Carrier: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jesus?

[steve43]

Most "scholars" downplay the significance and intensity of the Second Temple High Priesthood against the early Christian leadership.

It is understandable that this would tend to make later folks inclined to separate out the Christians from the "mainline" Jews as early as possible, even if their reasons were specious.

A close reading of Josephus and the NT shows that not only were Ananus and Caiaphas and the priests of their time against Jesus and his group, but this was extended through to the executions of James the Just. The High Priesthood likely even played a role in the persecutions of Nero against the Christians in Rome.

Of course, if you think Josephus wrote fiction, and the NT was made up, this would not make ANY sense to you at all.

[MrMacSon]

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I have often wondered that myself especially since the entire religion is based on a Jewish carpenter ...

I read somewhere recently that 'employing' builders was a common theme when starting narratives about new projects or theologies.

[MrMacSon]

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Of course, if you think Josephus wrote fiction, and the NT was made up, this would not make ANY sense to you at all.

Josephus likely wrote some fiction or inadvertently got some things wrong; to what extent is the question.

The NT on the other-hand, had lots of hands over lots of years.

[Blood]

But why reference Jewish writings, why fit with Philo and the two powers doctrine, if early Christianity wasn't Jewish? Certainly the hostility within Judaism could sustain the early Christian identification (in the gospel) of Jesus as the second power who communed with the Patriarchs. How couldn't this belief be Jewish?

Do you see a lot of Jews in second and third century Christianity? No? Then why is it impossible to imagine the same thing happening in the first?

People have no problem spotting Hellenized Judaism, but are blind when it comes to Judaized Hellenism, aka Christianity. It is not surprising that Jews exposed to Greek language and texts would be influenced by those texts, but somehow it's beyond the pale to suggest that Gentiles exposed to Jewish texts would be influenced by those texts, even though we have 20 centuries of evidence to prove that they were and are. But somehow this was impossible during some mythical and extremely brief "early" period.

[Stephan Huller]

This isn't 'authentically Jewish' enough for you:

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.

[DCHindley]

This isn't 'authentically Jewish' enough for you:

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.

Plato would have preferred to share wives in common ... no need for divorce. None of that sort of thing in Judaism, exceptin' when yer married brother drops dead childless. Or yur a king. Then you could just "put them away."

DCH

[Stephan Huller]

Except that Heschel rightly points to the testimony of those (Jewish) heretics who said that only the Ten Utterances were from God distinguishing the other 603 commandments that only came from the authority of man (Moses). It is curious the way the Pentateuch was written. Aquila uses the same line of reasoning to say circumcision wasn't established by God

[Solo]

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I have often wondered that myself especially since the entire religion is based on a Jewish carpenter ...

I read somewhere recently that 'employing' builders was a common theme when starting narratives about new projects or theologies.

Yeah, verily : 1 Cor 3:10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder (architekton] I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it.

Best,
Jiri

[maryhelena]

James McGrath takes Carrier to task for referencing Ehrman in his Bible and Interpretation article. The Bible and Interpretation site linking directly to McGrath's blog.

The Carrier Train Wreck Continues
McGrath Blog: August 29, 2014

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringo ... inues.html

The Carrier Train Wreck Continues

What Carrier says after summarizing his view of things is nothing short of remarkable. He writes: “Such is the theory. Why might we conclude it’s the more likely explanation? Because the sequence of evidence aligns with it. As Bart Ehrman himself has recently confessed, the earliest documentation we have shows Christians regarded Jesus to be a pre-existent celestial angelic being.”

This is such utter nonsense, and thoroughly hypocritical, that it makes me doubt that Carrier has any interest in engaging in serious discussion. He has elsewhere argued that Ehrman’s work is so full of errors that he is incompetent and completely untrustworthy, even when defending the consensus view that all work on the historical evidence in recent years points to, and not just Ehrman’s own. Yet when Ehrman makes an idiosyncratic case for his own atypical view, it is called a “confession” and accepted without question, and no mention of the details of Ehrman’s book which show that “angel” and “human” were not viewed as mutually exclusive categories in this period, and so the point does nothing to support his mythicism.

What Carrier offers in these recent online posts isn’t scholarship. It is apologetics, of the sort we regularly see conservative Christians engage in – the denigration of scholars, and then the favorable quotation of them when it suits one’s purposes.

[Stephan Huller]

But Ehrman is right. The name he doesn't utter but knows by heart is Marcion.