Freethought & Rationalism Archive

jdl · 04-27-2012, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdl

Carrier does some new damage under the heading "The Thompson Affair". The discussion of "The Priapus Affair" basically drives home what was already obvious.

Actually, I agree with both sentiments, but probably not the way you do.

What is the new damage done under the heading "The Thompson Affair" in your view? Is it to Ehrman's credibility as a scholar, or to Ehrman's actual arguments regarding mythicism?

Seems like Ehrman edited Carrier's comment very misleadingly. Don't you think so?

Joseph

youngalexander · 04-27-2012, 08:45 PM

Carrier's reply to the reply is a far less vituperative effort which sticks to analysis and demonstrates the 'sloppiness, incompetence, etc' of Ehrman with logic rather than outright bald statement. What a pity he did not adopt this tactic in his review.

"The Deflection Tactic":

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carrier

Ehrman does appear to want to hide the substantive errors and mistakes and fallacies I document, and one strategy he uses to do that is to deflect it all by reframing the debate as being about personal attacks ...

Why allow him the opportunity to do so? Still Carrier makes perhaps as best recovery as he may.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdl

Carrier does some new damage under the heading "The Thompson Affair". The discussion of "The Priapus Affair" basically drives home what was already obvious. Those are the highlights.
Joseph

Not quite, I thort "The Hoffmann Madness" was fairly hilarious. Having read Hoffmann's rant (his discription) I wondered if he may have been pissed when he wrote it. Carrier indicates a more likely explanation.

"Rhetoric as a Means to Avoid Argument" gets right to the crux

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carrier

But then notice how he asserts a principle in his own defense ("a few indications of general incompetence is good enough" reason to dismiss an entire book as unworthy of further attention) which is precisely the principle I applied to his book (I found more than a few indications of general incompetence). Which leads me to wonder: does he regard his treatment of them as an inappropriate personal attack that they didn't deserve? Or as simply a demonstration that the books he examined are incompetently researched and incompetently written, a perfectly valid thing to point out and say, and exactly what I did (but that he in his response attacks me for doing).

Now he 'splains it! Yet, is the momentum lost?

Again in "Closing Nonsense", but how many will read this? Will Ehrman reply? Not bloody likely, he has already signed off. Carrier closes the stable door, but the mare she has bolted! Fortunately there is a second round and hopefully Carrier will learn from this one.

Bring on The Historicity of Jesus Christ.

jdl · 04-27-2012, 08:51 PM

Thomas L. Thompson plans to write his own response to DJE. Ehrman won't be able to ignore Thompson, so it's not as though Carrier gets the last word in this controversy. The temperate review you were waiting for, Alexander, may yet be to come.

Joseph

Steven Carr · 04-27-2012, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdl

Thomas L. Thompson plans to write his own response to DJE. Ehrman won't be able to ignore Thompson, so it's not as though Carrier gets the last word in this controversy. The temperate review you were waiting for, Alexander, may yet be to come.

Joseph

Oh come on! Thompson is an expert on Judaism, and doesn't teach Early Christianity in a university. Why do you expect Bart to regard his opinions on 'Did Jesus Exist?' as of any value?

GakuseiDon · 04-27-2012, 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdl

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Actually, I agree with both sentiments, but probably not the way you do.

What is the new damage done under the heading "The Thompson Affair" in your view? Is it to Ehrman's credibility as a scholar, or to Ehrman's actual arguments regarding mythicism?

Seems like Ehrman edited Carrier's comment very misleadingly. Don't you think so?

It's hard to tell without knowing the context. Though from how Carrier himself reports it, doesn't Carrier actually appear wrong?

Here is how Carrier describes it (from link given earlier). Bolding is Carrier's from the blog:

... the main thrust of his piece is an extended chastisement for suggesting Thompson was a New Testament scholar. Let me quote to you Ehrman’s exact words (and those of you who read my article might already notice something odd about this; emphasis added):

Me [Ehrman]: “there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world.”
Carrier: Ehrman’s claim “is false: mythicist Thomas Thompson meets every one of Ehrman’s criteria.”  So on a very simple level, one might just ask: is it true that Thomas Thompson teaches NT or Early Christianity at an accredited institution? Well, no, he does not. He is an expert on the Hebrew Bible. His books are on the Pentateuch, the history of Israel in the Bronze Age, the alleged lives of the Jewish patriarchs. Now, I suppose someone from outside the field of NT or Early Christian studies might mistake someone with those kinds of expertise as being qualified to address, authoritatively, something having to do with early Christianity. But no one actually in the field would make that kind of mistake. Carrier too, of course, is not trained in these fields and is an outsider to them, so possibly that is why he doesn’t understand the difference.
Okay. Get his point? Now, read the sentence he quotes from me…the full sentence, including the half he mysteriously left out (I have marked it in bold; I provide the rest to show the context, which was more than just this sentence):

[M]ythicist Thomas Thompson meets every one of Ehrman’s criteria–excepting only one thing, he is an expert in Judaism rather than Christianity specifically. And I know Ehrman knows of him. So did he just “forget” when he says he knows of no one who meets his criteria? Or is he being hyper-hyper specific and not allowing even professors of Jewish studies to have a respectable opinion in this matter?
So Ehrman writes an entire article attacking me for not knowing a difference that in fact I explicitly stated in my article and thus clearly fully understood; and Ehrman predicates this attack on a quotation of me that conveniently omits the very material that proves his point moot, or at least misdirected.

