I offered to publish replies from Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Franco Tommasi to my article A Thorough Fisk of the Arguments of Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Franco Tommasi (and these will be linked there). They each provided their own reply. First up and in detail is Bermejo-Rubio. Franco Tommasi then adds his own brief remarks. If I have anything to add it will be in comments.
Remarks by Fernando Bermejo-Rubio
“Think of what you’re saying, You can get it wrong and still you think that it’s alright” [The Beatles, “We Can Work It Out”]
1
Since I have set forth the main arguments of my (and Franco Tommasi’s) position, as well as the main criticisms of the other position, in the co-authored book Jesus: Militant or Non-Existent? (and in other publications: see F. Bermejo-Rubio, “The Jewish Scriptures in the Gospels’ Construction of Jesus: The Extent of a Literary Influence and the Limits of Mythicism”, in M. A. Daise and D. Hartman (eds.), Creative Fidelity, Faithful Creativity. The Reception of Jewish Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity, UniorPress, Naples, 2022, pp. 123-153: Id., They Suffered under Pontius Pilate. Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha, Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, Lanham-Boulder-London-New York, 2023), I have hardly anything else to add. The following writing is just a set of remarks on Carrier’s lengthy “A Thorough Fisk of the Arguments of Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Franco Tommasi”. It does not aim at being an answer, just because “answer” entails the existence of a discussion, and the title itself of Carrier’s last writing—in addition to its tone—proves that he has placed himself beyond any discussion worthy of the name.
2
Almost at the beginning of “A Thorough Fisk…”, Richard Carrier describes me as a (noted) “biblical scholar”. Nevertheless, it is a demonstrable fact that I am not at all a biblical scholar, and accordingly that I do not consider myself as such. Richard Carrier must know it, because he has co-authored a book with Franco Tommasi and with me, has access to Internet and is good at social media.
To start with, I am Full Professor at a Department of Ancient History in a State University (UNED, Madrid). The following are some of the courses I am responsible for: Ancient History (Egypt, Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome), Numismatics, Methods and Techniques of Historical Research I, Contemporary Historiographical Trends I…
I am a historian specialized in Greek and Roman History, with a focus on the political and religious history of Hellenistic and Roman Judaea, topics about which I enjoy international academic recognition, as is shown by the projects and publications I have been invited to contribute (including, just to put a few examples, They Suffered under Pontius Pilate, a book written by invitation of a North-American Publishing House, the forthcoming Proceedings of a Colloquium held in 2022 about Judas the Galilean, or the forthcoming Oxford Critical Guide to Josephus).
I am a historian, and a historian of religions (I have a Master’s degree in this discipline). My focus in this field are early Judaism, ancient Christianity and Manichaeism. Just to make some examples, I have published a history of the Jews (from the captivity in Babylon to the arrival of Islam), a monograph on Valentinian Gnosticism, a bilingual edition (Coptic-Spanish) with a commentary of the Gospel of Judas. I took part, by invitation, to the international conferences held on the Gospel of Judas and the Tchacos Codex in Paris and Houston, and a few years ago I was trusted by the editors of Gnosis. Journal of Gnostic Studies to edit a special issue of the journal; I gathered an international team of specialists and the issue was published in 2022. I am the author of a monograph on Manichaeism and the co-editor and co-author of an anthology of Manichaean texts, with translations from Latin, Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Middle Persian, Sogdian, Parthian, and Chinese.
I am regularly invited to lecture on the several topics of my different fields of expertise by Universities and other academic institutions in Europe and America. I do not keep track of that kind of stuff, but I guess during my academic career I have been invited by at least twenty Universities. Among the last ones: Université Laval (Québec), Lausanne (Switzerland), Cambridge (UK), Naples (Italy)…
The topics I have chosen so far in the summer courses of which I am director are the following ones: Big epidemics and Pandemics in the ancient world, Intelligence activities in the ancient world, Fictitious material in ancient historiographical sources and Ancient literature as sources of ancient history. All speakers in these courses are University Professors and Lecturers of Ancient History and Classics.
I have conceived and convened the First International Conference on Intelligence Services in the Ancient World (Madrid, 2023), with specialists coming from several countries in Europe and North America. At present I am preparing, as literary editor, the first collective volume integrally devoted to this topic.
In my several fields of expertise I have published almost one hundred works in five different languages, among books, articles in peer-reviewed journals (including, of course, those specialized in Ancient History and History of Religions), and chapters in collective volumes (in publishing houses as Routledge, Brill, Peeters, Brepols, De Gruyter, Fortress Academic…). I have never self-published my work nor raised funds from others to do it.
This is, however, not my whole CV. I hold a PhD in Philosophy (1997), a career in which, among many other subjects, I studied Logic, Epistemology, History of Science, and Philosophy of Science. In fact, at the very beginning of my academic career for a time I was Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Moreover, one of my hobbies is Literary criticism, and I have published seven articles on Franz Kafka’s work, some of them in top peer-reviewed journals in Germany and the USA.
The only reason to explain who I am, from a scholarly and an intellectual standpoint, is of course not showing off my achievements, but to show the distortion of elementary (empirical) facts carried out by Richard Carrier. To say that I am a “biblical scholar”, and not a “properly trained historian” is a false statement. But, as the Latin dictum says, ex falso quodlibet (from a false statement, anything follows).
