lsayre wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:01 am
In which of Richard Carrier's books is this threads subject best discussed?
lsayre wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:01 am
But if I was to overcome my bias and purchase only one, which should it be?
I'm not greatly impressed by the details of the "Bayesian" argument attempted in Carrier's books and, if you haven't got a full library already or a strong appetite for mythicist stuff, they could pretty easily be passed over, without much lost about the context that couldn't be pieced together from various online resources (apart from the full nuance of Carrier's argument itself, of course, which requires the books).
If you had to get one, it would be On the Historicity of Jesus.
If you got ahold of it somehow, the chapter where he goes over background assumptions is quite worth reading and has this stuff.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
MrMacSon wrote: ↑Fri Dec 08, 2017 7:58 pm
On 7 Dec, Hurtado wrote -
I have read those pages of his book (200-205) where he discusses the relevant passage in Philo (De Confusione Linguarum, 62-63; Philo citing and allegorizing a passage in the OT book, Zechariah 6:11-12).
Note that Hurtado does not refer to De Confusione Linguarum, 145-6.
Later, in his Dec 7 post, Hurtado says
In short, in De Confusione, Philo wasn’t positing or developing any “archangel named Jesus.” Philo wasn’t talking about archangels at all there1, and neither he nor the Zechariah text calls the anatole figure “Jesus”.2 .
Of course Hurtado says that, because
Hurtado has not read the relevant passage, and .
he has not realised there is an induction/inference in Carrier's argument.
MrMacSon collected coincidental evidence of what Hurtado's process of committing the error might have looked like.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:04 am
If you had to get one, it would be On the Historicity of Jesus.
If you got ahold of it somehow, the chapter where he goes over background assumptions is quite worth reading and has this stuff.
Thanks Peter!!! Is 'On the Historicity of Jesus' also based primarily upon the Bayesian approach? If so, I'll likely pass on it.
Well, let me offer you Kirby's Theorem: in history, any Bayesian approach has a one-to-one correspondence to a non-Bayesian approach where all the same arguments and all the same rhetoric and all the same evidence is there, just without the additional patina of mathematics.[*]
This describes a good 80-90% of the book - Carrier comes at it as an Ancient History Ph.D., then tacks on some high-school math. If it were all then transformed back into a conventional history book, nothing of value would be lost.
[*] Only mostly true. In theory, someone could really do the job and build a good mathematical model. Also, some of the arguments might feel less natural without the numerical trappings.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
lsayre wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:01 am
In which of Richard Carrier's books is this threads subject best discussed?
In more than one way I'm highly repelled by Carrier as to both his person and his personal life choices, so I'm (unfortunately perhaps) biased against him thereby (perhaps in this regard somewhat similarly to Peter Kirby's perception of Hurtado's bias against him), and therefore I have never considered the purchase of any of his books. But if I was to overcome my bias and purchase only one, which should it be?
(I'm put off by Carrier's references to his lifestyle in his bog posts - they're unnecessary, egocentric red-herrings, and category errors. They create ad hominem comments unrelated to early Christian history in various places)
Last edited by MrMacSon on Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
One thing I notice there and in his blog-posts is that Carrier has a narrative style, without much reference to specific passages he is referring to, very much like the NT - midrash-like.
lsayre wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:01 am
In which of Richard Carrier's books is this threads subject best discussed?
In more than one way I'm highly repelled by Carrier as to both his person and his personal life choices, so I'm (unfortunately perhaps) biased against him thereby (perhaps in this regard somewhat similarly to Peter Kirby's perception of Hurtado's bias against him), and therefore I have never considered the purchase of any of his books. But if I was to overcome my bias and purchase only one, which should it be?