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Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

#143: Jan. - Mar. 2016 (Non-Fiction)
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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DB Roy wrote:It's problematic to say that Jesus wasn't replacing the law when he also states up front that he is founding his own church.
I disagree. My reading of Raglan is that he is not talking about the hero inspiring a new philosophy or somesuch. He is talking about the hero being said to have been the author of a literal body of laws, not in any vague sense but such laws that are used in a court of law. Raglan writes that it is understood that such laws are the product of centuries or millennia of collective experience and of course not actually dictated by any one person, but that, in myths about such heroes, they are nevertheless attributed to that hero.

Can you give any example of Jesus doing this? The only example I can think of off the top of my head is where he says disobedient children should be stoned to death. That is actually something a court could adjudicate. But there he is explicitly quoting OT law, not issuing a new law.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Flann 5 wrote: Bayes theorem is a rather tedious method of doing history and useful for insomniacs or those who wish to deceive themselves that their biases are 'scientifically' supported.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/305750452/Ri ... y-of-Jesus
Oh, btw, didn't notice this in your link dumping. But I did read enough of this Tim Hendrix document to conclude that he is either dishonest, or unable to read English. He is claiming flaws in OtHoJC that clearly are not there, even claiming Carrier omits to explain things that are fully stated inside quotes that Hendrix provide in this very document. At some point I gave up reading the document, but if he has a point, it is well hidden in really weird and logically absurd arguments.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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JohanRonnblom wrote:
Flann 5 wrote:
I'm a bit confused about your view here. If you say that he (Jesus) started out as a teacher or messenger,then he must have been a real historical person.



No. This is a very common mistake among people defending historicity. They think that if someone is a teacher, or is made of flesh, or born of a woman, or whatever, then they must have lived on Earth. It's very straightforward: In his epistles, which are the earliest Christian sources we have, Paul cites a lot of things he learned from Jesus. But he is very clear that he learned all these things through visions of Jesus. Historicists, of course, maintain that Jesus had also previously teached on Earth. But we find no traces of this in Paul's epistles. Historicists believe that first Jesus taught on Earth, then through visions. I believe he first (was believed to have) taught through visions, and never taught anything on Earth.
Thanks for your response Johan. Do you hold to Carrier's thesis or Doherty's version or do you have a variant of your own? Could you provide a brief resume of what your view is on the origin of Christianity. This would help to clarify what it is I am responding to. I'll respond to some of the points you make here but first it would help if you present even a rough version of what your view of the origin of Christianity is, and how you think this came about historically. It seems your view is a bit more like Carrier's version so do you agree with him that it was hallucinations or do you have some other theory?

Do you really think that when Paul wrote to the Christians in Galatia that Jesus was born of a woman and under the law he would have expected them to understand that he did not mean someone human born on earth? Paul writes in Galatians 3:13 "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law,having become a curse for us (for it is written,"Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.")

Paul obviously teaches that Christ was crucified on a wooden cross. Would he seriously have expected the Galatian Christians to think that he was not saying this happened on earth?
Surely it is more reasonable given the historical realities of the then current practice of Roman crucifixion that his readers would conclude that this happened to Jesus historically on earth as the gospels record.

And the Roman historian Tacitus is very precise saying, " Christus from whom the name (Christians) had it's origin,suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators Pontius Pilate."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

I think Paul says a lot more about Jesus life and teaching on earth than is often thought. Here's an article critiqueing Earl Doherty and indirectly Carrier's position on this matter.

http://www.bede.org.uk/price7.htm

I have to say the belligerent tone of some of the criticisms of Johan's posts is uncalled for and a bit strange considering he is also a mythicist himself.

Just for your convenience,I've debated this subject here previously and here's another article I've provided previously, critiqueing Carrier's thesis.

https://scienceandotherdrugs.wordpress. ... re-review/

And here's another verse from Paul's letter to the Ephesians where Paul says that Jesus descended to the lower earthly regions. http://biblehub.com/ephesians/4-9.htm

Furthermore Peter refers to Christ as the stone the builders rejected. It would be a stretch to say that the builders were demons in the sub lunar zone and not the earthly religious leaders Christ identifies in the gospels. In addition this stone is said to have been laid in Zion which was another word for Israel.
http://biblehub.com/1_peter/2-7.htm

