{"id":795,"date":"2013-10-20T09:39:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T09:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=795"},"modified":"2013-10-20T11:21:02","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T11:21:02","slug":"text-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=795","title":{"rendered":"Ehrman on Historicity Recap (by Richard Carrier)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Richard-Carrier-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a summary of the current state of the debate after the mini blog war between myself and Bart Ehrman over his latest book,\u00a0Did Jesus Exist?<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, which attempted to argue against various scholars (both legitimate and crank) who have concluded, or at least suspect, that Jesus never really existed, but was an invention in myth, like\u00a0Moses<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0King Arthur<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Ned Ludd<\/strong><\/a>. Some of this exchange involved other people, or were tangential to Ehrman\u2019s book. But I will give a state-of-play for everything.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Dr. Richard Carrier<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In one case I have concluded I was too harsh. But in every other case my criticisms have stood without valid rebuttal. Most were simply ignored (and thus no rebuttal was even attempted). For others, attempts to rebut them have only generated increasingly ridiculous errors of facts and logic to waggle our head at. Which in the end has only made historicists look just like the hack mythicists they rightly critique. This is not the way to argue for the historicity of Jesus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Link Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

My relevant articles in this series to date are (in chronological order):<\/p>\n

Ehrman Trashtalks Mythicism<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(21 March 2012)<\/p>\n

McGrath on the Amazing Infallible Ehrman<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(25 March 2012)<\/p>\n

Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(19 April 2012)<\/p>\n

Ehrman\u2019s Dubious Replies (Round One)<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(27 April 2012)<\/p>\n

Ehrman\u2019s Dubious Replies (Round Two)<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(29 April 2012<\/a>)<\/p>\n

-:-<\/p>\n

Pre-Book Debate<\/strong><\/p>\n

This debate began when Ehrman published an article for the\u00a0Huffington Post<\/em>\u00a0that was a travesty of errors and inaccuracies, in an attempt to promote his book. I criticized that article in my first critique. Ehrman attempted a weak response to that, which I then addressed in Round One, but the only substantive response attempted was by James McGrath, which I addressed separately. These rebuttals met with no substantive reply from either of them.<\/p>\n

Here is the breakdown of the points I made and their attempt to deal with them:<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0genetic fallacy<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(mythicists are critics of religion, therefore their conclusions about religion are false).<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Repeats the fallacy.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ehrman commits the\u00a0no-true-Scotsman fallacy<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(no one is qualified to talk about this unless they have an extremely hyper-specific degree major and a specific kind of appointment at a university). In fact, myself, Robert Price, and Thomas Thompson are all more than adequately qualified to evaluate the evidence for and against the historicity of Jesus.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman doubles down and not only doesn\u2019t concede the point but falsely impugns my credentials and makes absurd claims about how professional historians operate. As I observed of his response:<\/p>\n

[He then] repeats his misrepresentation of my credentials, suggesting I don\u2019t know the period in question, or the languages, or the documents or the literature on early Christianity. Which is all false. I am adequately trained in all of these. And it is disingenuous of Ehrman to assume Thompson is not, simply because he has a different specialty than Ehrman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ehrman then\u00a0quote mines<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0my review to argue I said something I didn\u2019t (about Thomas Thompson\u2019s credentials), and then attacks the thing I didn\u2019t say, and ignores entirely the point I\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0made. And then he makes completely ridiculous (and easily-refuted) claims about the publishing practices of modern historians in general.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0I then demonstrate he did all this<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0This should never have been an issue. It\u2019s just a fallacious attempt to dismiss arguments and evidence with a lame deflection tactic. He just assumes expert historians and biblical scholars can\u2019t have familiarized themselves with the ancient languages and documents pertaining to Christianity, and that scholars who lack university appointments can\u2019t be experts. Neither is true, and it is shameful that he keeps using those arguments.<\/p>\n

And yet\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Complains that I (yes,\u00a0I<\/em>) am making this into a debate about professional competence.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0To which I wrote:<\/p>\n

He also\u2026alleg[es] I am making this into a pointless contest over who is the better scholar. Yet he is the one who made it about that. As we saw in his article about the Thompson affair (and as I showed regarding his HuffPo piece), he attacked my credentials and argued that he is qualified to discuss this issue and I am not (likewise Thompson and others). For him to now say he is not interested in this comparison is massively disingenuous. It\u2019s\u00a0his comparison<\/em>, which he has pressed several times, and it was\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0that forced me to\u00a0respond<\/em>\u00a0by pointing out that the facts seem to point to the reverse. For him to claim\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0am the one who brought this comparison up is simply absurd. All I did was take his own argument and defend it properly: instead of making fallacious and irrelevant points about the hyper-specifics of what degrees we have (as he did), I tested the comparison he himself started by actually looking at the quality of our work on this subject. A comparison in which he came out very badly.<\/p>\n

I do not see this as a competition between us as to who is the better scholar, but as simply a matter of who to trust: someone who presents carefully researched, carefully worded, carefully reasoned work on this subject, with a minimum of mistakes (because as I\u2019ve said, I make them, too), or someone who doesn\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Ehrman simply doesn\u2019t. Not in his article. Not in his book. Not in any of his replies.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits a veiled\u00a0ad baculum fallacy<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(his fellow colleagues\u00a0had better not<\/strong><\/a>entertain the same ideas or people like him will make sure they will never be employed or taken seriously again).<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Repeats the fallacy.[1<\/strong><\/a>][2<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

4.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ehrman commits a\u00a0fallacy of false analogy<\/strong><\/a>. Whether by bad wording or bad memory (it doesn\u2019t matter, since the misinforming effect on readers is the same), Ehrman makes the\u00a0factually false claim<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that Pontius Pilate is like Jesus in being a famous person having no contemporary references to him, yet we believe he exists.<\/p>\n

Ehrman does not rest on this argument (that would be another fallacy), he merely uses it to deflect one weak argument for mythicism (the argument from silence), and he is correct in his conclusion (absence of evidence does not entail evidence of absence; and whether a valid argument from silence can be made against a mundanely historical Jesus is indeed debatable), but not his premise, which is factually false: we\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0have contemporary references to Pilate. In fact, very good ones: an inscription commissioned by Pilate himself, and a discussion of him by a living contemporary, Philo of Alexandria. Would that we had such things for Jesus. The debate would be over!<\/p>\n

