Richard Carrier addressed in peer-review for the first time

For the record, the issue is slightly different than Paul failing to mention earthly Jesus. Paul does not seem to be aware of a distinction between his own Apostleship and that of the original disciples of Jesus!

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp06.htm

In 1 Corinthians 9:1 Paul asks plaintively: “Am I not an apostle? Did I not see Jesus our Lord?” It would seem that for Paul the mark of the true apostle is the reception of the proper visionary revelation and authority from God. In 2 Corinthians 10 to 12, Paul defends his apostleship and compares himself to unnamed rivals (they are not from the Jerusalem group) who are competing for the Corinthians’ allegiance: “Someone is convinced, is he, that he belongs to Christ? Let him think again, and reflect that we belong to Christ as much as he does” (10:7). And he goes on in 11:4 to reveal the source of all these competing messages and claims to legitimacy:

For if someone comes who proclaims another Jesus . . . if you receive a spirit different from the spirit already given to you, or a gospel different from the gospel you have already accepted . . .
Paul operates in a world of perceived revelation from God, populated by self-appointed apostles who learn about the Christ, and formulate their own interpretations of him, through the Spirit.
In all of his arguments over the legitimacy of his position, Paul never addresses the issue in this way: “Yes, I know others were appointed by Jesus in his earthly ministry, but the way in which I was called is just as worthy . . .” Had there been such a thing as appointment by Jesus, can we believe that this, or a link to those who had been so appointed, would not be the ever-present benchmark by which all apostles were measured? Could Paul possibly have ignored such a standard throughout the debates in which he engages concerning apostolic legitimacy? In fact, Paul’s arguments reject the very idea that there could be any deficiency of qualification on his part. And the implication of 1 Corinthians 9:1 is that, since his “seeing” of the Lord is to be regarded as legitimizing his apostleship and this “seeing” was entirely visionary, the legitimacy of the others he is comparing himself to, which includes the Jerusalem apostles, is based on the same measure, namely visionary revelation.

If I may ask, why is the issue of Jesus’ historicity important to you? To be honest, it makes little difference to me whether Jesus was historical or not. I’m leaning (relatively strongly) towards him being a mythical figure that was later historisized. If I’m proven wrong, and if Jesus truly was historical, this will not shatter my worldview. What about you? If Jesus was a myth, what kind of an effect will it have on your worldview?

This argument seems to be another removal of the Pauline texts from what they actually say. Paul basically just says “I’m a real Christian true, I have the correct gospel and I got it from Jesus Himself!” To claim Paul’s argument is that “the only way one can be a true Christian is to experience a revelation from the celestial Christ which I have received” would not only be claiming something never found in Paul’s epistles to be part of Paul’s ideology, it would be to twist Paul’s words.

At this point, you need to abandon this ‘jesuspuzzle.com’ website, apparently controlled by Earl Doherty. It’s obviously a chaos of logic and you seem to have been taken in to every word on it. Why do you read the mythicists instead of real historians? The only real puzzle on that website is the fact that the front page says “Age of Reason” in big letters on the top.

Your worldview would not be shattered, perhaps, but I find that mythicism is in fact not a promulgation of logic and arguments, but in fact a product of an ideological worldview. As Ehrman says, most mythicists are really just trying to blow Christianity out of the water. I, myself, am a Christian. It would be pretty problematic if Jesus didn’t exist, but of course, it would also be pretty problematic for my worldview if the Earth was flat. I deny these claims, obviously not for ideological purposes, but because of the overwhelming absurdities and nonsense they cause rise to and the lengths that the people who support it have to travel in order to make their claims feasible, seeming to trip over every time they try.

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No, Paul is talking Apostleship, not just ‘mere Christianity’. And he does not seem aware of the earthly discipleship where the 11 disciples were coached by the Lord Jesus himself!

NASB 2 Cor. 11:5 For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles. 6 But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge; in fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things.

NASB 2 Cor. 11:21 To my shame I must say that we have been weak by comparison. But in whatever respect anyone else is bold—I speak in foolishness—I am just as bold myself. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ?—I speak as if insane—I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.

It would be easy for someone to say… your opponents spent time with a flesh and blood Jesus and you never had the same experience. Jesus himself picked the 12, and you, Paul, only saw a vision, etc… And yet, Paul is not aware of this argument.

Having said this, we can agree to disagree. There is probably little to no reason for me to continue on this thread. I take a hit and run approach to these forums :slight_smile: IF a topic interests me, I chime in, but, being a single dissenter, it’s difficult to provide detailed responses to many of the posters here. I wish you the best. Keep your Christian faith if it helps you.