And John in his first letter speaks of himself and others as having seen,heard and handled Christ which does not sound like hallucinations which have no tangible reality.
http://biblehub.com/1_john/1-1.htm
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Flann 5 wrote:Do you hold to Carrier's thesis or Doherty's version or do you have a variant of your own? Could you provide a brief resume of what your view is on the origin of Christianity.
I would say I'm fairly close to Carrier. I'll outline my basic theory, a lot of this is speculation and I'm not at all sure about all the details:
1. A Jewish, proto-Christian sect in Jerusalem have a belief in a heavenly teacher Jesus/Josua, who is a sort of link or messenger between God and the humans, preparing them for the imminent end of the world.
2. Paul converts to this sect and starts recruiting other non-Jewish adherents. He notices that they are not always receptive to the core ideas, speaking in his letters how new converts must be fed 'milk' before they are ready for 'solid food' (the deeper religious truths). Or in modern language, exoteric and esoteric material.
3. For Paul it was important that Jesus was fully human, in order to act as a link to the humans. As a Jewish convert, Paul was convinced that the flesh was associated with sin and temptation. Thus, in his theology Jesus had to be crucified by Satan in heaven, and then resurrected, cleansed from these flaws. This may have been inspired by the Egyptian passion plays dealing with the dismemberment and resurrection of Osiris.
4. The Roman-Jewish wars completely disrupt Palestine and the sect in Jerusalem is destroyed or weakened into irrelevance. Only Paul's converts in the diaspora are able to keep the sect going.
5. As a result of the Roman-Jewish wars, the anti-Semitism first noticeable in the Gospels start appearing, as a way for the Christians to distance themselves from the troublesome Jews. However, for some time Romans generally still recognize them only as a Jewish sect, if they are noticed at all.
6. The Gospels are written in the form of religious fables, to be used for recruiting new members. The resurrected heavenly Jesus is not immediately appealing to Greek and Roman converts, who are used to having fleshy gods running around meddling physically with the human world. So they need some of Paul's 'milk' to feed them and get them going with the general idea. In the story, they place Jesus in history just before Paul joined the sect, because his are the earliest records they possess. No one expects thinking people to take these stories about walking on water, burning bushes etc as literal truth.
7. Due to the destruction of the Jewish temple, the sect--as all of Judaism--underwent an immense crisis. The response to this was to develop a theology where the crucifixion of Jesus was reinterpreted as a replacement for the temple sacrifice. This was a classic 'sour grapes' manoeuvre: because they had lost their most sacred tradition, they conveniently discovered that they really did not need it anyway.
8. As a result of this, a spiralling fixation not just with the death and resurrection of Jesus, but also with the virtue of suffering was developed. It is most apparent in Acts, but obviously continues to this day.
9. As usually happens in a successful sect, a power contest of who could be the most blindly devoted soon occurred. This resulted in the inner circle being more and more careful about discussing the esoteric material, or to question the literal truth of the exoteric material, as this would put them at risk of being accused of insufficiently pure belief. A pretty good parallel can be found in Islam, where Muhammed tries very hard to tell his followers that he is a prophet, not a god, so that they will not make the same mistake that the Christians did and start worshipping him. But soon they forget this and become obsessed with following every single thing that Muhammed supposedly said or did, no matter how mundane.
10. However, this soon created a huge problem for the early Christians, because the new converts started worshipping Jesus rather than God. Yet, the inner circle were still devoutly committed to monotheism. Since they did not have the power to stifle the Jesus worshipping, the best solution they could come up with was to declare that Jesus and God were really the same, adding the Holy Spirit to help hide the obvious fudge and reach a holier number.
11. Soon enough, the official esoteric version is completely suppressed and forgotten, although undoubtedly more sophisticated members of the church have at all times held similar beliefs privately or with close companions, certainly up to this day.
Flann 5 wrote: do you agree with him that it was hallucinations or do you have some other theory?
I'm not quite so charitable. I think that known examples of how religions develop show that there is pretty much always an element of deliberate fabrication. Joseph Smith with Mormonism, Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science and L Ron Hubbard of Scientology I believe are sufficiently documented that we can be pretty sure they were not just innocently repeating some random 'hallucinations'. While hallucinations may well have played a role, I think it must be recognized that to form and lead a sect, a leader must have an understanding of power, how to wield it in order to recruit members, maintain their loyalty and fend off usurpers. Random hallucination will not serve this purpose, a prophet offering that would quickly get outmanoeuvered. So while they no doubt convinced themselves that what they preached was in some higher sense true, I'm fairly certain that on a more day-to-day level they were quite aware that they were making stuff up that they needed politically.
Flann 5 wrote: Do you really think that when Paul wrote to the Christians in Galatia that Jesus was born of a woman and under the law he would have expected them to understand that he did not mean someone human born on earth?
I think that passage is a strong indication that neither Paul nor anyone he knew believed in an historical Jesus.