We also have secure, detailed references to Pilate within forty years of his life in a secular historian (Josephus), something we also do not have for Jesus (even if we accept the two dubious references to Jesus in that same author, neither of them is in his early work but one written decades later, after the Gospels were published, and neither of those two references is secure or detailed, but rather brief and mysterious). In short, we have better evidence for Pilate than we have for Jesus. By a lot. And indeed, the silence of Philo on both Jesus\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0Christianity entails the insignificance of\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0to leading Jews of the time, which entails the Gospels hugely exaggerate (read: mythologize) the story of Jesus even if he existed\u2013two conclusions even historicists must accept.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Gets the facts right in the book. But still commits the fallacy of false analogy with them. And never responds to my critique on either point, nor issues a correction.<\/p>\n

So on this point his article was just sloppily worded (since he clearly knew the truth, in detail), and thus he will have misled tens of thousands of readers, who will in turn repeat that misinformation to hundreds of thousands or millions more. But even in the book Ehrman still uses this as a bad example of the point he wants to make, which is that plenty of historical persons have evidence comparable to what we can claim to have for Jesus. That conclusion requires examples of historical persons who actually meet that condition, producing a valid analogy. Pilate simply doesn\u2019t. And Ehrman has still never produced a valid analogous case. He has therefore rested his case on a\u00a0fallacy of false analogy<\/em>, even though there is no reason to (since he should be able to find genuinely analogous persons). This I chalk up to his being lazy.<\/p>\n

[I won’t attribute to Ehrman the sad legacy of McGrath’s attempts to defend his man, but McGrath’s attempt at a rebuttal here went like this:<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Claims only government officials erected inscriptions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Calls bullshit<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Wisely pretends he never said that.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Claims Ehrman was only talking about native Latin-speaking Italians.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Explains why that’s stupid<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Wisely pretends he never said that, either.<\/p>\n

…and that was it, apart from various other\u00a0stupid<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0claims<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that don’t deserve further mention.]<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

5.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ehrman commits a\u00a0fallacy of equivocation<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(trading on the tenuously variable meanings of the word \u201chave\u201d). Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u201cwe have numerous, independent accounts\u201d of Jesus, and that all these sources are \u201cin Jesus\u2019 native tongue Aramaic,\u201d and \u201cdated to within just a year or two of his life\u201d; and he concludes, \u201chistorical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last statement is indeed true: that\u00a0would<\/em>\u00a0be pretty astounding. It\u2019s just that the first statements are not true. We have no such sources. Ehrman knows this. So he is deliberately misleading the public with his choice of words. He is misrepresenting merely possible, and purely hypothetical sources (whose exact and complete content is unknown to us), as if they were sources we\u00a0have<\/em>, and as if we\u00a0know<\/em>those hypothetical sources were \u201cnumerous\u201d and \u201cindependent\u201d and \u201cdate within a few years of his life\u201d (we do not know that at all). I then summarized several of the problems with relying on these \u201chypothetical\u201d sources to prove Jesus really existed. Such evidence is simply not \u201castounding.\u201d It is in fact deeply problematic. And it grossly misleads the public to say otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u2022 OPHELIA BENSON:<\/strong>\u00a0Confirms that Ehrman is almost as misleading about this in his book (What Ehrman Actually Says<\/strong><\/a>). He is there somewhat clearer (if you try hard and pay attention) that these sources he says we \u201chave\u201d don\u2019t actually exist, and thus we don\u2019t\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0\u201chave\u201d them (see her further analysis in\u00a0The Unseen<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0A Small Town Guy<\/strong><\/a>). But as she notes, the way he writes it, and given the way he leans on these non-existent sources, even in the book a reader can easily mistake him for saying they exist. He likewise maintains they date to within a few years of Jesus (because like any crank mythicist, Ehrman has magical knowledge about things like that), and that they are numerous and independent and written and in Aramaic\u2013all claims that are not known to be true, however much scholars conjecture them. And again,\u00a0we don\u2019t have those sources<\/em>. So we don\u2019t\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0know what was in them (even if they existed\u2013and many respected scholars do doubt it).<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply. (On his treatment of this same subject in his\u00a0book<\/em>,\u00a0see below<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Claims Ehrman\u2019s poor wording doesn\u2019t matter because experts will know what he meant and agree with it.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Explains\u00a0why that does matter<\/strong><\/a>: most of Ehrman\u2019s readers\u00a0aren\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0experts (and will be grossly mislead); and experts\u00a0don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0all agree that what he said is true (in fact there is significant and pervasive disagreement on whether the Gospels used sources at all, whether any of those sources were written, whether they were ever in Aramaic, whether they were composed in the 30s, or what they originally said).<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

6.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ehrman commits a\u00a0straw man fallacy<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(or a\u00a0red herring fallacy<\/strong><\/a>, depending on what you think he was trying to argue). He correctly declares the non-existence of a single mythic god narrative (before Christianity no one deity was\u00a0born to a virgin mother\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0died as an atonement for sin\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0was raised from the dead) and thereby implies none of its elements existed in any pre-Christian mythic god narratives.\u00a0That is false<\/strong><\/a>. Each of those elements exists in the narrative of one pre-Christian god or another (or something relevantly similar to each element did), and some are shared by several gods. That\u00a0all three<\/em>\u00a0are not shared by any single god narrative is irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Ehrman is thus either making a straw man argument (\u201cmythicists who claim Jesus is a copy of a previous god narrative with all three elements are wrong, therefore all mythicists are wrong\u201d) or a red herring argument (\u201cthe Jesus narrative is not a copy of a previous god narrative with all three elements, therefore it was not influenced by any other previous god narratives with similar elements\u201d). In fact, when we look at the peculiar features of god and hero narratives surrounding pre-Christian Judaism and the parallel features within Judaism itself, and combine them, what we end up with is a demigod so much like that of Jesus that this cannot be a coincidence. As I wrote in my critique:<\/p>\n

