On Marcion as THE difference between Carrier and Doherty

[Giuseppe]

(NOTA BENE: an alternative title for this thread may be ''marcionite influence on Richard Carrier'' but maybe it's too ironical)

We all know already that Carrier insists again and again that a historicist Paul is ''unexpected = surprising = paradoxical = improbable'' (it's fun to add more and more similar adjectives before of using the last by me put in bold).

But note that Doherty is very less possibilist than Carrier: when Doherty says that the pauline letters exclude an historicist concept of Jesus, he is denying de facto the same possibility of a historical Jesus in Paul.

While Carrier allows that possibility only to conclude that it is more improbable than the possibility of a mythical Jesus in Paul.

Then I wonder: isn't Carrier saying impliciter that a surprising Paul is a marcionite Paul ?

I learn from prof Vinzent that Marcion loved to show the paradox of the his docetic Jesus in the form of continue antitheses between old and new, between flesh and spirit, etc.

But isn't a historicist reading of Paul a real paradox? A real marcionite antithesis? A cosmic deity is apparently a man who walked on this earth: contradiction, antithesis, surprise, paradox.

If Carrier sounds really marcionite in essentia when he argues that a historicist Paul is a surprising Paul, isn't he concluding that a historicist Paul is :

1) really Marcion in person, or
2) an anachronistic interpretation of Paul (as marcionite and post-marcionite)

This fact would make Doherty, to my knowledge, the more anti-marcionite scholar among all the scholars. More anti-marcionite than the same catholics.

By excluding the same possibility of a historical Jesus from the pauline epistles, Doherty is claiming impliciter that even the same historicist reading of Paul, in virtue of the surprise that it raises again and again, is a marcionite and therefore later reading of Paul.

Time ago, Carrier said that his reading of Doherty's books made him only a Jesus Agnostic. And that only his further investigation made him more sincerely mythicist.

From a certain point of view, this is true insofar Carrier has simplified the Doherty theory removing all the zavorra of his Q speculation about the origin of the Gospels.

But now I see that Doherty has more reason of being mythicist than Carrier, because he can accuse of ''masked marcionism'' any person who allows the possibility of a historicist - and therefore ''surprising'' - reading of Paul.

In short, if you are surprised by reading Paul according to a historicist reading, then you are betraying really marcionite influence.

[DCHindley]

Giuseppe,

You say "Carrier said that his reading of Doherty's books made him only a Jesus Agnostic. And that only his further investigation made him more sincerely mythicist."

Yet then, I must ask,

If this photo is supposed to be a likeness of Jesus ...

Jesus pretending to be Carrier-1.jpg (6.99 KiB) Viewed 1847 times

Then, in this photo, Carrier seems to be pretending to be Jesus!

Carrier pretending to be Jesus-2.jpg (26.76 KiB) Viewed 1847 times

But we see that he is at best a Jesus agnostic, and at worse a Jesus mythicist, so why imitate Jesus?

Rather than entertain the absurd notion that Carrier might be employing sarcasm towards our Lord and Savior, I propose the even more absurd concept that Jesus, being all-knowing, projected the above image into the brains of medieval artists so as to make available, to jesters like me, a means to mock the most able future opponent the world will ever know (I mean by this, Carrier).

DCH
(a note to readers: If you are offended by the statements set hereto, they are meant as HUMOR! If you are not offended, then they are true-isms that are intended to astonish and amaze)

[Giuseppe]

It seems, behind your irony, that you are the one offended by the (by you presumed) excessive pride of himself (et similia) of Richard Carrier. I believed in a first moment that Carrier is just as you have described him. But secunda facie I consider him a very humble and simple person.

Simplicity is not a moral defect, I think.