Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I would say two things about this: First, the Jesus tradition is at its earliest stage undeniably Jewish, much more so even than we assumed it to be little more than a decade ago. Second, because it is firmly couched within a Jewish milieu, I would further argue that it absolutely fits better into a real historical context that featured a real Jesus. At the time in which the Jesus movement emerged, its proponents would have had little time and no patience for a myth as imagined by Carrier. It works much better in a Greco-Roman tradition, but is practically implausible for first century Jews.
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Interesting, makes sense.
Carrier I don't think went into it as a mythicist, but seems to conclude that, and I really do want to see how he comes to that.
I do know that Carrier has talked a lot about the state of scholarship in the area of a historical Jesus and that it's lacking. I get the impression his opinion is that it's very self-referential, where things that are well established are just a deep layering of references with little at the bottom. That's his view as a historian compared to other areas of historical scholarship anyway, I'm really interested to see what he says.
Ehrman, as usual, will probably just be a summary of current scholarship (which is great for us laypeople), though he's getting more aggressive lately (he's understanding what sells I guess).
EDIT: Just checked and the Amazon page for Carrier's first of the two books is up:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...eeratidiscb-20