aa5874

Bart Ehrman's book is just filled with Logical Fallacies and is precisely as Carrier claimed that Ehrman is incompetent.

stephan huller

For what it's worth I managed to get a copy of this book. It is well written. I know firsthand how difficult it is to explain these things in language that people can actually understand. Trobisch has this gift. Ehrman is a gifted writer. The question is whether he has to resort to oversimplification and misrepresentation (as with his portrait of Morton Smith's exegesis of the Mar Saba document) in order to achieve this clarity and a popular readership. In any event, I managed to get the book without paying for it, so I am not rewarding Ehrman for past sins.

Adam

I admit that I am dismissive of oral tradition or (at the other extreme) a shared Greek original as capable of explaining the Q1 similarities and dissimilarities we see in gMatthew and gLuke or the disparity between gJohn (the most Aramaic of the gospels) and the Synoptics for the Passion Narrative. I don't think an appeal to scholarly consensus can outweigh the textual facts. However, I expect that your appeal to authority here is in full agreement with my own conviction that the canonical texts were all originally written in Greek. Your reply implies that the "experienced experts" have Mss
of Q1 (or even Q) and the Passion Narrative at hand to dissect. There is not even unanimity that such texts ever existed. It was only sources that were originally in Aramaic, as most Aramaic experts agree. (Scholars in Greek and Aramaic tend to defend their own turf.)

Can you name scholars who are sure that the sources Q and Passion Narrative were originally written in Greek? Perhaps they argue that part of each was in Greek (such as Q2) or that each was translated into Greek before being used as a source. I would agree with that. Maybe they do not deny an Aramaic origin.

The above is my reply to your #83. As for your #84 my earlier response had been to your assertions in your #79 about the dubious late provenance of Q etc.

GakuseiDon

Another item that Carrier lists under "Errors of facts", which either highlights Ehrman's incompetence, or highlights Carrier's habit of making extraordinarily bone-headed comments at times (and I do like the guy, honestly!).

Carrier writes:

The “No Records” Debacle: Ehrman declares (again with that same suicidally hyperbolic certitude) that “we simply don’t have birth notices, trial records, death certificates—or other kinds of records that one has today” (p. 29). Although his conclusion is correct (we should not expect to have any such records for Jesus or early Christianity), his premise is false. In fact, I cannot believe he said this. How can he not know that we have thousands of these kinds of records?

Using the preview function in Amazon, I see that Ehrman writes something slightly different, though it probably doesn't affect Carrier's point:

“... not only of Jesus but of nearly anyone living in the first century. We simply don't have birth notices, trial records, death certificates or other standard kinds of records that one has today.”

It sounds to me like Ehrman is saying that we have few records of anyone living in the First Century, and don't have the "standard kinds of records" available to check that one has today. A charitable reading might suggest that Ehrman was speaking in relative terms rather than absolute.

I thought initially that Carrier was taking Ehrman in absolute terms. I.e. Ehrman is claiming no such records exist today. But Carrier appears to read Ehrman as claiming that the Romans simply didn't keep such records AT ALL. Which of course would be an extraordinary statement by Ehrman. Carrier explains (my bolding):

Although his conclusion is correct (we should not expect to have any such records for Jesus or early Christianity), his premise is false. In fact, I cannot believe he said this. How can he not know that we have thousands of these kinds of records? Yes, predominantly from the sands of Egypt, but even in some cases beyond. I have literally held some of these documents in my very hands. More importantly, we also have such documents quoted or cited in books whose texts have survived. For instance, Suetonius references birth records for Caligula, and in fact his discussion of the sources on this subject is an example I have used of precisely the kind of historical research that is conspicuously lacking in any Christian literature before the third century...

Ehrman only demonstrates how little we can trust his knowledge or research when he says such silly things like, “If Romans kept such records, where are they? We certainly don’t have any” (p. 44). He really seems to think, or is misleading any lay reader to think, that (a) we don’t have any such records (when in fact we have many) and that (b) our not having them means Romans never kept them...

Can someone with Ehrman's book check the context of Ehrman's quote above against what he says elsewhere in the book? Is Ehrman apparently suggesting that the Romans never kept such records AT ALL?

aa5874

You should have done your homework first. This precisely what Dave 31 has been saying. You are making comments without first reading what Ehrman wrote.

I have Ehrman's book and Carrier is right--Ehrman is incompetent. "Did Jesus Exist?" is riddled with logical fallacies and based on admitted unreliable sources.

GakuseiDon

So Bart Ehrman is actually claiming in DJE that (to quote Carrier) "Romans never kept them", with "them" being "birth notices, trial records, death certificates—or other kinds of records that one has today”?

Vorkosigan

DonG:



It is hard to tell what Ehrman means, but I'm going to go with the charitable interpretation here. If only Ehrman had spent less time misrepresenting what mythicists are and more time defining what he meant.....

aa5874

Right now I am dealing with Carrier's statement that Ehrman is INCOMPETENT and I have ACTUALLY read some of the logical fallacies.

Grog

Well, I am not saying that if Q then HJ. Even if Q were firmly established, it would be simplistic to assume that it gets one closer to authenticity or an HJ. I agree with your questions. Those are the pertinent questions that have to be answered.

Vorkosigan

On second thought, the "if romans kept such records...." suggests that Ehrman is denying that they ever did.

Vorkosigan