First, he tells them explicitly just a few lines later: "Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants; one from mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage, which is Hagar."
But, some might say, even though he says it is an allegory, it could have been intended to convey a double meaning, both that in the allegory, and literally. But let's consider the phrase 'born of a woman'. It is really odd to say about a human! If someone says, "Barack Obama was born of a woman", what can we infer about that statement? It really makes no sense if talking about a human. It is only meaningful if the writer finds it reasonable to believe that he was not born of a woman. Otherwise, you would say he was born of Stanley Ann, or some other statement containing actual information. It makes sense to say that Hercules was 'born of a woman', but only because his father was said to be a god, so it is not a given. The same is of course also said for Jesus, which is why Paul needs to emphasize that he was fully human, he was born of a woman. He had no reason to believe anyone would think Jesus walked on Earth as he had probably never heard that idea being proposed.

If indeed Jesus had lived on Earth only a few years earlier, Paul would have had no need to tell people that Jesus had been 'born of a woman', no more than he needed to inform people that Cephas had two legs.
Flann 5 wrote: Paul obviously teaches that Christ was crucified on a wooden cross. Would he seriously have expected the Galatian Christians to think that he was not saying this happened on earth?
Surely it is more reasonable given the historical realities of the then current practice of Roman crucifixion that his readers would conclude that this happened to Jesus historically on earth as the gospels record.
I really don't see the connection. Paul, like other Judaists at the time, believed that things in heaven were more or less as they were on Earth, only a bit more pure. So of course there would be trees (and women!) in heaven, and of course if someone was executed they might be crucified, as this was a form of execution they often encountered. It was obviously something that Jews feared, an object of immense sorrow and hatred toward the Romans. A perfect object for religious symbolism, an object in dire need of a fantasy allowing them to overcome this fear and powerlessness.
Flann 5 wrote: And the Roman historian Tacitus is very precise saying, " Christus from whom the name (Christians) had it's origin,suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators Pontius Pilate."
That was written in the year 116, when the Gospel of Mark had been around for about 45 years, so all that shows is that he had a source from the Christian sect. There is no evidence that Tacitus had any other sources, and it is not likely that he would have.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Flann 5 wrote: And here's another verse from Paul's letter to the Ephesians where Paul says that Jesus descended to the lower earthly regions. http://biblehub.com/ephesians/4-9.htm
Eh, no. It says: "Now this, He ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things."
The wording "into", rather than "to..regions", is the standard interpretation, after careful consideration by the experts.

Now, the whole of Ephesians is probably a forgery, or a letter by another author which was later doctored to claim Paul was the author. But for this point this really does not matter.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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JohanRonnblom wrote:I would say I'm fairly close to Carrier. I'll outline my basic theory, a lot of this is speculation and I'm not at all sure about all the details:
Thanks. There's a lot there Johan. I'll respond to it after I've considered it carefully so it won't be a quick reply.
JohanRonnblom wrote:But I did read enough of this Tim Hendrix document to conclude that he is either dishonest, or unable to read English. He is claiming flaws in OtHoJC that clearly are not there, even claiming Carrier omits to explain things that are fully stated inside quotes that Hendrix provide in this very document. At some point I gave up reading the document, but if he has a point, it is well hidden in really weird and logically absurd arguments.
As I said I'm no expert on Bayes theorem but Hendrix apparently is qualified on this subject. In any case Carrier makes the Rank/Raglan scale the centrepiece of his Bayesian data and this is the very thing you yourself critiqued!

He's selective and inaccurate and garbage in garbage out is the maxim here. There is a subjective element here as it's not the same thing as using real quantifiable data when one is dealing with history.

