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

[karavan]

Nah there's no such thing as "historicism" Gisueppe, there's only mythicists and people who don't think Paul is talking about a cosmic storage of sperm in Romans 1:3 based on nothing but extreme wishful thinking. Oh, and was also buried in space per 1 Cor. 15:4, LOL. Not to mention Richard Carrier's literal outright pseudo statistics with Bayes theorem. This is *literally* pseudoscience. By the way, Geza Vermes' claim of the Philippians hymn being an interpolation is laughed at by everyone else, and Vermes only devised the silly theory because the Philippians hymn (if it *is* a hymn) debunked his personal interpretation on the status of Jesus in Paul's letters, as being non-divine. But Vermes' views on Phil 2 are without an ounce of evidence, and so they haven't convinced anyone. If you think Vermes has literally any evidence for this claim, present it. Like seriously dude, actually give me the smallest inkling of evidence for a created-as-an-adult Jesus in Phil 2. The only reference to a "man" is in v. 8, but that's a red herring, because v. 8 is not talking about Jesus' creation. It's talking about when Jesus was killed. The verses that actually talk about the incarnation in Phil 2 simply say Jesus was made in "human likeness". On your absurd interpretation, Paul believed that Jesus was made as an adult only to be immediately crucified, upon creation as an adult, in outer space. That's blatantly ridiculous. You would think Paul would have actually mentioned that, if he believed it, ROFL. Sorry dude, open your eyes and look at Galatians 4:4 where Jesus is "born" of a woman. Or Jesus being a descendant of David in Romans 1:3. Like, god damn.

_________

Another comment by Godfrey, who has zero comment on the fact that he blatantly lied about anyone "ignoring" Carrier, but now claims that they're simply ALL addressing one giant strawman so that they don't need to engage with his brilliant space sperm theories. I already debunked one of the comments above (pretty wishful thinking, or moreso blatantly denying who "the twelve" were in 1 Cor. 15). Godfrey, in attempting to debunk Litwa, writes;

"So I remain mystified by his decision to make his first chapter entirely about the “Jesus Myth Theory”."

Because Litwa is interested in the subject, and because he's clarifying that him saying "the Gospels were historicized" strictly does not mean "Jesus never existed" and he goes into some more length about the people who *do* say this. There's literally nothing mystifying about this.

After some crazy ravings about Casey's debunking of mythicism, back to what Litwa actually says and Godfrey's "response":

"Litwa manages to discuss Bauer’s “mythicist” views without once mentioning Paul or the New Testament epistles even though it was Bauer’s study of Paul that led him to conclude Jesus had not existed."

Gee whiz, like there isn't something called "space limitations". Litwa isn't engaging in a full-on study of Bauer's mythicism here.

"Litwa appears to be unaware that there are militant anti-religious atheist online forums that excoriate Jesus myth theorists and that a good number of mythicists have historically had very positive things to say about religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g. Paul Louis Couchoud, Tom Harpur, Robert M. Price — not to overlook Thomas L. Brodie)."

Total and utter red herrings: the fact that not all anti-religious cranks are mythicists doesn't change the fact that almost all mythicists are anti-religious cranks.

Litwa points out the fact that many of Brodie's parallels are ridiculous and mind-bogglingly complex and you need maze-like charts to make them "work". All Godfrey really has to say about this is;

"No quarter is allowed for any of the other parallels that are patently obvious and widely recognized in the scholarly literature."

LOL, but Litwa DOES comment on this. Specifically:

"Brodie uses bits and pieces of the Septuagint to reconstruct Jesus’s life; then he asks us to believe that Jesus’s life is actually derived from readings of the Septuagint"

"It is absolutely true that the evangelists imitated biblical stories to construct their portraits of Jesus. Yet these facts do not make Jesus an entirely literary creation."

In other words, Litwa is pointing out a basic fallacy of Brodie's logic when some real parallels exist. Namely, they simply have zero implication of the conclusion Brodie is trying to get us to believe, i.e. that Jesus didn't exist. The fact that the Gospels used some literary tropes from the Septuagint is a complete red herring to the question. "Here are some parallels with the Septuagint" =/= "all of Jesus is invented from the Septuagint or something". So Litwa just points out, and easily refutes the basic fallacy of Brodie's logic.

