Steven Avery

Thanks, Matthew. I agree, and while I earlier gave Richard a full pass on having the Vardaman stuff on the page this makes it a double-pass. (Although he could simply link to his existing article, of course. However it is definitely germane and Richard has every right to include it in the article, it is his call.) And Richard could even add the specifics of how this is referenced in the Case for Christ and a couple of other sources.

Richard Carrier does say elsewhere that :

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...26/ai_88826384
"(both John McRay and Lee Strobel cite him)"

Apparently this is in 'Case for Christ' and 'The Case for Christmas' for Strobel and 'Archaeology and the New Testament' by John McRay (1991)

A good review of another McRay book by Craig Blomberg points out this weakness. Note that this is as late as 2003.

http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2003/0200/0207
McRay, John. Paul: His Life and Teaching. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003

Here you can see another writer pick up on McRay,
mostly this is done on forums but occasionally an article.

http://www.sundayschoolcourses.com/h...u/histjesu.htm
Historical Evidence for the Gospel Accounts of Jesus Christ - Robert Jones

And here a paper gives Vardaman as a possible reference, noting also the Finegan source as well as the original Vardaman article.

http://www.wheaton.edu/DistanceLearn...nt%20Study.htm
The Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament: Second Commonwealth Judaism in Recent Study - J. Julius Scott, Jr.

.. archaeologist E. Jerry Vardaman has reported microscopic dates on coins which, if proven valid, could alter the dating of several New Testament events. Cf., E. J. Vardaman, "Jesus' Life, A New Chronology," Biblical Illustrator (winter 1985), pp. 12-18 and Jack Finegan. The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Mediterranean World of the Early Christian Apostles. Boulder: Westview, 1981, p. 14, notes 27, 28 on p. 237.

Back to Lee Strobel.

http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/...y-writing.html
Lee Strobel and imaginary writing - Chris Hallquist

http://tinyurl.com/293ls9
The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel

"McRay responded by saying ... An eminent archaeologist named Jerry Vardaman has done a great deal of work in this regard. He has found a coin with the name of Quirinius on it in very small writing, or what we call 'micrographic' letters. This places him as proconsul of Syria and Cilicia from 11 B.C. until after the death of Herod."

At the book entry you can read his equivocal take on all this.
Strobel manages to use the concepts of Vardaman without
giving direct approval by mixing it in with the larger theory.

Apparently the big Strobel problem is that he was still using
this Vardaman idea at least as late as December 2005 (I do
not know the printing dates of Case for Christ). As discussed
here, referencing Lee Strobel on a Fox News TV show.

Real Clear Theology Blog
http://ntrminblog.blogspot.com/2005/...christmas.html
"it does look to me like no Christian should be citing Vardaman on Luke's census." - Jason Engwer

This thread at apologetics.com discusses the Strobel misusage.

http://www.apologetics.com/forums/sh...86&an=0&page=0
Searching for True Religion with Reason and Faith

Just to be clear, I find the whole Quirinius having an earlier governorship
or leadership in Syria approach to be dubious, essentially a misdirection
for apologetics. Thus this is all peripheral stuff to my studies of Luke,
Matthew and the nativity.

It does however have lots of integrity and scholarship aspects which are very important. This may well be Lee Strobel's weakest reference (as discussed in the apologetics.com thread). Lee would do well to acknowledge this error publicly and clearly, especially in future editions of the two books mentioned above.

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

Sven

Kind of ironic if someone without any credentials (that I know of) says something like this about a respected historian, who has published in peer-reviewed journals.

Amaleq13

I find it extremely difficult to believe you would draw such a specific conclusion just from what the synoptics tell us. That you either refuse or are unable to acknowledge that reading the synoptics without John would naturally lead one to conclude that Jesus' ministry began after the Baptist's imprisonment is disappointing though not necessarily suprising. It requires conscious effort to step away from one's own assumptions and preferred conclusion. Only by doing so myself was I able to understand how you reached your conclusion and why it seems to make so much sense to you.

Your apparently false suggestion that only skeptical readers with tinted glasses find the texts in conflict is the reason for the journey. Your subsequent comments suggest you missed the point.

My question was about the apparently Christian alogoi who concluded that the synoptics offered different information from John.

Wrong. The true bottom line is that approaching the Gospels without any presuppositions about necessary agreement between accounts leads one to the same conclusion as Carrier while your conclusion clearly requires one to start out assuming that the stories must agree.