3
I do not know why Richard Carrier has called me a “biblical scholar”. But given that elsewhere in his last writing he blames me and Franco Tommasi for relying on apologetic devices, just in case he wants to make a kind of ideological reduction of the hypothesis he aims at ridiculing, it will be helpful to say something that Carrier has not told his readers, namely, that the proponents of the hypothesis held by us (most of whom are, despite the importance of their works, simply silenced in the very lengthy bibliography of his book On the historicity of Jesus) come from the most disparate cultural and ideological backgrounds. Among the advocates of the hypothesis are, for instance, Martin Seidel in the sixteenth century (he was not a biblical scholar, but a Latin teacher and a proto-Deist thinker), Hermann Samuel Reimarus in the eighteenth century (not a biblical scholar, but a Professor of Oriental Languages, one of the most outstanding figures of German Enlightenment, and a philosopher admired by Immanuel Kant), Charles Hennell in the nineteenth century (not a biblical scholar, but a liberal professional and independent author), Karl Kautsky (not a biblical scholar, but a Marxist philosopher and historian), Robert Eisler (not a biblical scholar, but a Jewish polymath), Joel Carmichael (not a biblical scholar, but a Jewish American historian and translator), Archibald Robertson (not a biblical scholar, but an atheist writer), Barrows Dunham (not a biblical scholar, but an American philosopher, also known for his courage before the House Un-American Activities Committee), Hyam Maccoby (not a biblical scholar, but a Jewish historian), Marvin Harris (not a biblical scholar, but a renowned anthropologist, proponent of the theory of cultural materialism), and so on. I guess that Carrier—who does not mention the works of these outstanding critical intellectuals—will write that they also were a bunch of ignorant authors, painfully using circular arguments and ignoring Bayes’ theorem…
4
Authors who deny that Jesus of Nazareth (of course, once stripped of his mythical covering) did indeed exist have been traditionally treated in the academic realm with disparagement, even contempt. I disagree with those who deny the historical existence of Jesus, including Richard Carrier, but I (and Franco Tommasi) have always conveyed our disagreement in the most respectful tone. In fact, in several publications F. T. and myself have argued that there is a space of intersection and overlap between the so-called “mythicism” and the so-called “historicism” (see F. Tommasi, Non c’è Cristo che tenga, Manni, Lecce, 2014, pp. 286-287; F. Bermejo-Rubio, La invención de Jesús de Nazaret. Historia, ficción, historiografía, Akal, Madrid, 2023, pp. 61-62; Id., They suffered under Pontius Pilate, pp. 34-35; F. Bermejo-Rubio et alii, Jesus: Militant or Non-Existent?, pp. 52-54), as far as “mythicists” adopt a skeptical approach to the sources, and sometimes we have approvingly cited the work of Carrier and other writers defending similar hypotheses. This sympathetic and constructive approach to the “a-historicist” theses and our obvious good will have not found echo in Richard Carrier, who in his text “A thorough Fisk…” goes on vulnerating the most elementary rules of academic courtesy by repeating false statements and unfairly attributing those who disagree with him sheer ignorance.
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There are not many people in the academic realm who pay attention to the “mythicist” arguments (these arguments have been answered since at latest the 19th century), but in the last years several scholars have done it. Admittedly, some things which have been said against the “mythicist” thesis miss the point and are inadequate, but if one takes the trouble of considering all the arguments used by scholars coming from very different ideological backgrounds (ultimately D.B. Ehrman, Simon Gathercole, Daniel Gullotta or Justin Meggitt), it is easy to see that the “mythicist” solution is not at all the simplest and most convincing one. As one of them (Meggitt) has rightly remarked: “Why would we expect any non-Christian evidence for the specific existence of someone of the socio-economic status of a figure such as Jesus at all? To deny his existence based on the absence of such evidence, even if that were the case, has problematic implications; you may as well deny the existence of pretty much everyone in the ancient world”. Nevertheless, the reaction by Carrier seems to be always the same: people disagreeing with him are painfully incompetent. In these circumstances, any discussion is precluded from the outset.
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As to the so-called “Testimonium Flavianum”, I will not tackle it again. The reason is threefold. First, and most important, in the defence of our hypothesis the Testimonium Flavianum holds a completely secondary and negligible place. Second, I am aware of the extremely problematic nature of this source: extremely learned scholars have discussed it for centuries, and they will go on discussing for centuries, without any assured result (of course, as in so many other respects, Richard Carrier claims he has got “the truth” about the TF, but this is just an opinion which has not settled the question on this text, which remains open to the most disparate assessments). Third, what I had to say on the TF has already been said in two articles published in peer-reviewed journals (incidentally, extremely learned scholars coming from very different ideological backgrounds have detected a negative Vorlage in the TF). Anyway, even if it could be demonstrated that the TF is just a whole creation (by Eusebius or by anyone else), or that the Vorlage (the alleged original text) did not have a negative tone, this would not be a serious problem for us.
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As to the argument related to Paul, I will not tackle it again. In my opinion, the articles written by D.C. Allison (“The Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels: the Pattern of the Parallels”, NTS 28 (1982), pp. 1-32) and Simon J. Gathercole (“The Historical and Humane Existence of Jesus in Paul’s Letters”, JSHJ 16 (2018) pp. 183-212) are by far more convincing than anything written on this topic by Carrier.
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In his writing, Carrier cites our sentence: “(As the French scholar) Alfred Loisy remarked more than a century ago, ‘one can explain Jesus, but not those who would have invented him’”, and he adds, referring to R. Price and him, “We not only can explain them, we have done”. But Carrier has omitted the paragraph that we wrote immediately after our sentence: “To put it in a more sharp and rigorous form, it is easier to account for the existence of someone like Jesus—that is, the historical being recoverable through a critical reconstruction— than the identity, and the procedures and the reasons, of those who could have invented the figure. Ockham’s razor supports the existence of the character.” Admittedly, Carrier ‒as so many other “mythicists” since the 18th century‒ has offered an explanation of why and how Jesus was invented, but the problem is that, in my opinion ‒and in the opinion of the overwhelming majority of scholars in the know, among whom there are also Jews, agnostics, and atheists‒, the assumption that Jesus of Nazareth existed is by far the simplest and the most convincing one, while the mythicist explanations (there are a lot of them), despite all its fanfare of scientificity, are systematically forced and convoluted.
