manoj

Perhaps, but that is not how I read it. Ehrman does not say that some 'mythers' are violently opposed to religion.

Read his book and you'll get the feeling that questioning the historicity of Jesus is something only idiots and people 'violently opposed to religion' do. Because historicity is so obvious! :Cheeky:

Cheers
Manoj

manoj

Well, I don't think I have to psychoanalyze the motives of the mythicists!

Acharya, Doherty, Carrier, Price and Ehrman (and many on this list) have spent many many hours often a lifetime of research on these questions. Of course they are passionate about this issue. But who cares what drives them?

By focusing on what drives a person to take a position rather than the argument itself, Ehrman makes it an ad hominem attack. Or so it seems to me. That is not to say he does not consider the arguments at all. He does. But the quality of this inquiry has been called into question (and there are enough threads that discuss this.)

Apparently not vocal enough! Ehrman was not aware of their existence until he very recently started digging into this issue!

Cheers
Manoj

GakuseiDon

Yes, you do! In the name of Bart Ehrman and his Holy Text "Did Jesus Exist?", I command thee!

"Ad hominem" is "that person is ugly, therefore his argument is bad!" An example of something that is not "Ad hominem" would be "that person is ugly and his argument is bad!" I was wondering whether Ehrman did either. Dr Price refers to Ehrman calling Price basically a thought criminal and launching a slanderous attack on Doherty. What bad things does Ehrman say about the mythicists themselves? I will be getting the book soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd raise a thread and ask. I can then look at the context to see if such criticisms are warranted.

The ones that call Ehrman dishonest, an incompetent scholar, and stuck in a post-Christian paradigm, you mean? Yes, it is true, there are LOTS of threads like that.

Yes, but the sensible mythicists know of the existence of vocal "tinfoil hat" mythicists. To Carrier's great credit, he distinguishes between the work of the sensible ones and the "tin-foil" hat ones. But for some reasons, other mythicists don't. I'm sure if Ehrman had used the same comments made by Carrier, mythicists would have felt insulted.

The "tinfoil hat" mythicists certainly aren't vocal in academic circles, despite the evidence they claim to have. And the "tinfoil hat" mythicists claim to have as strong evidence as the "tinfoil hat" challenged mythicists. As Acharya S might have said, "If I have seen any further than the others, it's because I have stood on the shoulders of Pygmies!"

Below: Hidden somewhere in Acharya S's basement, a statue of a Pygmy, symbol of Acharya S's arguments. (and before you complain that it doesn't exist, please check with Acharya S that there is in fact no such statue of a Pygmy hidden in her basement. After all, that's the important thing that needs to be checked here, right Richard Carrier?)



But anyway, my OP was after what Ehrman says about individual mythicists in his book. Carrier himself talks about "tinfoil hat" mythicists and their paranoia, esp Acharya S's. Does Ehrman say anything like that in his book, other than equating some of them to conspiracy theorists like Holocaust deniers?

GakuseiDon

Well, I got the ebook from Amazon, after installing "Kindle for PC" on my PC. Kindle of PC is good in that it allows you to search for text, but it doesn't allow you to cut and paste, which is a pain.

I can't see anything remotely similar to that charged by Dr Price. Ehrman says where he thinks Dr Price is wrong, but nothing close to anything like "thought criminal". And there is no slanderous attack on Doherty either. In fact, between Ehrman and Carrier, it is Carrier who appears to use the stronger language of "tinfoil hat" mythicists and their unreasoning paranoia.

Below are some quotes from Ehrman's book (I'll give page numbers according to my Kindle on PC application, but I'm not sure if it matches the hard copy):

On page 2, at the start of his book, Ehrman differentiates between "conspiracy" type mythicists (undoubtedly Carrier's "tinfoil hat" mythicists) and the more worthy mythicists.

But a whole body of literature out there, some of it highly intelligent and well informed, makes this case [i.e. for the non-existence of Jesus].

These sundry books and articles (not to mention websites) are of varying quality. Some of them rival The Da Vinci Code in their passion for conspiracy and the shallowness of their historical knowledge... But a couple of bona fide scholars... have taken this position and written about it. Their books may not be known to most of the general public interested in questions related to Jesus, the Gospels, or the early Christian church, but they do occupy a noteworthy niche as a (very) small but (often) loud minority voice.

So Ehrman distinguishes between those mythicists who have a "passion for conspiracy" and those that are bona fide scholars.

On page 5, Ehrman controversially ties the conspiracy theory mythicists with Holocaust denial:

Still, as is clear from the avalanche of sometimes outraged postings on all the relevant Internet sites, there is simply no way to convince conspiracy theorists that the evidence for their position is too thin to be convincing and that the evidence for a traditional view is thoroughly persuasive. Anyone who chooses to believe something contrary to to evidence that an overwhelming majority of people find overwhelmingly convincing--whether it involves the fact of the Holocaust, the landing on the moon, the assassination of presidents, or even a presidential place of birth--will not be convinced. Simply will not be convinced.

On page 20, Ehrman again distinguishes between scholarly mythicists who deserve to be taken seriously (even if found wrong) and conspiracy type mythicists:

As I will indicate more fully later. I think Wells--and Price, and several other mythicists--do deserve to be taken seriously, even if their claims are in the end dismissed. A number of other mythicists, however, do not offer anything resembling scholarship in support of their view and instead present the unsuspecting reading public with sensationalist claims that are so extravagant, so wrongheaded, and so poorly substantiated that it is no wonder that scholars do not take them seriously."

And finally, on page 30, Ehrman states it would be a mistake to tarnish the work of the serious mythicists and the conspiracy ones:

While it is useful to provide a taste of the sensationalist claims that one cn find in this literature, I do not think that the serious authors who have pursued a mythicist agenda (for example, G. A. Wells, Robert Price and now Richard Carrier) can be tarnished with the same brush or condemned with guilt by association. Their work has to stand or fall on its own, independent of the foibles and shortcomings of the senstionalists. Those who have done research do indeed make a case that Jesus did not exist.