Hendrix makes the same criticism of Carrier's methodology as Luke Barnes which is that he is not actually using Bayes theorem correctly at all. I wouldn't be as sanguine as you are about Carrier's mathematical and methodological competence, though I'm not an expert myself.

https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2 ... er-part-1/

This was on fine tuning and Luke Barnes takes no prisoners here in demolishing Carrier's pretensions to having ingeniously and summarily dispatched the fine tuning argument.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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JohanRonnblom wrote:
DB Roy wrote:It's problematic to say that Jesus wasn't replacing the law when he also states up front that he is founding his own church.
I disagree. My reading of Raglan is that he is not talking about the hero inspiring a new philosophy or somesuch. He is talking about the hero being said to have been the author of a literal body of laws, not in any vague sense but such laws that are used in a court of law. Raglan writes that it is understood that such laws are the product of centuries or millennia of collective experience and of course not actually dictated by any one person, but that, in myths about such heroes, they are nevertheless attributed to that hero.

Can you give any example of Jesus doing this? The only example I can think of off the top of my head is where he says disobedient children should be stoned to death. That is actually something a court could adjudicate. But there he is explicitly quoting OT law, not issuing a new law.
It is then possible that both you and Mr. Godfrey are wrong (can't say anything for Raglan). One of the traits is that he prescribes laws. Both you and Godfrey use the word. That doesn't necessarily mean that he writes a whole new body of laws. Prescribe as used here means:

state authoritatively or as a rule that (an action or procedure) should be carried out.
"rules prescribing five acts for a play are purely arbitrary"


That doesn't include or exclude adjudication in the courts. That appears to me to be a non-issue.

Did Jesus prescribe laws? Yes. In Mark 16, he is quoted as saying:

15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

That certainly meets the definition of prescribe as above. It is something taught in churches but not in synagogues which ties in with my earlier point. Here Jesus is authoritatively stating to his followers what they must do and it is not something found in Jewish law. He even more strongly prescribes in Matthew 28:

…18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”…

All authority in heaven and earth has been given him. That's basically saying the Jewish law don't mean shit. Then he mentions the Father, Son and Holy Spirit--rather un-Jewish in my opinion. He says he hasn't come to abolish the law and he doesn't strictly speaking. But what he does by prescribing--authoritatively stating a certain course of action be followed--has little to do with the Jewish law.

But the following example where Jesus goes against the law occurs in Mark 7:

14 Once again Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, “All of you, listen to Me and understand: 15 Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him; but the things that come out of a man, these are what defile him.”

Here Jesus is telling them that eating kosher is not necessary. The purity code for Jesus is what is in man's mind not his stomach. This flies directly in the face of Jewish law since the concept of kosher is a distinct part of it. This same episode is recounted in Matthew where Jesus said he came not to abolish the law. I guess he was lying.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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JohanRonnblom wrote:I would say I'm fairly close to Carrier. I'll outline my basic theory, a lot of this is speculation and I'm not at all sure about all the details:
Hi Johan. Well you upfront acknowledge that a lot of your presentation on the origin of Christianity is speculation, so it's not really evidence based which is what historians would generally be looking for.
JohanRonnblom wrote:1. A Jewish, proto-Christian sect in Jerusalem have a belief in a heavenly teacher Jesus/Josua, who is a sort of link or messenger between God and the humans, preparing them for the imminent end of the world.
What historical evidence do you have for this Jewish proto-Christian sect who have a belief in a heavenly teacher Jesus/Joshua? You seem to be following Richard Carrier here. There are fatal objections to his claimed basis for this. Carrier cites Philo and goes from there to Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 6.

But this Joshua is clearly an earthly not celestial high priest who receives a crown from named returnees from the Babylonian captivity.
It would be absurd to posit a parallel sub-lunar world with another Babylon and doppelganger returnees from a parallel celestial captivity. The branch prophesied is not Joshua but one who is to come.
Certainly there is messianic prophecy of the pre-existent son of God such as in Psalm 2 but he is never named in the O.T. as Joshua/Jesus. I think Carrier is often though not always correct when he recognizes O.T. messianic prophecies. Can you provide a single example of a Jewish religious group of the time who did not expect the messiah to come to earth and Israel, but to Carrier's sub-lunar world?
Is there even a single O.T. prophecy you can point to that sugggests the messiah would come to this sub-lunar world to redeem humanity? Is there anyone on record from any Jewish religious group of the time who stated that the messiah would be born in a parallel sub-lunar Bethlehem,to take one example?
http://www.historical-jesus.info/17.html
JohanRonnblom wrote:2. Paul converts to this sect and starts recruiting other non-Jewish adherents. He notices that they are not always receptive to the core ideas, speaking in his letters how new converts must be fed 'milk' before they are ready for 'solid food' (the deeper religious truths). Or in modern language, exoteric and esoteric material.
JohanRonnblom wrote:Flann 5 wrote:
do you agree with him that it was hallucinations or do you have some other theory?



