The author of the review is gDon, Tim.
gDon, to form my definitive opinion about the
Asc. of Isaiah, I should read before this interesting
book, especially the article of Roig Lanzillotta found in it,
''The Cosmology of the Ascension of Isaiah : Analysis and Re-Assessment of the Text’s Cosmological Framework''.
At moment, I see that even the view by a conservative scholar confirms the indipendence of that text from any Gospel ''tradition'':
It is not possible in my advice to show that it [the Asc. of Is.] uses the Gospels later became canonical, while it is clear that it uses traditions very near to these used by the evangelist Matthew.
(my rapid translation from E.Norelli,
Ancora sulla genesi dell’Ascensione di Isaia)
Therefore we are lucky to have a text that preserves a (pre-?)Christian tradition ignoring the Gospels. I think that just to show
mercy to historicist thesis, Dr. Carrier has not set that text in his calculations of of the posterior probability. I think that an ''agnostic'' position about the
Asc. of Isaiah (once we reconstruct the
original text) is not allowed: that text is either historicist or it is mythicist.
Tertium non datur.
At moment, I think that the original text is
already evidence of mythicism by the mere fact that the person who
first felt embarrassed (or surprised) by the absence of any reference to a Gospel Jesus was
precisely the Christian interpolator who inserted the ''pocket gospel'' in it. This is an even different situation from Paul's epistles, lacking of any interpolated ''pocket gospel'' of similar kind. If someone did feel the desperate
need of adding the ''pocket gospel'', then he was very surprised by his
absence in the original text,
even more than us.
And note that this is different from the marcionite Jesus, who does at least
a lot of things on Earth before to die.
Note that nothing is said about the precise location of the 'tree' where the Son is crucified. If that 'tree' is on this Earth,
where precisely? In America? In China? In Israel? We don't know.
Everywhere means nowhere. As the Eden of Genesis when it is thought to be in
this world.
From that point of view, I want to make me sure that prof Norelli is wrong when he says that some bits of the 'pocket gospel' (the birth of the Son later found in Matthew, too) were part of the
original text.
If Norelli is right, then the Asc. of Isaiah, in my view, is evidence of historicity.
En passant, I see that 9.12 reads:
And this Beloved will descend in the form in which you will soon see him descend - that is to say, in the last days, the Lord who will be called Christ, will descend into the world.
''called Christ'' is the same construct found in Antiquities 20.200. As a Christian interpolation, no surprise that it is found in a
Christian text.
. One thing that surprised me was that if I didn't know any better I would have thought I had simply structured my review around section 2 of yours... as far as I can tell we point out exactly the same things: