GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:22 pm
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:39 am- 2) he says that by doing so (considering an earthly mythical Jesus against historicity), he is not generous with historicity. It is a kind of fair play.
I don't understand what you mean, sorry.
Carrier himself said me that, if I had followed the Parvus's theory (about only an earthly mythical crucifixion), then I would have
increased the probabilities against historicity and not decreased them. This is easy to understand, isn't it? The historicist should prove
not only that Jesus was not in outer space,
but also that he was really historical from a real POV (and not only in the mind of Christian hallucinators). Clearly it is
quasi a mission impossible, since our only decisive sources are only of Christian hallucinators.
But from the other hand, the problem for mythicists is that the definition of earthly mythicism can't exorcize definitively the possibility that the earthly Jesus of Paul was a historical Jesus too. I mean: it can't exorcize that possibility
as and better than the outer space mythicism does. From this more intellectually honest POV, earthly mythicism has to be labelled as
Jesus Agnosticism. This term fits the fact that Wells never said that "Jesus never existed" (a clear example: he was always open to the possibility that the essene Teacher was the
real historical Jesus) , while Doherty could well say so.
This is the reason Ben appears dangerously as a crypto-Christian in my eyes. Can you prove that his secret agenda is not the following:
- 1) Jesus is earthly in Paul
- 2) Jesus can still be mythical
- 3) but with equal probability an earthly Jesus can still be historical
- 4) the faith is not missing in the Christians
- 5) therefore: the Christian faith is saved for other 2000 years.
If you are intellectually honest, GDon, then you have to recognize that the point (
3) is true. Ben himself considered the earthly mythicism as a
compromise in the middle. A compromise is by definition something that satisfies
both the sides.