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Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

#143: Jan. - Mar. 2016 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Carrier opens his book with a blistering attack on those he terms ‘pyramidiots’. His point is that alternative theories about the pyramids fail historiographical standards, as do claims that Jesus of Nazareth really existed. As one with some sympathy for alternative thinking about the pyramids, such as how Carrier’s beloved Bayesian Logic could assess likely causes of such features as the sight tubes pointing from the King’s Chamber to the sky, I found this attack provocative, if not surprising.

His overall point is sound. Assessing the evidentiary probability of different explanations is a sound historical method, rarely followed in the more speculative discussions of Jesus or of Egypt. This opening salvo helps to position Carrier in the noosphere, as one interested in analysis of alternative theories of history, but insistent on rigorous logic and clarity in argument, demanding sound use of evidence. The book is in fact a model of lucid rational exposition. Carrier’s analysis is restricted to the question of what rigorous history can say about Jesus Christ.
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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yes that is the thing the believer understandably finds so hard to do.

why not put the bible on the shelf for a minute and see what the evidence looks like without starting from the position of a supernatural personal deity.

ahhh if only it were that easy :yes:

lol if i listen to any more Bob Price i'll be quoting whole paragraphs verbatim from memory :-D and that's not a bad thing.



woohoo! just got the audiobook on audible, free with one month trial membership, score :)
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Richard Carrier wrote:On The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty, OHJ 1.1 p3
“I found his book well-researched, competently argued, devoid of… ridiculous claims… and more convincing than I’d thought possible.”
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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The key statement in this chapter is in 1.3, Myth Versus History, where Carrier describes the claim that “the early Christians preached a celestial being named Jesus Christ” as the most plausible mythicist theory.

This celestial Jesus was the subject of legendary accretion. My own way of seeing this is that Mark ‘reeled in’ the sky god and connected him to the earth. The fish was caught in skeletal form as a set of prophecies grounded in cosmology. Flesh was put on its bare bones through the gospel stories. Support was then available for the fervent hope that the imagined mediator was fully human and fully god, equally combining matter and spirit, time and eternity, in one person.

Christology, the science of Jesus Christ, has been bedeviled by false assumptions. The theory of the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory as the man of Nazareth, is more geometrical than historical. As such, the geometry of the eternal Christ can benefit by examining how the ancients imagined Jesus in the sky, on the pervasive ancient practice of imagining Gods and heroes among the stars.

Carrier will explore related material in his discussion in Chapter Three of the remarkable first century tract The Ascension of Isaiah. But for now, the idea presented here, that cosmology is central to how the ancients developed the myth of Jesus Christ, is an important hypothesis that flatly refutes historicism.

Paul Simon in The Boxer sings that a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest. For the Christians of the second century and later, a comprehensive and compelling story of how God had come to earth in the person of Christ readily formed a basis for cult organisation, disregarding the rest of the Jesus story that admitted its ideas were imaginary. The cult was strengthened by having a single agreed story, an agenda to which Mark's historizing fitted almost perfectly, apart from the need for the church to do spiritual and physical violence to conflicting views that gave more prominence to cosmology. Hence the early expulsion of the Docetics, who taught that Christ only seemed to be a man.
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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threw the audiobook on

was surprised to hear Richard doing the reading himself.

I let it roll on to chapter 5 or so.

Will go back to chapter 1 and listen again.

Ha! the chapter numbers were wrong, that was just chapter one... Damn this is going to be a long book :-D

liked the ned ludd analogy.

I think I'm going to need some monty python to break it up a little.
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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Robert Tulip wrote:T Hence the early expulsion of the Docetics, who taught that Christ only seemed to be a man.
But give due regard to the specific reason for the exit of the Docetics: that if this figure, Jesus, with whom disciples and others were said to have interacted, was not a man, he could not die and could not be resurrected. That was no small matter of importance to a segment of believers, who ended up winning out.

You haven't said here that docetism was heretical because it denied that Jesus was on the scene at some point, as some sort of manifestation, at least. I've seen that claimed as the nature of the heresy, though. We'd need to see where it was articulated that way to come to a different conclusion.
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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DWill wrote:You haven't said here that docetism was heretical because it denied that Jesus was on the scene at some point, as some sort of manifestation, at least.

docetism
defined narrowly as "the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality." [3][4] Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.
well we'll have to get rid of them :-D
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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i've been listening to the book

in between peeling the paint off the wall i've heard a couple of tid-bits i liked

generally though it's a slog, for me that is.

i get a laugh here and there too, so it's not all bad.

but i never realised how little i personally have invested in an historical jesus until now.

cosmic christ is way sexier :lol:
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Re: Ch. 1: The Problem (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)

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as Carrier points out at the start of the book that it's not so relevant to him personally

the only people that need an Historical Jesus are believers whose faith is based on a misunderstanding of mythology.

"if christ be not raised then our faith is in vain"

but that's BS

you can get heaps out of christianity without believing it literally.

just like you can get heaps out of any story without believing it literally.

i mean it's a story about a guy that dies and rises again

hell, i do that every day, who can't relate? :-D

even my garden does that :) but i don't worship it, i draw inspiration from it, i learn lessons by observing it.
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