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The claim by Richard Carrier that our method “derives ultimately from faith-based apologetics” or that it “is a quintessential apologetical device” is, again, demonstrably false. As to “contextual plausibility”, it is a most elementary requirement in any historical assessment. As to the “recurrent/convergent patterns”, its logic has been explained e.g. by D.C. Allison, Constructing Jesus. Memory, Imagination, and History, 2010 pp. 1-30 (an important work which, incidentally, was not cited in the lengthy bibliography of Carrier’s main book); anyway, is obviously untrue that it “simply means selecting what you want to be true and rejecting the rest”: as I have explained in several publications, recurrent patterns should be trusted only if some requirements are fulfilled, and particularly only if the motif detected by the pattern is not reducible to the interests and editorial tendencies of the Gospel writers and/or early Christian communities.
But the most obvious point is that related to the most essential criterion, counter-discursive material. As I have argued in an article written a decade ago (Revue des Études Juives), the core of this criterion is not that it created “embarrassment”, which is a purely subjective matter, but that it allows us to detect material which objectively does not fit (and even contradicts) the tendencies of the authors. This is why, in the last years, I have abandoned the label “criterion of embarrassment” and use the term “counter-discursive material” or “against the grain” (see e.g. F. Bermejo-Rubio, They Suffered under Pontius Pilate, pp. 46-51). This is not an idiosyncratic concept merely dreamed up for Jesus studies, but its logic applies in any field of history in which truth assessment is sought. The existence of this counter-discursive material is an essential point that has been remarked upon as a key method by virtually every author of handbooks of historical method, since the end of the 19th century (see e.g. Ernst Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1903 (orig. ed. 1889), pp. 523-527; Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History, London, Duckworth, 1912, p. 186; French orig. 1898), among many others. Therefore, to say—as Carrier does—that the method we use is a “broken method” or depends on apologetics has no rhythm nor reason, being an extremely outlandish (and ultimately funny) assertion.
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And here we come to one of the most puzzling and discouraging points we have detected in Carrier’s discourse, both in his responses in the book and in his blog, namely, his claim that everything which is found within a text must be the result of its author’s wish. Put otherwise, he claims once and again that if something is contained in a text is because it corresponds to what the author wants to say (so “counter-discursive” material would be a self-defeating concept). The problem lies in the fact that this claim is extremely naïve and uncritical, as a lot of learned and thoughtful psychologists, literary critics, and philosophers (from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Derrida) have argued. Carrier’s claim not only is refuted by everyday experience and by the complexity of the processes of creation and transmission of a text, but it also contradicts central insights of historical method, as well as the core of sophisticated theories as Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction. Obviously, an author tends to avoid fouling his own nest, and to control what (s)he writes and says, but sometimes (s)he cannot avoid using material which ultimately contradicts their main positions. The reasons for this state of affairs have been already explained since the end of the nineteenth century. As to why counter-discursive material has been preserved by the authors of the Gospels, see e.g. Bermejo-Rubio, They Suffered under Pontius Pilate, pp. 46-51; “On the Self-Styled ‘Refutation’ of the ‘Seditious Jesus Hypothesis’. On Jesse Nickel’s (and others’) Wishful Thinking,” JSHJ 22 (2024), pp. 168-171.
The pointless and unfounded character of the claim that an author has the absolute control on what (s)he says and writes is even more clearly perceptible in the case of the Gospels, written by authors who, despite their skills as narrators, were believers in all kind of supernatural beings and activities, and cannot be taken as paradigms of consistency, and addressed for internal consumption to communities whose members were also Jesus-believers, ready to accept almost everything aimed at enhancing the person they worshipped.
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It is ironic that Carrier wrongly (and unfairly) blames us for relying on apologetic devices, because in the coauthored book (Jesus: Militant or Non-Existent?, pp. 65-66) we have remarked that his position is, in several respects, ultimately very similar to confessional exegesis. Apart from what we have already written there, one could add other aspects. For instance, some of his objections to our hypothesis are identical to those harbored by conservative theologians (see e.g. F. Bermejo-Rubio, “On the Self-Styled ‘Refutation’ of the ‘Seditious Jesus Hypothesis’. On Jesse Nickel’s (and others’) Wishful Thinking,” JSHJ 22 (2024), pp. 163ff.). The statement that máchairai does not designate “swords” or that lestaí does not (often) designate rebels are typical apologetic devices (for the refutation of the first point, see Dale C. Martin, “Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous,” JSNT 37 (2014), pp. 3-24; Id., “Response to Downing and Fredriksen,” JSNT 37 (2015), pp. 334-345; for the refutation of the second, see e.g. the specialized works by Brent Shaw, Thomas Grünewald and Nadav Sharon cited in They Suffered under Pontius Pilate, p. 231, note 3). And just as believers have a vested interest in the existence of Jesus, Carrier has a likewise vested interest in his inexistence, since he has built his intellectual credibility on the staunch defense of this idea.