No, Paul is talking Apostleship, not just ‘mere Christianity’. And he does not seem aware of the earthly discipleship where the 11 disciples were coached by the Lord Jesus himself!

Paul is precisely aware that the twelve disciples were coached by Jesus himself, that is precisely why he has to defend himself as an apostle despite the fact that he had never met Jesus. This is why he goes to great lengths to demonstrate his apostleship, and even goes to the disciples themselves to confirm that he is preaching the same gospel that they are, without distinction.

Indeed, the very idea that Paul didn’t know that Jesus had the twelve disciples is contradicted by the very fact that he mentions them in 1 Corinthians 15:5. Furthermore, Paul is aware of Jesus’ own brother, James, as he recounts Galatians 1:19, which is as Gullotta notes, the Achilles heel of mythicism if anything. Even Carrier has to calculate it as “evidence for” Jesus in his Bayesian nonsense calculations, but denies that his thesis can’t survive in light of it. This is not some sort of spiritual brother, as Gullotta’s argument shows, including the facts that 1) Only James is ever singled out as the ‘brother of the Lord’, 2) His influence as a pillar of the early church is unexplainable without acknowledging his familial ties with Jesus, since he otherwise is not one of the twelve disciples and had a rather late Christophany, and 3) All other early Christian literature and tradition tells us Jesus had several familial brothers, including one named James. There are other reasons, but this is enough to show James was the brother of Jesus biologically, not spiritually.

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For your own knowledge, and for the sake of fairness and clarity, Dr. Carrier has just responded to me: On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review • Richard Carrier

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I think I may have pulled a muscle rolling my eyes at this complaint.

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Continuing my analysis of Carrier’s response now. Before I continue, I must note the importance of publication. Carrier’s responses seem continuously absurd to me in light of Gullotta’s response (indeed, with Gullotta’s response, I consider mythicism greatly more unlikely than I ever have), but there is something important to note. Reading Carrier earlier, it is as if he has been literally begging scholars to respond to him in peer-review. Now, it has been done in fact, Gullotta has read Carrier’s book (Carrier disingenuously claims in some spaces in his response that Gullotta skipped over some parts of his book) and has published an extensive reply to a number of his points. If Carrier’s arguments do not become strong enough to actually get published in a journal in response to Gullotta, this is where mythicism ends. His blog response is quite irrelevant since no scholar is expected to read or respond to points made in an online blog.

To further note, Carrier also claimed that there is now one peer-reviewed publication for his thesis (by Raphael Lataster) and one against (Gullotta). This is false. Christina Petterson also has a critical review in a peer-reviewed publication. Carrier calls it “evangelistic” which is ridiculous, he tries to not count it because, well, who knows. Perhaps he thinks shes biased. On that account, Lataster’s positive book review (3 pages long, shorter than Christina’s) also can’t count, since Lataster is himself heavily invested into mythicism. Either they both count or they don’t, in the end there’s more critical review of Carrier in peer-review.

-Jesus crucified by Romans or demons?

Again, in light of Gullotta’s critiques, Carrier is thrown into another state of uncertainty. After examining some of the arguments, he concludes this: “But I argue for something else being what Paul could have meant. And there is no evidence to decide between us.” Carrier says that Paul is just vague and there is no evidence from these texts one way or another.

For a little background, 1 Corinthians 2 says that the rulers of this age killed Jesus. A clear indicator of historicity, right? Not so, says Carrier. Carrier claims that the rulers of this age are actually the demons and they killed Jesus not here, but in the celestial realm, and so Paul isn’t talking about anything historical. Gullotta’s response is saying basically, “well, no Carrier, that’s not correct, you’re inventing an artifical distinction between the demons and the earthly authorities that didn’t exist in Paul’s time, and in fact Paul means what everyone else did in that time when he said what he said: the earthly authorities, controlled by the demons, killed Jesus”. Carrier throws up his hands after some analysis and says that it might go either way, who knows. Quite honestly, I’ve never seen Carrier rescind so much. Either way, I still find Gullota vastly more persuasive, “rulers of this age” was not a specific idiom, Paul is just talking about the rulers who happen to rule over this age, and so it is the rulers themselves who are the point of discussion, who are, as Paul notes, the Roman authorities as he says in Romans 13 (Carrier’s words on this passage rely on a distinction between the “rulers of this age” phrase and simply “rulers”, which in fact doesn’t exist since “rulers of this age” is not an idiom but just a reference to the rulers who happen to rule over this age). Since there was in fact no distinction between the earthly authorities and demonic powers in Paul’s time, and Paul’s writings sound exactly like what everyone else in his time was saying, it seems entirely obvious that Paul was in fact speaking of earthly rulers of this age killing Jesus who were being controlled by the devil.

