Are you part of a secular, atheist, humanist, or other organization? Or know someone who is? Let that org’s leadership know that before this July they can get a deal for access to any course this year we are gradually building to teach online at SecularActivism.org. “An organization, large or small, gets a certificate for one of its leaders to take a free course during 2014, if 30 members join the email list before July 1st. Just mention the organization name when asked how you heard about us.” They just need to contact John Shook to inquire.
Go to SecularActivism.org to see the current course offerings. Many more will be developed and taught before the end of the year (possibly dozens). For example, besides my Naturalism 101 course that I’m teaching now, I will also be teaching courses this year on the science and philosophy of free will, on historical methods (theory and practice), on the historicity of Jesus, and more (I’m considering offering courses on ancient science, economics, and technology, on Bayes’ Theorem and counter-apologetics, and others; feel free to make requests in comments here for courses you’d take if I taught them). And I am not the only instructor on board. We are contracting more and more teachers of skill or renown, to teach far more diverse offerings.
The force is strong, today 😀
Now, if I just had a few dozen more atheist friends…lol. I have one friend who openly admits to being atheist, several who waffle, at least publicly, and the rest all theists of one stripe or another.
Would you accept a smaller party of…one…for a free course? Kidding.
Hi Professor Carrier,
Many thanks again for your time and thoughts on the previous collection of questions that I posted. I read a good deal of the material that you linked to your response and they were instructive and informative as always.
I have a couple more questions:
1) What do you feel the author(s) of the Gospel of Mark used as his sources for the complex redaction/synthesis that he achieved in his gospel? Do you feel that the parables and logia attributed to Jesus might have originated from a non-Q written source that is no longer extent or do you feel Mark put them into Jesus’ mouth as a part of his redaction editing?
2) As a corollary to that, what are your thoughts on the relationships between the canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas. Do you feel that they shared a common source for the logia material or do you think the author of Thomas read the canonical gospels and simply de-deified what was read about Jesus?
3) Do you feel that the reference to Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum in the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus is entirely a forgery by a later Christian interpolator(s) or do you feel that it might have contained an authentic reference that originally was potentially highly suspicious of Jesus’ existence or his messiahship? Do you take Origen’s reference to Josephus as “although not believing in Jesus as the Christ” to mean that the Testimonium wasn’t present in the copy Origen possessed or that it had a authentic reference to a Jesus, but was deprecatory?
Many thanks again for your time and research!!!
mlt5198
Well, still not the best place for this comment, but that said…
1a) The Septuagint, Enoch, Homer, possibly early Josephus, and other Jewish apocrypha, the Epistles of Paul, and possibly the missionary teachings of Paul and other Christians. And his own literary imagination.
1b) Mark invented the sayings of Jesus, mostly or wholly (and when mostly, he is adapting sayings received by revelation passed down by the apostles). There was not likely any Q. Luke is redacting Matthew, in a freer style at several points. See Goodacre, The Case against Q</em>.
2) The latter. See Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels.
3) Entirely a forgery. Josephus never mentioned Christ in any capacity. See my chapter on Josephus in Hitler Homer Bible Christ (that’s a reprint of my peer reviewed academic article).
Most appreciative for all the thoughts and comments Dr. Carrier.
mlt5198