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Carrier blames us for ignoring “half of” his points. Admittedly, given that he has written so much, we cannot claim that we have not omitted some point in our responses, but the discussion during the preparation of the volume was precisely for that, and Carrier has had several opportunities to remark on our alleged oversights. But the ironical thing is that, as we wrote in the book,it is a demonstrable fact that Carrier does not pay attention to what his adversaries really say. A quotation of the book should suffice: “We noted on more than one occasion Carrier’s tendency to use extreme, not to say caricatural, versions of our theses. A glaring example of this is the fact that he ascribes to us the thesis that Jesus was a Zealot. We never affirmed that.” (Jesus: Militant or Non-Existent?, p. 131). This is a good example of how Richard Carrier works with aprioristic assumptions, without caring too much about what their adversaries actually state.
13
Leaving aside that we do not understand very well why, on the one side, Carrier affirms that we “make a very good case for the plausibility” of our hypothesis (“the next most likely after mine”), and on the other side he attacks it as if it were unfounded, the fact is that the procedure used by him to comment on the cluster detected by us is misguided. The reason is that he does not take into account the logic underlying this cluster. We do not claim the historicity of each item, but the historicity of the motif (for the logic, related to the conclusions drawn from the modern study of memory, see e.g. D.C. Allison, Constructing Jesus. Memory, Imagination, and History, 2010 pp. 1-30, an important work which, incidentally, was not cited in the lengthy bibliography of Carrier’s main book). Incidentally, the procedure taken by Carrier (to take each item in the cluster in order to state that its meaning is different and does not support our hypothesis) is exactly the same taken by conservative theologians and exegetes trying to “refute” the hypothesis.
14
In a recent article addressed against a conservative Christian scholar who has blatantly distorted the hypothesis of the Jesus involved in anti-Roman ideology (“On the Self-Styled ‘Refutation’…”, passim), I concluded that, when some minimal requirements are not fulfilled, it is futile to argue. I have come to the conclusion that this is what happens here. Richard Carrier thinks—or, at least, he says and writes—that we are incapable of understanding his thought and are no match for his brilliant mind. And we have come to think that he is a dogmatic mythicist, who does not seem to understand some of our ideas (and, what is more serious and sobering, the ideas of many other thinkers), believes he is in the possession of “the truth”, and does not seem to have the slightest capacity for self-criticism. Be that as it may, both of us (F. B.-R and F.T.) enjoy wide international recognition in academic circles in our respective fields of research, and we both are fully aware of our intellectual and personal worth. This means that the fact that Richard Carrier (or thousands like him) portray us as incompetent does not diminish our self-esteem one bit. But, as the Beatles said, “Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend”. Given the serious flaws detected in Mr. Carrier’s way of reasoning, with this text I definitely end the exchange with him.
⌘
Brief Remark by Franco Tommasi
Much of what I wanted to write is already contained in Bermejo-Rubio’s response (above).
I would only like to recall an aspect of Carriers’s long text that amused me. I don’t need to remind the reader of Carrier’s mantra: “authors only put in what they want to put in.” It was debated in the book to which his page refers and it is repeated if different forms in his “Thorough Fisk.” In that very “fisk”, he quotes us:
“two lēstaí (not “robbers” or “thieves” but “brigands,” in the Roman sense of “political rebels”) were crucified along with Jesus” (point (2): p. 69)
and makes the following comment:
“This is a distortion of the facts in more than one way. I already cover these there (pp. 102–03, 140–41), but in short, no, that word does not entail “political rebels,” and the evidence indicates Mark does not intend you to imagine they were cohorts of Jesus.”
Very well. So, according to Carrier, λῃσταί does not mean “political rebels”.
Just skip 564 words and you will read what Carrier writes:
“Well, Mark tells us why he wrote this: Mark has Jesus declare, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.””
The original greek text whose translation Carrier takes, without a word of caution, from the “New International Version” reads:
καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· Ὡς ἐπὶ λῃστὴν ἐξήλθατε μετὰ μαχαιρῶν καὶ ξύλων συλλαβεῖν με;
That is, the English translation Carrier uses says exactly the opposite of what he claims: λῃστὴν means indeed “political rebel”.
Carrier will of course retort that it is a confessional translation (by the way: isn’t it nice that Christians usually affirm λῃστής does not mean “political rebel” – just like Mythicists – and then they translate the word exactly as “leader of a rebellion”?) but the fact is he has used it verbatim to make his point.
What does all this teach us? Had Carrier noticed this detail, he would probably have used another translation or, at least, he would have pointed out his dissent. He did neither. So, at least sometimes, authors do not “only put in what they want to put in”.
I believe nothing else needs to be added.
Regarding Tommasi’s note, I am perplexed. I said (as he indeed quotes) λῃστὴν “does not entail” rebels. “Entail,” not “mean.” I did not say it never means that. Rather, its meaning must be taken from context (my also-quoted words: what “the evidence indicates”).
There is no context indicating what kind of λῃστὴν were crucified with Jesus in Mark 15. But there is context indicating how Jesus is using the word a chapter earlier (it’s in the very next verse, Mark 14:49).
The lesson we were supposed to learn here is not to take words out of context but pay attention to what the author is saying (and not invent them saying something they didn’t). One of us is not learning this lesson. And that is the most general point of my article.
Regarding Bermejo-Rubio’s response:
A third of it seems to assume “biblical scholar” is a slander.
I do not know why he thinks that. The point of that appellation was to assure readers he is qualified in this field (and not some amateur or outsider), and I linked to my description of his formal qualifications in the very first paragraph. I welcome his laying out of those qualifications further here, but I do not see that it corrects anything. His training and publications are consistently in that field, by his own admission.