He is implausibly implying that it\u2019s \u201cjust a coincidence\u201d that in the midst of a fashion for dying-and-rising salvation gods with sin-cleansing baptisms, the Jews just happened to come up with the same exact idea without any influence at all from this going on all around them. That they \u201cjust happened\u201d to come up with the idea of a virgin born son of god, when surrounded by virgin born sons of god, as if by total coincidence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s simply not plausible. And it misinforms the public to conceal this fact from them.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Possibly by punting to Hoffmann, Ehrman thought he\u2019d responded. Against which I argued that a reasonable person should conclude\u00a0Hoffmann is an unreliable loony<\/strong><\/a>. You decide.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

7.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits a\u00a0fallacy of hasty generalization<\/strong><\/a>. He says \u201cprior to Christianity, there were no Jews at all, of any kind\u00a0whatsoever, who thought that there would be a future crucified messiah,\u201d as if there was no evidence that could dispute that, even though I have presented a lot of it\u2013there is room for debate over it, but it is fallacious to pretend no debate exists: see\u00a0The Dying Messiah Redux<\/strong><\/a>. But more importantly, we simply do not know what most of the\u00a0dozens<\/em>\u00a0of Jewish sects of the time believed, and therefore such blanket statements about what \u201cno Jews of any kind whatsoever\u201d believed are already wholly fallacious. We\u00a0simply don\u2019t know<\/em>\u00a0that \u201cno\u201d Jews were thinking about a future dying-and-rising messiah. We therefore\u00a0cannot rest any conclusions<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on such a premise.<\/p>\n

Worse, what Ehrman attempts to argue from this premise is in fact self-refuting. I will quote my original remarks on that point:<\/p>\n

His mistake here is two-fold, in fact, since it does not merely consist of a factually questionable assertion, and one that does not entail the conclusion he wants even if the assertion were true (since imagining a murdered messiah was possible for Jews, he cannot mean to argue Christians wouldn\u2019t have invented it, when later [Talmudic] Jews clearly had no problem inventing one), but he leverages it into a whopper of a logical fallacy: a self-contradictory assertion. Ehrman says \u201cthe messiah was to be a figure of grandeur and power who overthrew the\u00a0enemy\u201d (certainly, that was the most\u00a0common<\/em>\u00a0view; but it is a fallacy of hasty generalization to assume that that was the\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0view, especially since we don\u2019t know what most of the dozens of Jewish sects there were believed about this: see\u00a0Proving History<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, pp. 129-34). From this fallacious hasty generalization, Ehrman then concludes \u201canyone who wanted to make up a messiah would make him like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, I want to pause for a moment and perform a brief logic test. Before reading on, read that last quotation again, and ask yourself if you can see why that conclusion\u00a0can\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0be correct. Why, in fact, what he is suggesting, what he predicts would happen on mythicism,\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>impossible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Answer: the only kind of messiah figure you could\u00a0invent<\/em>\u00a0would be one who\u00a0wasn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0like that. Otherwise, everyone would notice no divine being had militarily liberated Israel and resurrected all the world\u2019s dead. This means the probability of that evidence (\u201canyone who wanted to make up a messiah would make him like that\u201d) on the hypothesis \u201csomeone made up a messiah\u201d is exactlyzero<\/em>. In formal terms, by the Bayesian logic of evidence (which I explain in\u00a0Proving History<\/strong><\/em><\/a>), this means P(~e|h.b) = 0, and since P(e|h.b) = 1 \u2013 P(~e|h.b), and 1 \u2013 0 = 1, P(e|h.b) = 1, i.e. 100%. This means that if \u201csomeone made up a messiah\u201d\u00a0we can be absolutely certain he would look essentially just like Jesus Christ<\/em>. A being no one noticed, who didn\u2019t do anything publicly observable, yet still accomplished the messianic task, only\u00a0spiritually<\/em>\u00a0(precisely the one way no one could produce any evidence against). In other words, a messiah whose accomplishments one could only \u201cfeel in one\u2019s heart\u201d (or see by revelation, as the Corinthian creed declares; or discover in scripture, as that same creed again declares, as well as\u00a0Romans 16:25-26<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ehrman thus\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0rests a\u00a0wholly illogical argument<\/em>\u00a0on his original hasty generalization, a generalization he cannot prove true, and which some evidence suggests might be false.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply. (He only addresses\u00a0some<\/em>\u00a0of the evidence for a dying-messiah expectation in his book; and then rests again on the same fallacy of false generalization.\u00a0See my discussion below<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Repeats the fallacy. Only changing the claim up from \u201cno Jews expected a dying messiah\u201d to \u201call Jews expected a conquering messiah,\u201d unaware that these are not the same thing and do not entail each other.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Points out the obvious: that Christians\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0expected a conquering messiah, and thus were not going against that trend\u00a0anyway<\/em>\u00a0(they were sure their Davidic messiah was going to come and conquer the universe any day now\u2026he just had to die first, to clean the world of sin and gain his celestial powers). Thus, McGrath\u2019s revision of Ehrman\u2019s argument ceases to be any kind of rebuttal to mythicism.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

8.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits a\u00a0fallacy of begging the question<\/strong><\/a>. He claims that Paul met \u201cJesus\u2019 closest disciple Peter,\u201d but that begs the very question, whether the Gospels are telling the truth or weaving a mythical account. If we do not beg that question, then we must admit that (a) Paul never once calls Peter a \u201cdisciple\u201d (in fact, no such term appears anywhere in Paul\u2019s letters\u2013he never shows any knowledge of such a thing as there being a \u201cdisciple\u201d of Jesus) and (b) Paul never mentions Peter being close to Jesus at all, much less the \u201cclosest\u201d to him (other than being the first to receiverevelations<\/em>\u00a0of Jesus: 1 Cor. 15:5). This is actually one of the many curious things about Paul\u2019s epistles that suggests the Jesus myth theory is correct: Paul continually assumes only apostles exist, and that apostles are made apostles by having a\u00a0revelation<\/em>\u00a0of Jesus. The idea that anyone actually saw him or spent time with him in the flesh is nowhere found in his letters.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