Carrier also seems to want to ignore the early interpretations of Christians and non-Christians of Paul and says using them is “circular reasoning”. But this isn’t the case. If literally everyone according to our evidence read Paul in that time period to mean the same thing, that Jesus was crucified by humans, then that means what it probably means: this was in fact the correct interpretation, otherwise Paul was really, really, really bad at getting his views across. But Paul was a very educated Jew at the time and it looks as if his writings are rather very straight forward in general. There’s no reason to come up with a convoluted re-explanation of everything, it makes a lot of sense to say what the text seems to mean is exactly what it means.

-James the brother of the Lord

Here is where Carrier starts acting more like Carrier again. He calls Gullotta incompetent and dogmatic. Funnily enough, Gullotta hasn’t even been in academia for a decade and has already blown past Carrier when it comes to actual academic publications. Nevertheless, on the most important point in the debate, Carrier’s arguments shrivel. Carrier claims that there is a difference between James in Galatians 1 and James in Galatians 2 – they’re different James’s. This sounds just ridiculous to me. Besides the sheer absurdity of the claim, James is mentioned directly alongside Peter in Galatians 1. Then, in Galatians 2, when Paul is still talking about the exact same thing, he again mentions James alongside Peter. It’s beyond obvious that these are the same people – just read the text, as Carrier would say.

Carrier claims that the phrase “brother of the Lord” is simply a phrase for a rank-and-file Christian, but as Gullotta points out, this is refuted by the fact that the phrase “brother of the Lord” is only used on a single person in all of Paul’s letters: James. All other Christians, as Gullotta points out, are just called “brother”, “apostle”, “fellow worker in Christ”, “worker in the Lord”, etc. James is the only person ever singled out as the “brother of the Lord”, almost too much of a coincidence when we learn that all early Christian traditions held that Jesus had several brothers, one of them precisely named James, and in fact we know that James is an important brother of Jesus from Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XX.9.1. Carrier has argued this is an interpolation, but Tim O’Neill has refuted this. I haven’t seen a peep out of Carrier on O’Neill’s arguments, even though I have seen that he has been directed to this post on one of his blog posts by his followers. Mark and Matthew say the same thing, but Carrier just says they are “invented” and leaves it at that, one of his fantastical non-answers. At the end, he counts this as evidence for historicity, perhaps implicitly admitting that his thesis has to go to ridiculous stretches and lengths to make any sense out of it (and as I see it, still fails).

-Homeric Jesus

Now, while most of the other arguments are quite lengthy, this one is pretty simple. Carrier completely concedes that his following of MacDonald’s thesis of Jesus being based on some Homeric characters is faulty. Carrier’s only complaint though is that “I spent over a hundred pages arguing the Gospels are mythical, the Homeric thesis is less than 5% of it!” OK then. Let’s grant this he has other arguments. In any case, Carrier’s actual discussion on Homer is refuted. That is what Gullotta was going for, and Carrier admits he entirely succeeded. So this one, everyone admits, goes to Gullotta.

-Rank Raglan

Carrier says he thinks this is a good reference class, although this wasn’t Gullotta’s point. Gullotta’s point is: why not also test Jesus with other, more rigid and comprehensive reference classes out there? Gullotta makes the point clear, they’d never serve Carrier’s thesis since all of them would show Jesus existed. That’s the first problem. Secondly, Gullotta makes it clear that Carrier has in fact heavily modified the Rank Raglan classes to make it fit better with Jesus. Indeed, some modifications Carrier makes are precisely to stick Jesus into the list. Carrier claims he is “improving it”, but I don’t think any serious taker would believe that. Carrier has obviously dishonestly modified Rank Raglan in a very rigid way so that Jesus fits in better. If one takes the Rank Raglan as it was originally proposed, without Carrier’s biased modifications, Jesus would never qualify the myth type, nor would Jesus qualify the myth type with any other reference class available. Stunningly, Jesus only fits the myth type when we consider Carrier’s modified Rank Raglan reference class, which is obviously beyond coincidence – Carrier has dishonestly modified the reference class to make Jesus fit in. Jesus doesn’t, I’m pretty sure that’s that when it comes to RR.