I thus do not understand what point is being made here. Is this a kind of Argument from Prestige, where evidence and method don’t matter, only how “prestigiously published” someone is? I didn’t even deny that, yet it’s still fallacious to affirm it. Evidence and logic trump cv’s every day of the week and twice on Sunday. So, let’s get back to what we are supposed to be discussing. Which is: that historians in that field tend to have inherited bad methods from their peers, tutors, and exemplars. Which I then documented.
The irony is that Bermejo-Rubio himself argues this: that the reason his theory is not more widely granted plausibility is that historians in that field are clinging to faulty methodologies, and, even when secular, still mired in confessional training or models. He is right about that. As indeed I noted in my article: his theory (or some variant of it he would grant) is actually more plausible than the pacifist models that incorrectly retain far greater popularity in scholarly opinion.
Part of the reason for that is that scholars in this field are incapable of handling criticism well and take everything personally and thus dismiss his work as denigrating theirs. It does not. Nor does mine denigrate his. It calls out errors. The errors objectively exist. So there is no way to avoid doing that, other than to play the same game as the same historians who won’t grant his conclusions plausibility. Which is precisely the game we are supposed to be getting rid of here.
We cannot correct our errors if no one calls them out. Neither they, nor he, nor me.
This must be a discussion about facts and logic. Not personal offense. And until historians learn that lesson, no progress will ever be made, other than by popularity games that we should not be playing.
As for the thing we should be doing—discussing which facts are true and which methods sound, and which not—Bermejo-Rubio’s remarks do not add anything not already answered in my original article or the associated book, or the sources cited to the point therein.
For example:
One need merely read the studies I cite on the Testimonium Flavianum to understand who is doing this correctly and where the facts actually lead. Being angry that that is the case does not change it being the case. It’s just one more bad method on display, emotion over reason.
Or notice that he keeps attributing to me the “statement that máchairai does not designate ‘swords’” (something I have never argued), which illustrates this kind of strange apologetical approach that disregards factual reality in making a point.
Likewise his continued insistence that I claimed authors have “absolute control” over their text and never make the kinds of mistakes he lists is a straw man (literally a false description of what I said), but this is already pointed out in the work he is supposed to be responding to (p. 135 in the book; and the conclusion of Fisk).
Likewise his emotional reaction to my use of the word zealot, which I explain in the book did not mean what they take it to mean (p. 133), yet he ignores that now and repeats the claim I already answered as if I never answered it. Emotion is replacing facts. Again.
When the article or book you are replying to already refutes you, you should know you are at a methodological dead end. And that’s happening here in every case. Not coming to this recognition is a problem. And it can only be overcome by the very people who are avoiding it. There isn’t anything more I can do or say than I already have to show the way.
Well counter-argued, Dr Carrier – as ever. Frankly I was appalled that this academic wasted so much space on his credentials whilst providing almost nothing in the way of specific examples or arguments from sources. Instead it’s just very crude and unedifying ‘shock and awe’; a diktat from prestige.
That’s so true Jonathan.
This is the actual and common response of believers.
They can’t seperate logic/Evidence from their romanticism and sentimentality that’s invested in their belief.
They ALWAYS throw their credentials and also all references from those who are in their flock
To be fair to Bermejo-Rubio, I have often read your arguments about the intent of authors and had the same thought, that you sometimes seem to be assuming that the author has absolute control over the text and never makes weird errors and what not. You, of course, don’t do this in practice, so I think it violates the rule of charity to bring it up without a specific pertinent example on this topic. For example, Bermejo-Rubio should watch your discussing how badly Luke cocks up the transition between Luke and Acts because he seems to not recognize that his own work is contradicting himself and how you actually conclude somewhat uniquely that there must be some kind of previous tradition or source(s) or story pattern that Luke is having to operate within and he didn’t notice that his story in his first book makes lots of events in the second book seem really weird.
I think it may help to more consistently do what you do in many other cases and say, “I am not saying authors have absolute control or unlimited skill. I am saying that, if a detail is in a work, the author clearly wanted it there, and you actually need to argue to the conclusion with specific evidence that the author has it in there despite it embarrassing to them and their intended audience or whatever else your argument is rather than other alternatives, and you haven’t done so”. Again, to be fair, you always then clarify an alternative and provide evidence for that alternative or at least indicate that the alternative is equally explanatory of the existing evidence.
That having been said, every time you point it out, I always find it insightful. Because it really is actually really important to remember about artists. It’s incredibly easy to look at something and think it feels weird, or looks like a mistake, and not understand something that the artist is doing, and you actually need to check and see if there’s something you missed, because even bad writers are usually trying to be deliberate. My favorite example is Odysseus and Telemachus slaughtering the suitors with Athena’s divine help and sanction. It feels odd to modern audiences as much as the suitors seem like dicks, but it was wholly natural to Greek audiences because the suitors had so badly violated xenia which justified the response.
And, of course, the problem with the zealot hypothesis in specific is precisely that it depends on authors hiding evidence but somehow including it, and your point (which is the same point made much more strongly to conspiracy theorists) is “If they got rid of all the details that you need for your hypothesis, why didn’t they get rid of the other clues too? You need specific evidence that they couldn’t have”.
And indeed I explicitly say this in the book (p. 135, recovering the point begun on p. 99).
In particular, my argument has always been that authors always need a reason to include something. Even if they include something by mistake, there was some reason they nevertheless included it.
So it is missing the point to think I mean that statements against interest don’t exist. My point, rather, is that if you are proposing something is a statement against interest, you still need to propose a reason that that happened to this author. Why did they include it? “It’s a statement against interest” does not answer that question. It can be a consequence of your answer. But you still need to answer that question.
