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Thor · 03-22-2013, 09:17 PM

Just got Richard's response to TC's last reply. Really enjoying this whole debate, learning so much from you all its crazy fun.

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(1) "In other words, it is much more historically plausible that an actual man existed from Nazareth than it is that he was invented by eager followers." -- But not a plausible deified messiah deserving of worship. Thus, the historical Jesus was as hard a sell in Judea as a mythic one would have been. Thus, its being a hard sell cannot argue for Jesus being either historical or mythical. (See items 4 and 11 below.)

(2) The argument advanced in this response, however, is a slightly different one than previously formulated. This new argument is more familiarly called the Argument from Embarrassment. Basically, the "Why Would They Make That Up" argument. Many scholars have exposed the logical and factual invalidity of it. I document that fact and discuss the AfE extensively and why it doesn't work (especially in defense of a Nazareth origin, but not just that) in my book Proving History (pp. 124-69).

(3) "practically EVERY Jew—whether in Jerusalem, Samaria, or in Alexandria—agreed about several fundamental principles."-- This is debatable. There were at least ten and as many as thirty Jewish sects, which were widely divergent from the so-called "mainstream" sect of the Pharisees (which most directly became the Rabbinical sect post-war), and we know little about most of them, and thus cannot say "what they agreed about." This is a logically invalid argument from silence.

I document this diversity and the scholarship and sources on it in the anthology by Lowder and Price, The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave ("The Heady Days of Jewish Diversity," pp. 107-10, with endnotes). We cannot claim to know what fringe Jewish sects believed when we have no information about what they believed. Moreover, what we do know of the fringe sects is that they diverged in a lot of unexpected ways from what was supposedly mainstream. Thus, the many more sects we don't have information on can have diverged in many more ways still than even we know. I took Ehrman to task for the same fallacy (and he even contradicts himself on it, as I also point out):
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1794#20

(4) This is a good example of what I mean: "All Jews agreed about the characteristic singularity of God: the god of Judaism was the only God for every Jew."-- This is technically false depending on how you define the word "god." Jews were in fact henotheistic, i.e. they regarded one God as supreme but allowed other divinities subordinate to him (Satan, demons, archangels, angels), and usually just shielded this cultically (worship was denied them) or semantically (as with Jesus until much later, the word "god" would not be used for them, even though they were identical to what pagans called gods in attributes and so on, and some terms are even identical when translated, e.g. the word used by Jews for demon in Greek is actually the word "divinity," and archangels were often called "Lord" just as Jesus was, even though that word was interchangeable with God), but sometimes not even that held, e.g. the messiah Melchizedek and his council are called "gods" [elohim] in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Paul calls Satan "the god of this world," and so on, while the notion of worshipping archangels and/or other divine subordinates of God is attested for some Jewish sects.

This gets us back to item (1) above. If introducing Jesus as an object of worship was anathema to all Jews, it would be anathema whether Jesus was historical or not. Thus proposing that Jews would never countenance worshipping a second power in heaven can never be an argument for historicity. To the contrary, as I alluded to in my first reply, worship of a *celestial archangelic* being would be an easier sell than worship of *an ordinary historical man*. We know this from the Dead Sea Scrolls and their presentation of the superbeing Melchizedek, and from Rabbinical Talmudic discussions of heretical Jewish sects.

See Alan Segal's book Two Powers in Heaven:
http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarr...ail/039104172X

And Margaret Barker's The Great Angel:
http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarr...ail/0664253954

And Larry Hurtado, “Monotheism, Principal Angels, and Christology,” in Timothy Lim and John Collins, ed., The Oxford handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 546-64:
http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarr...ail/0199663084

(5) None of the other "all agreed upon" claims made in this latest reply are relevant to the Jesus myth debate. So I set them aside as of no importance.

(6) I never said anything about Christianity not being a Jewish sect or not starting among Jews. Indeed, I was quite repeatedly clear in saying the opposite. Being a fringe Jewish sect that attacked mainstream Judaism does not make them non-Jewish. Any more than it made the Essenes or the Qumran sect non-Jewish. Or indeed even the Samaritans, who are actually a Jewish sect (only declared heretical by Pharisees). And so on.