Godfrey then tells us all about how Litwa *accurately* portrays Carrier as a writer, not a scholar, as being intellectually fickle, inflexible and rigid, psychologically disturbed, blatantly hates Christianity, and has extremist/fringe presumptions. All of this is facts so far, and if anything still introduces Carrier in a much kinder way than Carrier introduces literally anyone he tries to refute. (Although Tim O'Neill completely wiped out his career.) Moving onto the ridiculous Rank-Raglan application of Carrier, which Gullotta already proved Carrier literally fudged the criteria on several points to make Jesus fit;

"To begin with, Litwa curiously infers (pp. 36-37) that for a literary hero to meet many of the Rank-Raglan points the author must have had such a pattern"

Nah, that's a passing comment Litwa makes in half a sentence. Litwa's argument is actually pretty simple: Carrier repeatedly misrepresents the RR criteria to make Jesus fit into the RR hero class, and then blatantly ignores the enormities of ways Jesus doesn't even fit the teeniest tiniest least bit. Despite Godfrey's further misrepresentation, Litwa isn't saying that Jesus doesn't fit ALL the criteria. Why is Godfrey lying about this? Litwa's point is that there are a mountain of failed correspondences;

"In the case of Jesus, moreover, the pattern ignores major elements of his life. What would Jesus be without his incarnation, his works of wonder, the resurrection, and so on? Other elements of Raglan’s pattern contradict the gospel accounts. Jesus’s mother was a peasant. His father or grandfather did not try to kill him. He was not raised by foster parents. Jesus did not attain his kingdom on earth (in one version, he denied that his kingdom was of this world; John 18:36). He did not lose favor among those who killed him. His killers, depicted as elite Jews and Romans, never actually favored him. Finally, all gospel stories agree that Jesus was buried."

Again, let's not ignore the fact that Carrier BLATANTLY changed the criteria, repeatedly, SEVERAL times to make Jesus fit when as a matter of fact he didn't. This is blatant lying on Carrier's part, and he needed to do it because he knows, as a matter of fact, that Jesus just isn't an RR hero. Nor is anyone an RR hero, it's not a valid reference class to begin with, LOL. But Carrier's blatant lying about the RR hero class to make Jesus fit into it is even worse: Carrier's misrepresentation of this is used as the starting point for his further pseudoscientific misrepresentation of Bayes theorem, where he uses Jesus being an RR hero (though he isn't) to determine the "background probability" that Jesus existed (a pseudohistorical approach in principle). He pulls a number right out of his arse and plugs it into the model. In other words, Litwa was dead on. Litwa didn't strawman a freakin' word.

Then, Godfrey assures us that trees grew in heaven because Revelation says so. Nah, that's a blatant lie. The paradise of Revelation is something that occurs on Earth. In Jerusalem or something. And this cosmology isn't in Hebrews either. Like, at all. There's no mention of space crucifixion in Hebrews. It's just a blatant lie. Sure, ancient cosmology held to the concept of the seven heavens, but it's a complete red herring. Hebrews literally never mentions the seven heavens. Paul mentions the (three) heavens a single time in the whole corpus, only to say that someone he knew experienced a revelation there. There is literally never a single identification, from start to finish, in Paul's corpus which places literally any of this in any of the heavens. Amazingly though, Godfrey admits that he has some doubts about Carrier's theory of Jesus' space crucifixion. If there was any hope an inkling of rationality is left in Godfrey's old head, this is it. But as it is, Godfrey has written a billion posts on the false errors of Carrier's enemies but few to any words critical of Carrier's ridiculous cosmic sperm bank theory, space crucifixion, space burial, space last supper, and so on, without the tiniest hint of actual evidence from Paul's letters themselves.

The Ascension of Isaiah also, obviously, has a historical Jesus. Here, Godfrey blatantly dismisses Litwa's citation on the date of the text because it fails to meet his presuppositions. Nah, "others said earlier" isn't enough. That's not a valid response. You need to interact with the data and recent study Litwa actually cites. And what about the fact that Carrier is misrepresenting AoI to make it have a space Jesus? Jesus is literally on Earth in this text, in both its current version and the original. Godfey actually says;

"Norelli’s revisionist argument "

God damn, the word "revisionist" there just spews so much hypocrisy it is amazing.

And on the final point, yup, Carrier is actually delusional enough to believe that concepts concerning Jesus' crucifixion has something to do with the myth of Inanna, where a crucifixion and a resurrection literally never takes place. LOL. Will Godfrey believe anything of Carrier says it? Of course. The amount of desperation just reeks at this point. But rest assured, Carrier addresses the fact that the myth was unknown later. But it wasn't, there's only Origen and Lucian who mention it way later on, already after the beliefs of Christianity had become known (as Christians and Jesus are already mentioned by Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny way earlier). So this is a red herring: you need actual pre-Christian evidence, not just something 1.5 centuries later at the earliest, to claim something is pre-Christian. This is utterly basic criteria. So of course this wasn't around before Christianity, and even if it WAS, it would still be a blatant red herring. There's obviously no connection with Jesus, because the concept of resurrection is nascent to Judaism and the resurrection of Jesus only fits the concept of resurrection in nascent Judaism. When Paul said Jesus was raised on the third day "according to the scriptures", that's what he meant. Because Paul and other Christians believed that the Old Testament foreshadowed Jesus in the history of the nation of Israel. Isaiah 53 is all about how Israel, as a collective, dies for sins and then rises from the dead. Metaphorically of course. But Paul and others thought this foreshadowed Jesus' life, and thus the scriptures prophesied Jesus' life and ministry, so to speak. And Paul is among the very earliest of the Christians. This unequivocally shows, on top of a mountain of other facts, that the resurrection concepts among the earliest Christians concerned Judaism, not freaking Inanna based on zero evidence.

As Litwa correctly notes, the gibberishness of the Romulus example is gibberish. Jesus is attested by people who knew his literal family, Romulus? Not even close.

And there it is, the whole thing debunked. That's what happens when a Neil Godfrey blog posts is tarnished with an ounce of scrutiny. And besides the long quote from Litwa I quoted on the RR hero class which Godfrey completely evades from addressing, there are tons of other points Litwa made which Godfrey doesn't address either. The pretense of a response is all we have here, which is hilarious given that it's Godfrey whose complaining that the dreaded enemies of mythicism are the ones not actually responding to Carrier.

[Giuseppe]

A curiosity, Karavan.

Are you a Christian ?

[neilgodfrey]

Will Godfrey believe anything of Carrier says it? Of course.

My, my. Despite my posting criticism after criticism on top of criticisms of Carrier's arguments. I actually can't think of any point off-hand where Carrier and I agree. No doubt some here will be able to remind me where our views coincide.

And there it is, the whole thing debunked. That's what happens when a Neil Godfrey blog posts is tarnished with an ounce of scrutiny.

Ouch! That hoits! Like a feather through my aura! Scrutiny? A strange word to use to describe a lot of decontextualized diatribe and silliness. I must repeat my apologies for trying to embarrass k by linking him/her/them with a person we do know by other means. I can fully understand his/her/their desperate need for anonymity! (Someone sure comes across as on a high from something. Maybe when he/she/they come back down to earth and back on their meds they can quietly disappear or -- god forbid -- actually seek to seriously engage in a discussion. But like others who refuse to engage me, one suspects the point is to ridicule and declaim without any serious interest in honest discussion.)

P.R. Davies, you were saying....https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=129291#p129291 ?

[neilgodfrey]

Maybe someone can inform k that to be able to claim that one has "debunked" an argument one needs to offer the "debunking" to probing and response from others. To write an essay and then declare it to be an A grade work that has "done its job" is not how serious discussion goes -- except for a raving narcissist with a Dunning-Kruger defect. Some might fear that k is approaching that level and would like to urge him/her/them to step back from going there.

[ABuddhist]

Although I would not dare to try to guess karavan's identity (even in the absence of such a prohibition within this forum), I am reminded of a similar rhetorical style's being used within the reddit community r/academicbiblical by a user (whose name I forget) against the user Chrissy_H_ for daring to say that it was not outside the pale of mainstream biblical scholarship to believe that both passages from Josephus referring to Jesus were interpolations. 4 things stand out about the debate for me.

1. The user Chrissy_H_ described emself as an ardent historicist.

2. The user Chrissy_H_'s opponent argued that only mythicists’ efforts ensure that mythicists’ and non-mythicists’ arguments that both passages in Josephus were interpolations receive any notability instead of being completely condemned and ignored.

