Ehrman simply presumes, for example (at minute 7:15), that “Paul knew Jesus’s brother”

Do you see any rhetorical value in responding to this with “Well, even better than that – Paul was Jesus’s brother!”?

I suspect this goes straight into the too-clever-by-half bin…

Yes. And I suppose momentum can build quickly. Sometimes even in a positive direction. I guess we would just need the critical mass of consciousness.

It is true that quantum leaps are not a real thing in human history. Progress is slow. And a corrupting resistance is persistent. But net progress is still measurable.

The ups and downs of gay rights over the last two hundred years reflect the point: progress, backlash, progress, backlash; but like global warming, the trend is nevertheless still up. This is most clear when comparing the state of things in 1925 with now (particularly in in socially advanced countries that are not the United States, but even in the United States).

MLK’s analysis was correct: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It’s just that noticeable progress takes longer than a human lifetime, and not on all fronts at the same time; and people with a moral spirit are justifiably impatient.

That is essentially my point in OHJ, Element 29, on the anthropology of “revolution cults,” which relates to the condition of a recent imperialism by a more advanced civilization upon a traditional one, forcing change in reaction.

But the effect could be expected in other conditions of similar construct. QAnon is in many ways a revolution cult, produced by merging a traditional way of life now increasingly rendered obsolete (Christianity in particular; traditional conservative values in general) with the “ways of the empire” that are making it obsolete (in this case, secularism, scientism, globalism, and social progress), to try and produce something superior to both. It’s delusion all the way down. But so was Christianity, which was just a supernaturalist conspiracy theory, which is now being replaced by secular ones.

And such extreme and wacky ideologies would be all the more likely to crop up at a time of tremendous upheaval, like with the rise of the Roman empire and the impact of that on Greek society?

To be fair, I think Ehrman is just stubborn and arrogant and uninterested in seriously considering the issue. There may be motives underlying those things, but too many are possible to know which.

But yes. The Gospels are socio-political propaganda, although their agendas are more bizarre than most today (closer to the modern Armageddon Lobby than to MAGA, for example), and not analogous enough to modern political devisions to place them.

By modern notions they are both conservatives attacking liberals and at the same time radicals attacking conservatives, and yet are not describable in any way as centrist; their beliefs lie on both extremes, willy nilly, with no clustering that matches modern sociopolitical divisions. Like, Quaker Fundamentalists or something.

A bit like how I think of our two-party system suggestive of multiple viewpoints—democracy!— despite the parties differing very little when it comes to their core assumptions about the role of the U.S. in the world, established elitist hierarchies, capitalism, business, Wall Street.

On a different note, I’m curious what milieu you picture the Greek writers/compilers of the Bible moving amongst. Ultra-conservatives hoping to quash unseemly wild or upstart elements they saw in society by reviving fantasies of stern desert patriarchs?