And then, of course, you can’t stop there: you also need to present evidence (something other than your theory) that your theory about the author’s reasons for including something against their interest is true (or at least more—not as, but more—probable than alternative reasons they may have had). The disregard of the need for evidence, and the circular reliance on their theorizing as a substitute for that evidence, is the problem I repeatedly call out, and that they repeatedly ignore (literally: notice not a single point in their reply even mentions, much less answers, any of my examples of this).
And neither responded to almost any substantive point I made in the article. My analysis of defects of method? Never critiqued. My identification of overlooked data and how it changes conclusions? Never answered. Instead all we get is a grievance list, much of which impertinent or not even true (examples above). This is why this field is not capable of discerning the truth: it is stuck in this mindset and can’t get out.
Not just this field – it seems a general human behaviour that I would call “Animal Farm” mentality – in lack of any better term known to me.
Unrelated to those points, there is now an interesting review of Jesus: Militant or Nonexistent by Nicholas Covington (of Hume’s Apprentice) that illustrates why even when wrong it remains the only serious debate of the subject in print and well worth reading and engaging with.
Wow, I learnt a new word today. Well, an old word, last in print in the 1700s, but a new word to me.
Professor Bermejo-Rubio chides Dr Carrier for “vulnerating the most elementary rules of academic courtesy”.
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vulnerate_v
Indeed. Because pointing out the field is awash in bad methods that are also being used here (and proving it with examples) is “wounding” the field. This is an example of placing emotions and social status above being right. Catching out the field’s errors is “doing harm.” That’s an abandonment of the entire point of scholarship as an objective discipline. Yet this is the mindset that has captured that field. On full display here.
And, of course, I would point out that it feels pretty hypocritical for Bermejo-Rubio to say exactly that when he’s made the same accusation against his colleagues. I like the dude but he seems to be falling afoul of what people in glass houses shouldn’t do.
This happens a lot with people stuck on fringe theories they have to stretch the logic to argue and can’t countenance the falsity of. In contrast, I readily admit historicity is 1 in 3. I’m not obsessed with insisting Jesus cannot exist; whereas their rhetoric is absolutist: everyone else is wrong; other interpretations are impossible (they only grant mythicism is more likely than alternatives). I also had to reject a lot of bad arguments for my position before honing its case down to what survives critique. I argue against mythicists openly and often.
They don’t follow any of these standards.
The result is that they get emotional and angry when things like this are pointed out. This happened in my (unrelated) debate with Alvaro, for example.
But note that they were always insulting and snarky (it’s all throughout the book). I just ignore that because I am not emotionally triggered by it and don’t care how they frame their rhetoric, only what the substantive argument is. So readers might get the impression I think their discourse is perfectly cordial and rational. But that’s an artifact of my stripping all of that out before finding anything to respond to, and only responding to that.
If I employ emotionalisms, it is discursive, not epistemic. I believe hiding pertinent emotions is misleading and thus not what scholars should be doing. But though I might state an argument emotionally, I never use an emotional reaction as a premise in an argument. “You insulted me, therefore you are wrong” is simply not an argument—even if the premise were true, and as we’ve seen, often it’s not.
So, really, what I think you may be observing is them not doing what I do, but the opposite. It’s all the same methodological palate: emotion before reason.
An interesting read.
On response from Fernando Bermejo-Rubio
1) I do have to agree with Fernando somewhat. Carrier often is incredibly harsh with his critics, and leaves little room for further dispute. As someone who reads his articles more regularly, this is a slight misinterpretation. Carrier went relatively soft in his disagreements. This is probably difficult to see if one is only reading one response, and would be more widely informed by reading his take on true apologist rhetoric. Though again, Carrier does come off pretty harsh in his replies to those with dissenting interpretations of the historical data.
2) I’m not an academic, so I can’t truly understand the nuance of this concern. In the original article, I took “biblical scholar” as a positive. Apologists often have degrees in tangential fields to the bible, and try to sidestep non-expertise in the relevant area. I accept that Fernando has good reason to make this distinction, and feel thoroughly justified by this portion that he is well-equipped to parse the data and draw academically reasonable conclusions from that data.
3) A confusing addition to me (again, as a non-academic who admittedly knows very little of the people cited). That smart people also believed a particular hypothesis is interesting, but not entirely useful. This isn’t to say their contributions aren’t important, only that the arguments stand or fall on their evidence rather than the employer of said arguments.
4) I’ve mentioned above that yes, Carrier can be downright vicious in his responses. I often find myself skipping over the hot frustration he expresses in many of his articles. It’s perfectly reasonable to feel slighted.
5) I think every reader here is aware that mythicism is not the consensus or even mainstream view of historians. Carrier himself has addressed the “you may as well deny the existence of pretty much everyone in the ancient world” response often. There are numerous responses to Christian apologists making that claim, citing exactly WHY Jesus is so different from other ancient people (and indeed why some ancient people SHOULD be considered less firmly established as historical).
6) Accepted. The Testimonium Flavianum is not a core point in your case even if some true passage is embedded under the surface.
7) I simply accept that both sides are satisfied with their data on this point. Carrier does not delve into the evidence itself in his response, and neither does Fernando. This is a base question of whether the argument from silence is fallacious or not.
8) This is basically the same contention as #5. Mythicism is not mainstream. Ockham’s razor states one should not multiply entities unnecessarily in an explanation. Carrier’s whole point is that an historical Jesus is unnecessary at least, and unlikely at best. Use of Ockham’s razor would need to be justified on either side of the debate.