Unfortunately for your efforts here, your approach is just another example of you treating your sacred texts differently from all other ancient texts (ie special pleading) and claiming anyone who doesn't it biased.

Those who do not share your faith in the texts are not likely to consider your conclusions sound because they are ultimately based more on faith than the evidence.

Toto

Off topic comments split off here

Doug Shaver

Can you quote any historian to that effect? One who is generally respected within the scholarly community?

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Richard Carrier writes the 'Nativity' article working with a specific syllogism that it will be good to attempt to summarize and express.

a) Luke is a good historian, solid on background
b) Luke places the birth of Jesus at 6 AD
c) ergo ... Matthew and Luke contradict

Note that most skeptics do not agree with (a) although Luke has been
proven to be an excellent historian. So Richard is walking a new path,
essentially trying to bridge
- a historical viewpoint with
- the skeptics view of the supposed contradiction in the Gospels.

In doing so Richard divides his understanding into two forks.

1) the "gap theory" - Jesus is born when John the Baptist is mature
2) the "Archelaus theory" - Herod of Luke 1:5 is the son, Herod the Ethnarch

In expressing these theories we will see Richard contradicting himself.
We saw above one huge difficulty in the following "gap theory" selective interpretation.

Luke 2:1
And it came to pass in those days ..

Which must somehow ignore the whole context of chapter one,
and the clear and powerful time marker introduction ..

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

And instead claim that the 'temporal marker' of Luke 2:1,
in those days..is the growing up of John the Baptist !
While this is absurd, it is Richard Carrier's contention,
glibly stated as as simple fact a in throwaway fashion.

"in those days" from vv. 2:1 picks up the "day" of the previous vv. 1:80"

What is especially ironic is that Richard Carrier does not even seem to realize that his favored interpretation of Luke 2:1 totally destroys his Archelaus theory. Here is the Archelaus theory.

Luke is referring to Herod Archelaus, not Herod the Great, and I think this most likely ... I think Luke is certainly only referring to Archelaus

Now this has many difficulties (even putting aside the raising of an unusual theory from "likely" to "certainly").

Richard touches on some of the difficulties, mostly discussing the simple fact that Archelaus was not a King, and Luke is generally precise in his historical appellations (more on that in a subsequent post). In fact this is a major difficulty, one which alone eliminates any likelihood of Luke referring to Archelaus much less yet considering it "certainly" true. Only if one has the prearranged syllogism above a-b-c and they thought that this fit their preferred argument could anyone make the strong "certainly" Richard Carrier claim for the unusual and difficult identification of Archelaus. Thus we see a strong circular component. The two recent earlier writers (J. Duncan M. Derrett and Mark Smith) who floated this theory, apparently far more tentatively, also had a specified goal .. try to, from their perspective, make Luke internally consistent without concern for Matthew.

Yet there is another difficulty, similarly great to the title King, that Richard does not even mention! The famous ruler (also greatly feared) was Herod the Great. One can see that in the writings of Josephus, with Archelaus his son being of far less consequence and a far shorter reign. So clearly the simple sense of anyone writing in 40 AD or later about :
in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea...
must be considered to be referring to Herod the Great, by any Ockhamish understanding.

This is simple logic used all the time.. if one referred to the great American Kennedy today one must have compelling and powerful evidence for this not to be John F. Kennedy rather than the Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Other examples could easily be given .. Napoleon (Bonaparte), Caesar (Julius). Even if other leaders with that name or title were quite famous in their own right (not the case with Archelaus). Granted there may be some cases .. e.g. Bush or Clinton .. where only history will tell us if one truly predominates historically, or whether you have to add Walker or Hillary for clear identification.

Yet Richard 'forgets' to mention the historical predominance of Herod the Great ! An astounding but convenient oversight.

The reason Richard rejects "Herod the Great" is simply that it does not fit his own logical bullseye as Richard offers nothing remotely compelling in the historical context or the words of the Luke verse. The burden of evidence to not have Luke 1:5 relate to Herod the Great must be very high.

And more .. what is especially ironic is that
Richard's own interpretation of Luke 2:1

"in those days" from vv. 2:1 picks up the "day" of the previous vv. 1:80"

totally destroys this Archelaus theory!
We would have to add 12 years to Herod Archelaus and that
would bring us up to 17 AD for the birth of Jesus !

