Chris Weimer

If by cooking you mean selectively quoting that which mostly aligns with a preconceived conclusion, then yes. However, in context, Carrier was not wrong here. It was Doherty who ultimately ignored the broader evidence. Carrier was noting that Doherty's interpretation is technically possible.

If someone sees something different than what I've seen, please let me know, but this is how I interpreted the mess.

ETA - To further clarify, I thought, and I think Gibson did also, that Carrier was affirming Doherty, which looking at it now, and talking to Carrier himself about it, I find not true. If you look at the other thread "Historical v. Mythical..." you'll find that I said that Carrier was a mythicist, in league with Doherty. I was misinformed.

Furthermore, I think it was Ted Hoffman who first claimed that Carrier agreed with Doherty. This is again false. And selectively quoting Carrier is what brought about this whole mess.

Amaleq13

That is how Gibson defined his meaning in using the term and I not only agree with what you've said about the legitimacy of Carrier's "selective quoting", I suggested the same thing earlier in the thread but obtained no reply from Jeffrey.

I think you've boiled it down well.

Well, he is a self-described mythicist but he has also stated that he disagrees with Doherty on several points. Personally, I am really looking forward to the book he intends to write on the subject in a couple years. I only hope it doesn't involve a great deal of Bayesian probability theory because it makes my brain ache.

rlogan

Hapkido guys have always been such whiners. :wave:




If we are past the acrimony now I would really like to see anyone from the anti-Doherty crowd explain why this odd language is being used when all someone has to do when saying someone is a descendant is - exactly that: "descendant of David".


I don't mean some vague handwaving, but some real demonstration that this is just what someone chooses when emphasizing familial relations. For example, one common convention today is "blood relative".

I can, in other words, make the empty assertion that if I say someone is my father "according to the flesh" that this means he is my biological father.

But that is just B.S. because I would say "he's my biological father" or "he's my father by blood". It is simply not a convention to say that he is my father "according to the flesh".


There might be a phrase common to emphasize when someone is a blood descendant as opposed to adopted, for example...

Clivedurdle

Shouldn't it be ..."and David begat....and Joseph begat Jesus"?

Anything else - especially God begatting anyone is immediately mythological. The added complexity "seed of" "according to the flesh" is direct evidence of myth.

Moving from the active to the passive is the stuff of newspaper headlines and confusion.

Amaleq13

This from a guy who apparently sits in church and compares his shoes to those of the other ladies?

I'm not part of that crowd but it occurs to me that we might very well expect odd/vague/ambiguous descriptions from Paul when it came to referring to the "fleshy form" taken on by the pre-existent Son. Especially given his expressed views on the rather negative nature of flesh, in general. He's kinda caught between a rock and another rock. He venerates the Son and the ultimate sacrifice He made but that required taking on, at the very least, the appearance of stuff Paul considers corrupt.

It seems to me that choosing roundabout language might have seemed the best solution for anyone holding such views. You don't want to just come right out and refer to this fleshy form in the same way you do the rest of humanity because you really don't believe the Son was ever entirely like the rest of humanity and certainly not truly a chunk a corrupt flesh.

I think this is even more likely if, as has been suggested elsewhere, we think of Paul's views as docetic.

jgibson000

And how do you know that EK SPERMATOS was not the way that Greek speakers/writers in Classical or Hellenistsic times said just this?

Have you actually examined the corpus of extant Greek texts to see whether or not this language is indeed "odd", let alone not used to express the idea of descent? Or is your claim based only in the assumption that for someone in the ancient world to express a particular concept or idea, they have to do so in the particular way that 21st century English speakers express that concept/idea?

Um .. have a look both at the entry on SPERMA in LSJ, BDAG, and TDNT and in particular at the instances of SPERMA and EK (TOU) SPERMATOS not only in the LXX, but in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Philo, Josephis, Vita Adam & Eve, the Scholia on Hesiod and Pindar, etc.

