Earlier this month I presented the thesis of On the Historicity of Jesus to the SBL Western Regional Conference (held this year in Azusa, California). Oliver Eldridge interviewed me over drinks afterward. There I mentioned I kept Waters’ summary handout, which fairly faithfully tracked most of the arguments he tried to present against OHJ at the conference.
This is how that went down…
The audience was more critical of Waters’ rancorous and somewhat contemptuous (and very apologetics-heavy) rebuttal than of my proposal. Choosing a Baptist minister to tackle this issue was probably not a productive decision by the SBL. Although I think Waters was actually the one making that decision. A secular-minded scholar, whose precious religious beliefs were not threatened by the proposal to be discussed, would have been a far better choice. Not that Waters isn’t well qualified. But religion is blinding. It causes people to act out in anger and irrationality, desperate to latch onto any rationalization to reject something, often without thinking it through first (and thus not realizing their rebuttal is making them look foolish and unstudied).
The Bayesian Herring
Waters’ handout listed thirteen points of attack.
Two were irrelevant.
Waters seemed prepared to defend the authenticity of the reference to Christ in Tacitus (even though, following Jean Rougé, I recently disproved that in a peer reviewed biblical studies journal, in an article now reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). But he rightly dropped that in oral presentation when I used instead the argument that it couldn’t be established as independent of the Gospels anyway, a point to which there is no factually or logically sound response. The reference is simply useless as evidence.
Secondly, Waters gave a “gosh golly I don’t understand it so I guess I should fear it” response to using Bayesian methodology to control for biases in reaching a conclusion in the matter. Apart from being a fallacy (that you don’t understand it actually disqualifies you from criticizing it), it also isn’t pertinent (my conclusion follows whether you use Bayesian methodology or not, and I didn’t rely on any explicitly Bayesian argument in my presentation to the audience). Nevertheless, his three points against it were also incorrect:
- That “BT does not eliminate the need for hermeneutics” is a red herring. We aren’t doing hermeneutics. We are doing history. And ironically, Christian hermeneutics is intrinsically unhistorical, as it begins with theological faith premises, not objectively factual premises verifiable to non-Christians (or indeed even non-Baptists). When we do secular (as in, fact-based) hermeneutics (what the rest of us just call “interpretation”) we are using Bayesian reasoning. So you can’t dodge the question that way.
- That “BT does not eliminate the need for criteria of historicity” is not only false, I proved it extensively in Proving History: it very definitely does eliminate the criteria so far employed in Jesus studies. I there demonstrated they are all fallacious or fallaciously applied, and can only be fixed by scrapping them and adopting a Bayesian model in their stead. Waters offered no rebuttal to any of my demonstrations of this (nor to that of any other expert who has pointed out the fatal flaws in the method of criteria, which incidentally is every single expert who has ever published a dedicated study on those criteria).
- That “BT does not insulate against subjectivity” is a moot point. Literally no method in history does. None. Zip. Zero. So you are stuck with BT, the only method that exposes all your subjective judgments to the light of day, forcing you to defend them. All other methods conceal or obfuscate those subjectivities. Which is precisely why BT is necessary.
That’s a digression to the SBL debate, though, since none of my presentation required acknowledging any of this. I find it typical of Christian apologists that they are so terrified of the power of Bayesian reasoning to destroy their beliefs that they will burn five minutes of podium time rebutting it even when it wasn’t part of the presentation they are supposed to be rebutting.
Which Brothers of the Lord?
Waters’ first two points were attempts to insist that “Brothers of the Lord” must surely mean biological brothers of Jesus.
He offered no evidence of that fact. To the contrary, all he did was gainsay, declaring (without citing a single argument in defense of the assertion) that “brother of the Lord” cannot mean “that he is only…a regular Christian” (it means in fact a baptized Christian, not simply a regular one). Waters presented no evidence against the fact that all baptized Christians are adopted sons of God and thus, in fact, all brothers of the Lord. I presented extensive, indisputable, and thoroughly explicit evidence of that fact (OHJ, p. 108), none of which he rebutted…or even, in fact, mentioned. Waters simply insisted that it “can’t be.” Like Luke Skywalker insisting Darth Vader can’t be his father. Because that’s impossible.