In the end, Gullotta seems to have made some definitive contributions to this discussion:
-he has shown that virtually everyone named Jesus at the time was historical and virtually no angel had this name, in fact angels had a distinctive El in their name
-he has, along with others, definitively removed MacDonald’s thesis and the RR class from this debate (any future discussions will simply be scholars restating that Carrier has basically just changed the class to make Jesus fit better)
-Gullotta has made the highly important observation that in Paul’s time, there was no actual distinction between the earthly authorities and the demonic authorities, every Jew “knew” that the demons controlled the Romans, and so Carrier’s distinction is artifical and imposing a modern reading on an ancient text
-Gullotta has shown that Hagar/Sarah in Galatians 4 have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, they’re simply describing the relationship with God, Israel, gentiles, etc

Gullotta has made more important contributions, but to say the least, even if this does not end the discussion on mythicism, this at least plunges the first spear into it. Even Carrier on the first two or three issues of discussion has rescinded to claiming that we are simply “completely uncertain” on whether this or that point goes towards the historical/mythical Jesus theories, arguments he earlier was using in support of mythicism. Gullotta has irreversibly damaged mythicism.

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In an online exchange with him once I pressed him repeatedly for evidence that this was a Christian expression used in the sense in which he interprets it, and of course he couldn’t find a single example. He then told me we just shouldn’t expect to find other examples. Make of that what you will.

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I’m sure we both know what to make of this. The claim is one of Carrier’s fictional constructs to salvage Galatians 1:18-19 from sterilizing mythicism. I have produced on my own blog a post about recent discussions on mythicism, and I will post it tomorrow on my blog and place the link here, where hopefully others will be able to review it and give me some thoughts on it. Hopefully you will be able to review it as well. For now, I will from this discussion and do some other important things.

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I’m half wondering if Carrier is planning a gradual move towards historicism, and will then tout his intellectual integrity in doing so and turn on his former mythicist allies. The way things are going, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Hm… I wonder how Catholic church for CENTURIES considered Mary an eternal virgin. What did they not understand about the manuscripts they copied and re-copied before the Protestants came along? I mean, there is only ONE way to interpret James the brother of the Lord and that is to consider them physical brothers, siblings. There could absolutely be no other meaning, right?

And what about this curious passage:

John 19:26When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27Then He said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” So from that hour, this disciple took her into his home.

Why was this necessary if there was the Lord’s brother, Mary’s other son still alive and well?

The origins of the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary seems to have its origins in the late second century I believe (this is not a subject I am very well versed in). But if you look at the early church fathers, they are defending it or debating it, and that is rather telling that it was a point of dispute within the church. The classic debate is between Helvidius and Jerome in the fourth century. Calling her the mother of God (Christotokos vs theotokos) was a bit of a sticky issue at the Council of Ephesus in 431. But even then, the perpetual virginity of Mary was not formally adopted until the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, in which they call her “ever virgin.” But it is interesting and striking that questions over Mary’s virginity after the birth of Jesus became such a hot topic for theologians so quickly.

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I pointed out that you were attempting to represent a particular passage as containing a logical contradiction, without having made the slightest effort to even check if it was a genuine logical contradiction. You didn’t even bother reading another translation. And yes, the NET gives an alternative rendering in the footnotes, that’s typical of a high level translation. But in order to make that translation make sense, the word μόνος would need to be translated differently.

The point here is that you interpreted the text a specific way because it suited your personal viewpoint, and you took no steps to verify your understanding of the text. That’s called confirmation bias. It’s the same kind of reasoning we see from flat earthers and Young Earth Creationists.

Why do you think this is some kind hint of mythicism?

Maybe you should look at why it makes sense to professional historians. If you spent more time reading professional historians, and less time reading stuff by"space alien ate my Buick" writers, you might get a better understanding of the issues involved.

Easy, they said he was the brother of Jesus because he was the son of Joseph. The few early Christian theologians who believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, believed that the people referred to as the brothers and sisters of Jesus were the children of Joseph from a previous marriage. Other theologians believed Mary was a virgin when she bore Jesus, but had other children with Joseph afterwards.

Both groups of theologians believed that the words for “brother” and “sister” when speaking of Jesus’ siblings, actually referred to Jesus’ siblings (whether full siblings or half-siblings). They did not interpret them as “spiritual brothers and sisters” who were just other Christians. Again, you would know this if you had made even the slightest effort to look into the issue, instead of just parroting stuff you’ve found online. Can you do better than Carrier? Can you find any first century examples of "[name] the brother of [name] as a reference to Christian fictive kinship? Or even any within 200 years of the first century, either prior or after?

We have a vast range of literature that used fictive kinship address, including plenty in non-inscriptional literature. You could try searching in Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Perseus, the Duke Papyri, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, Archiv für Papyrusforschung, and Dittenberger, for a start (I hope you read Greek!). Do let me know what you find. I know what you’ll find, because I’ve already looked at the diachronic evidence for fictive kinship address in proximate Greek literature.