Jeffrey

EarlDoherty

I am still reeling 24 hours later after reading of Jeffrey Gibson’s unconscionable behavior in regard to Richard Carrier. This kind of thing in any other field would get him ‘disbarred.’ And now today I see that once again he has been let off the hook, when as far as I’m concerned, he has totally discredited himself. After receiving a positive evaluation on Richard from Prof. Harris, he then tried to elicit something more negative, and when he received no response (probably because Harris could smell a witch-hunt) blatantly misrepresented the silence along his own prejudiced lines. He later tried to worm out of it by transparently misrepresenting his own words, including by pointing to his “carefully chosen words: ‘as far as I can tell’�! Is this a joke? Did this in any way convey that he had not actually received a reply from Harris? Were there not other words that could have been much more “carefully chosen�?

This kind of thing makes J. P. Holding look like a choirboy, and the dishonest tactics of creationists in regard to the views of evolutionists like small potatoes. But even that wasn’t enough. Determined to get the ridicule of Richard’s Greek competence he so desperately wanted, Gibson gives us an “anonymous� quote which just happens to do that very thing (and in a very ‘over the top’ way), then refuses to provide the source. He must have known that the thought that he simply made it up himself would cross most people’s minds, and yet he has still refused. I suggest that the only way someone would be willing to do that is if in fact the thought were true. I doubt that anyone who allegedly expressed himself the way Gibson says he did would be unwilling to have his name revealed. (Let him prove me wrong.)

Reactions to these tactics on this thread by those unsympathetic to Gibson seem largely to have been unnecessarily guarded, perhaps out of fear of the moderators and our now over-sensitive kowtowing to political correctness. That there have been sympathizers who have tried to soft-pedal or even excuse Gibson is itself reprehensible. To try to throw the blame back on someone like Ted Hoffman for introducing the “credentials� business (which was simply in response to Gibson’s constant attacks on me and Carrier for “cooking� the evidence as a reflection of our own ‘uncredentialed’ incompetence) is another joke.

The furor now seems to have died down, mostly on the basis of us misunderstanding poor Jeffrey who “never meant to be misleading.� I consider that to be a crock. I am personally livid, and I think Gibson ought to be blacklisted. I suppose I should feel fortunate that all my own professors have long since retired or passed on. I will have nothing further to do with him. I am about to post on the “Katie Sarka� thread a response which I made to him on the JesusMysteries list in 2001 in regard to the grammatical structure of Romans 1:1-4, but anything he says in response to that will be ignored. (Others are welcome to weigh in, if they wish.)

And they wonder why we express distrust of the motives and biases of believers who argue on these boards, and when we bring up a word like “bias� (or others), we are the ones roundly condemned. While I would never accuse all believers on boards like this of behaving in such dishonorable fashion, Gibson has done nothing to alleviate that distrust. He has managed to taint the whole concept of defending the faith.

Chris Weimer

I do wish we would keep attacks of people out of IIDB. This goes for everyone. EVERYONE. In this view, I sent Earl a private message trying to explain why I posted the summary of this thread earlier and clarifying (I seem to be doing this quite a bit these days) my exact position and what exactly transpired.

However, I have one final comment to make in public regarding this mess.

I have seen the emails between Gibson and indeed the quote provided is genuine. I am also forbidden to reveal the identity of the professor, but I have checked facts and Gibson did not fabricate this quote.

This is not an endorsement of the quote itself, but merely an assurance that Jeffrey Gibson did not make this up.

Chris

Amaleq13

To reiterate Chris' comment only in an official, blue-tinted Moderator Warning, the insults have simply got to stop. I don't want to edit anyone who clearly has a potentially more informed view of the evidence than the average person but not at the price of allowing them to insult another member.

Let's see if we can resolve all three issues Christ has identified without attacking any individuals, OK? In theory, that should not be too difficult for professionals.

Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

jgibson000

Since, of course, there is another (and I should think, patently obvious) way of explaining why I did not name the source of my quote -- namely, that the source of the quote asked me not to, I cannot help but wonder if your suggestion that I fabricated the quote and am attempting avoid admitting that I did so is the only way that my refusal to name the source can be explained, shows you to be a man of blinkered imagination? In any case, as Chris has already testified, your suggestion is as hasty and presumptuous as it is wrong. Heck, it may even be libelous.

But the real question that, so far as I can see, still hasn't been dealt with here by all who have been accusing me of underhanded tactics is whether what is said in the aforementioned quote about Richard's analysis of KATA, is, whether "over the top or not", true and would be regarded so by recognized and established experts in the field of Greek Grammar.

Jeffrey