Gullotta and Hurtado versus Carrier: a 'dialogue' between deaf

[Peter Kirby]

If Jesus were not real, then Christianity would be reduced to a religion based upon non-material gods. But the same can be said about other religions, and has no bearing upon whether the religions are true

https://peterkirby.com/theology.html

“Those who are content with a Jesus who is simply a mythical embodiment of an idea or symbol are not likely to join communities anyway, and neither will believers be satisfied with such. For believers God cannot be an idea or possibility but is a ‘holy reality’ (197). It is therefore consequential that their faith is connected to one who truly struggled, lived, conquered, and died.” (The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, pp. 67-68)

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p122a3p1.htm

Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of Christian faith: "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." [1 Jn 4:2]

https://lutheranreformation.org/theolog ... carnation/

And for our justification to be accomplished, He must be both. He must be a man to suffer and die. He must be God for His death to count as payment for all the sins of all people. Luther puts it this way:

“We Christians should know that if God is not in the scale to give it weight, we, on our side, sink to the ground. I mean it this way: if it cannot be said that God died for us, but only a man, we are lost; but if God’s death and a dead God lie in the balance, His side goes down and ours goes up like a light and empty scale. Yet He can also readily go up again, or leap out of the scale! But He could not sit on the scale unless He became a man like us, so that it could be called God’s dying, God’s martyrdom, God’s blood, and God’s death. For God in His own nature cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is called God’s death when the man dies who is one substance or one person with God.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_theology

It is fundamental for Orthodox Christians that they accept Christ as both God and Man, both natures complete. This is viewed as the only way of escaping the hell of separation from God. The incarnation unites humanity to divinity. Orthodox Christians believe that because of that Incarnation, everything is different. It is said that St Basil stated: "We are to strive to become little gods, within God, little jesus christs within Jesus Christ". In other words, Orthodox Christians must seek perfection in all things in their lives; and strive to acquire Godly virtue. It is believed that God, through assuming humanity, makes it possible for man to participate in divinity.

[neilgodfrey]

It just occurred to me that one reason I am often thought to be a mythicist is that I engage with questions that are sometimes pivotal to various mythicist views. Example: the text in Galatians speaking of James the Lord's brother. Perhaps some people think that the only interest in such a question, the only reason to question the conventional wisdom, is in order to take up some war cry against Christianity and "prove Jesus did not exist". But I don't see such questions in that way at all. To stick with the Lord's brother example, there are very good reasons to question both the authenticity of the passage and what it might mean anyway that are not related to the mythicist debate. I have posted about these reasons elsewhere but I suspect some people can't see beyond "mythicism vs historicism" and so miss the far more interesting areas to explore. Major questions arise in relation to nearly all of our other evidence for early Christianity if we take just a few moments to pause and think through all the implications if a brother of Jesus really were a head of the Jerusalem church in the time of Paul. Thinking these through has nothing to do with whether Jesus existed. If the verse in Galatians is a gloss (for which there is indeed some evidence) then that, too, does not mean Jesus did not exist.

It is the hangup about Jesus mythicism/historicism that too often gets in the way of some of the most interesting explorations into the evidence we have at hand.

[ABuddhist]

https://peterkirby.com/theology.html

“Those who are content with a Jesus who is simply a mythical embodiment of an idea or symbol are not likely to join communities anyway, and neither will believers be satisfied with such. For believers God cannot be an idea or possibility but is a ‘holy reality’ (197). It is therefore consequential that their faith is connected to one who truly struggled, lived, conquered, and died.” (The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, pp. 67-68)

Although I am not denying that Christian sects believe that Jesus was, at some level, a person upon this Earth's surface, my point was that if Christianity were to be reduced, through some events, to conceding that Jesus was not physically upon the Earth, this would not eliminate the potential role of Jesus as a saviour like Amitabha Buddha or another non-material god.

[karavan]

"That one is news to me. I didn't know I denied the twelve are the twelve disciples."

See your response to Gathercole dude, you denied his point that "the twelve" in 1 Cor. 15:4 are "the twelve disciples" as if there's a serious or plausible alternative, LOL.

""Wishy washy mythicism"? Is that because you can't pin me down as a mythicist? "

Of course I do LOL. If you think Jesus existed, feel free to go right out and say it, and why you think it. But keep in mind, "Jesus agnostic" obviously just means "closeted mythicist". Your whole "I don't care about whether Jesus existed" also just means "closeted mythicist".

And Nah, you're a Carrier fanboy and feel a need to vigilantly defend him from virtually any criticism you can find of him anywhere. But you've clearly and wholly accepted his pseudoscientific use of Bayes theorem and felt a huge need to confirm his conclusions by taking other ridiculous routes to dispatching passages like Gal. 1:18-19; 4:4, among other total gibberish.

P.S. Per your most recent comment, LOL, no, there aren't *any* good reasons to think Gal. 1:18-19 is an interpolation. That, sadly, is plain wishful thinking to tile away blatantly disconfirming evidence. Luckily, I don't live in a world where I feel a gigantic need to call everything incompatible with my views "INTERPOLATIONS!!!", which is something that Carrier actually does with an obsessive heart: BOTH Josephan passages, Tacitus, the part in Paul where Paul says Jesus got crucified by authorities (forgot the exact reference), Suetonius, and on and on and freaking on. In a way, you simply complete the list. Instead of mental gymnasticing your way around Gal. 1:18-19; 4:4 in the inane way Carrier does, you just add literally the rest of it to the interpolation category.

P.S.S. I'm *quite* interested in knowing if you buy the whole space sperm theory. I admit I'm just looking for another way to get a good laugh here, but seriously dude. Do ya?

____

ABuddhist has achieved his "VICTORY" against me that Godfrey doesn't always lap up *everything* Carrier says. While this isn't a victory (more like a relief ... somewhat ... he still vigilantly defends Carrier from virtually all critique, in a ridiculous apologetic way I debunked earlier when it came to both Gathercole and Litwa), it's definitely the closest thing to a "victory" ABuddhist has after I smackered his mythicism earlier.

P.S. ABuddhist, your first four points are totally irrelevant. Like, do you really want me to respond to those, and just keep laughing at you for getting triggered at calling myself "Dick (the Jesus Buster Duster) Carrier"? But the stuff about Islam is actually mildly interesting and not hyper-repetitive, so it's worth commenting on that, since Muhammad mythicists really are as insane as they appear to be. (Or perhaps just plain ignorant. Or sometimes both.)
a) You're going to need to clarify what you mean by this, it's QUITE unclear.
b) Nah that's BS, the date of the Sanaa manuscript PROVES that its references to Muhammad are contemporaneous, or at least insanely close to being contemporaneous. In any case, the Quran is absolutely contemporaneous to Muhammad.

I was hoping you were going to say more about the Islam topic (would be a refresher to me smacking mythicism around), but unfortunately not.

But yes dude, Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. I mean, it's pretty explicit in the sources.

P.S. Is that an attempt to reconstruct Christianity without Jesus? If so, it makes no sense to me. Paul shows TONS of interest in Jesus as a person, from noting his twelve disciples, his crucifixion and burial, his leading disciple, brother, a number of his teachings, lineage from David and a Jew, the last supper and so on. The idea that Paul has nothing about Jesus as a person is pseudohistorical wee woo gibberish. More can be added to this short list. The Gospels have disagreements on minor details, but by and large the paint roughly the same picture of Jesus. So that totally fails. You keep lapping onto the lack of "sources" as if it was customary to list your sources back then. But we can pretty easily tell that these Gospels had access to yet earlier sources. And finally, the lack of debate about Jesus in the extant sources proves WHAT exactly? LOL. It's undeniably and blatantly obvious that Christianity can't exist if Jesus didn't exist. The suggestion otherwise requires you to believe in a celestial Jesus at some point in Paul who got later historicized, which is a known clunker of a view. Otherwise, Paul knew Jesus own disciples and family. That settles, literally, everything. Movements also don't magically happen out of nowhere, new sects grow around teachers and leaders. This is a basic fact of social psychology.

________

@MrMacSon

"So (1) how do you, karavan, think Paul 'defined an angel' ?"

Paul doesn't literally lay out a definition, so it's impossible to say with precision. But we can definitely say that the angels were beyond the natural world for Paul, that they are God's servants, and that they belong to the created order of things. I've not literally studied the subject so I'll leave that there for now.

"On what basis do you say, "for *Paul*, Jesus was not an angel" ??"

Because he literally distinguishes them in Romans 8:38-39. And Paul elsewhere repeatedly describes angels as a class/order of beings, like humans (e.g. 1 Cor. 13:1). Nope, haven't read those books.

