Which is kind of what Ehrman and JCS come up with.

It’s just that, of course, plausibility does not equal probability.

Indeed. This is what I discuss as his speculations that only prove the point. And that I am already including as possibilities in the converse probability.

His theory is indeed plausible as a thing that would make sense. But the fact that this isn’t the story told means the opposite of what Ehrman infers: that he has to rewrite the story to make it make sense is precisely why we should doubt the story that was actually told.

Since there is no evidence for his version of events, it can’t be used as a premise (because of the simple rule: analogous to GIGO, SISO: speculation in; speculation out).

This is an example of confusing possibility with probability, and using a theory circularly to reinterpret material, then using that theory-reinterpreted material as evidence for the theory. These are not logically valid methods of argument.

I counter-counter-argue that the Gospels, starting with Mark, were composed in the 2nd Century.

As I cited some experts also do (so you are not out in left field here). I’m just explaining why I don’t buy it.

an indication of this later dating is the reference to the “abomination” befouling the Temple Mt, which did not happen in the First Century (because Caligula was assassinated) but it did happen after the Second Revolt.

Read the context (and the verse it cites: Dan 9:27 and 11:31): Mark means the temple is still standing when that happens, so he can’t be talking about a time when no temple existed.

Mark 13 says the temple will be destroyed; that will be a time of distress to flee to the mountains in; and only some “unknown” time “after” that will the end come (sometime at the end of his generation). So the abomination is the Roman defiling of the inner sanctum (Talmudic legend said it was Titus having intercourse with a harlot on top of an open Torah scroll in the inner sanctum; and looting it—Josephus’s tale that the loot was reverently taken out of the sanctum by a priest on an embassy deal to Titus is almost certainly an apologetic contrivance).

In any event, whatever is meant, the abomination has to immediately arise when the temple sacrifices ceased. That means it has to occur in 70 AD. Because that is what Mark’s cited prophecy said, and he says to pay attention to what the prophecy said.

The length of time being so much greater makes sense – at least to me, for what that is worth – for gentile, ex-pagans influenced by a tiny Jewish sect who were morphing into a post-Hebrew religion.

Paul indicates pagans had been flooding the church across three continents for an entire average adult lifetime before the Gospels were written. So no “extra” time was needed for this.

Indeed that’s why the first Gospel written is by a pagan-educated Pauline, to try and capitalize on the fall of Judea (right when the Jewish-Christian market was taking a hit for ignominy).

The Jewish Christians who tried to fix that by Judaizing Mark into Matthew actually removed or downplayed its pagan literary elements (although they are still Hellenized Jews, writing in educated Greek and thus fully aware of pagan literary tropes and forms).

Luke-Acts then comes early second century to try and resolve that dispute with a “perfected” text that allows both sects but prioritizes the Gentiles. And that’s when Jewish Christians almost don’t even exist anymore, e.g. Pliny the Younger didn’t even meet one in his account, and thus isn’t even aware the religion was Jewish.

John (our final redaction at least) is early-mid second century.

Furthermore, Mark’s focus on the Destruction of the Temple in the late 1st Century does make sense in the mid-2nd century if half the Jesus story he was rewriting was known to have been about a brave martyr-prophet who was killed in that earlier conflagration.

I don’t think you understand my point then. Mark’s principal problem is dealing with the lost temple (the fig tree narrative is entirely an apologetic for why God let that happen; the apocalypse chapter is entirely about fitting that event into the prophecy that the end was supposed to come in Paul’s day but didn’t).

That wasn’t a problem any more by 140 AD as everyone then alive was dead by then. The problem had been long forgotten by then. So there was no temple destruction to refer people to as starting the apocalyptic clock. Mark can only do that if he is writing when he could still expect the end to come within a decade or two of the temple’s destruction, not a whole generation or two later. His solve then doesn’t work. That is why he can’t be proposing this solve in the 2nd century. He can only be proposing it in the 1st.

Morreover, not only is Mark trying yo fit the temple destruction into a same-generation clock that rescues Jesus from being a false prophet, and thus solve a recent new theological problem that that destruction created, but he doesn’t bring in anything pertaining to the situation of Bar Kochba. Mark doesn’t know the temple would remain a ruin for three generations, not one, or anything about the circumstances causing Bar Kochba’s rise or his goals or predicting anything about its success or failure. There is no placement of the apocalyptic clock around that. Only the temple’s fall. That squarely puts Mark in the 1st century.

Comparably the mythical substrata about “James the Just” being killed and the Temple falling as a direct consequence and comeuppance for the Sadducess who supposedly executed “Christ’s brother” is, I think, a scrambled egg version of Jesus Ben Annaias and his heroic demise in the ruins of Jerusalem.

