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

[karavan]

Damn dude, a "fundamentally wicked person" because I take mythicism as a bit of a joke? And yep, YEC and mythicism are actually surprisingly similar. Peddled almost entirely by amateurs, in a huge want to quote anyone behind them with any sort of authority because they lack representatives among actual experts, massive and wild reinterpretations of everything that contradicts them, and on and on. Oh, and ridiculous conspiracy theories of the academy being out to get them based on literally not a hint of evidence.

You also spend a huge number of words on things that don't really get you anywhere. I don't know why you simply don't address the point, but here it is again: not for a lack of trying, Carrier hasn't gotten anything peer-reviewed for <seven> <literal> <years>. As for Godfrey's blog, he cites a total of four people. One is Earl Doherty, who has zero credentials and is a complete amateur. Another person, Couchoud, is literally a French philosopher who died in 1959. This guy is going to some *serious* lengths to find anyone who agrees with him. The next guy is J.C. O'Neill, who died almost twenty years ago. His argument was extremely circumstantial — the passage didn't fit what O'Neill assumed was Paul's understanding of the law. Usually, when you have a specific understanding of what a text says and then you find part of that text contradicts your theory of it, you're supposed to give up your theory. But O'Neill wasn't having it — his interpretation couldn't be wrong, it was Galatians that was interpolated. Amazing. Even worse, O'Neill's analysis is all wrong (assuming Godfrey is correctly representing him). Verses 8-10 have no relevance to 4-7? Of COURSE they do. It's the same subject. The prior verses are talking about someone in slave position being freed. Paul then, in 8-10, uses the metaphor of us starting out as slaves but then being freed from this by Christ and not wanting to be in our previous states again. Could Paul say things not so great about the law in Gal 4? Of course he did, he does so earlier in Gal 3 as well, despite Gal 3 being the basis for Godfrey saying that Paul couldn't say what he said in Gal 4. Amazing. "Doesn't address the Judaizers" is a red herring ENTIRELY, as if the whole of Galatians was against the Judaizers rather than a small part in the end of Gal 2. In other words, the analysis is all wrong. The only person left, besides this guy who died two decades ago, is R. Joseph Hoffman. That's the only living guy mentioned in this whole article, who similarly has no evidence of interpolation besides the Marcion thing I already dispatched earlier. I've dealt with Hoffman's claims on these topics before, and they're almost all wrong as usual.

Then there's the mass of apologetics around Galatians. Nah, Galatians isn't disputed in its authorship. Nor is that passage disputed by any actual scholars today. The first blog by Godfrey (you really love relying on that guy for your thinking, don't ya?) literally is nonsense, claiming that Galatians somehow needed to be frequently cited as proof of James' brotherhood as if people were debating mythicists back then, LOL. But in both the Gospels and in Josephus, James is also brother of Jesus. (This is the part where you whip out yet another ridiculous fringe theory, upon the thousands you've already erected, to get rid of that Josephan reference as an interpolation. What a beautiful magical, wishful world one gets to live in where the mountains of texts refuting them are literally all interpolations.) But yes, pretty much all scholars accept the authenticity of Gal. 1:18-19, and Godfrey has to dig back 70 years to find someone otherwise. But if you dig hard enough, you can find anyone claiming anything is an interpolation. The problem is the actual *evidence*, and on that note, both Gal. 1:18-19 and 4:4 are obviously, unambiguously authentic.

The rest is all pseudo, mental gymnastics. "PAUL WAS LYING ABOUT JAMES BEING A BROTHER!" or "PAUL WAS COMPLETELY STUPID, HE RANDOMLY CAME TO THE BELIEF FOR NO ACTUAL REASON THAT JESUS HAD A BROTHER", or "LORD IS ACTUALLY MAYBE JUST GOD, NOT JESUS AT ALL, DESPITE THE FACT THAT JAMES IS THE BROTHER OF JESUS IN THE GOSPELS AND THAT PAUL USES "LORD" AS A BYWORD FOR JESUS HUNDREDS OF TIMES", and finally, the ridiculous "SPIRITUAL BROTHER" interpretation that has been so deeply refuted by O'Neill as to be a total red herring. https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/ ... -the-lord/

