Thread title | Link | |
1 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 1 of 17: 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 17: Section 4.1 Epiphanius's Nazorians | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10557 |
3 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 3 of 17: Section 4.2 Ascension of Isaiah's Celestial Crucifixion | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10562 |
4 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 4 of 17: Section 4.3 Plutarch's Osiris | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10565 |
4 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 5 of 17: Section 4.4 Bad Apologetics Carrier's Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10669 |
5 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 6 of 17: Section 5 Carrier's Rank-Raglan Ref set | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10603 |
6 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 7 of 17: Section 6.1 Talmud Jesus 70 BCE | viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10568 |
7 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 8 of 17: Section 6.2 1 Clement | |
8 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 9 of 17: Section 6.3 Ignatius | |
9 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 10 of 17: Section 6.4 Hegesippus | |
10 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 11 of 17: Section 7.1 Acts Vanishing family | |
10 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 12 of 17: Section 7.2 Acts Paul's trials | |
11 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 13 of 17: Section 8.1 Epistles non-Paul | |
11 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 14 of 17: Section 8.2 Epistles Gospels in Paul etc | |
11 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 15 of 17: Section 8.3 Epistles Things Jesus did | |
12 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 16 of 17: Section 9 Miscellaneous | |
12 | Review of Carrier's OHJ, Part 17 of 17: Section 10 Conclusion |
I've reordered my list of review items and added a few more. I wasn't planning on including the Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory but since I've seen it popping up on some anti-apologetics websites I thought I'd add it in.
"Apologetics" is defined as the "systematic argumentative discours in defense of a doctrine, usually religious". There is good apologetics, and there is bad apologetics. Good apologetics is a defence that is grounded in principles that have already been established. Bad apologetics is a defence that uses an adhoc principle and usually a belief that "God can do anything". Good apologetics is rare, bad apologetics can be found anywhere.
An example of bad apologetics is trying to explain the implications of Joseph being called "son of David" in the Gospels (Matt 1:20). In the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, genealogies show how the line of generations went from Abraham (Matthew) or Adam (Luke), through to David and then generation by generation onto Joseph. Matthew lists Joseph's father Jacob. Luke lists Joseph's father as Heli. Both Gospels trace the descent from David through to Joseph. And Jesus, son of Joseph, is naturally also a descendant of David... and then someone decides to create a Virgin Birth doctrine! The genealogies in Matthew and Luke became irrelevant. Why trace the generations from David to Joseph to show that Joseph was the descendant of David, if Joseph wasn't Jesus' actual father?
Obviously the best explanation is that there was an earlier layer to the Gospels where Jesus was regarded as the natural son of Joseph. We know from Justin Martyr that there were early Christians who believed that Jesus was natural product of a man and a woman, beliefs that are reflected in the early heretical groups like the Ebionites. Apologists provide a selection of solutions, so that if one doesn't work they can jump to another. That's bad apologetics. But the most obvious answer is the least acceptable to the orthodox since it runs against their orthodox narrative.
Carrier's Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory is bad apologetics. I'm not surprised that Carrier uses bad apologetics given his poor reading of sources and his poor arguments. But I am surprised that there are bloggers online and on Youtube who are correctly critical of bad Christian apologetics but then interview Carrier and give his Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory a free pass. Carrier uses so many bad arguments in presenting his Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory that I'm surprised that there is little to no pushback from bloggers.
Carrier's Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory is his controversial idea that God took sperm from David and used it to build a body for Jesus. Thus, when Romans 1:3-4 describes Jesus as "seed of David according to the flesh", Carrier proposes Paul means that God took sperm directly from David and later built a human body for the celestial Christ. Carrier explains that mythicism itself doesn't stand or fall on the Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory, since, as I show below, he has an alternate solution that he can jump to: "seed of David according to the flesh" as allegory.
Arguing a fortiori in favour of historicity, Carrier gives odds of 2/1 as best odds for historicity for "born of a woman" and "seed of David". But his own judgement is that minimal mythicism entails that God using the sperm of David to create a body of flesh for Jesus is close to 100% probability:
Minimal mythicism practically entails that the celestial Christ would be understood to have been formed from the 'sperm of David', even literally (God having saved some for the purpose, then using it as the seed from which he formed Jesus' body of flesh, just as he had done Adam's). I do not deem this to be absolutely certain. Yet I could have deduced it even without knowing any Christian literature, simply by combining minimal mythicism with a reading of the scriptures and the established background facts of previous history. And that I could do that entails it has a very high probability on minimal mythicism. It is very much expected. So my personal judgment is that its probability is as near to 100% as makes all odds. (page 581)
Carrier uses three passages to build his argument:
- 2 Samual 7:12-14 God's promise to use David's seed
- Romans 1:3-4 "Seed of David according to the flesh"
- Gal 4:4 "Made of a woman"
From Freethinker Podcast "Legendary Interview With Edouard Tahmizian & Dr. Robert M. Price (4th Interview)!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjj4ar3-iws
Later:
55:25 [Edouard Tahmizian] "Dennis R McDonnell brought up a good point: "It's not that Paul couldn't have meant what you said about the cosmic sperm bank and all that, and then you know, getting the astral Jesus a physical nature" -- it's not that Paul couldn't have meant that, but the thing is, how do you think Paul would think that the the readers of his work would have interpreted his references? That's where the killer is. Because no one's going to know -- First Century Jews or even the Gentiles -- is going to be reading that letter of Paul and think what Carrier's saying: "Oh it means a cosmic sperm bank" stuff. They're going to think he came from, like, an actual physical descendant of David"
Tahmizian's point is a good one, and one I will return to. If Carrier himself doesn't know whether Roms 1:3-4 is literal (via a Cosmic Sperm Bank) or allegorical (via Gal 4), how would Paul's readers know?