That’s not in the Gospels. That appears in Hegesippus (c. 200 AD), who is probably quoting a lost Acts of James, which we cannot date, but since its content betrays a complete ignorance of actual temple and legal policy in the time of Jesus or Paul, it was clearly written by a late fantasist with no knowledge pertinent to what we are talking about here (probably of the same generation as Hegesippus, so, a generation after the Bar Kochba revolt).

And I don’t see any parallels to the Ben Ananias story; compare the case made by Weeden and Evans (OHJ, 249) for what actual evidence of mimesis there looks like. But even if it were somehow built out of that, Josephus existed to do that with then, so that wouldn’t help here. By analogy, the Western redactor of Acts knew Acts used the Antiquities and added material based on it later. So people went on using Josephus for stuff like this for quite a while.

The War meanwhile was written c. 76. So Mark could have used it before even 80.

…one that revered the teachings of Jesus Ben Annias…

Note there are no teachings of ben Ananias. The entire point of his story is that he taught nothing. He simply repeated the same mad phrase over and over.

So we have no basis to tie any such teachings in anywhere else. We cannot use as premises facts that don’t exist.

By contrast, Mark is pretty much entirely explicable as reifying the Epistles of Paul, and inventing literary chreai to meet the moment (of the aftermath of the war and how that changed the needs and market dynamics of Christian communities).

And we can know that because we actually have the teachings to show it by.

It makes perfect sense that someone in the generation after Paul would create a mythology to market Paul’s teachings by, so as to capitalize on a recent catastrophic scramble of religious politics in the Western world that advanced Paul’s ulterior agenda to de-Judaize the church.

There is nothing unnatural here. As I’ve explained, pinecones aplenty can look like this (contrary to your city-boy-sounding insistence otherwise), especially when pixelated as this mosaic is. Pinecone needles can grow all the way up the stem, and when picked and prepped for display can end up exactly like this. You are simply ignoring reality.

And what is depicted here is done exactly within the limits of the low-res mosaic medium. All the standard artistic practices are used (symmetry, offset, bordering). You are simply ignoring standard artistic practice (confirmed across this mosaic).

Just gainsaying reality is not a counter-argument. It’s just abandoning argument altogether.

Meanwhile, bringing in irrelevant examples isn’t a counter-argument either. You obviously have not checked what ancient clay plates look like (spoiler: they don’t have un-flared fat rims), but regardless, a dispute over an unrelated object in an unrelated painting—not even a mosaic—has no relevance to the pinecone case.

To be clear, I don’t believe any of that is true. Rather, it motivates because it is what the parties involve believe.

That is, I don’t think Ehrman changing position on mythicism would have any effect at all on him really. But he might believe that it will, and that’s all that matters to your point.

The worst that would happen is that he’d take a lot of shit, especially from his peers. But he takes a lot of shit from the public already for everything he won’t validate for them (like, that Jesus is God or that the Gospels are reliable histories; adding “John is fiction” and “Matthew made up what he added to Mark” to the repertoire would hardly modulate much).

Meanwhile, the actual effect of taking shit from his peers (and maybe even wife) would not materially be significant, but would be emotionally significant. And that is enough to drive fear or even unthinkability.

Less famous and less secure scholars would have more to fear (losing their job, getting their career and publications sandbagged or derailed, etc.), and in many case those fears would be real; but in some, they are not (e.g. some scholars are materially untouchable by such devices now, but what matters is that they don’t believe they are untouchable, which is alone enough to dissuade; and even without that, the disinterest in suffering the emotional labor of constant attacks and vilification from their peers and friends, and disinvites to parties, and all that, can suffice to drive, again, fear or unthinkability).

That said, I don’t think fear is a factor in Ehrman’s case, but arrogance. We see this play out in his vilification of me as incompetent for suggesting Jesus was already seen as a divine being from day one; and then a few years later changing course and agreeing with me (but never mentioning that or apologizing for it) and declaring the position one of brilliant scholarship defended by many respectable peers and his own expert conclusions.

His behavior toward me exhibited arrogance. His position shift exhibited arrogance. The only thing that changed is that he finally “checked” and found out his position was not mainstream; that mine was. And with countless peer reviewed peers now to hide behind, he could safely change position. Indeed, doing so saved face (rather than the other way around), and “saving face” explains almost all his behavior (including his rare but egregious lies about screwing up).

