I used to hear about evemerism, which I thought was the ancient religious tradition of giving previous earthly lives to the gods of Greece and Rome. Turns out that euhemerism is actually the same idea, derived from the same ancient philosopher as the word evemersim. I'm confused, too, about Carrier's seemingly divergent use of euhemerism. Can Robert or D.B. Roy clarify?

In Element 22 of Chapter 4, Carrier discusses the strange dearth of documentary history from 64-95 CE. Other than Paul, we have virtually nothing and Paul’s letters were written in the latter half of the 50s and that’s about all we get from him (and who knows how many times over the centuries those letters were revised by unscrupulous church officials?). But when we look at the period between 64 (when Tacitus dates the Neronian persecution of Christians) and 95 (when most “scholars” place the writing of 1 Clement) there is nothing. Carrier says we could add ten years on either side of that 30-year window and, other than the seven letters of Paul and the possible addition of Mark’s gospel, still not have much information about the development of the early church because these scant Christian documents don’t discuss it.

Not until Eusebius recorded the succession of bishops in the church in the 4th century, do we have anything that tells us what went on in the church during that period. Even that is highly suspect since Euebius was, himself, not a reliable or particularly believable writer and his very sources, such as Hegesippus, were not reliable. Prior to Eusebius, any attempts to fix apostolic succession were spotty and inconsistent. Not even the gospels agree on who comprised the 12 men. One would think that this detail would have been all-important and therefore jealously guarded and preserved and yet, already in the first century, these details were lost and irrevocably so. We don’t even know what became of these men just as we don’t know what became of Mary after her initial appearance in Acts—she simply disappears from the narrative. Nor do we know what became of Mary Magdalene. Something catastrophic must have happened during this period for this information to be so lost.

Apologists may lean on Acts as heavily as they wish and it does them no good because not only is Acts fraudulent in what it says but it’s what Acts doesn’t say that is particularly disturbing. Although this account claims to cover the history of the church from the time of the death of Jesus up to about 62, it tells us nothing of the church’s development in Africa, the Greek-speaking empire, Italy, Spain—nothing. From this, we jump to the Neronian presecution in Rome which no Christian writer in the first or second century has ever bothered to document for our edification. Only a pagan Roman writer made the effort. During the First Jewish War in which Titus lays siege to Jerusalem, not one Christian writer from that period or the generation after wrote a word about it. We also know that the Middle East had suffered through a severe famine from the later 40s to about the time that Acts ends. Untold thousands upon thousands died from it.

About five years ago, I began suffering from an aching gum on the top left side. Some time before than I had broken a tooth while munching on cauliflower. I didn’t realize until I licked the spot and realized a chunk of my upper molar was missing. So I went to the dentist and he capped it and it seemed fine. But a couple of years later, my gum would ache horribly in the winter weather whenever I drank something hot after coming in from the cold. With a year, I had terrible pain in the gum and spreading into my cheek. I went to the dentist who x-rayed it but saw nothing. He sent me to an orthodontist who also found nothing. I insisted that he drill anyway—right through my cap. He did and discovered to his surprise that it was completely necrotized above the cap. When my tooth broke, the core was exposed for a day or two and that was all it took, it began dying and now it was starting to rot my gum and my cheek. I got a root canal and everything is fine now.

Then last January, my appendix burst and I spent four days in the hospital recovering after emergency surgery at 1:30 in the morning. My appendix was actually going bad for a year but I didn’t realize that it was the problem. I would get very nauseous all night long and then vomit violently in the morning. This happened twice the year prior and happened again the day the appendix burst but I didn’t recover from the nausea as I had before, instead it grew worse until my right groin felt like it was about to burst open and I was burning up with fever. I went to the emergency room where a CAT-scan revealed the problem. According to the surgeon’s transcripts, when he removed my appendix, he commented that it was “perforated and gangrenous.” Since getting it removed, though, I feel great and have had no bouts of nausea.

