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View Poll Results: Should Carrier read less Doherty and more Detering?
Yep 5 71.43%
Nope 2 28.57%
Voters: 7. This poll is closed

 
 
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Old 06-23-2013, 09:21 PM   #1
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Default Should Richard Carrier read less Earl Doherty and more Hermann Detering?

The title says it all.
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Old 06-23-2013, 09:27 PM   #2
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The title does not give us enough to work with. What difference would it make?

Are you thinking of the different dating of Paul? or Mark?

My impression is that Carrier wants to stick as far as possible to credentialed scholars. Doherty relies on mainstream scholarship for the most part. If you can construct a case for mythicism based on mainstream scholarship, why go out on a limb?
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Old 06-23-2013, 09:32 PM   #3
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My impression is that Carrier wants to stick as far as possible to credentialed scholars.
Carrier has always ran the middle of the road, and just now departing from the safety of the middle.

I don't see him jumping to the far left or right anytime soon.
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Old 06-23-2013, 09:33 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by Toto View Post
The title does not give us enough to work with. What difference would it make?

Are you thinking of the different dating of Paul? or Mark?

My impression is that Carrier wants to stick as far as possible to credentialed scholars. Doherty relies on mainstream scholarship for the most part. If you can construct a case for mythicism based on mainstream scholarship, why go out on a limb?
The claim that the crucified Jesus was never believed to be on earth by early believers was virtually unknown to mainstream scholarship before Doherty.
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Old 06-23-2013, 09:41 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toto View Post


My impression is that Carrier wants to stick as far as possible to credentialed scholars.
Carrier has always ran the middle of the road, and just now departing from the safety of the middle.

...
What is this based on?
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Old 06-23-2013, 10:12 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by outhouse View Post

Carrier has always ran the middle of the road, and just now departing from the safety of the middle.

...
What is this based on?

he really didn't jump the fence until his new math book
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Old 06-24-2013, 03:07 PM   #7
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Just curious, but what is the advantage of reading more Detering?

If one were to ask me, Detering is better grounded in academic materials than is Doherty. For example, his reconstruction of Marcion's Greek text of Galatians, whether you agree with him on this or not, is based entirely on the sources themselves (in the original languages), as interpreted by Theodore Zahn and Adolf von Harnack, both very respectable 19th century scholars. Detering takes one liberty, choosing to call Jesus Isu Chrēstos, but even that is based on what is said about Syriac Marcionites by near contemporaries (that they pronounced Jesus as "Isu") and an inscription on the door lintel of the earliest "christian" church ever documented (where Jesus is called "Chrēstos" rather than "Christos").

Doherty on the other hand, while compiling a great deal of primary and secondary sources, often draws conclusions from them that, IMHO, go far beyond what the evidence he cites actually says or implies.

DCH


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The title says it all.
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Old 06-24-2013, 07:57 PM   #8
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Should Richard Carrier read less Earl Doherty and more Hermann Detering?
I'm pretty sure he has already read both of Doherty's books, so he could just read Detering too (if he hasn't already). He can probably read works from both guys!
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Old 06-24-2013, 09:24 PM   #9
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Here’s what got me thinking.

In Carrier’s blog of March 21, 2012 someone named Robert Bumbalough cross-posted one of Jake Jones IV comments from the Yahoo Jesus Mysteries group. Jake – as usual, was echoing Detering. This time it was about “Paul’s trip to Jerusalem” in Galatians 1:18-20.

Bumbalough asked Carrier for his opinion on Jake’s post and here’s Carrier’s reply:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Carrier
Thank you for cross-posting the whole text of that (I am not a Yahoo Groups member and do not dig through other threads for arguments anyway, so this is the best way to get me to consider it; although I am familiar with similar arguments from Price against the authenticity of Galatians as a whole).

I would prefer to see a peer reviewed article claiming this before taking it seriously. If it has not gone through peer review, then I have to vet the whole thing myself, and that’s a huge task (for example, I have not read the entire works of Tertullian and Irenaeus back to front checking whether this specific claim holds up), and I don’t have the time to undertake a thousand huge tasks like that. I have to be very selective as to which arguments I will vet and reconstruct my own defense of.

Indeed I prefer to rely as much as possible on established or indisputable facts or peer reviewed work. That doesn’t mean I reject all else as false, it just means I don’t think mythicism should require anything else at this point.

So I can only briefly vet an argument like this…if I see too many things wrong with it, I see it as inefficient to spend any more time examining it. And this has too many things wrong with it.

First, I know it was only an aside, but I don’t find very persuasive arguments like “Me thinks he doth protest too much,” precisely because many a writer who finds himself in a corner does indeed protest too much. Paul has clearly been accused of something, and he is very keen to defend his account against that accusation. I don’t see his protests as out of joint with the obvious aims and context of that chapter.

Second, Tertullian is not talking about “seeing” Peter but about Peter’s support of Paul’s position on circumcision, and not just Peter’s, but all the apostles. Thus Paul’s previous visit to Peter has nothing whatever to do with that, and so there is no reason for Tertullian even to allude to it. Likewise Irenaeus.

Third, I do not find it implausible that Paul, then just one apostle among many, might have visited Peter and James alone for only a fortnight. Particularly if Paul was avoiding the Jewish authorities (who might have it in for him owing to his apostasy from their prosecution team over to helping the prosecuted; Paul sometimes had to sneak around in Damascus, his own home town, for much the same reason: 2 Cor. 11:32-33).
Read the whole thing for yourself here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/667

IMHO Carrier should have at least recognized that Jake was echoing Detering.

And FWIW I also find it depressing to see that Carrier (apparently) believes that ‘Paul’ was a real character.

- Bingo

-------

Btw – I’m not faulting Jake for echoing Detering. In fact I think Jake is a better writer than Detering – but it may have something to do with the language barrier.
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Old 06-24-2013, 09:47 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toto View Post
My impression is that Carrier wants to stick as far as possible to credentialed scholars. Doherty relies on mainstream scholarship for the most part. If you can construct a case for mythicism based on mainstream scholarship, why go out on a limb?
We already have a case for mythicism. It’s a slam-dunk. It’s more a matter of social conditioning than it is of providing new/more evidence. We are dealing with a delusional disorder.

It’s like the obesity problem; or cigarette smoking. - It’s an education/ psychological problem.

More new/ convincing evidence might be nice, but it’s not the show-stopper.

- Bingo
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