(7) The Mormon analogy holds in this context: Just as Mormonism fit fringe American culture, so did Christianity. Christianity shares even a lot with mainstream Judaism (just as Mormonism did with mainstream American culture), but I assumed we were discussing those attributes of it that were non-mainstream. When we focus only on those in the case of Mormonism, too, we get my analogy with Christianity.

(8) My argument does not depend on the "possibility" that Christianity was a radical fringe group of Jews, but on the demonstrable fact of it. I direct you back to item (1). I am here being argued against like this: the Christian teachings were too radical for Jesus to be mythical, because such radical teachings would never succeed among Jews; oh, and by the way, there was nothing radical about Christianity and Carrier is just inventing a teapot in space by saying so. What? Besides those two arguments contradicting each other, the first argument is illogical (remember: point (1)).

(9) A possibiliter fallacy is saying (A) "it's possible that x, therefore probably x." But I am arguing (B) "x makes the evidence more probable than ~x; therefore, probably x." The teapot argument in this reply suggests this is not understood. It would seem I am being mistaken for arguing (A), when in fact I am arguing (B). And indeed I extensively explain in my book Proving History that the only valid way to argue is (B) and I even elaborately explain why we can't use arguments like (A). So it's perverse to have me accused of doing the opposite.

(10) "Unfortunately, outside of the odd mythicist interpretation of the early Christian writings, there is not one shred of documented evidence for such a movement or doctrine." -- This is multiply false. There are not only documents that contain evidence of minimal Doherty mythicism (e.g., the Ascension of Isaiah, 1 Peter, Ignatian anti-Docetism, Irenaeus on the heresies of Jesus being born in heaven, etc.) but there are documents whose contents make much less sense on any other theory (e.g., Hebrews, 1 Clement). The whole array of evidence I shall present in my next book, so there is no need to debate it now. We should just wait for that. Certainly, the merits of mythicism do hinge on whether it makes the contents of documents like these more probable than historicity does. So that is actually where the debate lies. But insisting there is nothing to debate is just inserting one's head in the sand.

(11) "My whole point in citing 11QMelchizedek from the Qumran Scrolls was precisely to illustrate how badly Jesus fit this model, to the point that it strains credulity to imagine how the subject of the Corinthian creed could ever be confused with Daniel’s Son of Man" -- It fits the Christian expectation of Jesus' future return on clouds of heaven exactly. So I don't see why it is being deemed incongruous. Indeed, there is evidence 11Q13 even imagined Melchizedek would die before doing the same. But that is at least debatable. Though I have an article on this in peer review at an academic journal, I have a current summary online here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1440

I can only assume what is being claimed here is that the "dying first" part (if we assume it wasn't already in 11Q13) is a novel addition that would be a hard sell to Jews who liked 11Q13. But again, go back to item (1): if that was a hard sell, it would have been as hard a sell for a historical Jesus as for a mythical one. It therefore can argue against neither. One might then try to gin this up into an Argument from Embarrassment, but then see item (2). Many religions come up with weird hard sells. That doesn't make those religions true. I give examples in my book. Mormonism is another.

Moreover, an AfE in this case defeats historicity as well (my point (1) again), since the same fact that ginning up an ordinary failed messiah into a worship-worthy Melchizedek figure would be just as foolish if Christians wanted their religion to sell--so if people don't make up foolish things, they would not have made that up, whether Jesus existed or not. They would have made up something easier to sell. Therefore, even an AfE here cannot argue for historicity. Christianity is as much a hard sell either way; and indeed, harder if Jesus really was just an ordinary guy executed (item (4) again).

Moreover, that a messiah would "die first" is (a) already in Daniel 9 and thus not anathema to Jewish thinking and (b) already embraced in Talmudic Judaism and thus was in fact mainstream (see my article link above for the references). So even the "hard sell" part is a hard sell.

(12) "They must somehow ignore or alegorise his humanness" -- This betrays a lack of understanding of minimal Doherty mythicism. On that theory, Jesus did indeed put on, as a garment, a human body made of flesh, one even fashioned from the sperm of David. Not allegorically. Actually. The only difference with standard historicity is that in Doherty mythicism this body is killed and buried in the sky, not on earth. As appears to have been the case in the earliest redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah, for example.