By the way, Neil Godfrey is not an "atheist amateur biblical scholar". That's a self-contradiction in terms. He's just an "atheist amateur", and you have to rely on his blog for literally everything because he's the only guy in the mythicist world who freely spends his hours digging as far back into history as possible to find any theory, no matter how ridiculous, to support mythicism. Basically, Godfrey can do literally nothing more than dig the trenches of academia to put together a mass of dead, fringe theories into one sort of hyper-ridiculous tangled mess to support his biases. But there are actually standards, these days, for claiming an "interpolation". One would be <actual evidence, and maybe a manuscript or something, which we have for all actual interpolations>.

But there's no way to save Godfrey, because Godfrey is wrong about everything, all the time. The "Jesus ben Ananias" figure is a red herring at best, probably an invention based off of the Jesus of the Gospels. After all, the Gospels easily predate Josephus and Paul predates it further. It also makes zero logical sense that Christians would invent Jesus based off a literal random figure of zero significance in Josephus rather than that that character was just quickly made up based on Jesus by someone.

That second point is a total red herring. Besides passing mentions of Jesus' notoriety in several regions, the vast majority of the Gospels have 99% of Jesus' career in Galilee. SO O'Neill hit the head on that one. Besides, what are these complete and utter random points you're responding to O'Neill on? Can you actually respond to his posts of relevance, i.e. the ones to do with James or something? LOL.

Nah, we don't have contemporary references to people in Jesus' position in Jesus-like figures. That's just a fact. Josephus is literally the only historian that has survived of 1st century Israel. The mention of those figures contemporary to Josephus is solely a product of the coincidence that they happened to live close in time to Josephus. ANY Jesus-like figure in Israel, who lived prior to Josephus, and more around Jesus' time, is not contemporaneously mentioned anywhere. This includes several figures who raised actual armies against the Roman Empire.

But again, all that was a complete and total, utter red herring. Besides Godfrey failing on all these points, you've produced literally nothing to challenge O'Neill on anything to do with the topic at hand. Rather, you've bought into Godfrey's extreme cherry picking of literally any detail he can find to response to. The fact that I was able to so easily, completely debunk Godfrey is sufficient to dismiss him. And you literally rely on Godfrey for everything you think on this subject, that you didn't get from Carrier. And that's it. These random handful of cherry picked details which have nothing to do with anything to do with the topic at hand are your whole basis for dismissing Tim O'Neill. I guess that shows how desperate mythicists are to ignore Tim O'Neill — four cherry picked "errors" which actually aren't errors at all. Literally, *four* for God's sake. If you held Godfrey or Carrier to even the slightest standards you're holding O'Neill to, you would consider both of them a laughing stock yourself, personally. After all, I can find thousands of laughable errors in their corpus of "work". The cosmic space sperm theory, which they've both been desperate to defend, should be sufficient to single handedly dismiss the two of them as completely and utterly desperate. By the way, you haven't commented on the fact that Paul never says anything about any of what he mentions as happening in outer space, at all, ever, even once. But without the slightest hint of evidence, we're supposed to believe that Jesus was crucified and buried in outer space and did the Lord's supper in outer space and was manufactured from sperm in outer space (based on things I debunked earlier which you haven't responded to) and that all the other inconvenient passages in literally all our sources are interpolations (but don't worry about the evidence part of that).

"rather, I am talking about faculties of biblical studies"

Time to join the reality of the present day my dude, there are mountains of biblical studies departments in secular, public universities. Ehrman works in one. There are these departments in Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, and on and on, filled with atheist, agnostic, Jewish and secular individuals. None of them have bought the mythicism BS, despite the fact that plenty of massively revisionist books have been peer-reviewed. That totally exposes the fraud you're pushing — mythicism fails to get any traction because it's an intellectual clown-show. G.A. Wells actually did become a mythicist at one point, and literally nothing happened to him. Some minimalist OT scholars like Thompson expressed sympathy for the project, nothing happened to them. Hell, Brill literally published Raphael Lataster's mythicist book in 2019, despite it being a pseudo intellectual clown show and nothing more than a rehashing of Carrier's theories without any critical considerations. I mean, it's so blatantly factually obvious that this mythicist conspiracy theory is ridiculous that you really must be a true believer in it to genuinely believe in Carrier's BS lie about a sort of institutional bias, LOL. Deal with it dude, you bought this crap, as did Godfrey, because Carrier needs it to make any money.

[ABuddhist]

Damn dude, a "fundamentally wicked person" because I take mythicism as a bit of a joke? And yep, YEC and mythicism are actually surprisingly similar. Peddled almost entirely by amateurs, in a huge want to quote anyone behind them with any sort of authority because they lack representatives among actual experts, massive and wild reinterpretations of everything that contradicts them, and on and on. Oh, and ridiculous conspiracy theories of the academy being out to get them based on literally not a hint of evidence.

You also spend a huge number of words on things that don't really get you anywhere. I don't know why you simply don't address the point, but here it is again: not for a lack of trying, Carrier hasn't gotten anything peer-reviewed for <seven> <literal> <years>. As for Godfrey's blog, he cites a total of four people. One is Earl Doherty, who has zero credentials and is a complete amateur. Another person, Couchoud, is literally a French philosopher who died in 1959. This guy is going to some *serious* lengths to find anyone who agrees with him. The next guy is J.C. O'Neill, who died almost twenty years ago. His argument was extremely circumstantial — the passage didn't fit what O'Neill assumed was Paul's understanding of the law. Usually, when you have a specific understanding of what a text says and then you find part of that text contradicts your theory of it, you're supposed to give up your theory. But O'Neill wasn't having it — his interpretation couldn't be wrong, it was Galatians that was interpolated. Amazing. Even worse, O'Neill's analysis is all wrong (assuming Godfrey is correctly representing him). Verses 8-10 have no relevance to 4-7? Of COURSE they do. It's the same subject. The prior verses are talking about someone in slave position being freed. Paul then, in 8-10, uses the metaphor of us starting out as slaves but then being freed from this by Christ and not wanting to be in our previous states again. Could Paul say things not so great about the law in Gal 4? Of course he did, he does so earlier in Gal 3 as well, despite Gal 3 being the basis for Godfrey saying that Paul couldn't say what he said in Gal 4. Amazing. "Doesn't address the Judaizers" is a red herring ENTIRELY, as if the whole of Galatians was against the Judaizers rather than a small part in the end of Gal 2. In other words, the analysis is all wrong. The only person left, besides this guy who died two decades ago, is R. Joseph Hoffman. That's the only living guy mentioned in this whole article, who similarly has no evidence of interpolation besides the Marcion thing I already dispatched earlier. I've dealt with Hoffman's claims on these topics before, and they're almost all wrong as usual.

Then there's the mass of apologetics around Galatians. Nah, Galatians isn't disputed in its authorship. Nor is that passage disputed by any actual scholars today. The first blog by Godfrey (you really love relying on that guy for your thinking, don't ya?) literally is nonsense, claiming that Galatians somehow needed to be frequently cited as proof of James' brotherhood as if people were debating mythicists back then, LOL. But in both the Gospels and in Josephus, James is also brother of Jesus. (This is the part where you whip out yet another ridiculous fringe theory, upon the thousands you've already erected, to get rid of that Josephan reference as an interpolation. What a beautiful magical, wishful world one gets to live in where the mountains of texts refuting them are literally all interpolations.) But yes, pretty much all scholars accept the authenticity of Gal. 1:18-19, and Godfrey has to dig back 70 years to find someone otherwise. But if you dig hard enough, you can find anyone claiming anything is an interpolation. The problem is the actual *evidence*, and on that note, both Gal. 1:18-19 and 4:4 are obviously, unambiguously authentic.