Likewise Waters simply insisted “brothers of the Lord” had to be apostles. Because. … No, really, that’s it. He had no argument. He just insisted that that had to be. That the phrase “cannot” mean non-apostolic baptized Christians. For some reason. He didn’t say.
Waters did not address any of my arguments in my book refuting these claims (OHJ, ch. 11.10). Nor any of the peer reviewed arguments of Trudinger supporting me, which I cited in OHJ. Apparently Waters didn’t even read Trudinger. He didn’t even use the rebuttal to Trudinger offered by Howard. Possibly because Waters knew I had already refuted Howard, and there really isn’t any coming back from that (OHJ, p. 590. n. 101).
By debate standards, this was kind of embarrassing. Gainsaying without argument. Ignoring the arguments of your opponent. Sigh.
Whose Women and Sperm?
As Christian apologists usually do, Waters ignored the context of the verse in Galatians 4:4, and disregarded how ancient principles of rhetoric operated for the construction of arguments, and the fact that Paul used vocabulary he peculiarly employs for divine manufacture and not the vocabulary he normally used for biological birth. Waters again just argued by gainsaying. He didn’t actually explain what rhetorical function the exact same phrase employed in Paul’s argument if it was supposed to inexplicably all of a sudden be referring to a literal birth, nor did he respond to any of my rhetorical analysis of the actual function of that phrase in Paul’s argument in OHJ (pp. 577-82). Waters did not seem to actually understand the fact that Paul means “mother” as in the realm, the world order, in which we are born. And that by sharing the same birth as us, to the same mother as us, we are able to share the same victory as Jesus, and thus, like Jesus, become born of the celestial mother in our resurrection.
Waters also incorrectly gave in his handout the translation of Romans 1:3 as “descended from David,” even though the Greek says no such thing. It says Jesus was made (using the same exact word Paul used of the making of Adam and the making of our future resurrection bodies) from the sperm of David. Not from the sperm of a descendent of David. Or anything of the kind. This is, we have to concede, ambiguous. Exactly as I explain in OHJ (pp. 575-77), which analysis Waters had nothing to argue against other than repeated expressions of incredulity.
Waters also did not seem to understand ancient cosmology. Even though I went out of my way to explain it in OHJ. He cited 1 Cor. 15:39-41 as arguing against a celestial incarnation, but that’s about the heavens above the moon. Not the firmament below it. Waters evidently did not grasp the distinction between celestial as supra-lunar, and the firmament as the region of space below the moon, which was the realm of flesh (yet was still known to extend hundreds of thousands of miles). Exactly as the earlier redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah says was the location of the crucifixion. And a distinction many other authors had described (from Plutarch to Philo). All as I extensively proved (OHJ, pp. 63, 178-97).
Waters made this mistake twice, claiming that “the world” in the Ascension of Isaiah meant on earth, when in fact it meant the whole world within the sphere of the moon. As it did everywhere in ancient cosmology. This suggests Waters didn’t think very much about even the original Greek vocabulary, much less the actual cosmology. Waters also claimed Paul did not know of any “pre-resurrectional human flesh,” evidently not even understanding that Paul says the resurrection body is not made of flesh at all. Nor was Waters’ unintelligible argument at all relevant to the firmament incarnation thesis. I have to conclude Waters was confused and didn’t even understand the thesis he was supposed to be responding to.
In short, Waters expended three more arguments trying to tackle my book’s argument about these two verses (Gal. 4:4 and Rom. 1:3), by ignoring or getting wrong pretty much everything my book said about them.
A Bad Argument from Silence
Sort of like Captain Renault in Casablanca, Waters essentially claimed to be “shocked, just shocked” that “there is no [surviving] mention of a [celestially] crucified Christ in any literature” (other than, well, the Ascension of Isaiah and allusions in Ignatius, Irenaeus, and 2 Peter; so, no mention, except for all the mentions). Of course, Renault was pretending to be shocked to suddenly discover gambling that in fact he had always overlooked, whereas Waters was pretending to be shocked by the absence of evidence I extensively documented Medieval Christians systematically destroyed, doctored, or opted not to preserve in any fashion (OHJ, pp. 146-52, 214-22, 275-79). The reason that evidence is absent is because Medieval Christians systematically destroyed, doctored, or opted not to preserve it in any fashion. So we can’t use its absence now as evidence against its existence then.