I'm not quite so charitable. I think that known examples of how religions develop show that there is pretty much always an element of deliberate fabrication. Joseph Smith with Mormonism, Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science and L Ron Hubbard of Scientology I believe are sufficiently documented that we can be pretty sure they were not just innocently repeating some random 'hallucinations'. While hallucinations may well have played a role, I think it must be recognized that to form and lead a sect, a leader must have an understanding of power, how to wield it in order to recruit members, maintain their loyalty and fend off usurpers. Random hallucination will not serve this purpose, a prophet offering that would quickly get outmanoeuvered. So while they no doubt convinced themselves that what they preached was in some higher sense true, I'm fairly certain that on a more day-to-day level they were quite aware that they were making stuff up that they needed politically.
You hedge your bets here between possible hallucinations and cynical making stuff up for political and selfish ends. The obvious question is how could Paul a zealous persecuter of Christianity have suddenly changed his mind and converted to that which he despised and considered a threat to true Judaism and it's traditions. How do you explain this?

But in fact it was not a bed of roses for Paul or the other Christian leaders since Paul had many conflicts and was executed by Nero,James the brother of John was beheaded by Herod, James the brother of Jesus was executed by the Jewish high priest, and John was deported and exiled to the isle of Patmos.
It's hard to see this as L Ron Hubbard style stuff.

As for esoteric stuff there is often a misconception I think about what Paul means when he talks about mysteries. He says that they are now revealed and pretty much spells out what they are for all to see in his letters.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/mystery/
JohanRonnblom wrote:3. For Paul it was important that Jesus was fully human, in order to act as a link to the humans. As a Jewish convert, Paul was convinced that the flesh was associated with sin and temptation. Thus, in his theology Jesus had to be crucified by Satan in heaven, and then resurrected, cleansed from these flaws. This may have been inspired by the Egyptian passion plays dealing with the dismemberment and resurrection of Osiris.
I think it would conflict with Paul's theology if he thought that Christ's human nature was a problem. Because if his human nature was inherently sinful he would inevitably sin and since Paul says that the wages of sin is death he would only be receiving the penalty for his own sins in dying. He could not make atonement for the sins of others which is the central teaching of Paul's gospel.
But of course he fulfiiled the law and all righteousness to redeem those under the law as Paul says that this was why he was under the law in Galatians.

Paul doesn't say Jesus was crucified by Satan in heaven. Some interpret I Corinthians about the rulers of this age in this way. Archons means rulers and can be human or spiritual rulers. There is a specific Greek word for demons which is used elsewhere in the N.T. which Paul could have used if he wanted to say this.

The contrast in 1 Corinthans first three chapters is between human and divine wisdom where he speaks of scribes and debaters and the Greeks seeking wisdom but that this was vain in the wisdom of God.
He says that if the rulers of this age had known the wisdom of God they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. The demons certainly knew he was the Lord of glory, but this would not be so obvious to the human rulers since he came incarnate.

We see in the gospels that Satan was involved but I don't think this is Paul's major point in 1 Corinthians.
JohanRonnblom wrote: The Roman-Jewish wars completely disrupt Palestine and the sect in Jerusalem is destroyed or weakened into irrelevance. Only Paul's converts in the diaspora are able to keep the sect going.
You would need to provide evidence that this was so. According to some Christian accounts many Christians managed to flee Jerusalem in recognition of Christ's prophecy that when they would see Jerusalem surrounded by armies they should get out,and apparently many did.
JohanRonnblom wrote:5. As a result of the Roman-Jewish wars, the anti-Semitism first noticeable in the Gospels start appearing, as a way for the Christians to distance themselves from the troublesome Jews. However, for some time Romans generally still recognize them only as a Jewish sect, if they are noticed at all.
Some anti-Semitism does emerge in the second century. I don't think the gospels are anti-Semitic. The O.T. and N.T. books are almost exclusively written by Jews and Jesus was a Jew. Paul in Romans chs 9 to 11 does not evince anti Semitism but to the contrary. Indeed the gospel was to be preached to the Jews first.
JohanRonnblom wrote:. The Gospels are written in the form of religious fables, to be used for recruiting new members. The resurrected heavenly Jesus is not immediately appealing to Greek and Roman converts, who are used to having fleshy gods running around meddling physically with the human world. So they need some of Paul's 'milk' to feed them and get them going with the general idea. In the story, they place Jesus in history just before Paul joined the sect, because his are the earliest records they possess. No one expects thinking people to take these stories about walking on water, burning bushes etc as literal truth.
You seem to be influenced by Carrier with the myths or fables line. The article I linked previously provided a broad response to Carrier's main points. Franky his youtube talk on the gospels as myth is poor in my estimation. He talks about improbabilities and what real people would do etc. He's not very observant of real human behaviour in my opinion,and seems to imagine that humanity consists entirely of clones of Mr Spock.