The rest is all pseudo, mental gymnastics. "PAUL WAS LYING ABOUT JAMES BEING A BROTHER!" or "PAUL WAS COMPLETELY STUPID, HE RANDOMLY CAME TO THE BELIEF FOR NO ACTUAL REASON THAT JESUS HAD A BROTHER", or "LORD IS ACTUALLY MAYBE JUST GOD, NOT JESUS AT ALL, DESPITE THE FACT THAT JAMES IS THE BROTHER OF JESUS IN THE GOSPELS AND THAT PAUL USES "LORD" AS A BYWORD FOR JESUS HUNDREDS OF TIMES", and finally, the ridiculous "SPIRITUAL BROTHER" interpretation that has been so deeply refuted by O'Neill as to be a total red herring. https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/ ... -the-lord/

By the way, Neil Godfrey is not an "atheist amateur biblical scholar". That's a self-contradiction in terms. He's just an "atheist amateur", and you have to rely on his blog for literally everything because he's the only guy in the mythicist world who freely spends his hours digging as far back into history as possible to find any theory, no matter how ridiculous, to support mythicism. Basically, Godfrey can do literally nothing more than dig the trenches of academia to put together a mass of dead, fringe theories into one sort of hyper-ridiculous tangled mess to support his biases. But there are actually standards, these days, for claiming an "interpolation". One would be <actual evidence, and maybe a manuscript or something, which we have for all actual interpolations>.

But there's no way to save Godfrey, because Godfrey is wrong about everything, all the time. The "Jesus ben Ananias" figure is a red herring at best, probably an invention based off of the Jesus of the Gospels. After all, the Gospels easily predate Josephus and Paul predates it further. It also makes zero logical sense that Christians would invent Jesus based off a literal random figure of zero significance in Josephus rather than that that character was just quickly made up based on Jesus by someone.

That second point is a total red herring. Besides passing mentions of Jesus' notoriety in several regions, the vast majority of the Gospels have 99% of Jesus' career in Galilee. SO O'Neill hit the head on that one. Besides, what are these complete and utter random points you're responding to O'Neill on? Can you actually respond to his posts of relevance, i.e. the ones to do with James or something? LOL.

Nah, we don't have contemporary references to people in Jesus' position in Jesus-like figures. That's just a fact. Josephus is literally the only historian that has survived of 1st century Israel. The mention of those figures contemporary to Josephus is solely a product of the coincidence that they happened to live close in time to Josephus. ANY Jesus-like figure in Israel, who lived prior to Josephus, and more around Jesus' time, is not contemporaneously mentioned anywhere. This includes several figures who raised actual armies against the Roman Empire.

But again, all that was a complete and total, utter red herring. Besides Godfrey failing on all these points, you've produced literally nothing to challenge O'Neill on anything to do with the topic at hand. Rather, you've bought into Godfrey's extreme cherry picking of literally any detail he can find to response to. The fact that I was able to so easily, completely debunk Godfrey is sufficient to dismiss him. And you literally rely on Godfrey for everything you think on this subject, that you didn't get from Carrier. And that's it. These random handful of cherry picked details which have nothing to do with anything to do with the topic at hand are your whole basis for dismissing Tim O'Neill. I guess that shows how desperate mythicists are to ignore Tim O'Neill — four cherry picked "errors" which actually aren't errors at all. Literally, *four* for God's sake. If you held Godfrey or Carrier to even the slightest standards you're holding O'Neill to, you would consider both of them a laughing stock yourself, personally. After all, I can find thousands of laughable errors in their corpus of "work". The cosmic space sperm theory, which they've both been desperate to defend, should be sufficient to single handedly dismiss the two of them as completely and utterly desperate. By the way, you haven't commented on the fact that Paul never says anything about any of what he mentions as happening in outer space, at all, ever, even once. But without the slightest hint of evidence, we're supposed to believe that Jesus was crucified and buried in outer space and did the Lord's supper in outer space and was manufactured from sperm in outer space (based on things I debunked earlier which you haven't responded to) and that all the other inconvenient passages in literally all our sources are interpolations (but don't worry about the evidence part of that).

