The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Peter Kirby
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The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by Peter Kirby »

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/8331

In Which James McGrath Reveals That He Is a Fundamentalist Who Has Never Read Any Contemporary Scholarship in His Field
General Call to James McGrath and All Other Biblical Scholars Who Do This

Stop fucking lying about my work.
Wow... And I thought we get a little hot in here...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringo ... nesty.html

Richard Carrier’s Dishonesty

At this point... the subject itself is left behind in the dust... all that is left, is a war of words. Yikes.

I don't know what to say. I haven't reached the level of partisanship required to start apologizing for Carrier, nor do I wish to add to the flames, but... Wow.

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Peter Kirby
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by Peter Kirby »

Neil Godfrey has also been contributing (in a good way...):

http://vridar.org/2015/09/11/part-2-of- ... -of-jesus/
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by perseusomega9 »

Well when you mix McGrath, who never read any argument he couldn't masterfully misconstrue, and Carrier's Internet warrior persona....
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by Peter Kirby »

This is the original article:

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/201 ... 8026.shtml

I've read it, and I can't imagine that Carrier's reply is anything close to being a measured response.

Misconstrue?

One of the big "examples" is how McGrath criticizes criteria one-by-one, instead of dealing with them as a cluster where all of them together are conclusive.

It's a legitimate criticism, I will give you. But does it mean McGrath is lying? Or is it something about which these gentlemen can debate?

Notably, Carrier addresses several "criteria" in Proving History. And some Jesus scholars believe that the criteria work only in conjunction, not separately. Perhaps the same kind of criticism could be brought up if John P. Meier were to go through Proving History and say that Carrier failed to consider the case where all the criteria are true, not just some of them. Yet is this an oversight, a disagreement, or a lie? Anything but a lie, really. It's hard to see how dishonesty is a motivating factor in this example, unless perhaps one simultaneously attributes to the person who is criticizing an extremely intimate and sympathetic understanding of one's own case...
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Peter Kirby
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

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By deciding that ... Paul believed Jesus to be a celestial figure in a realm where one could be “born of a woman, born under the Law,” “of the seed of David according to the flesh,” crucified, buried, and everything else that fits more naturally in the mundane terrestrial realm, Carrier has made it impossible for anything at all to contradict his viewpoint. Carrier’s approach allows him to say that every single thing he finds in the relevant sources is “exactly what we’d expect” if mythicism is true ... If everything is compatible with mythicism – just as nothing can contradict Thiering’s pesher approach to the New Testament, and any details in a text can be allegorized if one is determined to do so – then far from demonstrating mythicism to be correct, this shows it to be unfalsifiable, and thus scarcely worthy of serious scholarly discussion. If the explicit statements in Paul’s writings ... to the effect that Jesus was a historical figure are unable to count as counterevidence to mythicism, then clearly nothing can, and the appropriate scholarly response to this approach is to set it aside as “not even wrong.”
I can agree with the spirit of this. Doherty went too far down the rabbit hole, and Doherty's Alice here follows after, ending up in the same Wonderland.

I am now firm on this, myself--either these two things are interpolations, or the author of these letters had a 'truly human' Jesus view. I don't consider Doherty's interpretation of these statements to be plausible.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by Secret Alias »

Carrier is mentally unbalanced. That's the unfortunate part of all of this. He's the worst standard-bearer that 'mythicism' could have asked for. Whenever someone makes this about 'my ideas' and 'me' rather than the ideas themselves - ideas that he as a thinker is a mere vessel for, is a bad, bad sign. As I've said many times before ascetics make the best thinkers. Polyamory is for the most part incompatible with great thinking. I haven't come across many genius pussy hounds in my short life. Trying to impress and attract mates is one skill set; arriving at solid conclusions from historical data is a mostly thankless job that the sexualized do not find attractive or 'sexy.' My advice is choose one path or the other. If you want to 'score' I would suggest writing successful movie scripts and novels (preferably books that get developed into romantic comedies).
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by maryhelena »

Peter Kirby wrote:
By deciding that ... Paul believed Jesus to be a celestial figure in a realm where one could be “born of a woman, born under the Law,” “of the seed of David according to the flesh,” crucified, buried, and everything else that fits more naturally in the mundane terrestrial realm, Carrier has made it impossible for anything at all to contradict his viewpoint. Carrier’s approach allows him to say that every single thing he finds in the relevant sources is “exactly what we’d expect” if mythicism is true ... If everything is compatible with mythicism – just as nothing can contradict Thiering’s pesher approach to the New Testament, and any details in a text can be allegorized if one is determined to do so – then far from demonstrating mythicism to be correct, this shows it to be unfalsifiable, and thus scarcely worthy of serious scholarly discussion. If the explicit statements in Paul’s writings ... to the effect that Jesus was a historical figure are unable to count as counterevidence to mythicism, then clearly nothing can, and the appropriate scholarly response to this approach is to set it aside as “not even wrong.”
I can agree with the spirit of this. Doherty went too far down the rabbit hole, and Doherty's Alice here follows after, ending up in the same Wonderland.

