I know Giuseppe's point is more narrow that what I propose here, but, in order to put it in context, the way I'd put Carrier's points (and Carrier's presentation of Price's points) on this, from that web article are, firstly, -
.
Price says, “Carrier gives the reader [of
Jesus from Outer Space] both the comprehensive ‘big picture’ and a detailed account of the relevant data in both early Christian and contemporary pagan sources” and “His arguments are impressive and impressively presented.” And despite the few quibbles he does have with it (which I’ll get to next) he still concludes “The book is very powerful!”
Should I Make Mythicism More Fringe?
Price offers other supportive remarks, but of more importance I think are his critiques. His
first criticism is that my presentation “suffers” from my “retention of elements of traditional ‘mainstream’ scholarship.” In other words, he ironically criticizes me for being too mainstream—and not “fringe” enough. That’s actually high praise ... I should
not litter my thesis with
unnecessary propositions already deemed unlikely by the academy that needs to be persuaded. If my conclusion follows from even
their own assumptions (about basic facts like the mainstream dating of the Gospels and the authenticity of “the seven” trusted Epistles of Paul), they can have even
less justification for rejecting my conclusion.
< . . snip . . >
The one example Price spends the most time on is of course one of his own passion projects: his insistence that the letters of Paul are “heavily” interpolated (rather than, as I grant, only occasionally so) and that many deemed authentic, like Galatians, are really second century forgeries.
.
But I would remove Carrier's reference to Price's focus on "the letters of Paul [being] ''heavily'' interpolated" in Carrier's reference to Price's second criticism, thus -
.
Price’s
second criticism [of, which he builds on the first, is to ask, “
how...
can one harmonize the Mythicist notion of Jesus as a heavenly archangel descending to earth [or to just the sublunar realm]
with the “
adoptionist Christology of Romans 1:3-4” ...
The passage in question [Romans 1:3-4] reads (translating literally):
…concerning His Son, [the one] having come-to-be from the semen of David, according to the flesh ... having been singled-out as God’s Son in power according to the Spirit of Holiness from [His] resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.
[which Carrier otherwise says or means, “Jesus, though ‘declared Son of God in power…by his resurrection from the dead’, was already qualified as Messiah by virtue of his Davidic lineage.”]
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/17174
Giuseppe appeals to the Epistle to the Hebrews - which is, of course, not even considered Pauline - as being adoptionist.
We can go back to Carrier who then notes notes
.
Paul is consistently an adoptionist. He repeatedly implies God adopted Jesus as his son, throughout his letters, setting this up as a model for how we can be adopted by God and thus become God’s sons, too (and so Jesus is “the firstborn of many brethren”) ... [I'll come back to what Carrier said here1 after Carrier's next paragraph, thus > ] ...
So it’s important to notice that Paul does not say in Romans 1 that Jesus was “adopted” as God’s son at his resurrection; he says “singled out as God’s Son in power” from his resurrection onward. Jesus is thus being reconfirmed in a station he had abandoned to effect his atoning sacrifice, being restored to power, the very power he had given up in the incarnation to be “a slave” to the natural world order (just as Paul says in Philippians 2:5-11). Paul makes clear Jesus was always God’s son, even from the dawn of creation (Romans 8:3-4, Galatians 4:4; cf. Ps.-Paul, Colossians 1:15; and Hebrews 5:5-10). So his being “singled out as” the Son from his resurrection onward (when he resumed his supernatural state, after having voluntarily submitted to a mortal one) was only a reconfirmation of a status he already once had.
.
1 The bit I omitted (from that excerpt) is -
And we know from Philo that Paul (and thus his fellow Christians) regarded Jesus as the already-established “archangel of many names” in Jewish angelology, who Philo tells us was always called the Son of God, in fact even “Firstborn Son of God,” the exact same phrase Paul repeatedly uses of Jesus (see OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 40)2.
I'm not sure why Carrier asserts "
we know from Philo that Paul regarded Jesus as the already-established “archangel of many names” in Jewish angelology" - we might be able to
infer such tropes / memes (or whatever) were common in or after Philo's times, but we can't
'know' Paul got them from Philo (or that Paul's fellow Christians did, or even that Paul had engaged with 'fellow Christians').