"rather, I am talking about faculties of biblical studies"

Time to join the reality of the present day my dude, there are mountains of biblical studies departments in secular, public universities. Ehrman works in one. There are these departments in Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, and on and on, filled with atheist, agnostic, Jewish and secular individuals. None of them have bought the mythicism BS, despite the fact that plenty of massively revisionist books have been peer-reviewed. That totally exposes the fraud you're pushing — mythicism fails to get any traction because it's an intellectual clown-show. G.A. Wells actually did become a mythicist at one point, and literally nothing happened to him. Some minimalist OT scholars like Thompson expressed sympathy for the project, nothing happened to them. Hell, Brill literally published Raphael Lataster's mythicist book in 2019, despite it being a pseudo intellectual clown show and nothing more than a rehashing of Carrier's theories without any critical considerations. I mean, it's so blatantly factually obvious that this mythicist conspiracy theory is ridiculous that you really must be a true believer in it to genuinely believe in Carrier's BS lie about a sort of institutional bias, LOL. Deal with it dude, you bought this crap, as did Godfrey, because Carrier needs it to make any money.

The fact 5that you resort to more insults rather than calmly presenting your refutations is further evidence that you are a fundamentally wicked person. It is possible to take a model as a joke without insulting both the people who believe it and the people, such as myself, who merely discuss the model without endorsing it.

I am almost tempted to dismiss your words as the intemporate rage-filled ejaculations of a person who realizes that soberly presenting eir argument would weaken eir claims (and certainly your consistent barrage of insults combines with your persistent inability to read and reply to claims), but I will set forth three points among your response.

1. The fact that you have not replied directly to my comndemnation of your mischaracterizing Carrier's latest book as a self-published booklet as evidence that you do not research enough about the views that you attempt to refute I take as your admitting that you do not research ewnough the views that you attempt to rrefute. So why should I trust our words?

2. You admit that in recent years, two books advocating mythicism (one of which did not involve Carrier and was published by Brill) were published. You further admit that the scholar G. A. Wells was a mythicist. How do you reconcile these facts with your claim that mythicism is always a clown-show? I would have thoughten that if mythicism were truly a clown show, then no biblical scholar would have been a mythicist and no books advocating mythicism would have passed peer review. Certainly, this is the case with young earth creationism, which has had to create its own peer review process completely separate from mainstream science.

3. Do you not understand how strange it is that you grant to yourself the right to dismiss Dr. Carrier's arguments in large part because of his failure to get through peer review in 7 years (and because of his anti-theism) while ignoring the fact that the O'Neill whom you cite is an amateur (never peer reviewed!) who makes basic errors in his discussion of the gospels and comparing Jesus to other figures? I would have though that a never-peer-reviewed amateur making errors would be less trustworthy than a peer-reviewed ph. d. (even one with anti-theistic biases). Look, I am fully prepared to accept that Dr. Carrier was wrong, but your bombardment of Dr. Carrier and others with ad hominem insults rather than calm arguments really undermines your credibility.

As a final note, when you accuse me of having fallen for Dr. Carrier's claims, you implicitly call me a liar - because I have said that I am not a mythicist.

[karavan]

Please give up that moralizing of yours dude. You should be condemning both Carrier left and right for being far more "wicked" than I am.

After that giant post of mine, the only things you respond to have nothing to do with the actual relevant evidence but only my characterization of Carrier, who you definitely must 100% defend:

1. Yes dude, Carrier's book was not a self-published booklet. It's not far off, though. It's just a really long rambling that wasn't subjected to any sort of critical standards before publication, hence my characterization of it. I wonder if you're better with that way of phraseology, though: "just another long Carrier rambling not subjected to any critical standards before publication". Are you more comfortable if I worded it this way? LOL.

2. "You admit that in recent years, two books advocating mythicism (one of which did not involve Carrier and was published by Brill) were published."

Sure, one of them was totally and utterly refuted by a number of scholars plus Tim O'Neill, and the other is literally the exact same ideas rehashed that hasn't had many impact whatsoever. I mean, have you read Lataster's book? It's literally the exact same thing as Carrier's ideas, without anything new. You also latch onto Wells, who literally abandoned mythicism because he couldn't take it seriously anymore. The one credible guy who ever advocated the theory dropped it. Amazing.

Yup, mythicism is ABSOLUTELY a clown-show. Nothing needs to be reconciled. You somehow have this idea that clownish ideas can't get peer-reviewed. But they do get peer-reviewed, literally all the time, in tons of journals. The fact that mythicism so often fails to meet even this standard, is a testament that it's a particularly unimpressive clown show. By the way, there actually ARE young earth creationist scienitsts. Actually, there's a solid number of them. At least one member of the National Academy of Sciences was a YEC. That proves that clowns can do particularly well. A tiny handful of peer-reviewed publications by a loud minority of hyper-biased activists does not unmake a clown show.

