based on reactions to the ossuaries found in Israel.

It's his divinity I don't believe.

None of the NT should be accepted as reliable. That it was based on some preacher, maybe named Yeshus, why not.

for which there will never be certainty.

And even if there were, it would matter little if at all.

This debate is beyond boring for me.

OMGs. Carrier's a professional. He should.know better.

Interesting how you don't blast him for certainty.

And psychologists. And economists. And police officers. And lawyers. And judges. And politicians. And doctors. And scientists...

His Three-Horses-in-the-Race slide picks some fairly unexciting alternatives (Amazing superman? Noticed only by a few fanatics? Complete myth?), thus managing to side-step almost every interesting historical question that one might ask about early Christianity. The first people to spread Christianity managed to have reached much of the Roman world within a few decades, so that within thirty or forty years after the beginning of the cult, Nero was actively prosecuting its adherents and some texts were beginning to spread in Greek; and one would like to know (for example) among what sectors of the population the cult spread and why. Carrier provides no real insights here. Thus, instead of a continuum of hypotheses, which might offer useful queries (say) about the evolving mythologies attaching to foundational stories of a community, he offers only a handful of stark alternatives, which do not really offer much by way of directing further scholarship.

Similarly, his Four-Trends analysis is not particularly helpful. Syncretism is a natural social phenomenon, which one might expect as social groups encounter new ideas: there is nothing particularly unique here to the Hellenistic world; and one continues to find Syncretism at work in modern cultures. One can easily pick out evidence of Syncretism in ancient Christian texts, but it can be subversive: Jesus calls himself "the son of Man," but also obtains the title "Son of God," and its not immediately clear whether this represents an adoption of Hebrew usage or an undermining of the title of the Roman emperor. What one wants to know is not simply that evidence of Syncretism exists in the ancient Christian texts, but (more importantly) what we might learn from it about the cultural context of early Christianity and attitudes of early Christians. Carrier similarly wants to point to emerging Monotheism, Individualism, and Cosmopolitanism as intrinsic trends at the time Christianity emerged. Here, again, his claims are sweeping but not particularly helpful. By Cosmopolitanism, Carrier means "all men are brothers," but this is a view not widely shared in hierarchical societies like the Roman empire; in that empire, the view would not have had much support while flow of slaves (from Rome's wars of conquest) continued unabated, since slaves were easily replaceable; in that cultural context, the Christian scandal was to claim a particular crucified man was divine, since crucifixion was a punishment reserved only for those at the bottom of society.

Carrier also wants to compare Christianity to a variety of ancient mystery cults. These mystery cults, however, were called that because they had secret rites; and for the most part we today have little or no idea what their secret teachings or practices were. This, of course, makes it very difficult to refute claims that early Christianity somehow borrowed from them.

From here, Carrier wallows happily in Hackdom. Carrier identifies Romulus, for example, as a Roman state god whose death and resurrection are celebrated in annual plays; and he similarly claims that person "baptized" into the death and resurrection of Osiris were saved in the afterlife. These are quite crude and inaccurate glosses of what we know of Osiris or Romulus from research, and it is notable that Carrier provides no citations. Livy actually says

Romulus held a review of his army at the "Caprae Palus" in the Campus Martius. A violent thunderstorm suddenly arose and enveloped the king in so dense a cloud that he was quite invisible to the assembly. From that hour Romulus was no longer seen on earth. When the fears of the Roman youth were allayed by the return of bright, calm sunshine after such fearful weather, they saw that the royal seat was vacant. Whilst they fully believed the assertion of the senators, who had been standing close to him, that he had been snatched away to heaven by a whirlwind, still, like men suddenly bereaved, fear and grief kept them for some time speechless. At length, after a few had taken the initiative, the whole of those present hailed Romulus as "a god, the son of a god, the King and Father of the City of Rome." They put up supplications for his grace and favour, and prayed that he would be propitious to his children and save and protect them. I believe, however, that even then there were some who secretly hinted that he had been torn limb from limb by the senators - a tradition to this effect, though certainly a very dim one, has filtered down to us.

whereas Plutarch says

Romulus, when he vanished, left neither the least part of his body, nor any remnant of his clothes to be seen. So that some fancied the senators, having fallen upon him in the temple of Vulcan, cut his body into pieces, and took each a part away in his bosom; others think his disappearance was neither in the temple of Vulcan, nor with the senators only by, but that it came to pass that, as he was haranguing the people without the city, near a place called the Goat's Marsh, on a sudden strange and unaccountable disorders and alterations took place in the air; the face of the sun was darkened, and the day turned into night, and that, too, no quiet, peaceable night, but with terrible thunderings, and boisterous winds from all quarters; during which the common people dispersed and fled, but the senators kept close together. The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods ... The day he vanished on is called the Flight of the People and the Nones of the Goats, because they go then out of the city and sacrifice at the Goat's Marsh, and, as they go, they shout out some of the Roman names, as Marcus, Lucius, Caius, imitating the way in which they then fled and called upon one another in that fright and hurry ...

