My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus"

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GakuseiDon
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My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus"

Post by GakuseiDon »

I published a fairly extensive review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" on my website, and welcome any feedback. The review can be found here:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseid ... eview.html

I first uploaded it in early June this year, and have been updating it occasionally as I get feedback or think of something to add.

Briefly: I regard Carrier's 'heavenly crucified Jesus' myth theory as refuted, since Carrier's evidence for the idea of an incarnated celestial being does not exist in Christian or pagan thought. That's not to say that Jesus is then necessarily historical. But I think GA Wells' myth theory stands up much better, since it would have the strengths of Carrier's other views while avoiding the problem of an incarnated celestial Jesus (which Wells himself rejects as unlikely due to his own reading of Paul.)

There are five Sections in my review:

Section 1 is the 'review' proper, where I give my opinion of OHJ. I find the book has a few good things (esp the Elements section, which is very useful) but my opinion overall is not good. I find the book sloppily written and Carrier himself struggling to communicate ideas clearly.

Section 2 looks at Carrier's use of Bayes's Theorem (BT), from his use in his earlier book 'Proving History' as well as on-line. I look at reviews by mathematicians and other BT experts, and these reviews are overwhelmingly negative towards Carrier's usage. (I don't write this in my review, but I suspect that Carrier has a very poor understanding of BT's usage in practical situations.) I'd love to balance the negative reviews with positive ones, so if anyone knows of any positive reviews of the use of BT in questions of history (especially by Carrier but also by anyone else), can you please PM me so I can add it to my review?

Section 3 looks at the silence in early Christian literature. Carrier says that Paul is unusual and bizarre in that respect, but I show that there are plenty of examples in the first couple of centuries CE where writers are silent on details of a historical Jesus.

Section 4 looks at the texts used by Carrier as precedents for his 'death in outer space' theory: 'Ascension of Isaiah', Book of Hebrews, Plutarch's 'Isis and Osiris' and Paul's 'Rulers of this Age'. I explain why he is patently incorrect in how he reads those texts, and the implications for his theory.

Section 5 looks at the primary sources that Carrier uses in calculating his final BT result. These primary sources are: Extrabiblical Sources, Acts of the Apostles, the Gospels and the Epistles in the NT. I provide the BT odds that Carrier uses, and comment on those odds.

If anyone has any questions, criticisms or suggestions on how I can improve the review, please let me know. There has been some discussion on my review on reddit, in a thread flatteringly called 'The first convincing rebuttal I've read to Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus'.
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

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I am not sure this is exactly accurate:
since Carrier's evidence for the idea of an incarnated celestial being does not exist in Christian or pagan thought
You should re-read Tertullian's De Carne Christi paying special attention to get a sense of the argument(s) the Latin writer is refuting. There is a palpable sense that the heretics (one group of heretics?) hold that Jesus had a 'spiritual flesh' of some sort. The claim that the heretics believed Jesus to be a 'phantom' which begins with Celsus is entirely polemic in nature. Closest to the truth it seems is what appears in the Acts of John. Jesus had flesh which could 'change shape.' In the narrative where the crowd attempts to push Jesus over the cliff for instance, there is a sense that the crowd 'has him' for a moment, then he 'changes shape' or substance - at once 'passing through' (or better yet the crowd pass through him or even flying above them in some traditions. The flying Jesus is a perfect example of the spiritual flesh's ability to change shape. At once it is 'earth-like' (i.e. it stays where it 'belongs' according to Aristotle's dictum on the ground but then assumes 'air like' qualities and rises.

I think these 'discussions' about Carrier are rather boring now. Yes his borrowings from Doherty are unfortunate. But since I have brought up the correct understanding - i.e. the flying Jesus discussion - it is high time that anti-mythicists deal with that evidence - my evidence - and admit that they are part of a single tradition (i.e. that Jesus was an ordinary man) but that earlier traditions did indeed hold Jesus to have 'spiritual flesh' which capable of flying and passing through people. This is growing very tiresome indeed.

Taking a weak argument for something and then attempting to 'prove' that Jesus was originally conceived as human by it is dishonest scholarship. We should know better at this forum.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote:I think these 'discussions' about Carrier are rather boring now.
With all due respect, you are not speaking for everyone here. I am still reading and studying OHJ, and am still interested in the details
Yes his borrowings from Doherty are unfortunate. But since I have brought up the correct understanding - i.e. the flying Jesus discussion - it is high time that anti-mythicists deal with that evidence - my evidence - and admit that they are part of a single tradition (i.e. that Jesus was an ordinary man) but that earlier traditions did indeed hold Jesus to have 'spiritual flesh' which capable of flying and passing through people. This is growing very tiresome indeed.
I suggest that you simply ignore those threads that are now tiresome to you, just as you ignored the thread that I started and addressed specifically to you regarding the flying Jesus; I had intended to pick your brain on that matter, but apparently you were past it by that point, and that is fine.