Why did I tell you all this? To point out that were it not for advances in medicine, I would be dead and I am not yet 60 years of age. I still have some years to go. Without the advances in dentistry, my gums and cheek would have rotted and become abscessed and would have burst open and become infected. Eating and chewing likely would have become impossible. I likely would have died in agony. If I survived in that wretched state, I would have died when my appendix burst some 3 or 4 years later. By then, I probably would have welcomed death. And we’re not factoring in war or famine.

So what’s my point? My point is that the early Christian leaders were all dead by the late 50s. There are no records of what was happening in the church from 64 to 95 because there were no original church officials alive to see that histories were written. Even without wars and famines, only a third of the population lived much past age 55 for the reasons my autobiographical accounts above make clear. To live to age 70 would have been considered remarkable (only 1 in 20 people made it to that age and that is under ideal circumstances). Just ordinary things like broken teeth would have resulted in infections that would kill them. A burst appendix was an agonizing death sentence (you can’t believe the pain). I got a colonoscopy last year to make sure nothing else was wrong with me and I am clean but how many died of colorectal cancer back then with no way to diagnose it much less treat it? Even into the early 20th century, burst appendices killed people (Houdini comes to mind) and tuberculosis was the AIDS of that time, once you contracted it, you would die within a few years essentially drowning in your own blood. Venereal diseases were also incurable and killed many people (Scott Joplin and Al Capone, for example).

By 70, none of the original church leaders were alive and the lack of any documentation from that period proves it. Even saying that documents must have been written but got lost later on is problematic for it means, at the least, that there was no one preserving them and, at worst, someone was destroying them with impunity. The Christian edifice was scattered and had fragmented into small, isolated communities, a diaspora of sorts, each with its own lore, legends and writings. There was no authority to control or preserve the stories or ritual. When schisms developed, there was no arbiter to decide who was right or wrong. Secret knowledge would be lost. What were the secret and initiatory teachings of Paul? We don’t know and, moreover, by 70 at the latest, nobody did. What were all the myths that the early church held dear? We don’t know. No lists were preserved. We can’t even know anything about the various sects that opposed one another either by what they believed or by how many there were. We don’t know how many schisms were settled or how. We know Matthew and Luke used Mark to write their own gospels but that also means they once had ties to the Markan community but how and when? Why did they splinter off and who was behind it? We don’t know how many sects there were and how many died off. We don’t know what they changed or how they changed it.

About the lack of historical records in the first century from this part of the world, is this a general lack or one pertaining to Christianity specifically. I ask because if there is a general silence, then the silence from Christians has no particular significance. This might be an apologetic claim, but it still deserves to be checked out. I'm not too big a fan of arguments from silence in general.

DB Roy wrote:In Element 22 of Chapter 4, Carrier discusses the strange dearth of documentary history from 64-95 CE. Other than Paul, we have virtually nothing and Paul’s letters were written in the latter half of the 50s and that’s about all we get from him (and who knows how many times over the centuries those letters were revised by unscrupulous church officials?).

The transmission of Paul's letters is a matter of historic enquiry. We know that copies of his letters were circulated among various churches beyond the original recipient church.
As for "unscrupulous revisions",this is a matter of textual criticism. The circulation of Paul's letters and copies from various streams from diverse places prevents centralized control. And these various streams can be compared to determine where there may be deliberate or accidental alterations to the text.
So this is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

DB Roy wrote:Apologists may lean on Acts as heavily as they wish and it does them no good because not only is Acts fraudulent in what it says but it’s what Acts doesn’t say that is particularly disturbing. Although this account claims to cover the history of the church from the time of the death of Jesus up to about 62, it tells us nothing of the church’s development in Africa, the Greek-speaking empire, Italy, Spain—nothing. From this, we jump to the Neronian presecution in Rome which no Christian writer in the first or second century has ever bothered to document for our edification. Only a pagan Roman writer made the effort. During the First Jewish War in which Titus lays siege to Jerusalem, not one Christian writer from that period or the generation after wrote a word about it. We also know that the Middle East had suffered through a severe famine from the later 40s to about the time that Acts ends. Untold thousands upon thousands died from it.

This is an argument from silence. In fact it's accepted by scholars that most literature from the time is lost. We don't have copies of Homer or Tacitus and many other ancient writers 'til centuries later,whereas the Christians gospels have copies much earlier and more plentiful.
Where are the first century writings of these authors?