(13) "The earliest Christian creeds and teachings are universally binding on this point: Jesus was a man who died. He was NOT a celestial being." -- This is refuted by Paul, who has no knowledge of any other Jesus except the celestial being (try as you might, you'll never find in Paul any clear reference to Jesus ever residing on earth; but even apart from that, Paul talks about the celestial Jesus constantly, whether he was ever on earth or not). Phil. 2 even explicitly says Jesus was a preexistent being who descended from heaven to incarnate and die, then reascend to live again celestially, where he now sits (as is said many other places) "at the right hand of God." And Colossians and Hebrews are even more explicit on this (Heb. 1:1-4 and Col. 1:12-20 and Heb. 2:10 and 9:1ff. etc.). Likewise 1 Cor. 8:6 identifies Jesus as God's agent of creation (thus a preexistent being). Paul thus identifies Jesus as (a) a preexistent celestial being (in Phil. 2), (b) God's agent of creation (in 1 Cor 8:6), (c) the Image of God, and (d) the Wisdom of God; Hebrews adds (e) that he is the High Priest of God's celestial temple; and John adds (f) that he is the Logos who was the first being created. We know a Jewish being who fits the description of (a)-(f), being called all those things, as that being is repeatedly discussed by Philo, and even identified by Philo with a figure in Zechariah named Jesus. A celestial being. This is not teapots in space. This is documented fact.

(14) "he did NOT in any way conform to any imagined messianic prediction from Jewish scriptures" -- except Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53 and Wisdom 2 and 5 and...do I really need to continue? One might try to argue these were not yet understood to be messianic (except Daniel 9, which explicitly predicts a messiah will die), but that begs the question: at what point were they deemed messianic and by whom and why? We actually have no evidence that Is. 53 *wasn't* long deemed messianic (it is accepted as such in the Talmud) and Wisd. 2 and 5 are easily adaptable to messianism (appearing even to reference the same figure as in Is. 53) and when one accepts Daniel 9 as messianic (as it indisputably is; the Mechizedek scroll is thoroughly based on that fact), Is. 53 and Wisd. 2 and 5 become more obviously messianic (as they appear to reference the same figure: a dying chosen one of God who will be resurrected and exalted and whose death is associated with an atonement for sin [in Is.] and who is identified as the son of God [in Wisd.]). This looks a lot less like a teapot in space and a lot more like a testable hypothesis.
Ehrman on Historicity Recap
freethoughtblogs.com