Much of it is the jaded stock in trade stuff of self styled infidels websites with their improbabilities and supposed contradictions. It may be superficially persuasive but I think if anyone takes the trouble to check the Christian commentators on Biblehub for instance, on many of his supposed improbabilities from the gospels, they will find satisfactory responses.
These are old commentaries and so are Carrier's imagined improbabilties. It depends on your wordview whether you take miraculous accounts seriously or not.
I do agree with him that there is some thematic arrangement of materials in the gospels, but I think he goes well overboard with many of his claimed parallels some of which are quite absurd.
Also the physical resurrection of the body was antithetical to pagan and Greek thought and would not have appealed to them whether on earth or in some other world.
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/2016/04/05/ ... urrection/
JohanRonnblom wrote: Due to the destruction of the Jewish temple, the sect--as all of Judaism--underwent an immense crisis. The response to this was to develop a theology where the crucifixion of Jesus was reinterpreted as a replacement for the temple sacrifice. This was a classic 'sour grapes' manoeuvre: because they had lost their most sacred tradition, they conveniently discovered that they really did not need it anyway.
Carrier and Doherty are not so hasty to cry interpolation or forgery when it comes to the book of Hebrews as they see it as an important plank for their sub-lunar Jesus thesis
But N.T. scholars think it was written before the destruction of the temple as it speaks of it and the sacrificial system as still operating and the Hebrew recipients of the letter were suffering persecution with the temptation to revert to Orthodox Judaism as a way out.

But it's Hebrews pre-eminently that elucidates the superiority of Christ's sacrifice and this while the temple was still operating under the Levitical system.
The sacrifices too had to consist of lambs and other animals without blemish typifying the purity necessary and there is no suggestion that Christ had to be crucified to deal with any problem relating to his human nature being defective in purity. Hebrews says he was tempted yet without sin.

I could go on I suppose but you don't claim that what you say is not including a lot of speculation, so that's honest at least. As a matter of interest where do you get the idea of a parallel sub-lunar world populated by humans,cats,dogs plants etc? It's certainly no part of mainstream Judaism or Christianity and their canons of books. Carrier tends to trawl through pseudepigraphical and apocryphal writings for a lot of his stuff.

He talks about fake gospels and letters but then uses obviously fake stuff for many of his arguments. Fakes of course imply that something authentic is being faked.
I also don't see that Paul was enthusiatic for syncretizing pagan religions with Christianity. How anyone could actually read Paul's letters and think this, is baffling. Likewise the early Christians under threat and infliction of torture and death,refused to worship the image of Caesar as god, so historically speaking there is a lot of nonsense being peddled about pagan syncretism and early Christianity.

I don't see that Acts is somehow a different genre to Luke's gospel but it transitions pretty seamlessly and reads to me like a clear continuation from the gospel narrative continuing the account from Christ's resurrection and ascension to the outworking of their commission by him to preach the gospel beginning at Jerusalem and Judea and eventually to the Gentiles. Or that Acts fits Carrier's travesty of it.
http://www.reknew.org/2007/12/13/is-the ... s-reliable