I am now firm on this, myself--either these two things are interpolations, or the author of these letters had a 'truly human' Jesus view. I don't consider Doherty's interpretation of these statements to be plausible.
Putting all the allegations aside in this Carrier/McGrath debacle - I'm wondering if the above quote from McGrath's article is perhaps at the root of Carrier's attitude. He has, with his mythicist theory, dug a hole for himself. He has created a mythicism that cannot be disproved. It's an idea without any roots in physical, historical, realities. It's all pie-in-the-sky stuff. Easy for anyone, scholar or non-scholar, to dismiss as irrelevant to a historical search for early christian origins. Ideas, even crazy ideas, need to be tested by their usefulness to actually living on tera-firma. What difference does Carrier's mythicism achieve when lined up against belief in a heavenly hereafter? The heavenly afterlife scenario can inhibit care for the world we live in. Carrier's mythicism closes down a historical search for early christian origins. Doherty closed the door - Carrier has locked the door and thrown away the key....

Methinks Carrier needs to face McGrath' criticism of his mythicism: ''...Carrier has made it impossible for anything at all to contradict his viewpoint''.
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Re: Why Not Talk About This Instead?

Post by DCHindley »

Oh what I'd give to read the works of a modern writer who could express himself like Episcopal Bishop James A Pike did in the 1960s.

I remember reading The wilderness revolt; a new view of the life and death of Jesus based on ideas and notes of the late Bishop James A. Pike by his 3rd wife Diane Kennedy Pike and R. Scott Kennedy, Doubleday, 1972.

"Quotations from Bishop James A. Pike ... are excerpted and edited from transcripts of a seminar on Christian Origins given in May of 1969 for the Esalen Institute in San Francisco."

FWIW, Pike died in the desert of Israel several miles from Qumran when his car broke down and he and his wife tried to walk to Qumran because they knew they could find water there.

For me her book about Bishop Pike's views was as eye opening as J D Crossan was for others in the 1980s.

No sniping or animosity, although he opposed JFK as a presidential candidate because he feared that Kennedy would not be able to separate his Catholic religious belief from his duties as head of a secular government. And Pike was a LIBERAL! The 1960s were a raucous time with many heated debates. Maybe Carrier & McGrath should travel back in time ... to learn how to do it right! :cheeky:
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by MrMacSon »

Peter Kirby wrote:
This is the original article:

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/201 ... 8026.shtml
  • I've read it, and I can't imagine that Carrier's reply is anything close to being a measured response.

    Misconstrue?
One of the big "examples" is how McGrath criticizes criteria one-by-one, instead of dealing with them as a cluster where all of them together are conclusive.

It's a legitimate criticism, I will give you. But does it mean McGrath is lying? Or is it something about which these gentlemen can debate?
McGrath is a befuddled fool, as his opening paragraph shows -
Scholars of the New Testament typically view allegorical interpretation of the texts they study with disdain. There is a long history of Christians engaging first in allegorical interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures, and then later, applying the same approach to their own Christian sacred texts. Allegory is notorious for reading things into the text that simply aren’t there, things that are exceedingly unlikely to have been in view for the authors and their earliest readers. Allegory is also notoriously unconstrained, allowing one to find in the text just about anything one wishes to.
McGrath referring to allegorical interpretations of allegorical texts is disingenuous to the maximum.

As perseusomega9 said -
perseusomega9 wrote:... McGrath, who never read any argument he couldn't masterfully misconstrue ...
But Carrier is also a fool for exploding the way he does.
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Re: The Jesus Wars Go Thermonuclear

Post by MrMacSon »

maryhelena wrote: [Carrier] has, with his mythicist theory ... created a mythicism that cannot be disproved. It's an idea without any roots in physical, historical, realities. It's all pie-in-the-sky stuff. Easy for anyone, scholar or non-scholar, to dismiss as irrelevant to a historical search for early christian origins.
You keep trotting out this nonsense: implying mythicism is somehow not 'historical'. You use any opportunity in discussions about Carrier to bash Carrier and to misrepresent mythicism and what proposal of it means.

This is disingenuous -
maryhelena wrote:What difference does Carrier's mythicism achieve when lined up against belief in a heavenly hereafter? The heavenly afterlife scenario can inhibit care for the world we live in. Carrier's mythicism closes down a historical search for early christian origins. Doherty closed the door - Carrier has locked the door and thrown away the key...
While I agree with Peter -
Peter Kirby wrote: ... Doherty went too far down the rabbit hole, and Doherty's Alice here follows after, ending up in the same Wonderland.
- and we can also accuse Carrier of chasing Doherty down the rabbit hole, Carrier has, at least in my opinion, not gone so far down.

Carrier has mainly suggested how the stories might have been developed: the development of the NT books and their accumulation as a 'canon does have a historical setting and likely numerous settings.

It's just that we may never find evidence for those settings.
  • Just as Shakespeare's works have settings: especially his 1599 Tragedy of Julius Caesar
I'd say Carrier has not gone far enough and not been critical or investigative enough of the development of the Pauline narratives as also being allegory.
Last edited by MrMacSon on Sat Sep 12, 2015 12:37 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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