Carrier's version of Osiris cults is likewise inaccurate. The Osiris myth is that he was murdered, hacked apart, and thrown into the Nile, after which his wife retrieved all parts except his phallus; she then reassembled him with some substitute phallus and brought him back to life long enough to allow him to impregnate her, before Osiris descended to the realm of the death. Osiris was therefore often portrayed as a green-skinned mummy; and the ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying pharaohs with erect phalli may be related.

Carrier's method here, sadly, is to toss misleading one-liners, which do nothing to bolster whatever historical case he might want to make. An appropriate historical method, if one wanted to tie the Jesus stories to those of Romulus or Osiris, would require showing some connection. But the Jesus stories arise from a first-century Jewish cult, and Judaism seems to have been quite sticky about following other gods: baptism in the Jesus stories are more credibly associated with some first-century reinterpretation of Jewish mikveh practices than with an Egyptian god.

Genuine scholarship into the origins of Christianity, including careful examination of the reuse of existing cultural motifs, would be very interesting, of course, regardless of the religious or metaphysical commitments of the scholar. I found Aslan's book fascinating and informative, because it provided much information I had not known. But Carrier is just grinding his axe, sloppily, and in familiar ways, largely for the benefit of his choir. I could watch only about half of this gobbly-de-gook before quitting

I'm afraid I'm no where near well-versed enough in the subject to really pass any ration judgement, but your arguments are persuasive.

I wonder if his books are any more thorough or rigorous than his video?

For now I will take his arguments with a grain of salt, and perhaps dig a little deeper, although I'm afraid it would take a lot of digging starting from where I live on square one.

summarizing the work of another: "His writings contain many ideas, both new and good, but the ideas that are good are not new, and the ideas that are new are not good"

When Carrier writes articles pointing out that the gospels imply inconsistent dates for the birth of Jesus, or that the current ending of Mark was a later addition, or that the prophecy of Isaiah often claimed to predict a virgin birth, the observations are interesting -- but they represent the work of scholars long before Carrier's time

On the other hand, when Carrier writes a book explaining in detail why he finds the Jesus resurrection story implausible, from a scholarly point-of-view the natural reaction should be a guffaw: for the two thousand years, almost everybody who has heard the story has recognized it as implausible; and there's scarcely any reason to try to provide reasoning step-by-step to explain why it's an implausible story, unless one regards nearly everyone else as an intellectual ten-year-old in comparison with oneself -- and anyone who thinks that is stuck in an adolescent mindframe

Carrier's "research" is ideologically motivated: he thinks he can de-program Christians by pointing out that the texts are implausible and unlikely to find support in historical research. His notion, that it is somehow edgy and modern to notice that the standard Christian texts are neither accurate historical accounts nor scientific reports, represents an ignorance of twentieth century culture that is surprising in a person who considers himself a historian. It's really not so edgy anymore, even in Christian circles. Albert Schweitzer -- a man of enormous talent and energy, who first made a mark on the world through his commentaries on Bach, then become a parish pastor, next began writing books on theology, and finally set out to serve as a missionary society doctor in Africa, which he earned a medical degree to achieve -- wrote in his Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906: There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb. This image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to the surface one after another, and in spite of all the artifice, art, artificiality, and violence which was applied to them, refused to be planed down to fit the design on which the Jesus of the theology of the last hundred and thirty years had been constructed, and were no sooner covered over than they appeared again in a new form ... The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First because such a Jesus never existed. Secondly because, although historical knowledge can no doubt introduce greater clearness into an existing spiritual life, it cannot call spiritual life into existence. History can destroy the present; it can reconcile the present with the past; can even to a certain extent transport the present into the past; but to contribute to the making of the present is not given unto it.