Other scholars, I believe, are more moved by fear—as Philip R. Davies admitted he was, to both Lataster and myself, before his death; and he was retired at the time, so very little harm could be done him but to his reputation and social standing, and the emotional labor of enduring harassment from his peers for breaking ranks, and yet that was enough to silence him. The example set by the literal silencing of Thomas Brodie (by the Vatican) helped stoke fear in those vulnerable to church retribution (among other examples of that happening because of far more mundane deviations, e.g. Mike Licona, etc.), and signaled even to secular scholars the disapprobation they would receive if they didn’t toe the line too.

It is sad to see someone of Prof. Ehrman’s maturity appealing to such childish devices. Even lacking any hint of formal training in historical analysis, it should be obvious to him that, if only by its date, citing John as an independent source is laughable.

It was “simone” who suggested the term “crypto-apologetic shill” for someone else acting in Bart’s chosen role. As someone who claims to no longer be Christian, we can only speculate why he remains so invested in historicity: but as with Kipp Davis, Dan McClellan, and undoubtedly many others, his online-course enrollment would surely collapse if he admitted mythicism as a possibility.

I think a scientist should always have some doubt about things, it keeps his/her mind alive.

Take another nearby example: the pizza of the second picture. “It’s definitely pizza!” Like that top pineapple expert in 1950 in previous case, the pizza expert (forgot his name) confirmed the fact.

Question: why did no one even suggest that this was an ordinary Roman clay plate? (Spoiler: because it doesn’t sell)

I restored the photo a little without touching most of the contents of the plate:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/HbfMN33nP4EmTvQd6

Note the distance from the object to its reflection as well.

And I’d rather read about Judas from Bart Ehrman, it was really a bit unexpected news for me.

Dear Dr Carrier

Thank-you so much for taking the time to anaylse my amateur theory, and your counter-argument is compelling, no surprise. It is such a thrill that you have engaged with me – well for me, anyhow, from your point of view I can appreciate how tiresome are the enthusiasms of the non-scholastic.

Therefore, I promise to launch one more salvo from the other side of the planet (Australia) and leave it at that.

I counter-counter-argue that the Gospels, starting with Mark, were composed in the 2nd Century. Perhaps an indication of this later dating is the reference to the “abomination” befouling the Temple Mt, which did not happen in the First Century (because Caligula was assassinated) but it did happen after the Second Revolt.

The length of time being so much greater makes sense – at least to me, for what that is worth – for gentile, ex-pagans influenced by a tiny Jewish sect who were morphing into a post-Hebrew religion. “Mathew” and “Luke” are just around the corner to amplify Jesus-Odysseus as a miraculously born Hercules/Romulus, and so on.

Furthermore, Mark’s focus on the Destruction of the Temple in the late 1st Century does make sense in the mid-2nd century if half the Jesus story he was rewriting was known to have been about a brave martyr-prophet who was killed in that earlier conflagration.

Comparably the mythical substrata about “James the Just” being killed and the Temple falling as a direct consequence and comeuppance for the Sadducess who supposedly executed “Christ’s brother” is, I think, a scrambled egg version of Jesus Ben Annaias and his heroic demise in the ruins of Jerusalem.

Yet I can see why a modern scholar could still argue that Mark’s patchwork quilt of myth and propaganda – to neutralise the antipathy towards Jews felt by gentile Romans in the aftermath of Bar Kochba’s horrorshow – is, nonetheless, simply lifted from Josephus; e.g. even if it is composed in the 2nd Century, Mark could have just plagarised the trial of the oddball Jesus Ben Ananias and refashioned it according to his Christology.

Nontheless, I remain enamoured of the notion that Mark’s Jesus – the parables; mixing with women, the poor, the sick; preaching impending doom – are what Josephus left out about Jesus Ben Annias (the elements conspiculously absent from the Epistles). That this is the Historical Jesus, specifically the kernel of Schweitzer’s Ubermensch.

And as I wrote before, Mark (or the Marcan community) was a “Christian” who followed the celestial Lord of Peter and Paul. But perhaps due to an overlap between this faction and another faction/church, one that revered the teachings of Jesus Ben Annias, these two quite seprate messianic strains – but finding common cause over being predominantly gentiles harbouring apocalyptic hopes? – were fused together by Mark (with Homer as the bridge).

Why do I persist? For the non-scholastic reason that Albinus acquitted Jesus, yet the latter was killed by the Romans, broadly speaking, later on. In another chapter, Jospehus claims that Albinus was notoriously venal; he may have let off this Jesus because wealthy (gentile?) patrons stepped forward and paid off the procurator, e.g. business as usual.

Thanks again, it means a lot to me.