Hmmm..
So Richard 'forgets' to discuss this aspect of Luke 2:1
when discussing the Archelaus theory.

We see here the ..
methodology of interpretative manipulation.
Use an interpretation where it is convenient
and discard it or ignore it where it is awkward.

============

We will next see that Richard makes yet another faux pas in the favored Archelaus interpretation, one that is rather unusual. Richard loses his own bookmark, where he is arguing, and falsely accuses Luke.

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

Steven Avery

Quote:

Originally Posted by Praxeus The burden of proof is upon the claim of a contradiction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver Can you quote any historian to that effect? One who is generally respected within the scholarly community?

Hi Doug,

An interesting set you choose after our 'Richard Carrier credentials' discussion, now quickly closed.

If you really want to go into this more may I suggest a separate thread, as I really want to keep this one focused on the many problems in the Richard Carrier 'Nativity' article.

You can start the thread by posting your respected historians that claim that the burden of proof is upen the one defending the contradiction. Then we can go from there.

Lacking that, I would have to wonder why you would quiz me about what might be a null set (historians discussing what side has the burden of proof in the claim of contradiction) and why you would choose historians over logicians (or some other group) as your focus.

Thanks.

Shalom,
Steven

Sauron

1. You made a claim about a process of historical research and debate.
2. You got challenged on your claim.

Can you back it up and show that it's generally understood that way by historians?

A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.

NB: It's not Doug Shaver's responsiblity to show the contrary; your attempt at shifting burden of proof fails. Doug merely asked a question; it was YOU who made an actual claim. Since it was your claim; it's also your burden of proof.

NBB: Also - filling your response with multi-colored quotes of verses will not answer this question. Just to save you a few steps.

Steven Avery

Sauron, please..

You can easily see that I never framed a discussion of "contradiction" and "burden of proof" as outside of logical structures. And I even more emphatically never remotely intimated some supposed realm of "a process of historical research and debate" as being a superior realm for determining contradictions than logic.

And, as I pointed out, nobody has even indicated that the Doug and Sauron dream realms overlap with the world of logic .. i.e. professional historians are actively involved in weighing and analyzing and evaluating who has the burden of proof in demonstrating a contradiction - the one who asserts or the one who defends. Perhaps they set up their own special rules of logic in the Historical Societies ?

So, please do not superimpose Doug's words onto my writing.

And could the moderator please simply move these rather strange and diversionary posts to their own thread.

This has the smell of a desperation tactic to clog with nonsense a thread that demonstrates the Richard Carrier errors and false accusations in his Nativity article. Or at least a smokescreen attempt.

It takes an hour or two to properly write up one of the many Richard Carrier errors, like above, and then we get strained pseudo-historical-logic word-parsing-diversionary responses ?

Ok, to be fair, finding logical and conceptual difficulties in 'Nativity' is a bit of a duckshoot during migrating season .. everywhere I look one problem, difficulty, contradiction, dubious translation or false accusation is on top of another.

Here is a question that is more relevant.

We have an article that goes through five revisions over about five years in skeptic-land (and gets trumpeted as a legend on the errancy wiki). Yet it has a glaring and simple blunder like Carrier's own interpretation of Luke 2:1 destroying his own Archelaus theory and this is not even noticed ? Where is Tules Nesser Sari when we need him ? Where are the skeptic experts who like to look like fools by accusing me of being a "rank amateur" (and then closing the thread) who missed these types of blunders for years ? If a "rank amateur" can disassemble Carrier's article point by point in his spare time after work then something is very strange in skeptic land. Imagine what the ranked experts should be doing, if they were not huffing and puffing and blowing smoke.

Oh, you can add the "scroll of fasting" Megillath Ta’anith 'evidence' of Richard Carrier's. Why did it take Judge and myself to be the ones to point out that all visible evidence was actually against Richard Carrier on that account and that very strangely Richard Carrier did not include any specific references or footnotes or dates for his driveby claim ?

Oh, back to the stuff above.
Earlier I had specifically asked for folks to avoid such skeptic sideshows on this thread. Can you please post with some sense on this thread. I decided that Carrier's piece really needed an analysis. So please try to keep the thread directly focused and not plug it up with puerile propaganda - "we must think it actually is a contradiction because you have not proven that it is not".

Amazing.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

judge

I tend to agree. I think the danger might be that Richard Carriers work here might be or become irrelevant, unless he addresses the arguments around this issue, and various others raised on this forum.