9.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman begs the question again (assuming the Gospels are\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0myth, in order to conclude that Paul is referring to facts reported in them). In his article Ehrman produced\u00a0only one non-fallacious argument<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for the historicity of Jesus: that Paul at least appears to refer to having met his brother.<\/p>\n

This I acknowledged (it\u2019s really the only evidence that historicity has). But in the\u00a0Huffington Post<\/em>\u00a0Ehrman never mentions the fact that it is a fundamental cornerstone of all Jesus myth theories to offer alternative explanations of this passage. He thus misrepresents the strength of his own position by ignoring (and not telling the public about) fundamental elements of the contrary position. By contrast, I pointed out:<\/p>\n

Paul does not say \u201cbrother of Jesus,\u201d but \u201cbrother of the Lord,\u201d which can only be a cultic title (one does not become the brother of \u201cthe Lord\u201d until the person in question is hailed \u201cthe Lord,\u201d thus the phrase \u201cbrother of the Lord\u201d is a creation of Christian ideology). Yes, he may have earned that cultic title by actually being the brother of Jesus. But he could also have earned it by simply being a baptized Christian. Since all baptized Christians were the adopted sons of God, just as Jesus was (Romans 1:3-4<\/strong><\/a>), Jesus was only \u201cthe first born among many brethren\u201d (Romans 8:29<\/strong><\/a>), which means\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0Christians were the brothers of the Lord\u2026<\/p>\n

[And] there are numerous passages in Paul that confirm this:\u00a0Romans 8:15-29<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a09:26<\/strong><\/a>;Galatians 3:26-29<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a04:4-7<\/strong><\/a>; and Christians\u00a0explicitly taught<\/em>\u00a0that Jesus himself called all of them his brothers in\u00a0Hebrews 2:10-18<\/strong><\/a>, via a \u201csecret message\u201d in the Psalms (Psalms 22:22<\/strong><\/a>). They had obvious inspiration from what they regarded as scripture, the\u00a0Psalms of Solomon<\/strong><\/a>\u00a017:26-27, which Paul appears to reference, and which predicted that the messiah would gather a select people and designate them all the sons of god (and thereby,\u00a0his brethren<\/em>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Debate can still proceed from there (for example, see my further remarks to\u00a0McGrath<\/strong><\/a>), but it\u2019s important not to straw man the opposition by leaving out key elements of their argument. Yet in his article, that\u2019s exactly what Ehrman does.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Accuses me of burying the lead.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0I explain why that\u2019s stupid<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 MCGRATH:<\/strong>\u00a0Wisely pretends he never tried to argue that.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Admits\u00a0in the book<\/em>\u00a0that mythicists have explanations for this evidence. (And properly attempts to rebut them there.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

-:-<\/p>\n

Debating the Book
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The main problem with the book itself was the sheer number of errors, fallacies, and misleading statements that fill it. It is important to emphasize this: a handful of errors or fallacies would not condemn any book, as every book has a few, and a good book can more than compensate for that by being consistently useful, informative, and on-point in every other respect. But Ehrman\u2019s book was so full of gaffes it is simply unsalvageable, and as I said, it resembles in this respect some of the worst Jesus myth literature, which I can\u2019t recommend to people either, as it will misinform them far more than inform them. (Scholars can also correct their errors. If they are inclined to. Ehrman, so far, does not seem at all inclined to.)<\/p>\n

I could not list all the errors, fallacies, and misleading statements I marked up in my copy of his book. There were hundreds of them, averaging at least one a page. This shocked me, because all his previous works were not like this. They are superb, and I still recommend them, especially\u00a0Jesus Interrupted<\/em><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Forged<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Their errors are few, and well drowned out by their consistent utility and overall accuracy in conveying the mainstream consensus on the issues they address (Interrupted<\/em>\u00a0is an excellent primer to get anyone up to speed on where the field of New Testament Studies now stands, and\u00a0Forged<\/em>\u00a0is an excellent summary of why that mainstream consensus accepts that many of the documents in the New Testament are forgeries, and why that was known to be deceitful even back then, despite attempts to claim the contrary).<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Did Jesus Exist?<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0was a travesty. In my review I chose a representative selection of the worst mistakes, in order to illustrate the problem. Some readers took that as a complete list, and suggested those weren\u2019t enough errors to condemn the book. Although they certainly are (not all of them, but many of them are damning and render the book useless at its one stated purpose), they are\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0a complete list, but just the tip of the iceberg, and that is the bigger problem. Those errors are\u00a0examples<\/em>\u00a0of consistent trends throughout the book, of careless thinking, careless writing, and often careless research. Which means there are probably many more errors than I saw, because for much of the book I\u2019m trusting him to tell me correctly what he found from careful research, but the rest of the book illustrates that I can\u2019t trust him to correctly convey information or to have done careful research.<\/p>\n

And that was the gist of my review. So when, here, I check the state-of-play of the\u00a0specific<\/em>\u00a0criticisms I made, keep in mind that these were only representative examples of hundreds of other errors in the book.<\/p>\n

I think I have an idea what happened, if reports are true that Ehrman has said he takes only two or three weeks to write a book: with the exception of\u00a0Orthodox Corruption of Scripture<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0(and a few related works), which summarizes many years of his own dedicated research (and thus is an excellent piece of scholarship, not aimed at laymen), all his books have been just summaries of \u201cwhat he knows\u201d from being a trained New Testament scholar (plus occasionally a small foray into specific independent research, as when he investigated the nature of forgery in the ancient world for\u00a0Forged<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, which could have been completed in a couple of long days at a library). He is thus relying on field-established background knowledge. Which is fine when that\u2019s what you are reporting on (as he usually does). But when you are going outside your field, you do need to do a bit more, and you do risk being wrong a bit more often (which is why it\u2019s a good idea to field ideas in other venues before committing them to print: it gives you an opportunity to be corrected by experts first).<\/p>\n