WTFs
Waters tried to insist that when Philo talks about the archangel God made as the first created being, the archangel who actually carried out the creation of the universe, and governs and regulates the universe, and serves as the high priest of God’s celestial temple, that Philo was just talking about the “virtuous human soul.” Sorry, but I have to call stupid on that. Unless Waters thinks “the human soul” created the universe, even Waters himself apparently needs to phone Waters and call stupid on that.
Waters similarly tried to argue the Melchizedek figure in Hebrews was “not” a divine being or archangel, even though Hebrews says Melchizedek was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, and remains a priest continually” (7:1, 3). Um, Logic to Dr. Waters, that’s a divine being or archangel. That [a Pauline author] thought the Son of God was made the same way, and therefore was also “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,” is what folks in the poker trade call a tell.
And Continuing to Ignore Me
Waters’ penultimate argument is the most egregious example of ignoring everything argued in OHJ. He claims there are “glimpses of the historical Jesus” in the book of Hebrews, in particular the fact that he suffered “outside the gate” (Heb. 13:12) and “in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers” (Heb. 5:7) and “descended from Judah” (Heb. 7:14). Waters did not rebut any of my arguments to the contrary, even though I meticulously addressed every single one of these verses. Simply ignoring what your opponent says, and just repeating the arguments your opponent rebutted, is not just a debate fail, it’s disrespectful.
- In the first case, [the author of Hebrews] does not specify whether he means a metaphorical gate (as he goes on to imply all Christians live outside the same gate, meaning in the world of flesh) or the gate of the first heaven (specifically mentioned in the Ascension of Isaiah), or any of the many gates of the actual city of Jerusalem. All we can say is that the latter would make less sense of [the author of Hebrews] argument (OHJ, pp. 544-45). And [the author of Hebrews] never mentions Jerusalem. In fact, he makes no mention of even a city. Other than a metaphorical one: the city of the world Christians no longer belong to, and the city of heaven Christians long to join. Metaphorical cities do not historicity make.
- In the second case, [the author of Hebrews] makes no mention of the event of Jesus’s last prayer occurring on earth, and his account matches no existing Gospel (OHJ, pp. 548-49). It is thus again ambiguous as to whether it refers to an earthly event, or preceded Satan’s crucifying of Jesus in the firmament as predicated in the Ascension of Isaiah.
- In the third case, once again, the word “descended” is not in the Greek (Waters thus seemed keen to distort the truth by employing the most inaccurate of translations, inaccuracies that just “happened” to support his insistence upon historicity). The passage actually says “the Lord arose from Judah,” which matches being manufactured from the sperm of David. It thus adds nothing to Romans 1:3.
To simply ignore these facts and all else I argued in OHJ when claiming to rebut it, cannot be characterized as debating honestly.
The Argument From That Can’t Be
Finally, Waters tried the lamest Christian apologetic argument of all: if myth A differs from myth B, then myth A cannot be an adaptation of myth B, or have been influenced by it in any way whatever, even when all evidence suggests it was. By this reasoning, West Side Story cannot possibly have anything to do with Shakespeare.
This is just phenomenally stupid. It is an argument that does not deserve even the pretense of respect. Especially given the fact that I explained in detail in OHJ, with citation of scholarship on mythology (pp. 387-42), that all myths (all myths, like all of them, ever, in the entire history of humanity) that are inspired by or adaptations of prior myths, differ considerably from them. To which Waters responded not at all.
Waters likewise tried to pretend all the parallels I documented are coincidences. Even though such a large collection of such specific coincidences as I documented is extraordinarily improbable (pp. 96-108, 222-34). This is typical Christian apologetics: when the obvious facts are unacceptable, it’s better to claim the least probable hypothesis imaginable must therefore be true. That’s irrational.