9) I think even Fernando would agree that this form of argument is extremely popular among apologists, and based on other reviews of the literature is far more likely to be found in new testament studies than other areas of history. I highly suspect that he would strongly push back against it’s usage in popular forms (i.e. how embarrassing it would be for women to find be the first to see the resurrected Jesus). Simply saying this is not only used by historical hucksters is not itself a reply to whether or not the argument’s use was appropriate.
10) Is it not also important to point out that all documents we have from the New Testament are not simply personal recordings of history? Ignoring those written by committee, we directly see gospels changing the stories of their source material to suit a particular message. I’m not going to pretend that absolutely nothing counter-discursive made it in, but isn’t the evidence far more in favor of the the idea that the writers were very pointedly including/redacting information to suit their preferences?
11) In fairness to both sides, the arguments rely upon the evidence, not who made them. To say an objection is false because some or all of it comes from a verifiably biased source does not evince it’s falsehood. It’s fair to point out Carrier does have a dog in this fight, but it also feels like poisoning the well.
12) Having not read the book itself, only seeing the outcomes here, I can’t say either way. Fernando may be right. And there is perhaps a more robust historical definition for zealot that clearly delineates one from a militant. In common use, it is difficult to understand a religious militant that is not also a zealot.
13) Fernando and Carrier are both philosophers beyond my level. At a more modest level of understanding, this DOES make sense to me. Consider an argument based on 10 particular data points. If one does not find the argument convincing, it seems reasonable to point out where 1 point is false and 5 are ambiguous. And it may be equally reasonable to point out that even without the false data point, the overall conclusion is far more well substantiated than similar arguments where half the points are false or the vast majority are ambiguous.
14) Going back to points #1 and #4. Carrier has made sweeping statements before about the complete incompetency of his interlocutors before. Sometimes this seems warranted (see most apologists), other times it feels hyperbolic. I don’t think it unreasonable to feel like Carrier is taking an unwarranted high ground in all of this. Indeed, I think both sides would need to feel that way to argue with any conviction.
On response from Franco Tommasi
A fair reply, I guess. If that word exclusively means political rebels, then it’s a great point. I’m no scholar, so I can only look it up in freely available greek dictionaries. It does not seem to exclusively have that meaning, which case I would assume (as a non-scholar) that then the meaning is context dependent.
1) To care about wording rather than substance is to replace reason with emotion. That is precisely not what scholars pursuing an objective methodology should be doing. And yet my discourse is not that different from theirs. Their insults and disdain are just more florid and couched. All I am doing is speaking more plainly. Which ought to be the virtue we all strive for, not complain about.
2) What I think happened I suspect is less obvious to people who mistakenly assume the discourse here is rational. But what I did was point out the entire field is awash in defective methods, and proved it. Instead of listening to that critique and revising that broken methodology (or even proving me wrong), Bermejo-Rubio (like so many of his peers) took personal offense and assumed I was attacking him as an individual. Then he ignored everything we are supposed to be talking about to drunk-walk a hundreds-word chest-pump. Emotion before reason. Getting nowhere.
…
6) The issue I am bringing to the fore here is not that this is relevant. The TF has no logical weight as evidence for Jesus, and no scholar should still be clinging to such an idea by now. Rather, the issue I am foregrounding is that, whether a trivial side point or not, their methods here are not logical and need to be purged from all historical fields. They do not see it that way, because they emotionally “need” a militant Jesus, and so they “must” see one in the TF; for them it’s less about historicity and more about clinging to their pet theory. Emotion keeps blinding them to literally everything I say, and everything said in every peer reviewed study I cite against them. It’s talking to a wall at this point. And there just isn’t anything more I can do than just call it at this point.
7) The reality here is as nuanced as I explain in the book. The problem is that they ignore the nuanced reality, and replace it with black-and-white hyperbole. The argument from embarrassment (which I formally reclassify more broadly in Proving History as statement against interest, because that is what it is called in federal rules of evidence) is not out of court; rather, it must meet a number of evidential conditions to apply. They ignore all this and just “declare” things embarrassing and then “assert” that’s why something is in the text (this is what everyone in their field does, as every critic of this criterion has said in every peer reviewed study of it, as I cite in PH). But that’s illogical. You need to prove your theory (whatever it is) explains the evidence better (better, not as well as—better) than alternatives. Instead of doung that they just use their theory to circularly decide what is embarrassing (or “against interest” in whatever manner), and then use that result to prove their theory. This circular mode of argument simply has to stop. Every Jesus historian is doing it. And they are all wrong. They won’t listen. So I get louder. Then they complain about the noise. Emotion replaces reason. Getting nowhere.
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12) Yes, you need to read the book. Their mistaking my (lower case) zealot (as in, “a zealous” or “militant” person) for what they mean by (upper case) Zealot (as in, an actual armed member of the Zealot sect) is the same kind of thing as mistaking my statement of their competence (“noted biblical scholar”) as a slander: they are seeing negative things in what I say that don’t exist and are in fact the opposite of what I said. Thus emotionally triggered, they see red, and rage-screed for hundreds of words. When if they realized they misread me, they’d realize they should have calmed down and spent their time (and word count) actually addressing my arguments. I simply never said what they aver here. I never used zealot as a slander, but as a synonym for militant. But they are triggered by code words in some fashion I have no code book for so I could not know what bizarre loops they’d throw themselves in over a nonexistent sleight. And this is all a waste of time. It has fuck all to do with what we are supposed to be discussing. Emotion overrides reason. Getting nowhere.