2 In Element 40 (in
OHJ) Carrier says
.
the Christian idea of a preexistent spiritual son of God called the Logos, who was God’s true high priest in heaven, was also not a novel idea but already held by
some pre-Christian Jews; and this preexistent spiritual son of God had already been explicitly connected with a celestial Jesus figure in the OT (discussed in Element 6), and therefore some Jews already believed there was a supernatural son of God named Jesus—because Paul’s contemporary Philo interprets the messianic prophecy of Zech. 6.12 in just such a way [Philo,
On the Confusion of Tongues/Language 62-3.] ...
< . . .snip . . >
In
the same book, Philo says that even if no one is ‘worthy to be called a Son of God’, we should still ‘labor earnestly to be adorned according to his firstborn Logos, the eldest of his angels, the ruling archangel of many names’. Elsewhere Philo adds that ‘there are two Temples of God, and one is this cosmos, wherein the High Priest is his Firstborn Son, the divine Logos’ (whom Philo elsewhere identifies as the primordial ‘image of God’).
119 And Philo also says this ‘divine Logos’ is the being whom God appointed the Lord over all creation.
120
- 119 On Dreams 1.215; see also Philo, On the Giants 52. That the ‘divine Logos’ is the ‘image of God’ is also explicitly declared in Philo, On the Creation 31 as well as in Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 62, 97 and 147; On Dreams 1.239; 2.45; The Special Laws 1.81; On Flight and Finding 101. That this is an intermediary being (per Element 36), see Philo, Who Is the Heir of Things Divine? 205-206. For more sources on this Jewish doctrine of the ‘Logos’ as a divine being, which Christianity simply co-opted, see Daniel Boyarin’s commentary in Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (eds.), The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.546-49.
120 Allegorical Interpretation 3.96 and The Special Laws 1.81. That over all the universe ‘God put in charge his own true Logos, his firstborn Son, who is to take charge of his sacred flock, like the prefect of a great king’, see Philo, On Agriculture 50-52 ...
We know Jesus was also called the firstborn of God, the Logos, and God’s high priest in the heavens, and the one through whom all things were made, and who was appointed Lord of the universe, and was the true image of God; and Christians were also called upon to try and emulate him and adorn themselves like him, just as Philo is calling us to do [
121: That we ought to imitate Christ: 1 Cor. 11.1; Rom. 8.29; 1 Cor. 15.49; 2 Cor. 3.18.]. This is far too improbable to be a coincidence. Philo and Christianity must have this notion from a common tradition preceding both [
122 see Hultgren, ‘Origin of Paul’s Doctrine’, pp. 350-54.].
Carrier, Richard.
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt . Sheffield Phoenix Press.
.
Carrier also goes on to say in his web-article that
.
Price further conflates “messiah” with “Son of God.” The archangel Philo describes, who is clearly the archangel the earliest Christians believed Jesus was (and they believed this of him even if he existed), was always the Son of God. That was a position of supernatural status, not a biological reality. A messiah could also be called God’s son (as any king or priest could), but the messiah was a specific mortal-world agent, someone chosen (anointed) for a specific mortal-world task. All high priests and kings were so-described as messiahs (and “sons of god”).
But “the” messiah often meant the final chosen one, who would inaugurate the awaited end of the world. Sometimes it meant the final messiahs—as in the Talmud, there are two eschatological messiahs, the penultimate messiah “Son of Joseph” who would die and then be resurrected by the ultimate messiah “Son of David,” signaling the last days (see OHJ, Ch. 4, Element 5).
In [his] credal statement in Romans [Paul] is clearly using it in the final messianic sense: Jesus became not just any messiah but the Messiah Son of David in the flesh, meaning biologically (whether miraculously, procreatively, or allegorically; Paul does not say). This was a temporary status he [is said to have] assumed, to initiate the end of days. It is a status he only held, and only could hold, in 'a body of' flesh —indeed, [as] Davidic flesh— as prophecy required ...
.
So,
who / what they might have 'adopted' was essentially either a supernatural being or a notion of a human being.
.
