Steven Avery

Greetings.

One more point on the previous discussion of the strange identification
of Herod Archelaus as "certainly" "Herod, the king of Judaea (Luke 1:5)".

Please note that in the same paper in other circumstances than Herod Richard Carrier himself emphasizes the relative fame of a man as a factor in determining who would be referenced by Luke. In regard to a possible transposition of letters and a confusion of the names of :

"Publius Quinctilius Varus" & "Publius Sulpicius Quirinius"

Richard very properly notes -

"Why someone like Luke would mistake a famous man for a relatively unknown one is hard to fathom. The reverse would have made more sense."

Yet when it comes to the famous and feared Herod the Great the issue of likely historical recognition of a "famous man" is left totally out of the picture. The ease of historical recognition by both the historian, and the readers some decades later, is not even mentioned. Total silence. And that silence is very necessary in order to falsely presume that Luke "certainly" meant the lesser, the "relatively unknown", Herod the Entharch.

So we see that Richard was well aware of the significance of historical predominance. However he just 'forgot' to apply it, or even mention it, where it would work against his own chain of arguments (a rusty chain with broken links).

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Steven Avery

Amen.
Now watch this next one, Judge and other readers.

We discussed below how difficult is the "Archelaus theory" so I will not repeat all the backdrop.

Richard Carrier is looking for some excuses or reasons or justifications for allowing Genesis 2:1 to point to Archelaus (Herod the Ethnarch) who had a short and little-noted rulership rather than his famous and feared father, Herod, the King of Judaea.

Luke 1:5
There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea,

It is clear that the Carrier "certainly" argument is very, very difficult
and also that it fails completely if Richard is right in his interpretation
of Luke 2:1. Oops.

However, beyond that Richard now comes up with an amazing doozy in
the same identification, an argument built on an accusation of error by
Luke that Richard Carrier says does not exist. (Yes, it is that bad.)

First, lets us notice that historians place Quinirius as Governor
of Syria in 6 AD, that there is no doubt about the name of this position.

And this is confirmed in many other references..

Josephus Antiquities, 18.1-2:
Quirinius was a man of the Senate, who had held other offices, and after going through them all achieved the highest rank. He had a great reputation for other reasons, too. He arrived in Syria with some others, for he was sent by Caesar as a governor

And from Richard in his own words -

"confirms only that Quirinius was governor of and conducted a census in Syria."
"confirm that Quirinius conducted a census in 6 A.D. as governor of Syria"
"Quirinius is the first Roman governor to take control of Judaea"
"Luke ..gets the order of key features of such a document correct: first the name of the Caesar (Augustus), then the year since the province's creation (first), and then the name of the provincial governor (Quirinius)."

Now, let us see Richard loses his place, his bookmark, and falsely accuses Luke in an attempt to shore up the leaking dike of the "Archaleus" theory.

One big defense Richard gives us for the Archeleus theory is that Luke was imprecise elsewhere. (Note of course that this would only be a weak argument for possibility, or plausibility, and the Archelaus theory has multiple huge difficulties referenced above that were omitted by Richard. Even if his logic had been sound here the following would not be not a positive case for an Archelaus identity.)

This is how Richard frames his argument.

Smith argues that Luke may have meant by "Herod the King" not "Herod the Great" but "Herod the Ethnarch," in other words Archelaus ... I originally decided against it because I thought Luke was otherwise very precise with the titles of men in power throughout Luke and Acts (a fact that Smith himself documents),but Luke fails to be precise in naming the office of Quirinius, too

In this claim of an exceptional imprecision by Luke Richard has forgotten even what position he is taking !! Richard has lost his own bookmark since in his view Luke's mind and pen considered Archelaus as the Herod of Luke 1:5 and Jesus as born in 6 AD and Quirinius as governor of Syria 'in those days'. From the viewpoint of Richard's own theory of Luke's understanding and writing there would be no Lukan imprecision on Quirinius whatsoever !

Clearly from the Richard Carrier position Luke's identification of Quirinius would be 100% accurate !. Instead Richard has implicitly switched to a whole different set of arguments that he is not even making !

Amazing.

And Richard is using the supposed imprecision of Luke to support his own misidentification of Herod Archelaus ! While we see that Richard's own identifications and argumentation totally falsifies his own accusation of error !

How someone could make such a basic error on the sixth edition of a five-year-plus paper is truly amazing. How the skeptic reviewers and readers to date could miss something so simple is also amazing. Apparently when it comes to attacking Luke and Gospel authors reason, logic and consistency have a low priority.