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14) Note that I think this is a conflation other people are making, and then imputing to me. I have never once ever called Bermejo-Rubio (or even Tommasi!) incompetent. I documented that they use methods embraced by the entire field that are illogical. And I don’t just assert this. I prove it (as have others; this isn’t just me they are ignoring). They then “hear” this as calling them incompetent. But that’s a doom loop. If every critique of their methods is a slander on their competence, when will they ever correct their methods? They have locked their field out of any possible progress this way. Its errors can never be admitted, and thus never corrected, and so it goes on this way, being illogical. All because of taking a critique of a method as a personal attack. This is unacceptable. But I can only lead a horse to water. I can’t make it drink. On this point see the other exchange here.
By contrast, there are people I have called incompetent—but only when I can document that as actually being the case. I also make distinctions between incompetence generally (having no credentials) and incompetence selectively (laziness). But documenting that scholars all use, because they are all encouraged or taught to use, bad methods is the opposite of accusing someone of incompetence. A fully competent person can be expected to use bad methods endorsed by an entire field. The problem in that case is the field, not any individual’s competence.
Hence, acting emotionally and ignoring arguments and reason and evidence does not mean you can’t reason or argue or research or critique competently; it means, for whatever reason, you aren’t (in this particular case). I have diagnosed the reason in this case as that they have been misled by their field. They are victims. Not perpetrators. If they then replace reason with emotion so as never to realize that this has happened, that’s on them; but it still isn’t a product of their having a bogus PhD or being “unable” to do things well because they lack field-accepted training or experience.
So the folly is in conflating “the methods your field taught you are wrong” as “you are incompetent.” If scholars keep acting like that, they can never discover any flaws in their methods and can never correct them and make progress. But the very stubbornness here, of being emotionally triggered and thus blanking on the lesson, is also something taught to them by their field (directly and by examples). This is a field-wide flaw.
Note that Tommasi’s remark makes more sense after you read the book. You seem confused, justifiably, because this is like an inside joke.
The actual word means, just, “brigand.” It is a generic word for anyone lawlessly effecting ends by violence. It does not distinguish between brigands serving a rebellion and mere bandits robbing people for money. Both are called “brigands.”
I discuss issues of translation methodology in From Homer to Frontinus: Biased Translation Is Not Unique to Biblical Studies but this adds an example:
Like most words, the actual intent of the word depends on context. If I tell you a story about “brigands” contracted by the King of England to subvert the French government, and you translate it to a friend who speaks, say, Spanish, you might colloquially say (albeit in Spanish) “the king paid men to start a rebellion,” and he might then turn to his friend and say, “the king hired rebels.” None of these statements is incorrect, per se. Conversely, if I tell you a story about “brigands” who decided to haunt the hills and loot caravans for a living, it would never occur to you to describe them to anyone as “rebels.” Because I have given you a different context.
Hence I do personally think a literal translation would avoid translational inference and just translate both occasions as “brigand,” and let the reader understand in what sense from the context. Since brigand can mean either robber or rebel. But I can’t object to the NIV translators putting the obvious context into their chosen word in translation, either. But then, I can read the Greek, so I am not misled by that. And it is a correct capture of the contextual sense.
To illustrate my point, note that even the Berean Literal Bible fails to do this right, when it has Jesus say “Are you come out with swords and clubs as against a robber…? Every day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize Me.” Here “robber” mis-presumes (against context) what Jesus means. There is no coherence between his next sentence and that. Why would Jesus say “robber” here when clearly he means “rebel”? He is not talking about them thinking he’s looking for loot. He is talking about them thinking he is leading a rebellion.
It would be different if Mark had him say, “Are you come out with swords and clubs as against a robber…? I didn’t take any of the coins I overturned in the temple!” Then the context would be right.
But in the NIV, it has “They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left,” which commits the same mistake as the BLB: no context establishes that is the intended sense there. The BLB keeps the sense as “robbers,” which is just as presumptuous.
“Brigands” would be better in both cases. But whatever. In the book I glossed this as “thieves or wrongdoers” leaving the sense open (as some did, e.g. Luke literally puts “wrongdoers” in place of “brigands” at the cross; whereas none, not even Mark, uses known words for rebels or subversives: Jesus: Militant, p. 140).
Note that I used the NIV in my fisk because it would not contend with their position about this word, so they would not be distracted by that (irrelevant point) and miss my (actual) point that Jesus explains why an armed mob comes to get him: scripture said they had to; which rules out “because Mark wanted to conceal Jesus was a militant and just forgot to leave out the army advancing on him, therefore this all really happened.” Tommasi ironically missed my actual point and got distracted by my conceding the irrelevant one. Which demonstrates how obsession with his thesis is blinding him to everything I actually said.
A rather trivial point, but Bermejo-Rubio’s quote of Meggitt in his section 5 demonstrates an abject failure of reason on both their parts:
“To deny his existence based on the absence of such [non-Christian] evidence, even if that were the case, has problematic implications; you may as well deny the existence of pretty much everyone in the ancient world.”
That either of these people – and especially FB-R – think that you make this argument is simply flabbergasting.
Indeed. That is among the things I note that are already refuted in the material they are responding to.
I never make that argument. Not in our debate. Not in my fisk. Not in my study. Indeed in my study I repudiate that argument (OHJ, Ch. 8, conclusion).
So this is how it always goes.
They ignore the arguments I actually make. They claim I made different arguments instead. They rebut only those. And then claim I am the one being ridiculous.
How many times can scholars keep doing this and not realize their methodology is bankrupt?
How long until the general public realizes that?
Then everyone will see the entire industry as a joke.
But then the industry’s response will be “How dare you. We have massive cv’s.”
This is a doom spiral. I do not see how they can escape their own folly here. But I have told them how they could, more times than I can count.
What can I do but drink and laugh-slash-cry at this point?