3. The user Chrissy_H_ replied by saying that “Why would I bother engaging with the arguments of someone who has so little to say that they couldn’t be bothered to even read the scholarship, and are just repeating Tim O’Neill, whom I’ve already have tussled with elsewhere? You don’t offer a single thing worth actually thinking about.”

4. r/academicbiblical, even though it is no friend to mythicism, deleted the entire discussion rather than accepting that attempted refutations of the model that both passages mentioning Jesus Christ in Josephus as interpolations based upon insults and citing Tim O'Neill were legitimate.

I am not saying that karavan is the user whom the user Chrissy_H_ was debating with; I am only saying that karavan and the user whom the user Chrissy_H_ was debating with share a style of debating that even mainstream biblical scholars in r/academicbiblical reject, for which reason I feel vindicated in ignoring karavan's arguments until e abandons eir rudeness (and cites scholarship beyond O'Neill!).

[karavan]

"I actually can't think of any point off-hand where Carrier and I agree."

LOL, I hope you don't actually expect me to believe that. Godfrey, you've incessantly responded to every single person who has ever criticized Carrier in a scholarly medium (and there's a lot of them, as we now both know loud and clear, despite your deliberately false claim earlier that it hasn't happened). And, to my knowledge, not a vanishing single blog post where you criticize Carrier's theories. Not a single point offhand you agree with him on? LOL, you're a fanboy. I'm sure Carrier's laughing his arse off as you flock more people to his Patreon page for his mythicist ruses, which is basically how he makes his money.

None of your other comments are really relevant, given that I've fully responded to your blog post above in a pretty similar type of forum you posted them on and with equal credentials (none).

Since Chris Hansen was brought up (among several shrieks trying to get me to say more about myself), I thought it would also be worth mentioning, upon the many papers I listed earlier debunking Carrier (e.g. Gullotta showing that Carrier literally lied about, and changed the RR hero class criteria on a considerable number of occasions to make Jesus fit), that Chris Hansen has recently ALSO written a paper debunking Carrier, on the topic of Carrier's blatant misrepresentations of the Zalmoxis legends. What's better is that Hansen's paper went up in Robert Price's own mythicist journal. It's titled "A Thracian Resurrection: Is Zalmoxis a Dying-Rising God who Parallels Jesus?", from 2019.

This wasn't the only occasion Hansen exposed Carrier's failures. In Carrier's book where he actually defends the "dying rising god" trope, he cites Trygge Mettinger as showing Marduk is a dying and rising god. But as Hansen once pointed out in a blog post, the man said the literal opposite. https://amateurexegete.com/2019/12/24/a ... y-chris-h/

EDIT: Alright alright since you guys are curious I'll admit it: I'm actually Dick "The Jesus Buster Duster" Carrier, just foolin ya guys this whole time hahahahahahahahaha.

[ABuddhist]

=
Since Chris Hansen was brought up (among several shrieks trying to get me to say more about myself), I thought it would also be worth mentioning, upon the many papers I listed earlier debunking Carrier (e.g. Gullotta showing that Carrier literally lied about, and changed the RR hero class criteria on a considerable number of occasions to make Jesus fit), that Chris Hansen has recently ALSO written a paper debunking Carrier, on the topic of Carrier's blatant misrepresentations of the Zalmoxis legends. What's better is that Hansen's paper went up in Robert Price's own mythicist journal. It's titled "A Thracian Resurrection: Is Zalmoxis a Dying-Rising God who Parallels Jesus?", from 2019.

This wasn't the only occasion Hansen exposed Carrier's failures. In Carrier's book where he actually defends the "dying rising god" trope, he cites Trygge Mettinger as showing Marduk is a dying and rising god. But as Hansen once pointed out in a blog post, the man said the literal opposite. https://amateurexegete.com/2019/12/24/a ... y-chris-h/

With all due respect, you fundamentally misrepresent my citation of Chris Hansen in a way that further convinces me that you are so uninterested in reading/understanding what your opponents say that your refutations are worthless.