We have previously seen that when it comes to falsely accusing Gospel
authors Richard is very adept, as in the "start preaching" driveby
accusation. Thus every accusatory and contradiction statement Richard makes must be double-checked for accuracy if one takes his paper seriously. (And I am wondering to what extent I should actually bother with other offhand accusations as it is already demonstrated that they are written without rigor and with agenda.)

We are now ready for either a short review or on to verse Luke 2:2.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Steven Avery

Since such offhand accusations are designed to poison the well I think it would be good to go through the additional Richard Carrier supposed Luke-Matthew contradiction list in the days ahead.

The following are the additional big two "contradictions" that Richard gives the reader. Notice that Richard does not even mention Bible commentators who see no substantive difficulties. Which would clearly be the proper scholarship effort even if Richard disagrees with their viewpoint. Instead no such referencing is given as if these are either new points or old points that have never been discussed and addressed with salient counterpoint.

And in fact one of the two is so obviously not a contradiction that one might conjecture that Richard has been playing a little game with his readers.

For now we will simply repeat the Carrier claims.

#1 - Herod would know the identity of Messiah from the Simeon and Anna revelations.

Richard Carrier -
Luke describes Jesus being presented in the temple to repeated public pronouncements of his status, which would not have escaped Herod's supposedly murderous eye (or memory).
Matthew, in contrast, has Herod only finding out roughly two years later, from foreigners.

#2 - The travel-line, a few sub-issues are raised, including -
Luke says no Egypt, in Nazareth the whole time
When was Jesus in Jerusalem
Returning - new home in Nazareth

Richard Carrier -
The family of Jesus, according to Matthew, flees to Egypt and stays there until Herod's death (2.15, 2.21-23). In fact they stayed away from Jerusalem, not only for as many as two intervening years or more, but for the entire ten-year reign of Herod's successor Archelaus (2.22) as well .. This flatly contradicts Luke's claim that they stayed in Nazareth the whole time, from the very beginning, and went to Jerusalem every year without fail.

For the one story entails that Jerusalem was dangerous for the child Jesus, while the other entails that it could not have been. One story has the family start in Nazareth, then journey to Bethlehem and back again, while the other story has the family start in Bethlehem, then flee to Egypt, then find a new home in Nazareth only to avoid the wrath of Archelaus .. the ... details are inescapably at odds. They are telling different stories.

OVERVIEW

At the moment we are running on a few tracks on the thread.
Here is a mini-overview, readers may better understand why the thread moves in an out a bit as we discover more errors and look more closely at each issue. The movement is also for variety.

1) Review and overview of the flaws and errors in the Carrier 'Nativity' article, including but not limited to the already demonstrated --

a) scroll of fasting Megillath Ta’anith misusage
b) Richard's interp of Luke 2:1 destroys his Archelaus theory
c) Totally false accusation of Lukan imprecision (from the Carrier viewpoint)
d) Used to support the strained and improbable Archelaus theory and the
e) Archelaus theory has the additional major problem of historical predominance totally unreferenced by Carrier.
f) Sound interp of Luke 2:1 destroys the weak alternate "gap theory"
g) improper translation and follow-up of "census" and
wooden translation of "inhabitants"

Here are other tracks -

2) On to Luke 2:2 - additional major Richard Carrier 'Nativity' problems
3) Significant information omitted in 'Nativity'
4) Validity and consistency of Luke as historian affirmed by Richard Carrier
5) What does Luke actually say and
6) What is the Matthew and Luke timeline and
7) What sideshow "contradictions" does Richard use to impugn to the Luke and Matthew accounts (and support his own gap theory)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Amaleq13

The only thing you demonstrated on this point is that Carrier is only in error if one holds an a priori assumption that the four Gospels must agree. If one treats them like any other collection of ancient texts puporting to tell the same story, his conclusion is sound.

You should stop pretending that you had a legimate argument on this point and continue to move on to something else where you might have one that doesn't depend on accepting your religious beliefs in the texts.

Steven Avery

My point there is clearly 100% valid. However the skeptics will howl and whine and yelp that the believer cannot "prove" there is not a contradiction as we saw here. Amazing. This is Looking Glass Logic and I am happy to leave the discussion at that .. (set up a thread on "burden of proofs" and "contradictions" if you want to delve into it more) .. and move onward.

In the meantime we have gone way beyond that relatively minor false accusation of Richard Carrier's and entirely disassembled various principle main elements of his 'Nativity' thesis.

Please notice the -
thunderous and deafening silence defending the many Richard Carrier
blunders, omissions, misinterpretations, dubious translations, manipulations and contradictions.

