Threads in this series
Thread title | Link | |
1 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 1 of 12: Sections 1 thru 3, What I liked and didn't like | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10555 |
2 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 2 of 12: Section 4.1 Epiphanius's Nazorians | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10557 |
3 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 3 of 12: Section 4.2 Ascension of Isaiah's Celestial Crucifixion | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10562 |
4 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 4 of 12: Section 4.3 Plutarch's Osiris | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10565 |
5 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 5 of 12: Section 5 Carrier's Rank-Raglan Reference Set | |
6 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 6 of 12: Section 6.1 Talmud Jesus 70 BCE | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10568 |
7 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 7 of 12: Section 6.2 1 Clement | |
8 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 8 of 12: Section 6.3 Ignatius | |
9 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 9 of 12: Section 6.4 Hegesippus | |
10 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 10 of 12: Section 6.5 Evidence of Acts | |
11 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 11 of 12: Section 6.6 Evidence of the Epistles | |
12 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 12 of 12: Section 7 Conclusion |
It'll take me a while to write up my "Part 5 Carrier's Rank-Raglan Reference Set", so I'll skip it for now and post Part 6.1 first. From this review onwards, I will look at ALL of the arguments in OHJ that contribute odds against historicity. In this thread, I will examine his argument that the Babylonian Talmud shows Jesus Christ living around 70 BCE.
[SLIDE]
ANALYSIS: Carrier uses the Babylonian Talmud, which is much too late and unreliable as a historical source for early Christianity. He also uses Epiphanius, whom I showed earlier did not in fact write about a sect of Christians who believed Jesus lived around 70 BCE.
VERDICT: Strong Pushback. The evidence doesn't support Carrier's assertion.
CONTRIBUTION TO ODDS:
Carrier's Best Odds for Historicity: 4/5
Carrier's Worst Odds for Historicity: 1/2
Carrier argues that evidence suggests that there was a First Century CE non-canonical Gospel that narrated a Jesus born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem and executed under Alexander Jannaeus in 70 BCE. He uses two sources for his argument: Epiphanius and the Babylonian Talmud. I've already shown that Carrier has misread Epiphanius on this. But what about the Babylonian Talmud?
Carrier explains this source:
This includes one very late source, the Babylonian Talmud, completed in the fifth century (the early Middle Ages), which I will consider only because it says things very different from what the NT does and therefore would appear to be independent of the NT-unless the things it says are polemical inventions created in response to the NT (or some other Gospels outside the canon). In fact, a common conclusion scholars reach is that because it is so late, its contents don't in fact trace back to any actual first-century source at all; although, as l will show, that would make its contents very hard to explain. I suspect it reflects (and responds to) a first-century non-canonical Gospel (as I will explain in the next chapter). Its relevance, either way, is limited but not lacking.
Carrier recognises the lateness of the source, but he argues that if there were sects of Christians placing the Jesus character in more than one time period, then this would be unlikely under historicity and so contribute to mythicism:
How can the descendants of the original sect of Christians have come to believe Jesus lived and died a hundred years before our Gospels say he did? It is nearly impossible to imagine how such a doctrine could have developed. Unless there was no historical Jesus. Then he could be placed in history wherever each sect desired.
OHJ, p. 536
... the peculiar existence of two separate traditions about when Jesus lived (placing him a century apart) leaves us with a factor of 2 to 1 against historicity (or 50% against 100%), or at least 4 to 5 (80% against 100%).
Carrier explains that scholars believe that the references to Jesus in the Talmud were hidden under a number of "code names", though there is disagreement about how firm the associations are. Carrier references Robert Van Voorst's "Jesus Outside the New Testament" a number of times, and I'll also use the same work to provide some background.
Van Voorst examines a number of code names in the Talmud that scholars propose might refer to Jesus: "Ben Stada", "Balaam," "a certain one," "Ben Pandera" (or "Pantera") and "Jesus the Nazarene". Van Voorst rules out the first three -- Ben Stada, "Balaam" and "a certain one" -- and then looks at the code names "Ben Pantera" and "Jesus the Nazarene", both of which Van Voorst views as referring to Jesus Christ.
Carrier himself looks at three code names: "Ben Stada", "Ben Pandera" and "Jesus the Nazarene". He writes about the first two code names:
This Jesus was also known as 'Ben Stada', meaning 'Son of the Unfaithful', a woman named Mary... Ben Stada, who was thus also known as 'Ben Pandera'
...
Van Voorst insists 'Ben Stada' is not our Jesus, but none of his arguments are valid.(7)
I looked at Carrier's footnote for (7) and it read:
Now, knowing how Carrier has a habit of misreading sources, I immediately thought, "I bet a million dollars that Van Voorst didn't contradict himself." And I was not disappointed. Carrier had indeed misread Van Voorst. Van Voorst doesn't contradict himself between pages 116 and 120. He is in fact writing about two separate code names: "Ben Stada" and "Ben Pantera":
We begin with the passages featuring the supposed code names "Ben Stada", "Balaam," and "a certain one," which some argue are references to Jesus.
Van Voorst, p. 114
To begin with, modern scholars are correct to discount most "code" references to Jesus, especially "a certain one," Balaam, and Ben Stada.
Van Voorst, p. 116
Neither can Ben Stada be a code name for Jesus...