Schweitzer's investigation thus led him to conclude that scholarly search for a historical Jesus had essentially destroyed all the dogma that accumulated around the religion over nearly two millennia, leaving very little, and yet this demolition does not affect Schweitzer's own Christianity. This is perhaps unsurprising, once we realize Christianity originally spread without the dogmatic accretions which gradually became attached. But to understand how that happened, it is necessary to try to understand first and second century cultures, which are enough like our own in some ways that we might easily delude ourselves into ignoring the search for important differences

What was interesting in Reza Aslan's book about Jesus, written from the point-of-view of a Muslim, was the cultural context he noticed, such as the messianic claims of the shepherd Athronges and the unsuccessful rebellion he led (4BCE?) during the reign of Herod Archelaus: this historical detail might (for example) help explain who Luke 2 hopes to address when bringing frightened shepherds into the nativity narrative: In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; look! I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah ....”

Good scholarship clearly nails down facts; and excellent scholarship increases our understanding. Bart Ehrman, in my opinion, is an atheist who writes popular books on the history of Christianity that lie in the good-to-excellent range, whereas Carrier's work often seems to me to border on incompetent

historical sources because of the supernatural events they record but Livy et al are readily accepted as "real" history even though they contain in many cases the same type of events the same order of geographical and dating errors and the same moral standards of the era and people they record.

...are accepted as "real" history only for the more mundane claims they make for which there is sufficient secondary corroboration and no particular reason to doubt the claims being made.


For example, Livy is accepted as a generally accurate (within reason) historical account of there having been a war with Macedonia.


Livy is NOT accepted as reliable historical evidence of Romulus being fathered by the god Mars. For rather good reason, I would hope you would agree?




The Gospels are subject to the same treatment. It's that simple. As soon as a text starts throwing around "and then magic happened!!!!!" it's time to put on your skeptical hat and demand extraordinary corroboration of those specific claims.


Such extraordinary corroboration has never been provided. Whether we're talking Livy or the Gospels or any other historical text you want to use as a reference.

"and the magic happened" sections.

...about whether some guy named Jesus walked into a temple and argued with some moneychangers to bother looking into if there was even any reason to dispute such a thing, or any other mundane aspect of the narrative.

Why would I? I mean really, who gives a crap?

I repeat, who gives a crap if some guy named Jesus ran around preaching? It would be like investing time and energy trying to dispute that my friend's uncle Bob had seafood for dinner last Tuesday.

Why? What would be the point of disputing that? (Assuming it's not his alibi in a murder trial or something)

Jesus is the central person in a movement that changed the western world. He is more important than any of the other "Great Men" in history, in the forming of the course of History.

The central figure in that movement you're talking about is a mythological magic wielding offspring of an all powerful universe creating deity.

Not "some guy named Jesus who preached some stuff".

You get the difference... right?

his life. The claim of divinity automatically makes everything untrue. Careful now, you're killing off some famous people in history if that's your claim.

You can absolutely separate them.

But if you do... if you strip out all the magic bullshit... then the guy you're talking about isn't the guy Christianity is talking about anymore. Christianity is talking about the magic man who gives them eternal life. Not some dead guy who said some things a couple thousand years ago and is gone now.

NOBODY is in a Christian church anywhere on the planet worshiping the regular mortal man who made a few catchy statements a couple thousand years ago.


They're worshiping the son of their God who is going to make them live forever. They're worshiping the fictional character that may or may not be loosely based on a real guy before they tacked on all the magic powers and supernatural origin story.



So no, the claim of divinity doesn't "automatically make everything untrue". But if you discount the claim to divinity because there's absolutely no good reason to believe it (JUST LIKE we discount ridiculous mentions of Romulus being the son of the god Mars because there's no good reason to buy that bullshit), the rest of it is no longer the basis of a major world religion, it's just some random guy walking around talking to people, pissing off the Romans, and getting executed for it, then people making shit up about him afterwards and getting all carried away with it.

is the only thing that makes people consider that anything about the account, especially the transcriptions of the things he supposedly said are true at all.

Once you discount all the magic nonsense people inserted into the story it doesn't make the rest of it untrue, it just makes the rest of it irrelevant to the point where it doesn't even matter if it's true or untrue.

The historically interesting people then become the ones who made all the magic nonsense up and managed to get so many other people to buy it. Not the guy they made it all up about.

because they are third or forth hand accounts based on other sources and with a clear agenda. The immense contradictions within the Gospels takes away any credence.

He sacrificed himself to himself to save people from him sending them to hell? Wow. Why?