Conclusion
Dr. Waters simply didn’t actually respond to the arguments of OHJ. He ignored most of them, misunderstood some of them, and tried to obscure them all with stock Christian apologetics rather than taking the facts and methodology seriously. In all, it was a fairly useless debate. The only reassuring fact was that the audience seemed as bewildered by his line of attack as anyone. This encounter adds yet more evidence in support of the conclusion that we need to stop taking Christian fundamentalists seriously. They are ideologues, not objective professionals, when anything that challenges their beliefs is encountered. We need secular scholars to debate this theory. Christian believers who cannot abide even the thought of the thesis should just admit they cannot have anything honest or well-considered to say about it.
So who do you want to debate? Bart? He’s “secular”. You’ve done him, haven’t you? Don’t you have a book or something taking him on?
If Jesus was made from the sperm of David, and Jesus is God, then God is made out of sperm.
Which explains why:
Hi Richard. Thanks for this demolition. Like Dinsdale Piranha, cruel but fair. It makes me wonder if you have read Fundamentalism by James Barr. Advocacy for the Historical Jesus is primarily political, cultural and psychological, as a new form of fundamentalism, stepping back from the old disproved fundamentals such as Adam and Eve to now see belief in the historical existence of Jesus Christ as the fundamental bedrock of faith. As you have pointed out, conventional Christianity plays by very different rules from scientific scholarship. So rather than a futile effort to engage on facts, which are not a real concern for those with faith-tinted dark glasses, the sociological question is why Baptists place themselves outside the framework of intellectual discourse and prefer an emotionally comforting myth. If SBL frames the discussion in this way, it illustrates how socially bound they remain to Christendom assumptions which reflect tradition rather than evidence.
An own goal for the Conferece then. I read the interview. They did not know what to do with your argument? If they do not make any attempt to prepare for such a meeting , I despair of how they would know that thier students had prepared adequately for for their very expensive educations. Was there no constructive criticism at all beyond their mistaking stray threads for jumpers? I don’t think it was headlights they were caught in but in the act of bilking their students and the public. Either that or the gears ground when confronted with their delusional group-think. Fraud, delusion or simply not doing the work and assuming someone else had? Sure I would get in that car. It’s perfectly safe and not going anywhere: it hasn’t got any wheels.
“…amateurs should not be voicing certitude in a matter still being debated by experts.” Since you posted that on October 23, 2013 I think you have proven, inadvertently or otherwise, comprehensively that there are no experts. The Emperor is naked mate; I am just going to laugh. They have had a couple of centuries and not bothered to read the Book properly. As a first approximation these are very improbable stories that poison themselves with fantasy and magic heaped on more fantasy and magic. As you dig the improbability grows.
Once I actually read Paul while remembering the NT did not exist when he wrote, the discrepency between his writings and what followed generations later on the wrong side of of a near-genocidal war was more than a little obvious. He says his Christ was killed by unknowing demons; he only experienced his Christ in visions from heaven and he swears up and down that apart from his innovations concerning gentiles he has exactly the same access to Christ as the other apostles and, besides possibly a bare minimum, he did not get the story from them. Now were the other apostles actual colleagues of a real man, I would expect them to be trumping him with that fact, and for him to be defending himself with arguments why he was not so trumped. That does not have to be defended; it is the reading comprehension I had at 11, belief in Santa long gone. Anonymous tall tales decades after the fact are neither here nor there. We don’t need an academic bunfight to dismiss Santa; what makes Jesus any different?
It has always been for those who held a Jesus existing outside of apostolic heads and their own imagination to prove their case. The “scholars” couldn’t be bothered presenting the feeblist. There was no debate. Now we might get one, the train has left the station. We have two black swans, Doherty informally and now yourself formally, and those who have demolished the toolshed have supplied many more cygnets.
It might be apocryphal that the formal proof of 1+1 runs to fifty pages but you would be barking to requre that everyone familiarise themselves with that, if true, before being able to say “Nah mate; 1+1 isn’t 3”. My certitude here is the 99.999%. variety. I’ll allow a very small probability of Jesus because we can never be absolutely certain; but for all my intents and purposes that is academic. Until otherwise: null hypothesis.
Is there any news on reviews in the peer journals yet? I’ll be interested to see if anything de novo emerges but as Oliver Eldridge wrote you usually anticipate what is coming. They come home and you are annoyingly there before them with the dinner ready.
Tah very much I am enjoying the ride.
From the Eldridge interview:
Amen, brother Carrier!