I had said it was his \u201cincompetence in classics (e.g. knowledge of ancient culture and literature) and ancient history (e.g. understanding the methodology of the field and the background facts of the period) that trips him up several times,\u201d and that now makes sense: he is fully competent to make up for not being a classicist or specialist in ancient history, by getting up to speed in what he needed (which for this task might have taken a year or more), but instead he just relied on \u201cwhat he knows,\u201d which was all just what he was told or has read in New Testament studies. Which isn\u2019t enough. Disaster resulted.<\/p>\n

With those general points understood, let\u2019s look at the problems I specifically selected to discuss:<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

10.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits a\u00a0straw man fallacy<\/strong><\/a>. This he does in two respects, one excusable and one not. Regarding the first I said:<\/p>\n

Almost none of this 361 page book is a critique of the \u201cbad\u201d mythicists. He barely even mentions most of them. Indeed\u2026for the few authors he spends any time discussing (mainly Murdock and Freke & Gandy), he is largely dismissive and careless (indeed, his only real refutation of them amounts to little more than nine pages, pp. 21-30). I was hoping for a well-researched refutation of these authors so I could recommend this book to students, so they could see what sound scholarship looks like and to correct the errors in their heads after reading authors like these. But this book simply doesn\u2019t do that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I said, this I could live with. I sympathize with a disinterest in wasting the months of time it would take to fact-check and vet these terrible books and publish a comprehensive take-down of them. Although I would love such a book if anyone ever produced one, they have to do it right (actually do the fact-checking and make sure their criticisms are on point), and that takes a lot of work. And since his book\u2019s professed aim is to defend historicity, he really only needed to deal with the serious rebuttals to it, not the cranks.<\/p>\n

But he failed to do even that properly. As I said:<\/p>\n

He treats our arguments only selectively, never comprehensively, and I never once saw him actually engage directly with any single mythicist case for their theory of Christian origins\u2013as in, describing the theory correctly, listing the evidence its proponent offers for each element, and then evaluating that evidence and the logical connection between it and their conclusion. You won\u2019t find this done once, anywhere in this book, for any author. He just cherry picks isolated claims and argues against them, often with minimal reference to the facts its proponent has claimed support it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This alone almost condemns the book to the dustbin. I say almost because it would have been deeply flawed, but it could at least have had a lot of accurate and insightful analysis or well-researched information even when tearing down this straw man. But a straw man it is. And that is big error number one.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Gets completely wrong or ignores everything I actually said about this, and uses one of the most astonishing rhetorical tricks to avoid addressing an argument that I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0I point this out<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

11.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0makes a false statement<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in his attempt to demonstrate that mythicist D.M. Murdock is unreliable as a scholar; but instead ends up proving\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0is unreliable as a scholar. Regarding a particular statue that Murdock cites as evidence of one of her theories, Ehrman claims \u201cthere is no penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock in the Vatican or anywhere else except in books like this, which love to make things up,\u201d clearly meaning the statue she referred to never existed but was made up (by her).<\/p>\n

A correct statement would have been \u201cthe statue she refers to does exist, or once did, but it\u2019s not a statue of Peter but of the pagan god Priapus, of which we have many examples; the notion that this one represents Peter comes only from the imagination of theorists like her.\u201d But that is not what he said, or anything like it. It\u2019s clear to me that Ehrman simply didn\u2019t research this claim. He assumed that because she presented only a drawing of it, and the statue looked ridiculous, that she was making this up. The result: he makes a false claim that misinforms readers and establishes that he is not a reliable critic of D.M. Murdock\u2019s work. And as I pointed out, if he couldn\u2019t even be troubled to check facts like this, what else \u201cdidn\u2019t he check\u201d in this book?<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Insists that\u2019s not what he meant, and that he knew the statue existed all along, and that he was only saying in the book that it wasn\u2019t a statue of Peter.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0I adduce considerable evidence that he is lying<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

12.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of poisoning the well<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by making a false claim about Earl Doherty that wrongly impugns his character and reliability as a scholar. Ehrman wrote that Earl Doherty \u201cquotes professional scholars at length when their views prove useful for developing aspects of his argument, but he fails to point out that not a single one of these scholars agrees with his overarching thesis,\u201d which is simply false.<\/p>\n

Doherty is in fact one of the most careful scholars in the Jesus myth field, and is honest about his use of sources and fully in line with the way good experts handle them. (That doesn\u2019t mean Doherty is always right or never makes an error, but no expert is infallible, so I am not holding him or anyone to an impossible standard. What matters here is that Doherty does as good a job as any New Testament scholar. So attempting to make it seem otherwise is a tactic on the dark side of shady.)<\/p>\n

I explained how<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0this is a characteristic tactic employed by Ehrman throughout the book and not a one-off goof, and why this sort of thing downgrades the book\u2019s utility to junk status.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Claims he didn\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0Proves he did<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:\u00a0<\/strong>No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

13.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman exposes how careless his research for this book was by\u00a0horribly bungling his treatment of a key source<\/strong><\/a>. He discusses the one letter of Pliny the Younger that mentions Christ, but in a way that demonstrates he never actually read that letter, and misread the scholarship on it, and in result so badly misreports the facts that this section will certainly have to be completely rewritten if ever there is a second edition.<\/p>\n

The error itself is not crucial to his overall thesis, but reveals the shockingly careless way he approached researching and writing this book as a whole. As I wrote:<\/p>\n

Ehrman\u2019s treatment of the sources and scholarship on this issue betray the kind of hackneyed mistakes and lack of understanding that he repeatedly criticizes the \u201cbad\u201d mythicists of (particularly his inability even to cite the letters properly and his strange assumption that both subjects are discussed in the same letter\u2013mistakes I would only expect from an undergraduate). But if even historicists like Ehrman can\u2019t do their research properly and get their facts right, and can\u2019t even be bothered to read their own source materials or understand their context, why are we to trust the consensus of historicists any more than mythicists? And more particularly, how many other sources has Ehrman completely failed to read, cite, or understand properly?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Claims it was just a typo.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0I adduce considerable evidence that he is lying<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

14.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0makes a false claim<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0about Pontius Pilate\u2019s title (that he wasn\u2019t a procurator but a prefect; in fact, he was both) and about the historical development of Roman government (that prefects of provincial districts were renamed procurators by the time of Tacitus; they weren\u2019t, they still held both titles).<\/p>\n