God has a penis? Then is there a Mrs. God? And if not, why would God even have a penis if it served no function. And if God does not have a penis then "he" is not "he" at all, but "it".

On Edit: it occurred to me that if God does have a penis, is he circumcised? When? At "birth"? By whom? The more you think about it, the more ridiculous it is to call a god "he".

just take these parts.

but didn't bother to mention WHY it was wrong.

Definitions:

"He", Masculine third person singular pronoun used to refer to person or animals of the male gender.
"She" Feminine third person singular pronoun used to refer to person or animals of the female gender.
"It" Neuter third person singular pronoun used to refer to inanimate objects or animals with unknown or indefinite gender.

male
māl/
adjective
adjective: male

1. of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.
"male children"
synonyms: masculine, virile, manly, macho; More
manlike, mannish
"it's his male jealousy, which is nearly always unfounded"
antonyms: female
relating to or characteristic of men or male animals; masculine.
"male unemployment"
(of a plant or flower) bearing stamens but lacking functional pistils.
(of parts of machinery, fittings, etc.) designed to enter, fill, or fit inside a corresponding female part.

noun
noun: male; plural noun: males

1. a male person, plant, or animal.
"the audience consisted of adult males"

So the defining feature is "motile gametes", so you are correct that not all male creatures have penises. However, the Bible claims that man is made in god's likeness, so it follows that human-like males have, in addition to motile gametes, a motile gamete delivery system known as a penis.

However, in the interest of accuracy, I will rephrase my original question: Does god have motile gametes? (i.e. sperm&quot and if not, "he" is not "male", by definition.

You are free, of course, to define words in any way you choose, but just don't expect to actually communicate with made-up definitions.
and, BTW: No, the only function of a penis is not intercourse. It's also used to empty the bladder. So does god have a bladder too? How many glasses of water do you suppose god drinks in a day?

Men who have sex with other men or with no one are not really males?

Humans without penises, to most certainly include women, are "it's".

God is traditionally called "the father" because that is what jesus reportedly called him. It has nothing to do with penises or circumcision or anything earthly.

This line of debate is looking sillier and sillier and I am out.

See you around.

I call God father because Jesus did.

Suggest you take a step out of it Binkie.

If you insist on rephrasing it..

So the father sent his son to be sacrificed to himself so that he could forgive humanity *because* they killed his son (because if I'm angry at someone I know the one thing that will make it all better is if they kill my kid, then we'll be good...) and then finally allow himself to stop sending those people to hell (or oblivion, or whatever)?


You do understand that that's crazy right? That that makes nothing even remotely resembling any kind of rational sense?

Justin will ban you from one of his all encompassing, friendly, anybody is welcome groups!

Banning and alerting are things I disapprove of.

Especially when one is banned for nothing.... except not doing as one is TOLD because someone might maybe possibly could be offended.... even tho' no one has complained.

You can always ask to have you ban reviewed in the prayer circle but posting picturesof Jesus with a bong is not appropriate.

How so?

Well, duh! I just reposted it.


But how is it" inappropriate"? Especially in that thread. Please explain..... if you can.

If you can not see that then I am not going to bother.

Of the 14 people banned from A&A 5 are also pprd from DU.

Of the 7 people banned from interfaith zero are also pprd from DU.

We don't leave them for show.

Of the 14 people blocked from A&A 7 are atheists.

Good of you to bring that up, I missed that angle.

That does not mean you will be reinstated automatically. We might say no.

BTW I agree the ignore function is boring.

They were blocked because their posts there, jncluding yours, were nothing but mockery and disruption.

Do you ever get tired of posting misinformation?

The people who were banned were banned because they could not follow the sop or have a history of being disrespectful to believers.

The full SoP:

I'm really sorry you blundered so badly with your post up thread that claimed that:

"Here is a more interesting stat. Of the 14 people blocked from A&A 7 are atheists".

That was a great point rug, but not the one you thought you were trying to make, because you didn't really think it through. It turns out of course that everyone blocked from interfaith was an "interfaith". Ooops.

But you can't ever be publicly wrong rug. So now you are off comparing me to a rightwing thug and inventing new and (or at least you hope) clever arguments for why you didn't just hoist yourself up by your own petard.

Do have the last word.

The more telling stat is why half the people blocked from A&A are atheists. Do tell, why? Was the belief insufficiently lacking?