I haven’t read OHJ yet, so maybe you answer this question there, but looking up Galatians 4:4 in the Skeptics Annotated Bible (which is the KJV) I find this:
and the only occurence of “mother” in Galatians 4 is this:
So, Jerusalem may be the mother of us all, but it doesn’t seem to be the “woman” who made Jesus. Instead, this sounds like 4:4 is describing a human who was born in the usual manner. Do you think this is a mistranslation?
Where oh where is the video of this exchange!?
No recording was made. Not my call.
Richard,
You’re good with math. I have a request. In “Historicity” you make a pretty convincing and conservative-assumption case for the odds that Jesus wasn’t a real person. What are the odds that all these parallel details from First and Second Apocalypses of James and Peter from Nag Hammadi are coincidental to the canonical “Betrayal”? All four Gospels are used. This is a c & p from email that I send to scholars. The pertinent parts are the pairings. I say the Gnostics are the original, the canon derived (by inversion, of course). How to calculate the odds these passages are/are not derivative?:
Here is the proof for “Judas was James”. Compare with the inversion m.o. in the Dead Sea Scrolls (see Dr. Robert Eisenman).
Sant Mat is the Eastern Mystic tradition. ( http://www.rssb.org Sc ience of the Soul.org)
First and Second Apocalypses of James, Apocalypse of Peter, Gospel of Judas Nag Hammadi/Al Minya:
NHC (Nag Hammadi Codex) 24-44 is First, & NHC 44-63 is Second James
“I have given you a sign” NHC 24,10 “gave them a sign” (the ‘kiss’) Matt. 26:48
“cup of bitterness to the sons of light” 25,15 “let this cup pass from me” Matt. 26:39
“This is the second Master” 30, 25 “Those who seek enter through you” Second Apoc. 55,10 >
“I know whom I have chosen” John 13:18
“Then the disciples dispersed, but James remained in prayer” 30,25 “he withdrew and prayed” Lk 22:41
“the flesh is weak” 32,20 “the flesh is weak” Matt. 26:41
“I am he who was within me” 31,15 “I know whom I have chosen” and “I am he” John 13:18-19
“you are aware and stopped this prayer” 32,5 “Sit here while I pray” & his ‘sorrow/trouble’ Matt. 26:36-7
“you have embraced and kissed me” 32,5 “He said ‘Hail Master!’ and kissed him” Matt. 26:49 (The kiss is inverted tendentiously, of course.)
“a multitude will arm themselves against you” 33,5 “band of soldiers with weapons” John 18:3/Mk 14:43
Second James:
“stripped and rising naked” Second Apoc. 58,20 “naked young man, leaves cloth & flees” Mk. 14:51-2
“Hail my brother, hail!” Second Apoc. 50:10 (from NHC 32,5) “Hail, Master!” Matt. 26:49
Apoc. Peter:
“He [Jesus] was about to reprove you [Peter] three times in this night” Apocalypse of Peter, first paragraph, about inner vision of Jesus — inverted in the four Gospels:
“Peter denies Jesus a third time” all four gospels, and this after Jesus comes three times and finds them “sleeping”. (They are actually trying to meditate and he tells Peter his concentration is not complete.)
Gospel of Judas,
Apophasis Logos is Word in John.
Anami Desh (Sant Mat, ‘No name region’) is “region never called by any name” 47,13
“you will be replaced by someone” (Not Matthias, he isn’t mentioned. This is Jesus merging into him.)
“You will be replaced by someone” 36,1 is “woe to the one who delivers me” Matt. 26:24; and:
“You will able to go there but will grieve a great deal” 35,20 Matt 26:24
“You stirred up wrath against yourself” First Apoc. 32,10 “Your wrath has been kindled” 56,23 gJudas (shows Judas is James)
“You will exceed them all, you will sacrifice the man that bears me” 56,20 “woe to that man who delivers me” Matt. 26:24 (This is JUDAS sacrificing himself, the “woe to that man” is his sacrifice!)
