Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
Yeah with Richard you get the feeling he's taken up a premise that he's married to, and works with that assumption when approaching the question. So in a sense he's doing what he so often criticizes with his counterparts, ultimately being slightly dogmatic in his approach to the question of Jesus historicity...
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Exactly.
Something else that is important to point out in discussions of the historical Jesus that I don't think I have mentioned in the past is that the development of the mythicist theory itself occurred in an era when the growing consensus among scholars was that Christianity was a Graeco Roman movement with little connection to Second Temple Jewish culture and religion. It was MUCH easier to make mythicist claims in this climate, but in the past fifty years, that idea has been totally debunked. I have in the past criticised Carrier for having a poor understanding and inadequate training in Jewish culture and religion, and I wonder if his own theory is itself heavily influenced by the fact that his background and training is in Graeco Roman literature.