I should recover the Carrier's comments in a time when he had not yet read Detering and Robert Price's books against the authenticity of the epistles.
Before his reading of their books, Carrier conceded that he didn't know the real force of their arguments against the authenticity of the epistles. Accordingly, he assumed that if they were correct to move "Paul" in the second century, then he would have abandoned the study of Christian origins. An euphemism to say that he would have concluded for an Absolute Agnostic Position about the historicity of Jesus ("fifty-fifty").
Such is the power of the Argument from Silence in Paul.
In conclusion: without a genuine Paul in the first century, Carrier would opt for 1 against 1 for myth.
With a traditional dating of Paul (his current position) he opts 2 against 1 for myth.
Richard Carrier would reach a Pure Agnostic Position, if only Paul was a forgery
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schillingklaus
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Re: Richard Carrier would reach a Pure Agnostic Position, if only Paul was a forgery
That's Carrier's problem but no problerm for mythicism.
Re: Richard Carrier would reach a Pure Agnostic Position, if only Paul was a forgery
Carrier rejects a priori the Radical Criticism on Paul:
I see that the historicity/authenticity of Paul/Pauline epistles has been (and continues to be) defended by mythicists who want to be clear about what they deny: that we have lost at all the witness of real Christians of the past who adored a different Jesus from the Gospel Jesus.
Not really. Letter collections are a well known genre of the era and we have many examples.
What is surprising (though not so much once we admit the context) is that the letters we have are demonstrably pastiches of smaller letters, with sections left out. That is abnormal. They are thus a deliberately edited collection, which appears first to be the product of Marcion (contrary to many attempts to claim otherwise, there is no evidence their text was altered in any substantive way when they were reissued in the anti-Marcionite edition a couple decades later; e.g. see Tertullian’s attempts to compare them). This has consequences to how we use and understand the letters, but it does not lead to the black-and-white result of rejecting them in whole. That is invalid binary thinking that has no place in any field of history.
What is surprising (though not so much once we admit the context) is that the letters we have are demonstrably pastiches of smaller letters, with sections left out. That is abnormal. They are thus a deliberately edited collection, which appears first to be the product of Marcion (contrary to many attempts to claim otherwise, there is no evidence their text was altered in any substantive way when they were reissued in the anti-Marcionite edition a couple decades later; e.g. see Tertullian’s attempts to compare them). This has consequences to how we use and understand the letters, but it does not lead to the black-and-white result of rejecting them in whole. That is invalid binary thinking that has no place in any field of history.
I see that the historicity/authenticity of Paul/Pauline epistles has been (and continues to be) defended by mythicists who want to be clear about what they deny: that we have lost at all the witness of real Christians of the past who adored a different Jesus from the Gospel Jesus.