In his comments about the Ehrman-Price debate, Carrier has this to say -
"Argument 9. The Gospels are not just copying each other. Score 1. Ehrman was unclear on this point, but his gist was, that the Gospels are or contain multiple independent sources for Jesus. He even appeared to argue that the Gospel of John contained historically authentic material about Jesus (by saying John did not use the Synoptics; so we must then assume he meant John supported historicity).
"Outcome: Gainsaid. Score 1. Price didn’t exactly argue against Ehrman on this point; he just gainsaid him, by declaring (correctly) that for all we know, the material unique to each Gospel was invented by its author and didn’t come from a source. To be fair, Ehrman didn’t actually defend his assertion in the debate, either. And a mere counter-assertion does score against a mere assertion. Otherwise, apart from his Argument to Aramaic (which I will address separately [see next post in this BC&H thread, below]), Ehrman never explained why anyone (even experts) should believe any content in the Gospels has a source other than an already-known Gospel. Thus, as he left it, we are to assume that merely because Matthew added material to Mark, therefore Matthew had a source for that material. Moreover, not just a source, but a source that, merely because it existed, must contain orally transmitted eyewitness testimony ...
- "There is zero reason to believe either. Even if we grant the Q hypothesis (and I probably would in a clocked debate), the peer reviewed literature extensively establishes that Q was written in Greek (using the Greek OT as its scriptural source) after the Jewish War (e.g. see Dale Allison on the Sermon on the Mount; in OHJ, pp. 465-68). Every conclusion contrary to that is pure speculation. In other words, Q was written basically the very same time as Mark, possibly even after Mark.
- "Which is starting to sound a lot like Matthew. And yes, the more you analyze it, the more you start to realize that Q actually is just Matthew (see evidence and multiple experts concurring in OHJ, pp. 269-70 and 470-73). Ehrman has never given a rational reason to disagree with that conclusion. Whereas a rising vanguard of experts in the field are starting to realize the Q hypothesis is untenable; and even its staunchest defenders admit it’s at best 50/50 there even was a Q (see my citation of Kloppenborg admitting this; in OHJ, p. 270, n. 34).
- "Notice Ehrman does not tell the audience any of this. He just asserts Q is an established fact and is therefore an “independent” source. It isn’t. It’s a highly dubious, highly contested, highly doubted hypothesis, as even its own defenders like Kloppenborg admit. (IMO, it’s worse: the Q hypothesis is wholly indefensible and I cannot fathom why any rational historian would still be defending it). For example, even if Q existed, how do we know Q is not a redaction of Mark, and Matthew and Luke just used that redaction, thus explaining their material that agrees with Mark, and the material that agrees with each other? We don’t. Therefore, theories based on Q “lacking” Markan material have exactly no basis in any evidence or logic. Such theories are viciously circular (they define Q into existence as material shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark; and then act surprised that Q lacks Markan material). Which means, fundamentally fallacious. There is a reason David Hackett Fisher wrote a book1 demonstrating and explaining that historians really need to start learning logic, because they are frightfully bad at it."
- 1 Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought Harper & Row, Publishers; 1st edition (1970)
- "It only gets worse when we get to the other imaginary sources Ehrman relies on. Yes, literally imaginary sources —with even less evidence for their existence than there is for Q. These are L and M, meaning material only found in Luke or Matthew, respectively; and sometimes S, or the imaginary “Signs Gospel”, that some speculate into existence as a source used by John (in fact, it’s just a previous redaction of John, which was wholly literary fiction: see OHJ, pp. 491-99; with even in fact a wholly fictional eyewitness source invented by the authors of John in their attempt to refute the Gospel of Luke, the central purpose of the fabrication of the Gospel of John: OHJ, pp. 487-91, 500-05). There is no evidence L and M are based on sources.
- "Ehrman himself occasionally admits some of the content of L and M was invented by Luke and Matthew, respectively. So how does he or anyone know all of it wasn’t? They don’t. We cannot base our belief in the historicity of Jesus on sources for which we have no evidence. We have extensive evidence of fabrication in the Gospels. We have no evidence of their using sources. They never name sources, and never credit anything to a source. John is the only exception, but he only fabricates an unnamed source who never existed; and Luke cites Mark and Matthew as his only sources —again unnamed, since when Luke wrote, those Gospels probably had no names (contrary to what is often claimed, Luke does not reference having any oral sources, only prior Gospels, which we know were Mark and Matthew: Carrier's 'Not the Impossible Faith', pp. 178-82). So the evidence shows these authors (even John) all building on Mark, borrowing what they wanted, rewriting what they wanted, altering what they wanted, and adding what they wanted. Matthew redacts Mark, Luke redacts Matthew, and John responds to Luke with a wholly new fiction drawing on Mark and Matthew. Never with any indication of having a source for any of it.
- "So it is dishonest of Ehrman to claim we have multiple independent sources. None of the Gospels are independent. They aren’t even independent of the Epistles. And none of the other sources Ehrman relies on exist, nor have any evidence of ever having existed."