Ehrman's point is that "there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world.” Why he specifies "New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics", I don't know. But that's what Carrier quotes him as writing.

Ehrman then gives Carrier's response: Ehrman’s claim “is false: mythicist Thomas Thompson meets every one of Ehrman’s criteria.” Ehrman then says that Thompson is an expert on the Hebrew Bible, and doesn't meet the criteria.

The full quote, as Carrier points out, is "[M]ythicist Thomas Thompson meets every one of Ehrman’s criteria–excepting only one thing, he is an expert in Judaism rather than Christianity specifically."

Now, if Ehrman's criteria is someone who teaches "New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics", and Thompson doesn't teach any of them, then how does Thompson meet every one of Ehrman's criteria, except that he doesn't teach the New Testament or Early Christianity or Classics?

Carrier suggests Ehrman is being "hyper-hyper specific", and maybe that is so, depending on what other criteria was specified. We need the context here.

But as Carrier presents it, isn't Carrier actually wrong?

Steven Carr · 04-27-2012, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

But as Carrier presents it, isn't Carrier actually wrong?

No.

Ehrman cut out the bit where Carrier said Thompson was an expert in Judaism, and then slammed Carrier for allegedly not knowing that Thomson was an expert in Judaism, not Early Christianity, and that if Carrier had known anything about the subject, he would have known that an expert on Judaism just wasn't qualified to talk about Early Christianity.

I paraphrase somewhat, as Ehrman's article is hidden behind a paywall.

Please feel free to produce the exact wording, as I may have got some of it wrong.

Of course, we are now all going to ignore Gakusei Don's views on Early Christianity, until he starts to teach it in a university or college somewhere :-)

After all, isn't that the criterion that should be used to decide who is allowed to speak on the subject?

andrewcriddle · 04-28-2012, 01:19 AM

Just to clarify: Is Thomas Thompson a Mythicist in the sense in which the word is normally used on this forum ?

I had the impression that he was more what this forum would call a Jesus Agnostic. IE he does not believe that we can get behind the claims made about Jesus in the early documents to an underlying historical reality.

Andrew Criddle

dog-on · 04-28-2012, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Just to clarify: Is Thomas Thompson a Mythicist in the sense in which the word is normally used on this forum ?

I had the impression that he was more what this forum would call a Jesus Agnostic. IE he does not believe that we can get behind the claims made about Jesus in the early documents to an underlying historical reality.

Andrew Criddle

Agnostic, I think. Probably like some of us here are, in that we do not prescibe to any particular Myth hypothesis, but instead find the consensus case for historicity to be less than convincing.

youngalexander · 04-29-2012, 06:58 PM

Ehrman’s Dubious Replies (Round Two)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carrier

Thus, his attempt to twist a rule of interpretive charity into a monstrous absurdity doesn't cut it, and only exposes how poor a grasp he has of logical reasoning. Authors don't get to say the exact opposite of what they meant and then claim it is our responsibility to telepathically know that that is what happened. Authors don't get to say things that clearly indicate they badly mishandled their sources, and then claim we are always to assume they never do that. Authors don't get to say things that clearly indicate they didn't check their facts, and then claim we are always to assume they nevertheless did. Indeed, as his own quote of me says, if you cannot reconcile a contradiction or error in my work, you should call me on it so I can correct myself. Well, I called him on it.

GakuseiDon · 04-29-2012, 07:28 PM

Thanks for the link, youngalexander. Yes, I agree, that was a much better criticism of Ehrman than the first one.

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04-27-2012, 08:51 PM	#223
jdl Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Auckland Posts: 85	Thomas L. Thompson plans to write his own response to DJE. Ehrman won't be able to ignore Thompson, so it's not as though Carrier gets the last word in this controversy. The temperate review you were waiting for, Alexander, may yet be to come. Joseph

04-28-2012, 01:19 AM	#227
andrewcriddle Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Birmingham UK Posts: 4,876	Just to clarify: Is Thomas Thompson a Mythicist in the sense in which the word is normally used on this forum ? I had the impression that he was more what this forum would call a Jesus Agnostic. IE he does not believe that we can get behind the claims made about Jesus in the early documents to an underlying historical reality. Andrew Criddle

04-29-2012, 07:28 PM	#230
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Thanks for the link, youngalexander. Yes, I agree, that was a much better criticism of Ehrman than the first one.

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