However, I now conclude I was much too harsh on him about this. This issue I realize is at such an advanced level even many historians of Rome don\u2019t know it correctly, and the literature can be confusing to someone not carefully attending to it. This counts as the kind of obscure error that commonly happens and doesn\u2019t impugn a book when it does. It needs to be corrected, but it\u2019s not indicative of any great failure for having made it.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Cites a modern source saying\u00a0it\u2019s not an error<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0No, it\u2019s still an error. For readers who want to know why, I have prepared a special document explaining the scholarship and evidence establishing the point:\u00a0On the Dual Office of Procurator and Prefect<\/strong><\/a>. But again, I no longer think this mistake counts against Ehrman\u2019s work in this book, since it is a mistake easy to make.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

15.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that from antiquity \u201cwe simply don\u2019t have birth notices, trial records, death certificates\u2014or other kinds of records that one has today\u201d and is adamant not only that we\u00a0have<\/em>\u00a0none<\/em>, but that such records were never even kept, because he asks \u201cif Romans kept such records, where are they? We certainly don\u2019t have any.\u201d In fact, we have lots of those things. I mean\u00a0lots<\/em>. (So in answer to Ehrman\u2019s question, \u201cWhere are they?,\u201d probably some are in his own university\u2019s library.) But more importantly, Christians\u00a0could have<\/em>\u00a0quoted or preserved such documents relating to Jesus or his disciples, as such documents certainly would have existed then. Thus a historian must explain why they did not.<\/p>\n

A correct treatment of this issue would be to give reasons why Christians didn\u2019t quote or preserve any of these records;\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to claim that no such records existed or could have survived. That is simply false. What he said, therefore, suggests he didn\u2019t even check whether his claim was true, and had no experience with ancient documents other than New Testament manuscripts, two marks against him that cast a shadow over the whole book. If this is how clueless and careless he is, again, what else is wrong in this book?<\/p>\n

At the very least what he says in the book badly misinforms the public, and that not on a trivial matter, but on a crucial issue in the debate between historicists and mythicists. As I wrote originally:<\/p>\n

We cannot claim the Christians were simultaneously very keen to preserve information about Jesus and his family\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0completely disinterested in preserving any information about Jesus and his family. An example is the letter of Claudius Lysias in Acts, which if based on a real letter has been doctored to remove all the expected data it would contain (such as the year it was written and Paul\u2019s full Roman name), but if based on a real letter, why don\u2019t we still have it? It makes no sense to say Christians had no interest in preserving such records. Moreover, if a Christian preserved this letter long enough for the author of Acts to have read it, why didn\u2019t they preserve any\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0letters or government documents pertaining to the early church, just like this one?<\/p>\n

I personally believe we can answer these questions (and thus I agree with Ehrman that this argument from silence is too weak to make a case out of), but not with this silly nonsense. A\u00a0good<\/em>book on historicity would have given us educationally informative, plausible, and thoughtfully considered answers and information about ancient documents and the total Christian failure to retain or use them. Instead Ehrman gives us hackneyed nonsense and disinformation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And as in this case, so we can expect in all others. Therefore we simply cannot trust this book. It belongs in the dustbin.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Says a variety of confusing, fallacious or false things, in an attempt to simultaneously deny he said what he said and at the same time defend what he didn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0Explains why none of that amounts to a valid response<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

16.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that no \u201ctrained classicists or scholars of ancient Rome\u201d have ever questioned the authenticity of the reference to Christ in Tacitus. In fact, some have, as I demonstrated (citing the survey articles of Benario). It is clear that Ehrman didn\u2019t even bother to check. And if he didn\u2019t bother to check this, what else \u201cdidn\u2019t he bother to check\u201d? It\u2019s a serious question. Because given the many examples of this, it really looks like this book was a lazy armchair spinoff, and not a serious work of scholarship. And that also matters here specifically, because, as I wrote:<\/p>\n

Part of Ehrman\u2019s argument is that mythicists are defying all established scholarship in suggesting this is an interpolation, so the fact that there is a lot of established scholarship supporting them undermines Ehrman\u2019s argument and makes him look irresponsible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acting like that is not how to respond to mythicists.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Misrepresents everything I said about this.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0I call him on it<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ehrman also argued that he \u201cmeant\u201d that no\u00a0current<\/em>\u00a0Tacitus scholar doubts the passage, but he gives no reason to believe that\u2019s true (the latest articles against its authenticity have no known rebuttal, so we really don\u2019t know if or how many experts share their opinion). But more importantly, it\u2019s not a valid excuse, since by concealing the fact that several Tacitus experts\u00a0have<\/em>\u00a0doubted its authenticity,\u00a0the entire argument he makes is undermined<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In my subsequent research I encountered a new reason to question the authenticity of the passage in Tacitus, and so I went back and checked the standard text on evidences for Jesus (which Ehrman should have read cover-to-cover for his book), Van Voorst\u2019s\u00a0Jesus Outside the New Testament<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, and I realized that he, too, documents serious scholars questioning the authenticity of the passage (pp. 42-43). I had forgotten about that. So Ehrman really has no excuse for either his ignorance on this fact or (as he now claims) his merely failing to mention it. For surely a scholar writing a book on historicity should have read Van Voorst, and should be honest about when mythicists can rely on actual published scholarship by Tacitean scholars.<\/p>\n

Like Benario, Van Voorst mentions (most relevantly) C. Saumagne, \u201cTacite et saint Paul,\u201d\u00a0Revue Historique<\/em>\u00a0232 (1964), pp. 67-110, and Jean Roug\u00e9, \u201cL\u2019incendie de Rome en 64 et l\u2019incendie de Nicom\u00e9dia en 303,\u201d\u00a0M\u00e9langes d\u2019histoire ancienne offerts \u00e0 William Seston<\/em>\u00a0(1974), pp. 433-41. Van Voorst also argues (as have several other scholars, only some of whom he cites: pp. 43-44; Benario names others) that Tacitus originally wrote \u201cChrestians\u201d and not \u201cChristians,\u201d which was corrected by medieval Christian scribes back to Christians (there is indeed some evidence of this).<\/p>\n