3. Nah dude, O'Neill didn't make "basic errors". You should scroll up, I completely wiped your repetitive citations of Godfrey against O'Neill. I basically exposed Godfrey's thousands of basic errors in an attempt to show O'Neill making a handful. If you applied your own standards of dismissing O'Neill, you'd have literally zit to do with either Carrier or that Godfrey dude. And by the way, O'Neill's lack of credentials are a red herring. You know why? Because he's not making up his own theories. He's not saying anything new. He's literally pointing out just basic facts known and already published by the experts in the fields and showing just how easily Carrier's theories splinter off.

By the way, you wrote a WHOLE OTHER COMMENT to me and didn't bother responding to ANY of the relevant points concerning the actual facts, i.e. the wishful thinking of interpolations in ALL the texts that just so happen to refute you based on not the slightest hint of actual, relevant evidence which is somehow backed up because Godfrey was able to go back and find one or two credentialed people in the last entire century who held these hyper-fringe views, and then he combines a ton of hyper-fringe views supported by one or two people based on almost zero basis in the last century to make this sort of super-complex of fringe nonsense without the slightest shred of evidence. If you're going to bother responding to my comments, kindly don't waste my time on details like "Carrier is a clown" (he is) and try to actually defend the theory.

"As a final note, when you accuse me of having fallen for Dr. Carrier's claims, you implicitly call me a liar - because I have said that I am not a mythicist."

Yeah freaking right you aren't a mythicist. You know, this is actually really odd and almost kinda funny. All these people who believe in just the right mythicist interpolations, space sperm theory, fans of Carrier's theories (and Godfrey's endless defenses of it read by no one other than Carrier's fanboys) all over the place, just can't bring themselves to being open about their mythicism. I don't know why, but these closet mythicists, even when only surrounded by other mythicists on places like this forum, just can't admit they're mythicists.

[neilgodfrey]

The fact that I was able to so easily, completely debunk Godfrey . . .

Where did you do this?

If you are Tim, I've been asking for years for a moderated discussion between us and so far you have refused, as far as I am aware.

[karavan]

Nah Neil, I'm not Tim. But I find it a wee bit tragic that you're so incensed that the average person couldn't take you seriously that you think that the only possible way I could write about you the way I wrote about you is by being Tim O'Neill. Also, scroll up dude. This guy cited a mountain of your blog posts and I responded to them just today. Not very hard to find.

[ABuddhist]

For what it is worth, I have become so disgusted by the User karavan's refusal to refrain from insulting people during discussions within this thread (including the dfeamatory allegation that Dr. Carrier is a fraud) that I have created a forum thread calling upon him to be banned: viewtopic.php?f=5&p=129252#p129252

I had little joy in creating such an argument; one of the great pleasures that I have found, when reading and participating in this forum, is how people are consistently polite even when they disagree.

[neilgodfrey]

. . . . BS lie about a sort of institutional bias, LOL. . . . .

Um.... only mythicists have spoken of institutional bias in the field of biblical studies? Seriously?

[karavan]

Sorry, you believe there's an institutional bias against mythicism among scholars in secular, public universities? Can you please explain why literally nothing happened then, to G.A. Wells, Thompson, Davies, Lataster got to publish his exact rehash of Carrier's theories in Brill, and on? LOL. Just be honest dude. The idea that Bart Ehrman is too afraid to be a mythicist lest his higher ups get him is blatantly ridiculous.

[neilgodfrey]

Nah Neil, I'm not Tim. But I find it a wee bit tragic that you're so incensed that the average person couldn't take you seriously that you think that the only possible way I could write about you the way I wrote about you is by being Tim O'Neill. Also, scroll up dude. This guy cited a mountain of your blog posts and I responded to them just today. Not very hard to find.

If they are not too hard to find then simply copy and paste the debunking you've done in a separate comment.

[karavan]

"If they are not too hard to find then simply copy and paste the debunking you've done in a separate comment."

It's literally on the previous page on the thread dude. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3737&start=20