Steven Carr

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/667

'I am puzzled especially because this HuffPo article as written makes several glaring errors and rhetorical howlers that I cannot believe any competent scholar would have written. Surely he is more careful and qualified in the book? I really hope so. Because I was expecting it to be the best case for historicism in print. But if it’s going to be like this article, it’s going to be the worst piece of scholarship ever written.'

youngalexander

Having just read Carrier's blog, it would appear that the fun has already begun, what with the publication of Erhman's recent book and the imminent arrival of Carrier's two volumes.

The article looks like a rush of blood to satisfy the great unwashed!:huh:

maryhelena

Great title by Carrier:

Ehrman Trashtalks Mythicism

I see that the ebook is now available on amazon. I had thought of purchasing it - but not now. I'm not going to waste my money, and time, on someone who seems to have such a blind spot towards the ahistoricist/mythicist position. I'll just enjoy all the fun and games as Richard Carrier's ice-cold logic outmaneuvers the ill-conceived and badly presented Ehrman mythicist attack.

:eating_popcorn:

------------

I do read books......................Richard Pervo's The Making of Paul, arrived yesterday...

The Making of Paul (or via: amazon.co.uk)

blastula

That's a very strong critique. I'd like to see Ehrman respond.

I am puzzled that Ehrman would talk about Aramaic sources within a year or two of Jesus's life, yet one of his recurring themes about the unreliability of the gospels is how we don't have any original texts and nothing can be dated less than decades after his death. Depending on what he means, it may not be a strict contradiction, but there is a tension there.

maryhelena

Neil Godfrey's blog post on Ehrman's HuffPost article.



http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/03/...nst-mythicism/

aa5874

<removed>

Bernard Muller

Richard is right on the mistakes of Ehrman (more so #1 & #2). But I found his application of the Bayes theorem very prone to attract detractors.
First, the gospels and Revelation suggested or plainly said the resurrections and the liberation of Israel were expected from Jesus (with a delay & with God's intervention, some time after his death and alleged resurrection!). So that typical Messiah was in the book, at least of Jewish Christians (Paul changed that, in my views, to be more acceptable to Gentiles and the Romans).
Then Carrier goes on:
It is not zero, far from it. Of course, with the death, some Christians could still believe their Jesus Messiah will accomplish all that, in the future, when he comes back (with the power of God!).
Then Carrier continues:
(Emphasis mine)
Here we see Bayes theorem in action. First you feed it bad data, and then by some magic, you conclude what I bolded. So easy. So if I devised a Messiah figure who gathered followers then offered himself to hungry lions "we can be absolutely certain he would look essentially just like Jesus Christ." and give a result of 100% through the Bayes theorem.
Then Carrier tackles the problem of "brother of the Lord".
In hypothesis 1, Carrier makes a big assumption, about James having been baptized as Christian (but it is never stated in early Christian texts, and Paul never said James and other members of the church of Jerusalem were 'in the Lord' or 'in Christ' or even 'brothers'). Then Carrier says, after some dicussion (invoking Clement of Alexandria!), "It’s enough to test the hypothesis that every Christian would be called brother of the Lord". The problem is Paul never used that expression for confirmed Christians.
Then, in the quote I exposed, Carrier writes "(not one time in all of Paul’s letters does he ever say or even imply that this phrase means only biological brothers)." Yes, but maybe he did not have a need for it. However he had a need to declare a particular woman a biological sister of a named man (Rom16:16) and in Rom16:13, Paul has another unnamed woman as a biological mother of a named man, and, at the same time "has been a mother to [Paul]".
Then Carrier introduces his Bayes theorem which of course concludes in his favour.
And finally Carrier muses that a James was a brother of Peter, and that an interpolator added "of the Lord".
Of course we have no evidence of that. Instead, from early Christian texts and Josephus' antiquities, we have James as a blood brother of Jesus, no brother of Peter named James, and many clues that James was not even a Christian.

blastula

I believe Carrier means a messiah who has already done all that.

Bernard Muller

to Blastula,
Yes, it is complicated. First I seem to defend Bart, which was not my intention. But Bart was partly right, as from the perception of Revelation and probably Jewish Christians (hints of that in gMatthew and gLuke and Acts): a (humble) HJ was made to be a Messiah, having in the future a big part in setting God's Kingdom on earth and even (through God) resurrecting dead. So "(“anyone who wanted to make up a messiah would make him like that”) on the hypothesis “someone made up a messiah” is not exactly zero, but much more than that.
But wait, that goes against Bart's argument, because Bart said the Christian messiah was so different of the "standard" one, he could not have been invented.

GakuseiDon

I don't think Carrier is right on #1 of Ehrman's mistakes. In fact, it's disappointing that Carrier is doing to Ehrman what Acharya S is doing to Carrier on the Luxor inscriptions. Very disappointing indeed.

Carrier writes:

Mistake #1: Ehrman says “not even … the most powerful and important figure of his day, Pontius Pilate” is “mentioned in any Roman sources of his day.” False. Philo of Alexandria was a living contemporary of Pilate, and wrote a whole book about him...

We also have discussions of Pilate in Josephus’ Jewish War, written in 78 A.D., the same distance from Pilate’s life as the earliest Gospels are assumed to be from Jesus.

But Ehrman wrote "Roman sources". Carrier notes that and writes:

If Ehrman is being hyper-specific as to his use of the word “Roman,” that would be even more disingenuous (as Philo’s cititizenship would hardly matter for this purpose; and at any rate, as a leading scholar and politician in Alexandria and chief embassador to the emperor, Philo was almost certainly a Roman citizen)...

But that is not the extent of his mistake. Forgetting (or not knowing?) about Philo (or even Josephus) mentioning Pilate is bad enough. Worst of all is the fact that Ehrman’s claim is completely false even on the most disingenuous possible reading of his statement. For we have an inscription, commissioned by Pilate himself, attesting to his existence and service in Judea. That’s as “Roman” an attestation as you can get...

Then Carrier goes on to psychoanalyze what is happening in Ehrman's brain:

But Ehrman didn’t make that valid argument; he made the invalid argument instead, and premised it on amateur factual mistakes. Emotion seems to have seized his brain. Seeing red, he failed to function like a competent scholar, and instead fired off a screed every bit as crank as the worst of any of his opponents. Foot, mouth.

All that, remarkably, based on one line.

Googling Ehrman's book, this is what Ehrman writes (my emphasis):

We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that Pilate ruled for ten years, between 26 and 36 ce. It would be easy to argue that he was the single most important figure for Roman Palestine for the entire length of his rule. And what records from that decade do we have from his reign--what Roman records of his major accomplishments, his daily itinerary, the decrees he passed, the laws he issued, the prisoners he put on trial, the death warrants he signed, the scandals, his interviews, his judicial proceedings? We have none. Nothing at all. (Page 44)

[Does that mean that Pilate didn't exist?] No, he is mentioned in several passages in Josephus and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo and in the Gospels. He certainly existed even though, like Jesus, we have no records from his day or writings from his hand. And what is striking is that we have far more information about Pilate than about any other governor of Judea in Roman times. And so it is a modern "myth" to say that we have extensive Roman records from antiquity... (Page 45)

So, Ehrman DID mean "Roman sources", and written sources at that. He is addressing the "myth" that the Romans were great record keepers (which they were) and that therefore we should expect to have Roman records of people like Jesus. But we don't see any written Roman records of Pilate, much less of Jesus.

Note that Ehrman does refer to the Pilate inscription in his book, twice.

Time for work, but I'll look at an even more disappointing example from Carrier in my next post.