I am increasingly convinced that Van Voorst (and his backers) might be right about that. Which creates a problem they overlook. If Tacitus originally wrote \u201cChrestians,\u201d then it becomes possible he was originally writing about rioters who were following the Chrestus who had ginned up riots under Claudius (Nero\u2019s predecessor) as reported by Suetonius (Claudius<\/em>\u00a025.4), and that later Christian scribes inserted\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0the line about Christ (that he was killed under Tiberius by Pilate), thus coopting a passage about a completely different group, turning it into a passage about\u00a0Christians<\/em>. So when Tacitus says the people punished for the fire are the ones \u201cthe public calls Chrestians,\u201d he may have been referring to his treatment of the Chrestian riots under Claudius (which must have been covered in the lost books of Tacitus that covered Claudius\u2019 reign from 41 to 47 A.D., as the date of the Chrestian riot could have fallen in that period, and it is indeed odd that Tacitus does not otherwise mention it: Van Voorst, pp. 31-32).<\/p>\n

This makes the possibility of interpolation substantially more credible. This would also explain why no one else mentions this event (for centuries), and no other historians of Nero\u2019s reign (like Pliny the Elder) were ever quoted or had their histories preserved (as we would normally expect if they had mentioned Christ or Christians\u2013which fact supports the conclusion that they didn\u2019t, which then entails Tacitus didn\u2019t, unless he was repeating what was by then a Christian legend about the fire at Rome, about a persecution that never actually happened, and not anything actually recorded by historians contemporary with the fire).<\/p>\n

In the end, I still think we cannot establish an interpolation has occurred here (even if one did), but it\u2019s certainly more plausible than I had once thought. And it was always more plausible than Ehrman claimed.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

17.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were recent events\u201d (of the 30s A.D.) is \u201cthe view of all of our sources that deal with the matter at all.\u201d In fact, some of the sources that \u201cdeal with the matter\u201d date the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to the 70s B.C., and this would be known to anyone who read up on the basic literature on the historicity debate (whether, again,\u00a0Van Voorst<\/strong><\/a>, or the mythicists Ehrman claims to be rebutting on this point). Instead of mentioning this or discussing these sources (Epiphanius and the Talmud), Ehrman gives the impression that the mythicist G.A. Wells was just making this up. Again, this kind of sloppy treatment of the evidence and mythicist arguments is typical of Ehrman\u2019s book; this is just one of the examples I chose to discuss.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Claims he didn\u2019t mean \u201call\u201d when he said \u201call\u201d (and that he had his reasons for keeping quiet).<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Explains why that\u2019s not a valid excuse<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

18.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that Osiris \u201creturn[ing] to life on earth by being raised from the dead\u201d is a fabrication because \u201cno ancient source says any such thing about Osiris (or about the other gods).\u201d Note the hyperbole: no\u00a0such<\/em>\u00a0thing about\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0gods. This is multiply false. Moreover, as I wrote:<\/p>\n

He relies solely on Jonathan Z. Smith, and fails to check whether anything Smith says is even correct. If Ehrman had acted like a real scholar and actually gone to the sources, and read more widely in the scholarship (instead of incompetently reading just one author\u2013the kind of hack mistake we would expect from an incompetent myther), he would have discovered that almost everything Smith claims about this is false.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u00a0cited abundant evidence<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that his claim is false: many dying-and-rising gods predate Christianity. Many effected their deaths and resurrections in different ways (the differences being moot to the point that they nevertheless died and rose back to life), and some even \u201creturned to life on earth by being raised from the dead\u201d in essentially the same way Jesus did (who, after all, did not stay on earth any more than they did). Whether the one kind or the other, these gods include Osiris, Dionysus, Romulus, Hercules, Asclepius, Zalmoxis, Inanna, and Adonis-Tammuz.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Acts like a Christian apologist and invents hyper-specific definitions of \u201cdying\u201d and \u201crising\u201d in order to claim that since no god meets his\u00a0hyper-specific definition<\/em>\u00a0of those terms, therefore there were no dying-and-rising gods.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0I then demonstrate<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that there were indeed dying and rising gods\u00a0even by his own hyper-specific definition<\/em>, and the gods who don\u2019t meet his\u00a0hyper-specific definition are still\u00a0sufficiently similar<\/em>\u00a0to the original beliefs of how Jesus died and rose to sustain mythicist arguments for cultural diffusion and syncretism (thus rendering his original argument moot, just as I originally said).<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

19.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u201cwe don\u2019t have a single description in any source of any kind of baptism in the mystery religions\u201d (note the hyperbole again). To which I quoted and cited several sources describing baptisms in the mystery religions.<\/p>\n

I proved sin-remitting baptisms had long been a component of the Bacchic mysteries and were in some way a feature of Osiris cult as well, and were then known to be a component of several other mystery religions. As I concluded regarding Osiris:<\/p>\n

One could perhaps get nitpicky as to what might be the exact theology of the process, but whatever the differences, the similarity remains: the death and resurrection of Osiris was clearly believed to make it possible for those ritually sharing in that death and resurrection through baptism to have their sins remitted. That belief predates Christianity. Ehrman is simply wrong to say otherwise. And the evidence for this is clear, indisputable, and mainstream. Which means his book is useless if you want to know the facts of this matter. Or any matter, apparently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

