On Saturday March 29th (2014) at 4:30pm I will be giving an impromptu talk about my new book Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013 and taking questions from the audience. Officially we’ll go until 6pm, although Jen and I will be having dinner at a nearby pub afterward and then grabbing a few drinks at the bar before heading home. Sponsored by the San Francisco Atheists. Details for the event are here. Description:
Dr. Carrier will talk about the contents of his new anthology, Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013, which contains essays and academic papers on subjects as diverse as what purpose historians serve in society and how history can actually be an experimental science, to exposing bogus Hitler quotes and demonstrating some early non-Christian references to Jesus are fake. He will also talk about how he was independently funded to research and write about how the Gospels contradict each other on dating the year of Christ’s birth, and how we know the ending of Mark is a forgery, and other topics, including future research now going on in Sweden due to Carrier’s journal publication of his results on those bogus Hitler quotes. He will be selling and signing books and taking questions from the audience.
The talk will be given in the Niantic East meeting room of the Club Quarters Hotel (lower level, take the elevator down to LL), on 424 Clay Street (San Francisco, CA), near Battery (adjacent to the Elephant & Castle Pub, and near the Embarcadero Muni and BART station). You are welcome to bring drinks purchased at the bar. Open to the public. Cash donations will help them cover the room rental. Several of us will likely end up at the Elephant & Castle Pub after (that’s where Jen and I will chow down and then hang out for a bit).
Neil Godfrey at Vridar is now claiming there was a historical Jesus (see the comments): http://vridar.org/2014/03/20/parallels-or-parallelomania-how-to-tell-the-difference/#comments
You are aware that Godfrey was never a mythicist, yes? See my past discussion of that point (even quoting him) here (under “Not Noticing His Opponents Aren’t Mythicists”). Godfrey has no definite opinions for or against historicity and is interested in both kinds of explanations of the evidence.
Request for a ride from Pinole in East Bay (or car & BART combination) . If anyone will be going west to this event along the I-80 corridor (and also attending the dining afterwards), I will help pay for a ride and meal as I am now age 71 and mostly blind and do not get out much these days. I live very close to the freeway in the On the Hill townhome development above Collins Elementary School.
Many thanks for any assistance! — “Grandpa Dave”
dcmack2@comcast.net
P.S, – I have enjoyed reading and now listening to Dr. Carrier’s work ever since his pre-PhD days on the Secular Web. 🙂
I’ve echoed this request on my Facebook Page.
Can those of us that are not near San Fransisco get more information on what this future research is exactly?
It’s described in the new afterword to the chapter on Hitler in Hitler Homer Bible Christ (p. 188) with more in the updated notes 3-4 (p. 169).
I was just talking with McGrath and he said, regarding Mark,
“The case for Mark itself being early, as argued by Crossley and Casey (interestingly, both prominent atheist New Testament scholars) focuses on the evidence that convinces a far greater number of scholars that there are earlier sources or materials embedded in Mark. Mark 13 seems to have been shaped by the Caligula crisis, for instance.”
This may be a problem for the Christ Myth Theory. Thoughts about early source material in Mark?
What McGrath is quoted here saying is simply untrue. But McGrath has shown himself repeatedly to be too incompetent to independently evaluate scholarly arguments (I catalog several examples under his name here). If he were competent, he would know why Crossley’s arguments for a Caligula association make no sense on any final analysis (and were purely speculative to begin with). I address it in my forthcoming book. It’s simply not a viable hypothesis. Meanwhile, Casey’s arguments are based on delusional tea leaf reading, and a complete failure of even rudimentary logic, as I point out in my critical review (and on the logic, also, importantly, here). If this is what historicity hangs on, it’s dead as a respectable hypothesis. (As to McGrath’s claim of “a far greater number of scholars,” once we subtract fundamentalists from whom he means, that statement is a plain falsehood.)
But the more general question is whether mythicism requires a post-war date for Mark. It does not. Mark is so demonstrably allegorical it could even have been written by Paul and still be complete (and deliberate) fiction. Since unlike the later Gospels it never represents itself as history. It is consciously constructed in a mythic mode from beginning to end. Matthew, meanwhile, is even more grandiosely mythical. Luke is the only Gospel that might seem hard to explain as from the early first century, since Luke was actually trying to trick people into believing a historical Jesus existed (as is John, who wrote after Luke), and one might think it harder to explain why someone would try to do that so soon in the cult’s development–of course, even then, harder does not mean impossible; but more importantly, contrary to appearances, I find an early date would actually have no effect on the probability, due to the demonstrably deceitful character of the text, and its manifestly being based on earlier texts that are themselves patently mythical–Mark and Matthew–and the circular, fact-contradicting, and self-refuting nature of arguments against rapid legendary development (I address all this in chapters six and ten of my forthcoming book).
Myths have often been fabricated almost immediately. For example, the Life of Saint Genevieve is full of complete and grandiose bullshit, and it was written just ten years after her death. With the result that, if we had no independent corroborating evidence she existed, we should conclude she probably didn’t. This is a valid application of Law’s Rule.
Yes, yes, and yes–so far as I know.
(Although they might reserve some seating for the disabled; and they might have a sign-in sheet; but I’m just guessing.)
If it’s anything like San Francisco, you might be expected to order a meal or a drink (as compensation to the establishment).