It wasn’t. Wow, these are easy, got any more?

But Jesus wasn’t the son of Joseph, so James could not have been his brother! Do you have (to be consistent) any other examples of ancient people calling each other brother OF X, even while they were only step brothers? Lets be consistent here. You want Carrier to dig up similar examples for you so it’s only fair for you to provide the same.

It’s not my argument, so I don’t have to do anything with it. I think it’s a pathetic argument which avoids the very obvious fact that they knew full well that “X the brother of Y” was a reference to biological kinship rather than fictive kinship. And this is the point; they didn’t interpret the meaning of “X the brother of Y” as a reference to anything other than biological kinship. This destroys your entire argument about their interpretation of this phrase.

Pro tip, I only have to dig up examples to support my arguments, not other people’s arguments which I don’t even agree with. How are you going with your research by the way? Ready to rewrite the lexicons yet? I can’t wait to see all the lexical evidence you’re going to pile up.

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I think some important points have come up on SuperBigV’s new argument regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity. Firstly, Gullotta pointed out that Mary’s perpetual virginity was never actually adopted by the Catholic Church until the 6th century AD.

Secondly, Jonathan noted that even for those who did believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, not a single one of them interpreted the brothers of Jesus, including James, as spiritual brothers. They still believed they were members of the same family, if Joseph had sons from a previous marriage. So, even SuperBigV’s argument that there must have been some other kind of interpretation of the brothers of Jesus (since some believed in the perpetual virginity), when we actually look at that interpretation, we find that it cannot support mythicism. In order to demonstrate this, all we have to do is actually read one of the earliest accounts regarding Mary’s virginity, which is the Protoevangelium of James (c. 2nd century AD, heretofore PEJ). This is what we read:

PEJ IX: And Joseph cast down his adze and ran to meet them, and when they were gathered together they went to the high priest and took their rods with them. And he took the rods of them all and went into the temple and prayed. And when he had finished the prayer he took the rods and went forth and gave them back to them: and there was no sign upon them. But Joseph received the last rod: and 1o, a dove came forth of the rod and flew upon the bead of Joseph. And the priest said unto Joseph: Unto thee hath it fallen to take the virgin of the Lord and keep her for thyself. 2 And Joseph refused, saying: I have sons, and I am an old man, but she is a girl: lest I became a laughing-stock to the children of Israel. And the priest said unto Joseph: Year the Lord thy God, and remember what things God did unto Dathan and Abiram and Korah, how the earth clave and they were swallowed up because of their gainsaying. And now fear thou, Joseph, lest it be so in thine house. And Joseph was afraid, and took her to keep her for himself. And Joseph said unto Mary: Lo, I have received thee out of the temple of the Lord: and now do I leave thee in my house, and I go away to build my buildings and I will come again unto thee. The Lord shall watch over thee.

Here, when Joseph is told to take the virgin Mary in marriage, he initially refuses declaring that he already has sons – that is to say, he does not want to get married because he already has children from a previous marriage. I think that settles that, there remains to be any evidence for a spiritual understanding of the brothers of the Lord passage.

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yaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssss.

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I appreciate your enthusiasm. As it is, there is a blog about recent mythicist discussions and argumentation in academia. Spoiler, there is a refutation spree. Any comments are appreciated.

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Did you check out one of the latest mythicist in town?

Year 303-Christianity is Invented

This book was written by a Spanish engineer (yes, engineer) who claims to have spent 20 years researching and says that the New Testament was written between the years 303 and 330 by the same authors.

Also, he says that Jesus never existed, that there were no Christians before the IV century, that Justin Martyr, Origen and the others were fictional characters whose works were written by the same people who wrote the New Testament, that the Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery because it is between two passages that fit perfectly, and a long etc.

He claims to have found “hidden signatures” that reveal that the gospels were not written by the disciples, but by a team of people.

Dr. Antonio Piñero, from the University of Madrid, responded to Fernando Conde Torrens, the author, saying that his hypothesis is impossible, because we already have the New Testament before the III century.

Mr. Conde is present on practically every site that mentions him, doing mental gymnastics and semantic games to avoid being refuted. A user showed him a passage he ignored (because it mentions Christians long before the IV century) and Conde insulted him.

He is similar to John Loftus. Whenever he is cornered, he says “Read my book, you ignorant fool”.

What’s worse, is that he refuses to debate anyone who doesn’t agree with him. I found him on YouTube refusing to debate someone, and I told him “Richard Carrier debates people who don’t agree with him, why don’t you do the same?”… he never responded.

Perhaps we don’t exist either!

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