[ABuddhist]

Example: the text in Galatians speaking of James the Lord's brother. Perhaps some people think that the only interest in such a question, the only reason to question the conventional wisdom, is in order to take up some war cry against Christianity and "prove Jesus did not exist". But I don't see such questions in that way at all. To stick with the Lord's brother example, there are very good reasons to question both the authenticity of the passage and what it might mean anyway that are not related to the mythicist debate. I have posted about these reasons elsewhere but I suspect some people can't see beyond "mythicism vs historicism" and so miss the far more interesting areas to explore. Major questions arise in relation to nearly all of our other evidence for early Christianity if we take just a few moments to pause and think through all the implications if a brother of Jesus really were a head of the Jerusalem church in the time of Paul. Thinking these through has nothing to do with whether Jesus existed. If the verse in Galatians is a gloss (for which there is indeed some evidence) then that, too, does not mean Jesus did not exist.

Indeed; I have repeatedly within this thread cited your references to scholars opposing mythicism who conceded that the reference was an interpolation.

I honestly wonder whether there may now be developing a taboo around challenging such verses' authenticity, given that their authenticity has become so crucial to defending the theological and secular orthodoxy that Jesus existed. In order to address hypothetical objections by karavan, I must emphasize that I am not saying that there is a taboo, nor that such a taboo may not be justified - I am only raising the possibility that such a taboo may be arising.

A similar taboo, it seems, has arisen around the references in Josephus's works to Jesus, from what I understand: during the 19th century it was much more acceptable to openly deny the authenticity of one or both references, but now, as I learned through reading Reddit, the ardent historicist Chris Hansen's acceptance of such arguments has gotten him condemned and insulted within r/academicbiblical.

[Peter Kirby]

https://peterkirby.com/theology.html

“Those who are content with a Jesus who is simply a mythical embodiment of an idea or symbol are not likely to join communities anyway, and neither will believers be satisfied with such. For believers God cannot be an idea or possibility but is a ‘holy reality’ (197). It is therefore consequential that their faith is connected to one who truly struggled, lived, conquered, and died.” (The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, pp. 67-68)

Although I am not denying that Christian sects believe that Jesus was, at some level, a person upon this Earth's surface, my point was that if Christianity were to be reduced, through some events, to conceding that Jesus was not physically upon the Earth, this would not eliminate the potential role of Jesus as a saviour like Amitabha Buddha or another non-material god.

You said:

"But the same can be said about other religions, and has no bearing upon whether the religions are true"

It would be more accurate to say that there are some Christian sects for whom it has no bearing, but for most Christian sects - including most of the Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic traditions - it is fundamental to what their religion means to them.

[karavan]

"I am only raising the possibility that such a taboo may be arising."

And you do so based on just as much evidence that you or Neil has that any of these passages are interpolations to begin with based on one or two scholars you dug up from the 1960s, LOL. Imagine if mythicists were fine with my dismissing mythicism based on as slender a basis as they use to dismiss things like the obvious originality of Gal. 1:18-19. Not happy at all.

"A similar taboo, it seems, has arisen around the references in Josephus's works to Jesus"

Nope, no such taboo dude. It's called "more evidence has been found". In the 1970s, a new attestation of Josephus' passage was discovered which looked more like the originally unmodified version that scholars predicted, since the dominant scholarly position is a *partial* interpolation.

P.S. Proof that Chris Hansen has been "condemned" for his views on Josephus ANYWHERE? The only people who condemned and literally suppressed Chris Hansen was mythicists, who forced him to revoke himself from some of the public conversation on the subject.

[Peter Kirby]

And you do so based on just as much evidence that you or Neil has that any of these passages are interpolations to begin with based on one or two scholars you dug up from the 1960s, LOL.

Imagine confusing the number of scholars you can dig up with the quality of the evidence.

[karavan]

"Imagine confusing the number of scholars you can dig up with the quality of the evidence."

But am I *really* making this confusion? I actually commented at longer length on the quality of the evidence earlier in this very thread, on page 3 I think. The quality is that, well, there's no quality. By the way, there *tends* to be a correlation between a position dying in academia and the amount of evidence there is for it at any given moment.

[ABuddhist]

P.S. Proof that Chris Hansen has been "condemned" for his views on Josephus ANYWHERE?

Alas, the thread dealing with such a thing was deleted from reddit and from its archives, which you will probably interpret as evidence that I am lying about such a claim. But here are the links if you are interested: https://vridar.org/2020/11/16/bad-histo ... issenters/, in which I cite https://snew.notabug.io/r/AcademicBibli ... reputable/