I was not citing Chris Hansen because I claimed that e supported Carrier - to the contrary, I mentioned that e was an ardent opponent of mythicism who described emself as an "ardent historicist" (which itself refutes your claim that historicism does not exist). Had I wanted to further elaborate upon what Hansen's being an "ardent historicist" means, then I would have cited eir refutations of Carrier. But I did not go into such detail because I was not citing Hansen as a person who supported Carrier.

Rather, I was citing Hansen as an opponent of mythicism who is wise enough to condemn debating styles based upon insults, recognize that non-mythicists have constructed cases against Josephus's having mentioned Jesus (which he accepts as true arguments), and recognize that citing Tim O'Neill is not the be all and end all of ways to refute arguments that when accepted as true support mythicism.

[ABuddhist]

EDIT: Alright alright since you guys are curious I'll admit it: I'm actually Dick "The Jesus Buster Duster" Carrier, just foolin ya guys this whole time hahahahahahahahaha.

What you say is defamatory. I will report you for this to both Mr Carrier and to this website's administrator.

I did not report Mr. Godfrey for thinking that you are Mr. O'Neill for the following 2 reasons.

1. Mr. Godfrey appears to have been genuinely confused by your switch to first person pronouns when you discussed how Mr. O'Neill was refuting his claims.

2. Mr. Godfrey, during all of his conversations within this forum, has consistently evinced a level of politeness that moved me to extend to him the benefit of the doubt.

[neilgodfrey]

"I actually can't think of any point off-hand where Carrier and I agree."

LOL, I hope you don't actually expect me to believe that. Godfrey, you've incessantly responded to every single person who has ever criticized Carrier.......

According to K's logic, if I point out misguided criticisms of the radicalization process and ideological aims of Islamist terrorists, then in K's logic I must be a supporter of Islamist terrorists. (And of course, I have done just that and been accused of that, too. That's how it goes.)

Just for the record -- not for the childish karavan who has no interest in serious discussion -- areas where I have posted disagreements with Carrier:

• heavenly crucifixion,
• Jewish messianism of the first century,
• the Ascension of Isaiah in relation to Jesus descending to the lower heaven
• the James the Brother of the Lord passage in Galatians,
• his explanation for "born of a woman" in Galatians
• the specific dating relevance of the Book of Daniel
• Nazareth
• his tone in certain venues and on certain occasions
• what I consider to be misplaced colloquialisms

There are other areas we disagree (in particular, Paul and Philo) that I have not yet posted about. (And Tim has posted other disagreements on the blog, too.) But I do agree with his Bayesian approach and much of his background data discussion. (I have applied the Bayesian approach to a wider range of evidence in some cases than Carrier has done and come to different conclusions on some details.)

Fundamentally, though, I simply have a different interest from Carrier. Carrier in OHJ is focused on testing a hypothesis for Christian origins. I am more interested in searching for hypotheses to explain the sources.

I take the existence of Jesus as a non-starter. The evidence for his existence is simply not comparable to evidence we have for very minor persons by comparison in ancient times. Whether Jesus existed or not cannot be a historical fact but is always a hypothesis. (Some recent engagements have led me to wonder if a historical Jesus might well be the best hypothesis to explain some of the evidence we have, but I am still looking into that question and will post in due course. In most areas, though, such as the question of gospel sources, the hypothesis of a HJ to explain the evidence will remain superfluous and unnecessary.)

[ABuddhist]

Just for the record -- not for the childish karavan who has no interest in serious discussion -- areas where I have posted disagreements with Carrier:

• heavenly crucifixion,
• Jewish messianism of the first century,
• the Ascension of Isaiah in relation to Jesus descending to the lower heaven
• the James the Brother of the Lord passage in Galatians,
• his explanation for "born of a woman" in Galatians
• the specific dating relevance of the Book of Daniel
• Nazareth
• his tone in certain venues and on certain occasions
• what I consider to be misplaced colloquialisms

There are other areas we disagree (in particular, Paul and Philo) that I have not yet posted about. (And Tim has posted other disagreements on the blog, too.) But I do agree with his Bayesian approach and much of his background data discussion. (I have applied the Bayesian approach to a wider range of evidence in some cases than Carrier has done and come to different conclusions on some details.)

Mr. Godfrey, although I hesitate to ask you for sources (given the vitriol that karavan may throw your way in making similar requests), I would be sincerely interested in reading the precise blog-posts. Would you mind linking them for me (and others, if they want) to read?