Giuseppe wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:07 am
GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:24 amAccording to Dr Carrier, 2 Peter was a forgery by later historicists. But take out that one passage, and it reads pretty much like nearly all the rest of the literature of the time: lack of details, not just about Jesus, but about everything else as well
I have never understood why this fact (you insist continually on) would be a point going against Carrier.
In this case, it isn't a point
against Dr Carrier's mythicist theory so much as pointing out a failure of analysis. It starts with the question which I addressed in the other thread I started that I linked to: "what is the difference between those texts that are regarded as mythicist and those as historicist?"
If there are so few differences, such as a simple sentence can flip one to the other -- as we see in, say, 2 Peter and 1 Timothy, and both texts share a lack of interest in details about
not just Jesus but historical details generally then how does that set the expectations about what should appear in a 'historicist' text and a 'mythicist' text?
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:07 amIf you have just called "
indifference about a historical Jesus" the
partial absence of historicist details in the post-pauline writings,
then accordingly you should call "
ignorance about a historical Jesus" the
total absence of historicist details in the pauline epistles.
I wouldn't use those definitions myself. What I'm arguing is that we need to set our expectations about what a 'historicist' text would look like. I'll repeat the comment by Doherty from his "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" that I gave above:
"As one can see by this survey, if one leaves aside Justin Martyr there is a silence in the 2nd Century apologists on the subject of the historical Jesus which is virtually equal of that found in the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 485)"
Is that what we would have expected? Is 2 Peter and 1 Timothy what we would have expected from 'historicist' texts? That's the point I'm making.
Let me flip the question of
"Why is Paul silent on historical details about Jesus?" on its head, and ask instead
"Why SHOULDN'T Paul be silent on historical details about Jesus?"
Is the answer: Paul shouldn't be silent because if he believed that Jesus was historical his letters would be filled with details on that Jesus? BUT we don't see that happening in those other texts that are deemed 'historical', do we? So where is that expectation coming from?
The expectation is coming from an assumption that a historical Jesus is a "newspaper reporter" Jesus, as I wrote above. That is, the idea that if you think Jesus is historical, then you think that people followed Jesus around writing down the things he did and said, and that's what we see in the Gospels. But nearly everyone here knows that the Gospels were written as literary texts shaped by the Old Testament, and it is hard to determine what, if anything, went back to Jesus.
Giuseppe, let me ask you this question that I'd like to see Dr Carrier answer:
which NT texts (outside of the Gospels) contains those quotes and actions of Jesus' (miracles, etc) that you'd expect to see in a 'historicist' text?