Brodie vs Carrier on historicity of NT Paul

[maryhelena]

Thomas Brodie has been 'welcomed' by mythicists for his position that the gospel figure of Jesus is not a historical figure. However, Brodie also proposes that the NT figure of Paul is not historical. Two mythicists taking opposite positions on Brodie are Richard Carrier and René Salm. This thread will seek to look at the issues involved in Brodie's ahistorical figure of Paul for the Carrier-Doherty mythicist theory and for the ahistoric/mythicist position in general.

René Salm: Thomas Brodie’s nuanced analysis furnishes academic support for the view that “Jesus” and “Paul” are both literary fictions. This is not only of great service to mythicists—it is mythicism. His work will also be of great service to all researchers interested in Christian origins. Through detailed New Testament source criticism, Brodie has convincingly shown that the central texts of the Great Church are creative fiction proclaiming an invented savior.

http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2013/03/ ... odie-pt-3/

Thomas Brodie: Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus	Richard Carrier: Brodie book review and blog comments.
What hit me was that the entire narrative regarding Paul, everything, the thirteen epistles say about him or imply — about his life, his work and travels, his character, his sending and receiving of letters, his readers and his relationship to them — all of that was historicized fiction....It was fiction, meaning that the figure of Paul was a work of imagination, but this figure had been historicized — presented in a way that made it look like history, Page 145. And with it comes the question of whether, like Hebrew narrative, the 13 Pauline epistles are historicized fiction......we are now faced with epistolary fiction. Page 152.	....the false premise has to do with his treatment of the Pauline epistles. .....and he deals with them almost not at all. In fact, his answer to them is to declare them all forgeries, and Paul himself a fiction. Brodie makes no clear case for this conclusion, and what arguments he does have are fallacious (e.g. the letters have certain features that forged letters sometimes share–except, so do authentic letters), and the position as a whole is too radical to be useful. http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2795
The idea that Paul was a literary figure did not remove the possibility that behind the epistles lay one outstanding historical figure who was central to the inspiring of the epistles, but that is not the figure whom the epistles portray. Under that person’s inspiration — or the inspiration of that person plus co-workers — the epistles portray a single individual, Paul, who incorporates in himself and in his teaching a distillation of the age-long drama of God’s work on earth. Page 146/147	Paul’s historicity is far better attested than that of Jesus: because we have the things written by Paul himself! http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... ment-16891 As to the more skeptical point that the epistles are a fabrication altogether, that is simply not a tenable premise to use in this debate–even if it could be argued, any argument depending on it becomes less probable than the same conclusion reached without it. Rhetorically, therefore, you need to prove Jesus didn’t exist without relying on that premise. If you then want to argue that even Paul didn’t exist, that’s a whole other challenge. One I have no interest in. See my remarks previously. http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2839

[MrMacSon]

"What hit me was that the entire narrative regarding Paul, everything, the thirteen epistles say about him or imply — about his life, his work and travels, his character, his sending and receiving of letters, his readers and his relationship to them — all of that was historicized fiction....It was fiction, meaning that the figure of Paul was a work of imagination, but this figure had been historicized — presented in a way that made it look like history"

Thomas Brodie: Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus p145

Too many bare assertions and mere linking of them - Brodie (or someone else) would do well to argue this properly.


As for Carrier

Paul’s historicity is far better attested than that of Jesus: because we have the things written by Paul himself!

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... ment-16891

That is vacuous beyond belief .... As is the next sentence -

"You can only assume “the evidence for Paul’s historicity is equivalent to that for the historicity of Jesus” if you assume the letters are forged."

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... ment-16891

"Explained", I guess, by this

If you then want to argue that even Paul didn’t exist, that’s a whole other challenge. One I have no interest in.

Carrier is ethically obliged to engage with the arguments or assertions of those who think the Pauline's are inauthentic.