First, let's look at 2 Samuel's prophecy about the seed of David:
1. 2 Samuel 7:12-14:
2 Samuel 7:12-14 is clearly referring to David's son Solomon. Solomon built the First Temple, "a house in God's name". Obviously the sperm is being passed on from David in the 'traditional' way. There is no collecting of sperm and storing it somewhere. Curiously Carrier never informs his readers in OHJ that 2 Sam 7 is talking about Solomon, nor that "I will raise up your sperm after you, which shall come from your belly" in context refers to David having sex with a woman who gives birth to Solomon.
To be clear: no-one outside Carrier has proposed that 2 Sam 7 can be read that way. There is no indication that Paul used 2 Sam 7 at all in developing his theology. There is no evidence that anyone else in ancient times viewed 2 Sam 7 this way. Yet in an amazing feat of mind-reading, Carrier has reached back 2000 years and determined that Paul not only used the passage but viewed it exactly as Carrier requires him to have read it. This is bad apologetics.
Carrier continues:
And yet the rulers descended from David failed after generations, and Jews give various reasons why. This raises the question: descendants of David ruled for hundreds of years, but what happened after that stopped? How likely would it be that someone in the First Century CE would have known whether they were a descendent of David? Might a jump from David directly to Jesus via a Cosmic Sperm Bank be more 'plausible'?
However, it does seem that Jews kept track of their genealogies (though how accurate these were is a different question). Simeon ben Gamliel, a Jewish leader who died around 70 CE, was considered a descendent of David. From Wiki:
The great-grandson of Hillel the Elder, he was considered to be a direct descendant of King David.
He is one of the Ten Martyrs mentioned in Jewish liturgy. According to the Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon he was beheaded, along with Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha the High Priest, prior to the Temple's destruction...
Another example: Hegesippus relates a fanciful story about the grandchildren of Jude, "brother of Jesus according to the flesh", who appeared before the Emperor Domitian around 90 CE. Domitian asked them if they were descendants of David, and they said 'yes'. Not via a Cosmic Sperm Bank presumably, since they were descendants of Jude, brother of Jesus according to the flesh, and not descendants of Jesus himself; but through natural means.
So the claim to be a descendant of someone who lived hundreds of years earlier wasn't unusual, and these were represented using the terms "son of" and "seed of". Both Joseph and Jesus are called "son of David" in the Gospels. Jesus was called "seed of David" (Jhn 7:42) and the Jews called themselves "seed of Abraham" (Jhn 8:33)
As Carrier notes, God was believed to have been able to do anything, and so that might have included maintaining a cosmic sperm bank:
Those later Jewish legends, if relevant at all, are from about 1000 years later. Yet a Cosmic Sperm Bank would have been very useful to early 'historicist' Christian apologists to resolve issues around both Joseph and Jesus being "sons of David" without them being related:
- The Cosmic Sperm Bank would have been a useful concept for early Christians. Think of the long genealogies in Luke and Matthew which I discussed earlier, tracing Jesus via Joseph, generation by generation, from Abraham (Matthew) or from Adam (Luke) up to Joseph. How much easier to invoke the Cosmic Sperm Bank and jump from David straight to Jesus, leaving the problem of ending the line at Joseph? But if early Christians didn't know about a Cosmic Sperm Bank, then those long genealogies in the Gospels are explained.
- The Cosmic Sperm Bank would have been a useful concept for later Christians who got stuck with the Virgin Birth narrative. In the end some decided that it was actually Mary who was the seed the David, at odds with the idea of patriarchal succession. How much easier to declare the seed of David implanted by the Holy Spirit from a Cosmic Sperm Bank? But if later Christians didn't know about a Cosmic Sperm Bank, then the confusion over the Virgin Birth and the descent from David via Joseph (even though Mary was a virgin) is explained.
2. Romans 1:2-4 "Seed of David according to the flesh"
I've quoted Dr Price earlier as saying that Carrier has "got to get out of Romans 1:3-4". Price's own suggestion is that "seed of David" might be a later interpolation to combat heresies, or that Paul is quoting a hymn that doesn't match Paul's own pre-existent Christology. Dr Price believes those options are "much more likely than this crazy thing [Cosmic Sperm Bank Theory]".
Carrier provides the following translation for Romans 1:2-4:
concerns his Son, who was born from the sperm of David according to the flesh,
who was appointed to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead (page 532)
He gives two possible readings of "sperm of David according to the flesh" that are consistent with minimal mythicism:
- A literal meaning: God took David's sperm from a Cosmic Sperm Bank to construct a human body (page 533)
- An allegorical meaning: "every Christian comes from 'the sperm of Abraham' by spiritual adoption; Jesus could have been understood to come from 'the sperm of David' in a similar way." (page 575)
I've already looked at the literal meaning and how there is no support for a Cosmic Sperm Bank. Taken literally, Paul seems to be suggesting that Jesus is the descendent of David, at least according to the flesh.
For the allegorical reading: Carrier is right that Paul saw the Gentiles as the adopted "seeds of Abraham", so descendants "according to the promise" (Gal 3:29). But Paul's use of "seed of David according to the flesh" seems unambiguous.
Carrier does suggest that the allegory Paul uses in Gal 4 might carry over to Rom 1, so let's look at that now.
(continued)