DB Roy wrote:Apologists may lean on Acts as heavily as they wish and it does them no good because not only is Acts fraudulent in what it says but it’s what Acts doesn’t say that is particularly disturbing.

Here's an assertion that Acts is "fraudulent". On what basis? Carrier reads the gospels and Acts through the prism of his theory of a non historical hallucinated being, who could not have been historical. I've watched his youtube talks on "the gospels as myth" and "Acts as historical fiction."
Many of his arguments are puerile.Things he considers improbable to be real history. He says for instance that the disciples come across as "dumber than a bag of hammers" in failing to understand what Jesus was saying to them.

But Carrier himself is a shining example of this human trait, in his utter inability to comprehend and interpret the same gospels.
Mark he says is emulating Homer and we should not think he is writing real history at all. So there was no historical person Jesus.

Carrier argues that the gospels are myth but Acts is historical fiction.

But Luke's gospel is recognized to be followed by Acts and to have the same author. How then is the same author suddenly changing genre's from the gospel to Acts? Of course no one but Carrier thinks there is a change of genre.

He could call the gospel of Luke historical fiction but then the main character would be historical in an historical setting but the accounts would be fictitious.

It doesn't suit Carrier's thesis to have any kind of historical Jesus though.The gospels don't fit the genre of myth.

When it comes to Acts he says it's "historical fiction." By parity of reasoning then Paul couldn't have been an historical person either since he features so prominently in Acts. Why not say Acts is myth? But then Paul would not be historical.

But Carrier admits that Paul was a real historical person. Paul says to the Galatians that they had heard about his former life as a persecutor of the church.

Where did they hear this? Galatians comes before Acts so this is an appeal to common knowledge about Paul's life among the churches. So there obviously was a Paul who persecuted the church, and Acts account of this is not fiction.

Furthermore Paul writes in many cases to churches he actually founded. How could he have founded them if he didn't actually travel to these places as Acts records?

Historical fiction Carrier says had features like travel,adventures, and romance.

He even tries to make an absurd case for a "chaste romance" between Paul and Lydia in Acts. He say Luke lies in Acts about Paul's history.
I can easily show that Carrier is just sloppy in his reading of Galatians and Acts in relation to Paul's movements.

Carrier is just infatuated with his theory and everything else must be shoehorned to conform to it.

This is not how good historians do history.

http://reknew.org/2007/12/is-the-book-of-acts-reliable/

Leveling arguments from silence don't do you any good here, people, or did I not make that clear already? The reason for the silence is what we are concerned with not that there was a silence--that much is undeniable. WHY was there a silence?? If there was an active church established through apostolic succession, where was it during this silence? What was it doing? We should have a record of it consolidating its power, gathering and preserving a library of precious documents. It should have been issuing its own letters settling disputes, clarifying dogma and ritual, appointing elder, etc. Instead we get nothing. Why?

If we say the documents were lost--why? How? Wasn't anyone in charge of them? If not, why? Saying Paul's letters were passed around from church to church tells us only that there was no church of apostolic succession but a ragtag collection of communities that Paul was, in fact, trying to unite, meaning they all held very different views. Some were clearly opposed to Paul because in Galatians, he warns his readers not to buy into these other false gospels. But, once again, we know NOTHING about these opposing sects or what they taught--nothing. Nor do we know whatever became of them. If anyone documented this--and it should be obvious that no one did--what happened to those documents? If they were lost, how did they get lost?

The lack of a true church of apostolic succession that Acts tries to foist off on us is nowhere more apparent than Paul's letter to the Romans where he calls Jesus the "son of God in power" as well as descended from David. These were the two camps that he was to address in Rome--one Jewish and one pagan--both with very different views. Paul would have no reason to do that than he was trying to draw them together. By saying "son of God in power," he was likely making wiggle room because that's not the same thing as saying that Jesus was the son of God but rather was a man that was given some measure of God's power. He wasn't an actual descendant of God. By doing that, now Jesus can be a metaphorical son of God and could still be descended from David. If there was any kind of a church with central authority, why wasn't it settling this dispute instead of Paul who wasn't even accepted as a true apostle by many other apostles? If Paul was working for this church, why wouldn't he just say so? That would certainly give him undisputed authority.