OTOH, no one blocked from Interfaith has any semblance of any faith, let alone interfaith. Moreover, those blocked, including yourself, are the most frequent opponents of public expressions of religious belief, let alone interfaith cooperation. The failure here is entirely yours, Warren.

Oh, regarding personal insults, check why you were blocked.

I must say, that is the shabbiest argument you've put up in some time.

can or has ever proved the existence of Jesus. See Thallus, Pliny, Seutonius, Tacitus. They do talk about Christians but offer no proof of the man Jesus. Josephus, (see Antiquities of the Jews) mentions Jesus twice but Josephus has been largely debunked because some of the passages in his early works may have been planted by early Christians.

Or maybe the stork brought them.

Last edited Wed Apr 15, 2015, 09:29 AM - Edit history (1)

or because of tales people like Paul told about I'm?

There is very little narrative in Paul's letters, and most of it is about him.

Everything outside of that box is to be ignored or assumed not really able to exist. The ability to understand what history was to people 2,000 years ago is something that won't fit that little box but there is a space reserved to put all the things they believe must be true because, well you know, will fit.

is that persons who otherwise pride themselves on their reliance on well-supported facts will adopt truly egregious bullshit (eg., Carrier's acceptance of Earl Doherty's self-published, non-peer-reviewed ravings) that purports to prove that "Jesus never existed."

It's a rather--uhm, odd--abandonment of skepticism.

But I hope you know what I mean. Because of Jesus himself, or others who spread Christianity.

For (we think) about three years, Jesus preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. After his death, that message was perforce carried further by his followers: his brother Jacob in Judea, Paul and possibly Simon Peter in the non-Jewish world. It's not at all clear whether Paul and Peter were on the same page; certainly Paul and Jacob were not. Both Paul and Peter apparently got crosswise with the Romans and died for it-- and their teachings were carried on by their followers. The Q Source would have been the first codification of Jesus's message. By the end of the first century CE, all four of the canonical gospels were in circulation, so there was obviously a demand to know more about Jesus himself.

And who spread it early on from biased and questionabe sources.
The Q document is speculative.
We don't really know what Jessus said or preached.

Jeez my tablet has a mind of it's own.

That's pretty much the current state of the scholarship. Q can be reconstructed using the documents that incorporated its text. Historians and Biblical scholars offer evidence for their readings. You offer--what?

It seems to me that it is a reconstruction to confirm an already "proven" theory. It's an answer to a question that really may not exist.

Are you as skeptical of the stories of his life and teaching or do you give it a pass?

Mohammed as well.
And of course most of the old testament. At least those who actually lived.
All biased stories told by believers.

seems to cover a handful of years of Greek history around 110 BCE

Suetonius (c. 70 - 125 CE) lived somewhat after the period when Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judaea (26–36 CE), and he is primarily known for his Life of the Caesars, though he seems also to have produced biographies of several then-famous grammarians, rhetoricians, poets, historians, and prostitutes

Tacitus (c. 55 – 120 CE) likewise was born after Pontius Pilate had left Judaea and is primarily remembered for his now quite fragmentary Annals and Histories. The surviving Histories cover only part of 69-70 CE. In the Annals, the era during which Pontius Pilate was in Judaea is contained in Books IV, V, and VI but Pontius Pilate himself merits no mention in these three books, nor does Judaea, nor the Jews

Pliny the Elder did live (c. 25 - 79 CE) at the right time: he was born near the Italian alps and died during the eruption that destroyed Pompeii. He served as a military officer in Germania, paused to write a history of the wars there, then seems to have served procuratorships in regions now in Belgium, France, and Spain, as well as in the province of Africa (now parts of Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya). Pliny may have been aware of Nero's little game of setting Christians on fire (64 CE), since he seems to have lived in Rome then, but he was keeping a low profile (as many prudent people do in such times), writing his history of the wars in Germania or harmless treatises on rhetoric. The wars with the Jews that culminated in the sack of Jerusalem (c. 70 CE) might have interested Pliny as a military man and Roman governor. But there would have been no reason for him to take much interest in whatever local criminals Pontius Pilate had crucified in Judaea when he was a child: when the Romans crucified somebody, it signified their utter contempt for the person; the bodies were typically left to rot or be scattered by beasts, which is why (despite reports that the Romans crucified thousands after, say, the rebellion of Spartacus) we still have actual archaeological evidence of only one crucifixion. Pliny's great passion, in later life, seems to have been natural history