03-22-2013, 09:17 PM	#208
Thor God of Hating Twitter Join Date: Apr 2006 Exp:	Just got Richard's response to TC's last reply. Really enjoying this whole debate, learning so much from you all its crazy fun. ______________________________________________ (1) "In other words, it is much more historically plausible that an actual man existed from Nazareth than it is that he was invented by eager followers." -- But not a plausible deified messiah deserving of worship. Thus, the historical Jesus was as hard a sell in Judea as a mythic one would have been. Thus, its being a hard sell cannot argue for Jesus being either historical or mythical. (See items 4 and 11 below.) (2) The argument advanced in this response, however, is a slightly different one than previously formulated. This new argument is more familiarly called the Argument from Embarrassment. Basically, the "Why Would They Make That Up" argument. Many scholars have exposed the logical and factual invalidity of it. I document that fact and discuss the AfE extensively and why it doesn't work (especially in defense of a Nazareth origin, but not just that) in my book Proving History (pp. 124-69). (3) "practically EVERY Jew—whether in Jerusalem, Samaria, or in Alexandria—agreed about several fundamental principles."-- This is debatable. There were at least ten and as many as thirty Jewish sects, which were widely divergent from the so-called "mainstream" sect of the Pharisees (which most directly became the Rabbinical sect post-war), and we know little about most of them, and thus cannot say "what they agreed about." This is a logically invalid argument from silence. I document this diversity and the scholarship and sources on it in the anthology by Lowder and Price, The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave ("The Heady Days of Jewish Diversity," pp. 107-10, with endnotes). We cannot claim to know what fringe Jewish sects believed when we have no information about what they believed. Moreover, what we do know of the fringe sects is that they diverged in a lot of unexpected ways from what was supposedly mainstream. Thus, the many more sects we don't have information on can have diverged in many more ways still than even we know. I took Ehrman to task for the same fallacy (and he even contradicts himself on it, as I also point out): http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1794#20 (4) This is a good example of what I mean: "All Jews agreed about the characteristic singularity of God: the god of Judaism was the only God for every Jew."-- This is technically false depending on how you define the word "god." Jews were in fact henotheistic, i.e. they regarded one God as supreme but allowed other divinities subordinate to him (Satan, demons, archangels, angels), and usually just shielded this cultically (worship was denied them) or semantically (as with Jesus until much later, the word "god" would not be used for them, even though they were identical to what pagans called gods in attributes and so on, and some terms are even identical when translated, e.g. the word used by Jews for demon in Greek is actually the word "divinity," and archangels were often called "Lord" just as Jesus was, even though that word was interchangeable with God), but sometimes not even that held, e.g. the messiah Melchizedek and his council are called "gods" [elohim] in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Paul calls Satan "the god of this world," and so on, while the notion of worshipping archangels and/or other divine subordinates of God is attested for some Jewish sects. This gets us back to item (1) above. If introducing Jesus as an object of worship was anathema to all Jews, it would be anathema whether Jesus was historical or not. Thus proposing that Jews would never countenance worshipping a second power in heaven can never be an argument for historicity. To the contrary, as I alluded to in my first reply, worship of a celestial archangelic being would be an easier sell than worship of an ordinary historical man. We know this from the Dead Sea Scrolls and their presentation of the superbeing Melchizedek, and from Rabbinical Talmudic discussions of heretical Jewish sects. See Alan Segal's book Two Powers in Heaven: http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarr...ail/039104172X And Margaret Barker's The Great Angel: http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarr...ail/0664253954 And Larry Hurtado, “Monotheism, Principal Angels, and Christology,” in Timothy Lim and John Collins, ed., The Oxford handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 546-64: http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarr...ail/0199663084 (5) None of the other "all agreed upon" claims made in this latest reply are relevant to the Jesus myth debate. So I set them aside as of no importance. (6) I never said anything about Christianity not being a Jewish sect or not starting among Jews. Indeed, I was quite repeatedly clear in saying the opposite. Being a fringe Jewish sect that attacked mainstream Judaism does not make them non-Jewish. Any more than it made the Essenes or the Qumran sect non-Jewish. Or indeed even the Samaritans, who are actually a Jewish sect (only declared heretical by Pharisees). And so on. (7) The Mormon analogy holds in this context: Just as Mormonism fit fringe American culture, so did Christianity. Christianity shares even a lot with mainstream Judaism (just as Mormonism did with mainstream American culture), but I assumed we were discussing those attributes of it that were non-mainstream. When we focus only on those in the case of Mormonism, too, we get my analogy with Christianity. (8) My argument does not depend on the "possibility" that Christianity was a radical fringe group of Jews, but on the demonstrable fact of it. I direct you back to item (1). I am here being argued against like this: the Christian teachings were too radical for Jesus to be mythical, because such radical teachings would never succeed among Jews; oh, and by the way, there was nothing radical about Christianity and Carrier is just inventing a teapot in space by saying so. What? Besides those two arguments contradicting each other, the first argument is illogical (remember: point (1)). (9) A possibiliter fallacy is saying (A) "it's possible that x, therefore probably x." But I am arguing (B) "x makes the evidence more probable than ~x; therefore, probably x." The teapot argument in this reply suggests this is not understood. It would seem I am being mistaken for arguing (A), when in fact I am arguing (B). And indeed I extensively explain in my book Proving History that the only valid way to argue is (B) and I even elaborately explain why we can't use arguments like (A). So it's perverse to have me accused of doing the opposite. (10) "Unfortunately, outside of the odd mythicist interpretation of the early Christian writings, there is not one shred of documented evidence for such a movement or doctrine." -- This is multiply false. There are not only documents that contain evidence of minimal Doherty mythicism (e.g., the Ascension of Isaiah, 1 Peter, Ignatian anti-Docetism, Irenaeus on the heresies of Jesus being born in heaven, etc.) but there are documents whose contents make much less sense on any other theory (e.g., Hebrews, 1 Clement). The whole array of evidence I shall present in my next book, so there is no need to debate it now. We should just wait for that. Certainly, the merits of mythicism do hinge on whether it makes the contents of documents like these more probable than historicity does. So that is actually where the debate lies. But insisting there is nothing to debate is just inserting one's head in the sand. (11) "My whole point in citing 11QMelchizedek from the Qumran Scrolls was precisely to illustrate how badly Jesus fit this model, to the point that it strains credulity to imagine how the subject of the Corinthian creed could ever be confused with Daniel’s Son of Man" -- It fits the Christian expectation of Jesus' future return on clouds of heaven exactly. So I don't see why it is being deemed incongruous. Indeed, there is evidence 11Q13 even imagined Melchizedek would die before doing the same. But that is at least debatable. Though I have an article on this in peer review at an academic journal, I have a current summary online here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1440 I can only assume what is being claimed here is that the "dying first" part (if we assume it wasn't already in 11Q13) is a novel addition that would be a hard sell to Jews who liked 11Q13. But again, go back to item (1): if that was a hard sell, it would have been as hard a sell for a historical Jesus as for a mythical one. It therefore can argue against neither. One might then try to gin this up into an Argument from Embarrassment, but then see item (2). Many religions come up with weird hard sells. That doesn't make those religions true. I give examples in my book. Mormonism is another. Moreover, an AfE in this case defeats historicity as well (my point (1) again), since the same fact that ginning up an ordinary failed messiah into a worship-worthy Melchizedek figure would be just as foolish if Christians wanted their religion to sell--so if people don't make up foolish things, they would not have made that up, whether Jesus existed or not. They would have made up something easier to sell. Therefore, even an AfE here cannot argue for historicity. Christianity is as much a hard sell either way; and indeed, harder if Jesus really was just an ordinary guy executed (item (4) again). Moreover, that a messiah would "die first" is (a) already in Daniel 9 and thus not anathema to Jewish thinking and (b) already embraced in Talmudic Judaism and thus was in fact mainstream (see my article link above for the references). So even the "hard sell" part is a hard sell. (12) "They must somehow ignore or alegorise his humanness" -- This betrays a lack of understanding of minimal Doherty mythicism. On that theory, Jesus did indeed put on, as a garment, a human body made of flesh, one even fashioned from the sperm of David. Not allegorically. Actually. The only difference with standard historicity is that in Doherty mythicism this body is killed and buried in the sky, not on earth. As appears to have been the case in the earliest redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah, for example. (13) "The earliest Christian creeds and teachings are universally binding on this point: Jesus was a man who died. He was NOT a celestial being." -- This is refuted by Paul, who has no knowledge of any other Jesus except the celestial being (try as you might, you'll never find in Paul any clear reference to Jesus ever residing on earth; but even apart from that, Paul talks about the celestial Jesus constantly, whether he was ever on earth or not). Phil. 2 even explicitly says Jesus was a preexistent being who descended from heaven to incarnate and die, then reascend to live again celestially, where he now sits (as is said many other places) "at the right hand of God." And Colossians and Hebrews are even more explicit on this (Heb. 1:1-4 and Col. 1:12-20 and Heb. 2:10 and 9:1ff. etc.). Likewise 1 Cor. 8:6 identifies Jesus as God's agent of creation (thus a preexistent being). Paul thus identifies Jesus as (a) a preexistent celestial being (in Phil. 2), (b) God's agent of creation (in 1 Cor 8:6), (c) the Image of God, and (d) the Wisdom of God; Hebrews adds (e) that he is the High Priest of God's celestial temple; and John adds (f) that he is the Logos who was the first being created. We know a Jewish being who fits the description of (a)-(f), being called all those things, as that being is repeatedly discussed by Philo, and even identified by Philo with a figure in Zechariah named Jesus. A celestial being. This is not teapots in space. This is documented fact. (14) "he did NOT in any way conform to any imagined messianic prediction from Jewish scriptures" -- except Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53 and Wisdom 2 and 5 and...do I really need to continue? One might try to argue these were not yet understood to be messianic (except Daniel 9, which explicitly predicts a messiah will die), but that begs the question: at what point were they deemed messianic and by whom and why? We actually have no evidence that Is. 53 wasn't long deemed messianic (it is accepted as such in the Talmud) and Wisd. 2 and 5 are easily adaptable to messianism (appearing even to reference the same figure as in Is. 53) and when one accepts Daniel 9 as messianic (as it indisputably is; the Mechizedek scroll is thoroughly based on that fact), Is. 53 and Wisd. 2 and 5 become more obviously messianic (as they appear to reference the same figure: a dying chosen one of God who will be resurrected and exalted and whose death is associated with an atonement for sin [in Is.] and who is identified as the son of God [in Wisd.]). This looks a lot less like a teapot in space and a lot more like a testable hypothesis. Ehrman on Historicity Recap freethoughtblogs.com __________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!