*sigh* That is why I said Mythicism is a Shibboleth. You better be waving around the same books!!!
It is a brute fact that exactly one of :
1. The talmud and the Gospels refer to the same Jesus
2. The talmud and the Gospels do not refer to the same Jesus
Is true. The problem is, the Carrier-justified argument wants to have it both ways: It wants to assume that #1 is true--so that the Talmud and (pre)Gospels are both talking about the same Jesus--the same one which the talmud supposedly denies the existence of--but then, they want to slide on over to #2, so that they can say that by asserting the existence of one Jesus, it is denying the existence of a different Jesus.
I.e. for that argument to work, you have to believe *both* #1 and #2, which are flatly contradictory. Its no good saying I'm wrong about this, you just did just that:
Here, you are clearly assuming #1:
And here you slide on over to #2:You continue to ignore the implication of an identity between the pre-Gospel Jesus and the Talmudic Jesus. The next question then is: do you accept the definition of minimal historicity given by Carrier?
Which is it? Does the Talmud refer to the same Jesus or not? Does it refer to the Jesus you want to claim it denies the existence of, or not?The implication is that the texts (i.e. epistles) preceding the first gospel were referred to that Janneus' Jesus. While the first gospel talked about a Jesus under Pilate. Are they the same Jesus? No.
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This is why I said Mythicism was in its "late stage, decadent" phase...sooner or later, people take the writings of the founders so seriously that they forget they are human too, and sometimes adhering to them is embracing a contradiction. Not casting aspersions here, it happens to every movement sooner or later. Its happened to me on more than one occasion, and no doubt it will happen to me again.