Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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toejam
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Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by toejam »

According to Bob Price's facebook page, he's planning on launching a kickstarter fundraiser to have him and Ehrman debate the historicity of Jesus. Or if not a debate, a "friendly exchange". Hope it happens! Somehow I get the feeling it won't though.

Ehrman was on the Skeptic Fence podcast a few months back and said he had no intention of dialoguing with Carrier but would be happy to debate Bob Price should the opportunity arise. Seems like Price is trying to put things in place.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by GakuseiDon »

That would be great! Do you have a link to the facebook announcement?

Price and Ehrman had a spat a couple of years ago after Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" book was published, as documented on The Uncredible Hallq blog here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012 ... t-m-price/

So it's good if they've moved on from that.
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toejam
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by toejam »

https://www.facebook.com/robert.m.price.77?fref=ts

This was Price's post: "Shortly I will be announcing a Kickstarter campaign for a planned debate (friendly exchange) between me and Bart Ehrman: "Did Jesus Exist?""
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Thanks toejam!
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
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toejam
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by toejam »

Update. Looks like things are in the works:

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GakuseiDon
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Thanks toejam. I hope it will be a written debate rather than a face-to-face one, to give each of them time to put down thoughts and develop arguments.

Also, does Dr Price actually have a Christ Myth theory of his own? I've never seen one outlined. The closest thing is his review of Acharya S's "Suns of God". Dr Price writes:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/price-sog-review.html
  • I had already found the solar mythology paradigm quite helpful in explaining the origin and character of much of the Old Testament narrative. Ignaz Goldziher, following Max Muller, made a powerful case for the solar/lunar/stellar identity of most Genesis (and several other biblical) characters in his masterpiece Mythology Among the Hebrews. Once one knows what to look for, Isaac, Esau, Enoch, Moses, Samson, and Elijah emerge as obvious candidates for solar myths. And Jesus certainly has many of the same marks. The others appear to be fictitious or legendary in any case. With Jesus, virtually the whole story deconstructs into various Septuagint rewrites (as Randel Helms shows) and myth-borrowings as the Scandinavian and German Religionsgeschichtliche Schule demonstrated to the satisfaction of anybody but moss-backed apologists. The only remaining question, for me at least, has been whether Jesus Christ was a man transfigured into mythic proportions by the imagination of his admirers, or whether he began as an imaginary deity and was subsequently made historical in the manner suggested for the Greek deities already by the ancient Euhemerus. We will shortly see the perspective Acharya takes on this pivotal question...

    Again, please keep in mind that I agree with Acharya on the basics: the mythical life of Jesus Christ was derived from many long-standing myths, many or most of them derived ultimately from ancient astronomy. I just don't see convincing evidence for there having been crucifixion stories about Krishna or the Buddha. That is a disagreement between scholars. I am not trying to debunk her as apologists for religious traditionalism try to debunk both of us. But what about Jesus?

    As I read through Suns of God, the question occurred to me again and again: Okay, you have demonstrated that there were plenty of crucifixion myths and crucified gods. But does that prove Jesus wasnt actually crucified, any more than it proves Spartacus wasn't? Why couldn't a historical Jesus have been like Spartacus, or better, like Cleomenes, the radical king of Sparta? He was chased off his throne and out of his homeland for advocating land reform. He fomented unrest all over the Eastern Mediterranean until he died in Alexandria. Then they crucified his corpse. Women admirers of the slain king came to his cross to mourn (Plutarch tells us) and swore they beheld a snake crawl up to protect the face from desecration by vultures. Hence, they concluded, he was a son of the gods. I doubt there is any reason to declare Cleomenes a myth. He has the kind of historical rootage Jesus lacks, though we can see how he was already passing into a cloud of legend. Why not Jesus?

    Acharya's answer is striking. She is discussing Sir James Frazer's fascinating theory that the gospel character Barabbas and Philo's character Carabbas both reflect an otherwise suppressed late continuation of human sacrifice among Jews, and that all victims, representing the surrogate king in a sacred king sacrifice, were called Barabbas, son of the father. Then she says, It is probable that there was at least one Jesus Barabbas sacrificed in this manner during the decades that the gospel Jesus was said to have lived (p. 462). Even if there were a dozen or more historical Jesuses who had been sacred king sacrifices, it is not their biography being told in the gospel. The gospel tale represents a fictionalized, archetypical account of the ritual murder so commonly committed in the ancient world (p. 463). What this says to me is that the ostensible difference between the Bultmannian view (there was a historical Jesus, of whom we know virtually nothing, because he was lost in a haze of mythical glorification) and the thoroughgoing Christ-Myth hypothesis (there was no historical Jesus, only myths) is moot.

    The case would be exactly analogous to that of King Arthur. There may have been a Romano-Celtic chieftain named Arthur whose name is preserved in the Round Table epics, but does that count as a historical King Arthur? There may have been a Celtic bard named Myrrdin, whose name was attached to Merlin the Magician, but would it be meaningful to call him the historical Merlin? Suppose I am watching the film Excalibur with my daughter, and we see Merlin summon up a supernatural fog, then change Uther's visage and cause his horse to ride upon the cloudbank to the castle of Cornwall, and my daughter asks me if Merlin really existed. To paraphrase a Unitarian minister of my acquaintance, I suppose I might answer my daughter, If you want the long answer, yes. If you want the short answer, no. If my daughter and I are watching King of Kings, and we see Jesus walk on water and raise Lazarus from the dead, and she asks me if there was a historical Jesus, I'd have to give her the same answer. I think that is the answer Acharya is giving us, and I agree with her.
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toejam
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by toejam »

Personally, I would prefer a face-to-face, though hopefully in the form of an extensive back-and-forth conversation rather than a rigid debate format where it can turn into a game of debate tactics.
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gilius
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by gilius »

Check out the Price Vs. Atwill debate:
http://www.infidelguy.com/index.php/com ... /component

Price lost!
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by GakuseiDon »

toejam wrote:Personally, I would prefer a face-to-face, though hopefully in the form of an extensive back-and-forth conversation rather than a rigid debate format where it can turn into a game of debate tactics.
If it is face-to-face, it would be good if they concentrate on one topic. I'd like to see it focussed on "evidence for a historical Jesus", so that Ehrman would need to justify the sources used in determining that there was one. I don't think Price is committed to any one view of a mythical Jesus, so "HJ vs MJ" would be rather uneven. (ETA In the link provided above by gilius, Price states that he leans towards a celestial Jesus. Note that interview was done in 2006.)
Last edited by GakuseiDon on Wed Feb 11, 2015 4:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
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John T
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Re: Ehrman v. Bob Price debate?

Post by John T »

Oh, I can't wait to hear Price's snarky comment that Jesus didn't walk on water but instead he was water-skiing.

"Once one knows what to look for, Isaac, Esau, Enoch, Moses, Samson, and Elijah emerge as obvious candidates for solar myths."...Price

I'm sure that Dr. Price could also do the same for Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Once you are willing to suspend rational reasoning you can turn any famous historical person into a myth.

I can see the new Dr. Price 3,000 years from now. George Washington was a myth. The myth says he prayed to the sun of god to give him a miracle as he was surrounded by his enemies when a providential thick fog swallowed the sun allowing his men enough time to escape Long Island across the East River unnoticed by the British fleet.

Yep, if you know what to look for you can turn anyone including George Washington into a myth.

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
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