As for this -

As to the more skeptical point that the epistles are a fabrication altogether, that is simply not a tenable premise to use in this debate – even if it could be argued, any argument depending on it becomes less probable than the same conclusion reached without it.

the last point -

• "even if it could be argued, any argument depending on it becomes less probable than the same conclusion reached without it."

is unfathomable. Nonsensical. A non-sequitur, at least.


Carrier makes this vague comment -

But he [Brodie] doesn’t explain how [the Paulines] contents can still make sense within the context of a non-historical Jesus

in this blog post - http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2795

But that is a non-sequitur, at least. In the context of a non-historical Jesus, the Paulines don't have to 'make sense"!!

These are non-syllogisms missing terms & premises. Very Illogical. Invalid as 'argument'.
.

[maryhelena]

Tom Dykstra on Brodie's book.

It’s not just Gospel stories about Jesus that are literary fictions: Paul himself is a literary construction, since “down-to-earth details concerning Paul are composed on the basis of specific Old Testament texts — details of plot and scene and emotion.” (140) For example, Paul calls the Galatians stupid which sounds like anger, but when you reconnoiter in the Old Testament, especially in the Greek version, you find a similar text in Jeremiah, where the great prophet effectively calls the people mindless, and then repeats it with intensified effect (Jer. 5:21, 23). . . . Galatians is not raw emotion. It contains a rehearsed literary adaptation of ancient Jeremiah. (141)

Likewise, parts of 1 Corinthians correspond to Deuteronomy. Even the litany of resurrection sightings in 1 Cor 15:1-8 is “a very careful literary synthesis of older texts.” (150)

The story of Paul in Acts is likewise historicized fiction. The storm and shipwreck is modeled on well-known literary accounts of storms, and the rest of the voyage parallels the Old Testament story of people being deported and brought to captivity in Babylon in 2 King 25.

------

Brodie recognizes that these are not common interpretations in scholarship today, but when he reached these conclusions he searched to see if they had occurred to anyone else. He discovered that at the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century the biblical scholar Bruno Bauer had already proposed that Paul and Jesus were both mythical creations, and a number of people who followed him in that belief. And of course the New Testament is a continuation and literary inheritor of the Old Testament, and many scholars such as Thomas Thompson, John Van Seters, and Robert Alter have shown that historicized fiction is typical of the Old Testament.

http://tomdykstra.wordpress.com/2012/12 ... -new-book/

[MrMacSon]

.
Dykstra makes better points & arguments, including this one

... As Brodie puts it, "If a newspaper announces cheap flights to Mars, it is important to note whether the advertisement occurs in the Travel Section or in the Cartoons-and-Jokes Page. Clarity on the literary factor is Rule One.” (122)

"If, as Brodie asserts – and he backs up his assertion with evidence – the literary context of the New Testament is historicized fiction created by rewriting Old Testament texts, Rule One trumps the other “critieria for historicity.” Sure, there are texts that speak of eye-witnesses and reliable transmission of historical data, but it is a mistake to read such a text as historical, "without asking sufficiently whether it is actually historical or whether it is simply written to look like history." (122-3) Even such things as accurate geographical knowledge aren’t necessarily evidence of historicity – Virgil’s Aeneid also shows accurate knowledge of places.

You reach different conclusions once you take into account the literary character of the New Testament books. So, for example, John Meier in A Marginal Jew interprets texts that present Jesus as a new Elijah to mean that 'a historical Jesus thought of himself as standing in the line of Elijah/Elisha'. But the simplest explanation that fits the literary data is that "the evangelists adapted the biblical figure of Elijah to draw the picture of Jesus." (158)

http://tomdykstra.wordpress.com/2012/12 ... -new-book/

[DCHindley]

So,

If fiction shares linguistic features with historical narrative (and it does), we have license to wave away anything represented in a narrative source that we find offensive as "fiction," and imagine whatever reason or motivation we want for the production of said fiction?

Like ... as if! This kind of approach is getting wearisome.

DCH

[maryhelena]

So,

If fiction shares linguistic features with historical narrative (and it does), we have license to wave away anything represented in a narrative source that we find offensive as "fiction," and imagine whatever reason or motivation we want for the production of said fiction?