This climax passage is in answer to “What will those who have been baptized in your Name do?” (55,22) They will sacrifice the man that bears them! “Someone else will replace you, in order that the Twelve may again come to completion in their God” (36,1-3) is Judas merging into Jesus and becoming the master who leads them all, him included, into reunion (‘again’) with the Father. Matthias is NOT mentioned, and he should have been here, not just “someone else”. He hadn’t yet been invented in the tradition. The tradition in the gnostic version preceded the canon. The above are just the most obvious parts. There are others that are not so obvious. Other gnostic texts such as Thomas the Contender detail meditation technique, like Apocalypse of Peter does right after the three denials of Peter.
Any two of these above would i.d. the parallel tradition, and the Gnostics would NOT copy an orthodox tradition of sacrifice, especially of humans, and certainly not EVER the Master as sacrifice. This is the original. There is no question Judas was James and he was the successor.
Also, the Gospel According to the Hebrews, now lost but mentioned by a number of first century church fathers has Jesus giving the bread to James, not the disciples (Matthew 26) not to “them” (Mark 14 and Luke 22), and not to Judas (John 13). Bread is a symbol of life, not death.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/gospelhebrews-throck.html
http://www.textexcavation.com/gospelhebrews.html
In Hegesippus, second century church historian, James is said to utter: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” and “You will see the Son of man coming with power and on the clouds of heaven.” Luke 11:1 has the Lord’s prayer taught by John to his disciples.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hegesippus.html
The Gospel of Thomas, 12, has the disciples told to “Go to James, for whom heaven and earth were created.” Another passage in Hebrew Matthew has John as savior of the world at 17:11. Only the New Testament has Jesus as savior, but no mention of James or John as saviors, which they were in many extra-biblical sources and Sant Mat (www.rssb.org Science of the Soul.org).
–Bob Wahler
This is all nonsensical. Not a single logical argument is here. It’s not even intelligible how you are deriving your conclusion.
Stop posting these ramblings. If you continue to post lengthy incoherent arguments like this, I will have to ban you. You are already on my shitlist for being a bigot. Add insane to my list, and you’re gone.
Hi Richard! Yesterday Dr. Antonio Piñero (Professor, Greek Philology, Complutense University of Madrid , http://www.antoniopinero.com/curriculum.html ) criticized your book and complained that you didn’t refer to his works. Do you know them?: http://www.tendencias21.net/crist/El-cuento-de-nunca-acabar-De-nuevo-sobre-la-existencia-historica-de-Jesus-Compartir-82-de-25-marzo-de-2015-Preguntas-y_a1778.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Never heard of him.
Why was I supposed to refer to him?
Best I can tell, he doesn’t even address any of the content of my book, and admits he didn’t read it and only skimmed it.
I also can’t tell if he defends historicity (he says he agrees with Ehrman: “El primero defiende la misma posición que mis colegas y yo en “¿Existió Jesús realmente?. El Jesús de la historia a debate, de Editorial Raíces, Madrid, 2011.”) or ahistoricity (he says obviously Jesus didn’t exist: “Opino que, naturalmente, “Jesu/Cristo” nunca existió.”).
I confess I’m confused.
Well, he distinguish between two different figures: an historical one called “Jesus” and another theological called “Christ”, so “Jesus Christ” or “Jesu/Cristo” -the sum of both- never existed in his opinion.
“He cited 1 Cor. 14:39-41 as arguing against a celestial incarnation…”
Typo; should say 1 Cor 15:39-41
***
“there is no [surviving] mention of a crucified Christ in any literature”
I can not make sense out of what you or Waters are saying here. It seems there must be word(s) missing (maybe “celestial”?). A crucified Christ is mentioned all over the place.
***
“1. In the first case, Paul does not specify…”
Should say not Paul but the author of Hebrews, like case 2.
Excellent catches all. Fixed.
I have been reading OHJ and it is a masterful work if not the best on the subject. It is good that your discussion of Q and how easily you dismissed it, is not really important to your argument because the case for Q is vastly superior to the case against it. I have read every book in your footnotes on the subject and are flabbergasted you dismiss it so lightly. I, also think the gospels (all of them) were written much later than most suppose, possibly as late as 120 except Mark. Keep up the wonderful work. Maybe you could even make a case against Q in a future work because Goodacre and Goulder certainly haven’t.
I can’t fathom why anyone thinks that. There is no evidence for Q. Literally, none. It’s all based on a foundation of speculations and arguments from incredulity.