As Carrier points out, this didn't happen simply because whatever kind of central church there may have been had ground to a halt simply because its original leaders died. If they had been the same age as Jesus, then by the year 55, most of them were close to death's door for the reason I've already stated--lack of proper healthcare as well as wars and famines made short work of them. They might still have been alive if they were teens in the times of Jesus but, upon his death, teens would have had no authority or wherewithal to found a church. They had to be adults and probably the same age as Jesus within 5 years either way. By 70, certainly, none of them would still be alive. That more than accounts for the lack of documents written by these original church officials--if they ever existed, they weren't alive to write any by then. The Christian communities were cut off, isolated, bickering--just ripe for a Paul to come along and try to unite them under his umbrella.

The prior probability for this is high and therefore likely to be true. The evidence we would expect to find to support my contention about Paul is the New Testament itself. We DO have Paul going around trying to unite these various sects. The evidence we would expect to see if there was a church of apostolic succession having the authority to set dogma and ritual is not in the New Testament with the exception of Acts but even then the prior probability is low. When we study Acts to see that it is a house of cards, the posterior probability is even higher that they were was no such church. On the other hand, if we assume there was no such church, the evidence we would expect to see is already present in the NT and further study reveals a total silence from at least 64-95 and that boosts the posterior probability. So no matter how you slice it, it comes up no church.

DB Roy wrote:The lack of a true church of apostolic succession that Acts tries to foist off on us is nowhere more apparent than Paul's letter to the Romans where he calls Jesus the "son of God in power" as well as descended from David. These were the two camps that he was to address in Rome--one Jewish and one pagan--both with very different views. Paul would have no reason to do that than he was trying to draw them together. By saying "son of God in power," he was likely making wiggle room because that's not the same thing as saying that Jesus was the son of God but rather was a man that was given some measure of God's power. He wasn't an actual descendant of God. By doing that, now Jesus can be a metaphorical son of God and could still be descended from David. If there was any kind of a church with central authority, why wasn't it settling this dispute instead of Paul who wasn't even accepted as a true apostle by many other apostles? If Paul was working for this church, why wouldn't he just say so? That would certainly give him undisputed authority.

You are concocting a non existent dispute out of your imagination D.B. Paul is writing to Gentile Christians in Rome though there may have been some Jewish Christians in that church also.

It's clear from Romans chs.9 to 11 that he's addressing Gentile Christians. If you think Paul doesn't have a high Christology in Romans then you can't have read it with your eyes open.

I suppose you want chapter and verse here? I'll get back to you with them.
https://carm.org/paul-think-jesus-was-god

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Going thru my library, I found this 1996 book that I had not really read since I bought it several years ago. It's called The Apocryphal Jesus -- Legends of the Early Church edited by J.K. Elliot (Reader in Textual Criticism at the University of Leeds) and published by the University of Oxford Press. In a chapter entitled "Stories relating to the Growth of the Church" the author writes about all the various books of Acts and not just the one in the NT, although it is certainly no more believable than the others. He writes:

The eponymous hero of all these Acts is, to a large extent, a stock character. He is a fearless champion for Christ, displaying prodigious deeds of courage, performing spectacular miracles, delivering himself of effective speeches, defending in public his faith, withstanding hardship and suffering deprivation (including imprisonments and torture), and typically dying as a martyr. Paul in the Acts of Paul is not the historic figure discerned in the New Testament letters. Peter is not the disciple recognized in the canonical gospels. They and the other apostles, John, Thomas, Andrew, who figure in the different Acts are each merely a personification of the obedient apostle venerated as an ideal figure in the areas where the stories originated.

Elliot points out that these Acts were very popular among Christians of that period and what they read while their churches were growing and evolving. But these were 2nd century Christians. What great heroes of the church were first century Christians reading about? And who and where were those heroes? And where are the writings their exploits were written on?