However since Richard Carrier threw in various gratuitous errancy swipes (that one about preaching apparently had a Carrier-interpretative purpose on a position that Richard took that is dead in the water anyway) it is my responsibility to show his irresponsibility. Richard didn't even have the forthrightness to point out that other commentators see no contradiction where he hopes there is one and where he makes his blithe and facile accusations. In terms of scholarship that is the primary issue, the skewed presentation of Richard Carrier.

Clearly a believer and a skeptic are rarely going to agree heartily and fully on such accusations so the important issue is proper and complete scholarship references, at least showing two sides of the question. Which are simply lacking in the Carrier paper where he sneaks in the errancy side-swipes and train-wrecks. Remember the similar problem in the LXX paper where Richard Carrier showed the other side of the almah discussion but using the "weakest link".

One can see the swipes serving as sort of a skeptic psychological fallback position.

"Well, I may be wrong in all my convoluted and contradictory theorizing about Luke, but anyway ... look .. I said there are these other contradictions between Luke and Matthew, so in the big picture there must be some contradiction somewhere."

This underlying element is why the unscholarly approach to the little extraneous swipes (not even referencing any counterpoint whatsoever) is both reprehensible and pernicious.

And why I take the time to do my part to gladly and happily undo the damage by documenting the shenanigans.

And then showing a more excellent way to read and understand the beautiful Luke and Matthew and Gospel verses being attacked.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Amaleq13

No, it clearly was not and you've offered nothing substantive to suggest otherwise. (hint: repeating the flawed claim and insisting it to be 100% valid does not constitute a substantial rebuttal) Your argument on this particular point clearly only works if one approaches the texts with the same a priori assumptions that you do (ie the Gospels must agree). If one refrains from the special pleading in which you consistently indulge and treats them like any other ancient texts, Carrier's conclusion is the one that is reached (ie the synoptics and John differ with regard to the start of Jesus' ministry).

Pointing out that your argument is based on special pleading required neither howl nor whine nor yelp so this particular bit of drama obviously doesn't apply. But I'm sure no one needs to have it pointed out that this is simply a straw man intended to distract from something upon which you would rather not have focus placed. Not that I blame you, really. Acknowledging that every position you hold is ultimately founded upon a logical fallacy would be quite embarrassing I'm sure.

hatsoff

There is no burden of proof for seeking the truth. Yes, it is distantly possible that Mark and Luke, and even Matthew, did not intend to imply that Jesus began his ministry after John the Baptist was put in prison, but that would be an unnatural reading of the text. Matthew's is probably the clearest of the three, saying that "Jesus began to preach" (4:17) following John's arrest and Jesus' return to Galilee. This is only compatible with the fourth Gospel's account with some imaginative--that is, unwarranted--interpreting.

Some of us like to take things one issue at a time, in order not to get sidetracked or over-worked. If you don't consider this "minor" point to be worthwhile, I would have suggested you didn't mention it, or at least not showcase it as the very first of your objections.

I can't speak to everything you mentioned, but on this point--the beginning of Jesus' ministry--he has been defended adequately, first by others, and now by myself.

Perhaps he should have been a bit more sensitive to Christian readers, but I see nothing in his article which is erroneous. I can't imagine any non-Christian historian arguing that the synoptics and John are harmonious with regard to the timeline of Jesus' ministry. It's a no-brainer, unless of course you believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, in which case you have stepped squarely outside the bounds of legitimate historical research.

That's not a fair expectation. Religious biases have no place in any scientific inquiry, including history. Mr. Carrier is under no burden to make room for Christian interpretations of the evidence any more than he should detail the Hindu, Buddhist or Zoroastrian view. His is not an exercise in abstract philosophy, but a naturalistic evaluation of ancient texts. And whether or not he has made mistakes (which shouldn't be too shocking, given that he is human) this question of Jesus' ministry is not one of them.

Sauron

Dodge.

You made a statement above about historical processes. Can you support it? Here it is again, in case your memory is conveniently failing:

The burden of proof is upon the claim of a contradiction.

Doug asked you for some proof that this is how burden of proof is normally understood in historical circles.

As for your claimm that you never tried to frame the discussion that way -- let's remember that when Doug asked you that question You certainly had no problem trying to foist a false burden of proof onto Doug Shaver. But when it comes to you actually lifting a finger to support a statement that you made, suddenly you duck out.

A page of evasion and ad hominems against me (and others) could be skipped with just a straightforward answer. Either that, or a retraction of your claim. I'll even allow you to restate the claim. But trying to pretend that you didn't make the claim is intellectually dishonest.

There's nothing wrong with the original question.

hatsoff

Looks like Luke is out. Hmm. I'll have to take a closer look before I can be sure.

judge

I was not aware of this, Luke fails to give the correct office that quirinius held in 6CE?

Interesting. even more evidence Luke may not have been thinking of the 6CE taxation enrollment.