Again I think Carrier is wrong and moulding the facts to fit his thesis. There are various kinds of mythicism and Carrier is critical of the astro-theological version epitomised in the movie Zeitgeist. It has problems too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE5baeWTMk
Last edited by Flann 5 on Wed Oct 26, 2016 11:28 am, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Flann 5 wrote: In any case Carrier makes the Rank/Raglan scale the centrepiece of his Bayesian data and this is the very thing you yourself critiqued!
Yes. This is not a point against Bayes' Theorem, or Carrier's use of it. It is a point in favour of it! If he had not used BT, it would not be so clear what Carrier counts as his main argument. This would make it harder for critics to argue against Carrier. Thus, his use of BT is a great thing if we are interested in the advancement of knowledge.
Flann 5 wrote: Hendrix makes the same criticism of Carrier's methodology as Luke Barnes which is that he is not actually using Bayes theorem correctly at all.
My criticism of Hendrix' criticism is that he appears to have no idea what he is talking about as regards to Carrier's methodology or writing. In addition, Hendrix' logic appears quite flawed, when he brings up an example of what he thinks is a flaw in Carrier's use of BT, he is really attacking any use of BT, and using a thought example that is simply absurd. It's very possible that Hendrix is competent in some area of mathematics, but there is so much that is simply wrong in his critique that I can't be bothered to read through all of it. He does at some point list some bullet points, which is helpful, and as far as I can determine they are all invalid, either because Carrier does not do what Hendrix claims, or because Hendrix' logic is flawed.

If you have a specific question regarding some specific argument Hendrix (or Barnes) uses, maybe we can discuss that. Regarding the general attacks on Carrier's competence, I'm not impressed by such antics. Carrier is frequently guilty of doing his himself to the people he disagrees with, and I'm not impressed with that either. I'm only interested in talking about issues of fact, not issues of character.
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Re: Ch. 6: The Prior Probability (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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DB Roy wrote:Prescribe as used here means:

state authoritatively or as a rule that (an action or procedure) should be carried out.
"rules prescribing five acts for a play are purely arbitrary"


That doesn't include or exclude adjudication in the courts. That appears to me to be a non-issue.
No, that is in the word 'laws', not in the word 'prescribes'.

I'll cite Raglan extensively: "The only memorial of his reign, apart from the events that begin and end it, is the traditional code of laws that is always the product of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of gradual evolution, and is never in any sense the work of one man. One man, a Justinian or a Napoleon, may cause laws to be codified, or may alter their incidence, but it has never been suggested that all, or even any, of the laws in their codes were devised by these monarchs. It is well known, in fact, that they were not. On the other hand t has been clearly shown by Sir James Frazer that the Ten Commandments, in their familiar form, could have had nothing to do with Moses, since the original Ten Commandments, whoever first composed them, were entirely different. It seems clear, then, that the attribution of laws to a hero of tradition is merely a way of saying that they are very old and very sacred."

As we can see it is no accident that the element reads 'prescribes laws'. Raglan is interested in laws, not in philosophical principles or political or religious exhortations.

A law is a binding rule that is associated with a sanction. It is true, that many of the 'laws' in the old testament do not have specific sanctions, but from the context it is clear that the priests are supposed to mete out punishment to transgressors, and in many cases specific penalties are specified.
DB Roy wrote: Did Jesus prescribe laws? Yes. In Mark 16, he is quoted as saying:

15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
This is not a law, it is an exhortation. The threat of 'condemnation' is not a sanction. It is the same with most of your other examples.
DB Roy wrote: 14 Once again Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, “All of you, listen to Me and understand: 15 Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him; but the things that come out of a man, these are what defile him.”
It's a reasonable interpretation that this is an argument against the Jewish food laws. But we must remember what it is that we are treating here. It is not our combined knowledge about the hero, but a specific text about the hero. While we might say that Christians don't observe Jewish food laws, therefore Jesus changed the law with this statement, well that is an argument that requires much more information than we can find in Matthew, or the Gospels combined, etc. In Matthew, there is no mention of people generally starting to eat shrimp because Jesus told them to. He has some followers, but most oppose him.

Now, you could find (or construct) a text about Jesus where there is a statement such as 'Jesus said [the above], and all over the world people followed his command and started eating bacon.' If we score such a text, Jesus would get a point on the Rank-Raglan scale. But we must find that text, and use that text consistently, because it may have other problems which cause Jesus to score lower on the scale. It might also be a problematic text for other reasons, such as dating.

Similarly, I am not at all certain that Alexander is really well known to modern historians for prescribing laws. But in the text I chose to score, which is Plutarch's and Strabo's writings, it so happens that Plutarch reports Alexander's laws to be remarkable and widely used. Maybe Plutarch was wrong, that does not matter, because we are scoring a text. Not 'the truth' or somesuch.
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