This matches with Carrier's comment that Van Voorst doesn't see Ben Stada as being a code name for Jesus. Van Voorst continues, this time writing about Ben Pantera:
Our results so far have been negative, but the final proposed code name, Ben Pantera (sometimes given as Ben Pandera) is reasonably identified with Jesus.
Van Voorst, p. 120
Claims of Jesus' illegitimacy and especially the Ben Pantera identification presuppose an earlier, well-developed Christian tradition of the virginal conception.
Van Voorst, p. 121
We have seen how the tradition of Jesus' illegitimacy, and the Ben Pantera story related to it, arose from the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth. This doctrine was not explicitly formulated by Christians until near the end of the first century (Matthew and Luke), and even then may not have been widely shared as a leading doctrine by other Christians...
So, no contradiction at all. It's very clear that Van Voorst is stating that Ben Stada was not a reference to Jesus Christ, but that Ben Pandera was. It's another example of Carrier's sloppy research, and it underlines the need to ALWAYS check Carrier's references to ancient sources and modern scholars.
Van Voorst believes the story about Mary having an affair that results in the birth of Jesus indicates that the story in the Talmud was sourced some time after the First Century. We can see similar accusations in the writings of Celsus, as captured by Origen. If those accusations were indeed a reaction to the story of the Virgin Birth, it suggests a Second Century CE origin to those accusations.
The final code name is "Jesus the Nazarene". This is generally accepted by scholars as being a reference to Jesus Christ, and to a Jesus Christ living in 70 BCE, in the time of Alexander Jannaeus. As Carrier notes:
... the point is that here we have knowledge of a completely different gospel tradition placing Jesus the Nazarene, apostate, 'son of the virgin Mary', under Alexander Jannaeus, with a different crucifixion account. occurring in a different location...
The apostate 'Jesus' under Jannaeus is still explicitly identified as 'Jesus the Nazarene' and as being stoned and crucified 'on the day before the Passover' (on 'a Sabbath eve' even) for 'practicing magic and leading Israel astray'. So we clearly see that the Jews who compiled the Babylonian Talmud only knew of a Jesus executed under Jannaeus, not any Jesus executed under Pilate. And Epiphanius confirms that some Torah-observant Christians, from the original sect of Christianity, actually did preach that. So there was some sort of Gospel circulating in the East, from a more conservative and faithful descendant of the original Christian sect, that narrated a Jesus born of the virgin Mary (as the Jewish polemic in the Talmud entails these Christians were claiming) in Bethlehem (according to the Christians themselves who adopted this version of events) and executed under Jannaeus for working miracles and 'leading people astray'.
Was there indeed some sort of Gospel by an original Christian sect that narrated a Jesus born of the virgin Mary, in Bethlehem and executed under Alexander Jannaeus? I think inferring the existence of an original Christian sect, much less a Gospel by them, is a step further than the evidence can bear. Certainly the Epiphanius side of Carrier's argument doesn't support this view at all, as I showed earlier.
So what do we make of a reference to Jesus Christ living in 70 BCE? I'll turn now to Earl Doherty, who wrote on this topic in his "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man". Doherty is a mythicist, so may be biased against finding any kind of historical Jesus in early sources. But I've found that he rarely if ever misreads his sources when referencing modern scholarship. Doherty writes:
Two other passages in that Talmud refer to Jesus the Nazarene. The first (in Sanhedrin 107b) has Jesus excommunicated, concluding with the line:
And a teacher has said, "Jesus the Nazarene practiced magic and led astray and deceived Israel."
The latter is a clear reference to the Christian Jesus, but it is appended to an anecdote about someone who was excommunicated for inspecting a woman too closely. In its present form, the anecdote specifies "Jesus the Nazarene" as the one excommunicated, by the rabbi he was traveling with. But it cannot in any way represent a real or older Jesus tradition, for we can identify earlier versions of certain of its component elements, and they have nothing to do with Jesus.
A similar situation is found in another obscure passage of the Babylonian Talmud. In Sanhedrin 103a, the meaning of a Psalm verse is being discussed, one option being "that thou mayest not have a son or disciple who burns his food in public like Yeshu the Nazarene." The same phrase is included in another passage to offer a meaning for a different Psalm verse. But it happens that we have a quotation of the second passage in a lexicon of rabbinic texts compiled in the early 12th century, known as the Arukh; there our concluding line does not mention Jesus at all, but rather Manasseh (king of Judah 698-642 BCE)... the Arukh predates by more than two centuries the oldest extant manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud (the "Munich" manuscript of 1342) which contains the reading of Yeshu ha-Notzri...
...
Indeed, one of the difficulties in evaluating the rabbinic literature is the fact that we have no early manuscripts. The oldest of the Mishnah dates from 1400, the Tosefta from about 1150, the Palestinian Talmud from 1299, the Babylonian from 1342, with portions from the late 12th century.
So, we have two hypotheses on the table to explain the references in the Babylonian Talmud:
1. There was some sort of Gospel circulating from an early Christian sect, that narrated a Jesus born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem and executed under Jannaeus. The writers of the Talmud decided to include this information by writing about a Jesus who was a sorcerer and a Mary who cheated on her husband, because they wanted to take jabs at Christians and their Christ story.
2. Over a thousand year period, texts were subtly rewritten to take jabs at Christians and their Christ story.
I think the evidence supports the latter hypothesis.