Like ... as if! This kind of approach is getting wearisome.

DCH

"wearisome'? Nah....it opens the door to an exciting future for research into early christian origins

[Clive]

If there is a brain or a team behind the epistles and the gospels it should be reasonably easy to tease out with modern computer technology.

I would look again at the politics - two possibilities come to mind - Seneca, or if it is all much later - a friend of Constantine's mum!

[MrMacSon]

.
If fiction shares linguistic features with historical narrative (and it does), we have license to wave away anything represented in a narrative source that we find offensive as "fiction" ...

I wouldn't say it's a case of "waving away anything ... we find offensive" - it's a case of evaluating the narratives, and re-evaluating them in light of others' evaluations; & in light of other narratives of the times - their theological, political, sociological, & anthropological aspect; and how those narratives changed during those times.

[Leucius Charinus]

Thanks for the OP maryhelena. Interesting.

I too wonder why Carrier, who is usually careful to advance his command of the evidence, dismisses Brodie on the historicity of "Paul". I would be interested to hear all about his reasons for interpretting the evidence and thereby arrive with a conclusion that in the historicity stakes "The Buck Stops at St. Paul". Specifically I'd like to determine whether or not Carrier makes mention of the Dutch Radicals position on the integrity of the Pauline Letters - the hypothesis of inauthenticity.

Here is a background article: http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/detering.html

• Conclusion
  
  The question of the authenticity of the so-called Principal Epistles, raised for the first time by Bruno Bauer and Dutch Radical Criticism, should no longer be put under taboo by researchers. Exactly the crucial fundamental questions in New Testament scholarship are far too important for them to be left to amateurs or fantasists. Professional theologians, too, should not deprive themselves of the liberty to think in new channels. No one will be surprised that modern research will be sufficiently resourceful to come up with different, non-radical solutions for the series of irregularities and problems in the Pauline Epistles found by the Dutch Radicals.75 We should, though, when considering all this, not lose sight of the most plausible of all the possibilities, the inauthenticity of all the Epistles brought to the fore by the Dutch Radicals, which enables us to solve all the separate problems with one single model of explanation.
  
  A lot of water will, it is true, have to flow under the bridge of scholarship before the hypothesis of inauthenticity finds general acceptance. An enormous scholarly job awaits us if we are to further unfold and confirm in tough and meticulous labour what has been indicated here in rough contours. All in all, however, I am sure that there is today hardly any assignment for New Testament research that promises a richer result for our historical knowledge of primitive Christianity than an investigation of the Pauline documents from the perspective of Dutch Radical Criticism. And this at a time, alas, when the saying remains true, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few" (Mt 9:37).

I am also interested in what Brodie has to say about the fabrication of canonical texts. Thanks for the link to the review. I have a superficial understanding about what Brodie is attempting to outline to scholarship. It seems to be a process of mapping stuff out of the Greek LXX and into the Greek NT. I don't know his exact argument but I get the feeling that it relies on something like the following .... The more mappings Greek LXX to Greek NT that can be identified, the more it suggests a literary construction rather than an historical construction.

What does Brodie say about the "IS" code used in the LXX for "Joshua" and the NT for "Jesus"? This is a mapping of just one fundamental code.

Was Brodie influenced by the Dutch Radicals questioning of the authenticity of the Pauline epistles or did he independently arrive at this conclusion?

[MrMacSon]

.
I too wonder why Carrier, who is usually careful to advance his command of the evidence, dismisses Brodie on the historicity of "Paul".

It's not just a question of Carriers views of Brodie's views of Paul. It's that Carrier seems to accept Paul's historicity without question.

It would be appropriate for carrier to apply the same methodology to Paul that he applies to Jesus.

Specifically I'd like to determine whether or not Carrier makes mention of the Dutch Radicals position on the integrity of the Pauline Letters - the hypothesis of inauthenticity.

Likewise.