I did both a master of divinity degree—training to be a minister—and, eventually, a Ph.D. in New Testament studies.'

Does training to be a minister, or a Ph.D in 'New Testament Studies' qualify you as a 'professional historian', in the way that studying the Illiad would qualify you as a professional historian?

Crossan is an expert on the criterion of double dissimilarity, criterion of embarrassment etc etc - all the criteria that Carrier shows are logically invalid and bankrupt.

What qualifies somebody as a 'professional historian', so that people like Bart Ehrman and JD Crossan are professional historians and Earl Doherty isn't?

GakuseiDon

Thanks for the link, Steven. I'm going through it now.

Hmmm... According to Carrier, the criterion of embarrassment is one of the main methods used by historians. I didn't realise that!

Toto

I don't see where Carrier said anything resembling this. He says that the criterion of embarrassment is one of the main methods used by historical Jesus scholars (most of whom are not historians) but that it is an invalid method.

The transcript is a little hard to read, because it is reporting a conversation verbatim, without the verbal clues that make sense of things.

spamandham

...you misread it. Carrier says this is a criterion used by *Jesus Studies*, not historians.

The arguments that have been advanced for it are completely fallacious and wrong. So, the criterion doesn’t even apply. What I do in this book is not only do I point out that often happens but that the criterion itself is defective.

Carrier, an actual historian rather than someone with a divinity degree from a Bible college, point blank claims the CoE is bunk, and explains in detail why that is. He also makes the same observation those of us here have been making, which is that in the cases it's proponents use as case studies, they have basic facts and assumptions wrong and the CoE does not apply. This is what makes it worse than useless - it promotes faulty reasoning and poor assumptions.

spin

Bum in chair at tertiary education establishment with at least one course with a title starting "History of..." (eg "History of Knitting").


spin

GakuseiDon

Thanks for the transcript. What I heard was "the most common is like the argument from embarrassment", and took him to mean "one of the main ones."

Toto

But it's not used by historians, except for theologians who pretend to do history.

Doug Shaver

Great interview. Thanks for the link.

rlogan

Carrier is a potty mouth!

He talked a lot about Bayes' Theorem without in my view really explaining the essential nature. We have prior beliefs, evidence is introduced, and the posterior probability is a weighted mixture of the two.

mountainman

Ditto. I have made some comments about Richard Carrier's comments on the non canonical "books" here.

But this was just as off the cuff interview. His second book will tell the story one way or another. If I am reading things right the first book will lay the groundwork with Bayes Theorem and its applicability to history, and the second book will tackle "The Historicity of Jesus" using Bayesian analysis. Here we will see not only Carrier's weighted conclusions but also his weighted assumptions. Bayes' Theorem is not immune to GIGO (garbage in garbage out). It will be interesting to see this second book.