You have to remember that some of us are in it for the details. Your approach tends to step waaay back and look at the big picture from the perspective of what must be the Andromedan equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope. I confess that about half of the time you are looking at things from so far away that I have no idea how you are connecting the dots, or how the overall picture, once the dots are connected, is supposed to be related to the text that I have physically open before me and am reading in three different languages, line by line, so as not to miss any crucial details.

Call my approach tiresome or "white" or any other term the full force of which I do not completely understand, if you must, but the details will probably always continue to be important to me and to others like me; I doubt I am completely alone in my predilections.

Ben.
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Ben C. Smith »

GakuseiDon wrote:I published a fairly extensive review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" on my website, and welcome any feedback.
Thanks for the link, Don. I have bookmarked it for perusal, and will let you know if I spy anything to comment on.
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

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As I was never raised to be a Christian (nor carry around the presuppositions of that European religious movement) I will return fire for fire.

While it may be fair to say that I do not worship the surviving texts of the New Testament canon and assume - quite rightly IMO - that it is hopelessly corrupt that position is itself attested in the writings of the Church Fathers. This is what the heretics (Marcionites) themselves say about the Catholic material.

The idea that you spend hours and years analyzing Hebrews in order to refute Richard Carrier is an interesting exercise. It is just as interesting as discovering whether dogs can be taught to drive cars. But like teaching dogs to drive cars it is hardly 'definitive' in any broader sense with road building and transportation issues in the 21st century in any meaningful way especially if one wants to pretend that using this hermeneutical exercise to establish to disprove a modern atheist activist (who seems more interested in fucking twenty year old students than any serious scholarship IMO) has any relevance on the issue of what Hebrews 'means' or was trying to mean in antiquity.

Yes it is a typical approach of western scholarship to have one academic put forward a thesis and then everyone comes down and picks it apart. But this thesis in particular has no standing in academia. In the case of your work on Hebrews it was noted I have to commend you for not making it exclusively about Carrier. Indeed you spent most of your attention looking at the actual text which is commendable. However given the unprecedented statement from Clement that 'Luke' transformed the text through his translation and given the ambiguity over whether the text is actually Pauline, the applicability of such an endeavor beyond third or fourth century Christianity is questionable.

The text as we have it is not older than the third century or perhaps the late second century. It is not the original text but an orthodox fabrication or falsification which clearly altered the original ideas of the author (probably Paul) into something which comes more in line with the falsifier of the canon as a whole ('Luke' or some late second century writer like Irenaeus).

So to get back to your point in the previous thread, neo-liberal scholars such as yourself (my substitute for the term 'white' which you find offensive) seem to engage in this idiotic trench warfare where it becomes my job to convince you to investigate the flying Jesus and other aspects of the 'not Catholic' or 'not Orthodox' tradition. If I don't bring it up or bring forward alternative understandings of Jesus in antiquity you will continue to ignore them and act as if they don't exist so you can go back to the comfort of your myopic view of 'acceptable opinions' in antiquity.

To this end, given the fact that I am a father, an entrepreneur (a word which is supposed to rhyme with the French heure rather than the American manure) as well as a husband, caretaker of a sick mother I do not take it upon myself to waste hours getting you to find interest in Baarda's work nor any of the other difficulties for your entrenched worldview. It is enough for me to continue to point out that your efforts are akin to watching people teaching dogs to drive and move on.

Keep up the good work!
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote:As I was never raised to be a Christian (nor carry around the presuppositions of that European religious movement) I will return fire for fire.
Please see my PM to you.
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Adam »

What's that saying, "I wish I were a fly on the wall..."
As nice as he presents himself in public, what might he really be thinking...
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Giuseppe »

The similarity regarding the silence about Jesus between I e II CE epistles may be explained so:
1) the apologists from II CE wanted to copy the stile of writing of the apostolic age, by imitation of the Pauline silence about Jesus in order to seem old and authentic, or...
2) the origin of Pauline epistles is in II CE, too.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Giuseppe »

I find bizzarre the fact that there is no agreement about what meant Paul about Jesus. In general, a epistle seems to be designated only to claim major authority about the own personal revealed risen Jesus and therefore has not more value than the endings of our gospels (when talking about Resurrection episodes). This would raise a more right question: did the epistles reflect a period where the true object of dispute was the nature of the true revelation post-Resurrection (hence excluding deliberately any disturb relative to HJ)??
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Re: My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Je

Post by Blood »

GakuseiDon wrote:
Section 3 looks at the silence in early Christian literature. Carrier says that Paul is unusual and bizarre in that respect, but I show that there are plenty of examples in the first couple of centuries CE where writers are silent on details of a historical Jesus.
I think Carrier's point here is that Paul's silence is noteworthy only because his writings are supposedly the earliest, not because such silence is unique.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
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