A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

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Giuseppe
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A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by Giuseppe »

Judge by yourself: why does Litwa describe Carrier as a modern Marcion, by merely mentioning him in a book on the demiurge?

https://books.google.it/books?id=hXU-EA ... er&f=false

The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea.

For me, this mention works as a subtle form of public defamation. Something as: if you judge the Biblical god with the same metric of Carrier, then you are a naive and grotesque dogmatic as Marcion was.
Giuseppe
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by Giuseppe »

The basic assumption is that "smart" people would not raise the same marcionite criticism against the biblical god.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by GakuseiDon »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 11:42 am The basic assumption is that "smart" people would not raise the same marcionite criticism against the biblical god.
That doesn't seem to be the implication, based on those short extracts from the book. The implication is that someone can read the Old Testament and come up with their own ideas about what it all means. For Dr Carrier, it meant becoming an atheist. For Marcion (who, by all accounts was part of the proto-orthodox church), it meant determining that the OT God was not the God of Paul. Unless there are more references to Carrier by the author that is missing?
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by Giuseppe »

Why just Carrier? Why not Dawkins?

At any case, even if he had named Dawkins and not Carrier, it is still a subtle insult.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by GakuseiDon »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:14 pm Why just Carrier? Why not Dawkins?

At any case, even if he had named Dawkins and not Carrier, it is still a subtle insult.
Why is it an "insult", though? In a book about people who consider the OT God being an evil Creator God, Dr Carrier's views seem to be applicable. In the following article from his "The Christian Delusion", Carrier gives his view of the character of the OT God by providing texts to support his position:
https://sites.google.com/site/thechrist ... ill-of-god

It is the will of God to solve his problems with apocalyptic mass murder, including the horrible drowning of millions of people (including men, women, children, and babies) and billions of animals (though apparently sparing fish for some reason)...

It is the will of God that you murder anyone who picks up a stick on a Saturday...

It is the will of God that you commit genocide when he wants you to...

It is the will of God that you can buy and keep slaves...

It is the will of God that we kill people who have sex (except when they have sex with their various wives and sex slaves)...

It is the will of God that gay men be executed (but lesbians can have all the sex they want)...

It is the will of God that you engage in human sacrifice when you promise him to...

It is the will of God to murder tens of thousands of innocent people just because one guy did what God actually inspired him to do (which even that one guy had enough sense to know was inexplicably unjust)...

It is the will of God to make deals with the Devil and allow hideous evils to befall the innocent just to win a bet...

It is the will of God to be jealous, angry, and vengeful and to cruelly bring natural disasters upon the world...

Carrier provides text passages to support his points, so that's all fair enough and well supported. It gives an insight into how Marcion and others might have approached the OT in their day. Once the tether to traditional Judaism became weakened, it opened up the freedom to reassess what was in the OT. Marcion apparently started as a member of the proto-orthodox church so at some point his view of the OT God seems to have changed.

Can you explain exactly what the insult is, please? I'm guessing I'm missing something, as all I have are the passages you give by Litwa in your link.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by GakuseiDon »

I found a page on Litwa's book on his website: https://mdavidlitwa.wordpress.com/

The bolded part is where I guess Litwa touches on Dr Carrier's views.

"The Evil Creator God: origins of an early Christian idea"

Summary.

This book examines the origins of the evil creator idea chiefly in light of early Christian biblical interpretations. It is divided into two parts.

In Part I, the focus is on the interpretations of Exodus and John. Firstly, ancient Egyptian assimilation of the Jewish god to the evil deity Seth-Typhon is studied to understand its reapplication by Phibionite and Sethian Christians to the Judeo-catholic creator. Secondly, the Christian reception of John 8:44 (understood to refer to the devil’s father) is shown to implicate the Judeo-catholic creator in murdering Christ.

Part II focuses on Marcionite Christian biblical interpretations. It begins with Marcionite interpretations of the creator’s character in the Christian “Old Testament,” analyzes 2 Corinthians 4:4 (in which “the god of this world” blinds people from Christ’s glory), examines Christ’s so-called destruction of the Law (Eph 2:15) and the Lawgiver, and shows how Christ finally succumbs to the “curse of the Law” inflicted by the creator (Gal 3:13).

A concluding chapter shows how still today readers of the Christian Bible have concluded that the creator manifests an evil character.

The highlighted part is fascinating: the Jewish God was considered to be an evil deity according to ancient Egyptians? It makes sense but I'd never seen any ancient texts (in English translation of course since I can't read anything ancient otherwise!) expressing that position. Anyone have any information about that?
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MrMacSon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by MrMacSon »

fwiw
Litwa on Carrier in 'The Evil Creator'.PNG
Litwa on Carrier in 'The Evil Creator'.PNG (473.41 KiB) Viewed 1444 times
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MrMacSon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by MrMacSon »

Litwa on Carrier in 'The Evil Creator'2.PNG
Litwa on Carrier in 'The Evil Creator'2.PNG (504.6 KiB) Viewed 1444 times
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MrMacSon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by MrMacSon »

Litwa makes the same point after ~14:00 (to ~15:00) in the video below as he makes in the first full paragraph of his text on p. 165 above, without reference to Carrier (ie. without reference to Carrier in the video, at least up until 15:00)

eta3: Litwa makes the same point about atheists & Marcion's view of the Creator God as he does in those 2 pages above at ~ 3:50 onwards in the video (also without mentioning Carrier)

eta4: Litwa says at 29:10 that "modern atheists are saying what Marcion said" (after some pretty pointed comments before that; not about atheists)



(eta: however, I do think Litwa maligns Carrier and Thomas L Brodie unnecessarily in How the Gospels Became History, 2019)

eta2: I get the impression Litwa doesn't know of the proposals and arguments that (i) Marcion preceded Luke or (ii) that they both arose [separately] from a common proto-gospel ... Litwa does say ~ 4:30+ that Luke's Gospel was a response to Marcion's
Last edited by MrMacSon on Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: A subtle way to defame Carrier by Litwa

Post by GakuseiDon »

Thanks McMacSon, that's interesting! The video is well worth watching, I'm about half way through at the moment. Litwa talks about the Seth-Yahweh connection at 24 mins in.
Giuseppe wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 11:39 am Judge by yourself: why does Litwa describe Carrier as a modern Marcion, by merely mentioning him in a book on the demiurge?
Giuseppe, Litwa describes Marcion as "one of the great -- and greatest -- of Christian theologians... just an amazing figure" at about 4 mins in. So I doubt that comparing Dr Carrier to Marcion was done as part of an insult.
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