Occam’s Razor entails we should assume the simplest hypothesis until we have evidence that it can’t explain. The simplest hypothesis is that Luke is using and adapting Matthew (their nativities alone prove the point, even before we get to the rest), and doing so by the established methods of using and adapting source material taught in ancient schools. And all the evidence fits that hypothesis exactly.
Some evidence cannot even be explained any other way (e.g. OHJ, p. 471), or is very improbable any other way. Once you concede Luke is redacting Matthew, you have no need of Q. So you need really good evidence to maintain there is a Q. And there isn’t even good evidence, much less really good. And that’s before we get to all the evidence Goodacre, Goulder, Perrin, Shellard, Drury, Turner, Farrer, etc, etc., etc., have adduced in addition against the Q hypothesis.
Even Kloppenborg had to admit they kind of have a point (OHJ, p. 270, n. 34) and that there being a Q is at best 50/50. Kloppenborg! (And he was being absuredly charitable to Q. Because he is so invested in it.)
But hey, take a shot. What do you consider the best items of evidence making Q the more probable hypothesis than Luke redacting Matthew?
Well that was clearly a ridiculous mismatch, but hopefully some of the audience will have taken away something useful from it. Maybe next time you should take along a poster with the letters RMFB (read my book) to wave as appropriate.
One typo I noticed in your post: where you mention 1 Cor. 14:39-41, presumably you mean 1 Cor.15, not 1 Cor. 14?
Re secular debating opponents: Matthew Ferguson springs to mind as an excellent candidate – it would be awesome to have either an actual debate / discussion, or a back and forth written exchange between the two of you on the topic of historicity. And Mark Goodacre is an obvious candidate.
Yes, I would also love to see a rematch with Goodacre. He’s honest and intelligent, albeit a Christian, so somewhat limited on the conclusions he can reach.
The problem is that discriminating against people because of their religion is completely antithetical to the ethos of modern academia. This approach, emphasizing that the focus should be on arguments, not beliefs, proved tremendously successful in many areas of knowledge. In the Natural Sciences, in particular, but even in some Social Sciences. It is also very fair, so people shiver at the thought of discriminating against someone because of their religious beliefs in secular academia.
I fully agree with you, and would like to go even further and limit the secular study of religions just for non-religious people, especially the study of their origins. Otherwise, what has happened to Biblical Studies, and is currently happening to Islamic Studies, is inevitable; the field gets flooded by believers of that religion, often working in institutions sponsored by religious organistions, driving it into a more and more conservative stance.
I feel there is no easy solution for this problem, and am actually quite pessimistic about the future.
I suppose you’ve already seen and responded to eric chabot:https://chab123.wordpress.com/?s=richard+carrier
A
Nothing he says there is informed or addressed my actual arguments. Just apologetic wheel spinning. Not even worth addressing. My book answers him more than sufficiently.
Happy Easter Richard!
I just had a Twitter discussion with Tom Holland (author of In the Shadow of the Sword and BBC history presenter) regarding Tacitus and the historicity of Jesus.
https://storify.com/VinylTiger/easter
Towards the end he made some statements about the mythicist debate that surprised me, e.g. “It’s been the focus of the most intense debate for over 150 years now.”
“It’s probably the single most discussed & debated topic in the entire field of ancient history!”
Do you agree?
I assumed that the debate would have developed from a position of total acceptance, slowly have small pieces removed from the agreed historical account due to doubts being raised, until recently the mere existence of Jesus is being disputed.
Your thoughts?
I don’t know how one would even know that or measure it.
Felix,
That’s an interesting thread. It’s kind of scary that a historian working for the BBC is trotting out such ill-informed nonsense (and ascribing such high confidence levels to his assertions).
Two questions for Richard relating to this :
1) Are you going to get involved with this discussion, and provide some basic facts? I think this is precisely the type of person who needs to be educated about this stuff. I will do if you don’t, based on OHJ – but you’re the expert!
2) Per your point in Sense and Goodness about the importance of popular-level books, are you planning to produce a pop version of the Jesus myth arguments? Unless I’ve missed something, the objections from the academic community have been almost entirely spurious (and predictable, for anyone familiar with Hector Avalos’ observations about theology in academia).