20.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of hasty generalization<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(or the\u00a0fallacy of argument from ignorance<\/strong><\/a>), claiming \u201cthere were no Jews prior to Christianity who thought Isaiah 53 (or any other \u2018suffering\u2019 passages) referred to the future messiah.\u201d I\u00a0explained why this is a fallacy<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in several respects, among them the fact that he couldn\u2019t possibly claim to know what all Jews thought, among all the dozens of divergent sects we know about. (As I explained above<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Ehrman later makes that very point himself (that blanket assertions about what \u201cno one thought\u201d cannot be allowed, because we don\u2019t know what everyone thought:\u00a0Did Jesus Exist?<\/em>, p. 193), and thus he contradicts himself by using a rule that, applied to himself, would destroy one of the central pillars of his whole thesis (Did Jesus Exist?<\/em>, pp. 142-44), which is the\u00a0fallacy of inconsistency<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(an implicit\u00a0fallacy of special pleading<\/strong><\/a>). He also didn\u2019t address the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls (even though he knew I had proposed some) or the Talmud (which he also knew about).<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 THOM STARK:<\/strong>\u00a0At least did what Ehrman didn\u2019t: actually engaged with my argument and evidence, in a series of lengthy exchanges online. And he identified a number of errors in my treatment of the evidence.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>I corrected my errors and revised my analysis. But the conclusion came out the same. See my latest analysis of all the evidence in\u00a0The Dying Messiah Redux<\/strong><\/a>. As even Stark agrees, and contrary to Ehrman, we\u00a0cannot<\/em>\u00a0rule out the possibility of Jewish theologians having imagined a dying messiah before the rise of Christianity; and though Stark still disagrees with me, there is still a lot of evidence that there probably were some pre-Christian Jews who did.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

21.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman neatly combines a\u00a0no-true-Scotsman fallacy<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with a\u00a0fallacy of poisoning the well<\/strong><\/a>, by (perhaps unintentionally) misrepresenting my credentials (saying my Ph.D. is in \u201cclassics\u201d and not, as it is in fact, \u201chistory\u201d with a specialization in ancient religion and historiography), thus making it seem as if I\u2019m less qualified to discuss this subject than I am.\u00a0As I pointed out<\/strong><\/a>, at the very least this demonstrates how carelessly he wrote this book, given (once again) how poorly he checked its facts.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0Apologized.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

22.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ehrman\u00a0falsely claims<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in his book that there are no hyper-specialized historians of ancient Christianity who doubt the historicity of Jesus. So I named one: Arthur Droge.<\/p>\n

(And of those who do not meet Ehrman\u2019s irrationally specific criteria but who are certainly qualified, we can now add\u00a0Kurt Noll<\/a><\/strong>\u2013as I note in my review of\u00a0Is This Not the Carpenter<\/em><\/a><\/strong>. Combined with myself, Robert Price, and Thomas Thompson, that is a handful of well-qualified scholars who are on record doubting the historicity of Jesus. And there are no doubt many others who simply haven\u2019t gone on the record.)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0See\u00a0my remarks above<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on Ehrman\u2019s continuing fondness for this No-True-Scotsman argument and why it\u2019s a fallacy.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

23.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0hitches his wagon<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to a whole festival of fallacies by ignoring all the literature in his own field demonstrating that the \u201cmethod of criteria\u201d he relies upon is logically invalid and must be abandoned. In fact, every study ever produced specifically examining the value of those methods has come to the same conclusion: they are invalid and must be abandoned. I document this and demonstrate it myself extensively in my book\u00a0Proving History<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

24.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of inconsistency<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(which is an implicit\u00a0fallacy of special pleading<\/strong><\/a>) by arguing that using the \u201ccriterion of dissimilarity\u201d negatively is invalid, and then (later in the book) arguing that using the criterion of dissimilarity negatively is\u00a0valid<\/em>. His first claim (against Robert Price) was also false: using the \u201ccriterion of dissimilarity\u201d negatively\u00a0in the way Price actually did<\/em>\u00a0is not invalid. Thus, besides being inconsistent with himself, Ehrman also doesn\u2019t know how logic works.<\/p>\n

As I wrote:<\/p>\n

Ehrman attacks Robert Price for using the \u201ccriterion of dissimilarity\u201d negatively (on p. 187), insisting that\u2019s a \u201cmisuse\u201d of the criterion, and then defends using it negatively himself (on p. 293), a blatant self-contradiction. It is also fallacious reasoning. Price was using it \u201cnegatively\u201d (in Ehrman\u2019s sense) to show that the case for historicity from the Gospels is weak because for every story about Jesus the Christians had a motive to invent it, which is a logically valid way to argue: he is rebutting the contrary claim (that some of these stories must be true because they\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/em>have a motive to invent them) and thereby removing a premise that ups the probability of historicity, which\u00a0necessarily lowers the probability of historicity<\/em>\u00a0(by exactly as much as that premise being true would have raised it). Ehrman outright denies this (on p. 187) which betrays a fundamental ignorance of how logic works. Perhaps what Ehrman\u00a0meant<\/em>\u00a0to say was that this argument cannot\u00a0alone<\/em>\u00a0prove Jesus didn\u2019t exist, but Price never says it does.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Similarly, Ehrman uses\u00a0the same self-contradiction tactic<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0when he complains about my dismissing his book as unreliable because of all the errors I found in it, and then defends his dismissing of mythicist books as unreliable because of all the errors he found in them. Nice.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

25.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of hasty generalization<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0again. In order to assert absolute certainty that the \u201cQ<\/strong><\/a>\u201d source existed (since he leans a lot of his case on it), he dismisses the work of Mark Goodacre (who extensively presents\u00a0The Case against Q<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0in print and\u00a0on the web<\/strong><\/a>) and other leading scholars who agree with Goodacre (including\u00a0Michael Goulder<\/strong><\/a>, E.P. Sanders and Margaret Davies), without giving, or citing, any rebuttal to it whatever. He just says it \u201chas failed to convince most of the scholars working in the field\u201d (buried on p. 352, n. 10).<\/p>\n

But I doubt Ehrman has widely polled scholars on this (so as to know \u201cmost\u201d reject it), much less all and only those scholars who have read and examined the case made by Goulder and Goodacre (since the opinion of scholars who haven\u2019t even examined their argument obviously doesn\u2019t count for anything). He is therefore arguing from his own ignorance, and making hasty generalizations about \u201cthe scholarly community\u201d as sufficient reason to dismiss Goodacre\u2019s case. That is a fallacy. His case has to be addressed. It can\u2019t be dismissed by armchair polls conducted in Ehrman\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

26.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of non sequitur<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by arguing that if there is material in a document (like Matthew) that doesn\u2019t come from a known source (like Mark), it therefore comes from another source (like M), and therefore we \u201chave\u201d that source (we \u201chave\u201d M). He never allows that it comes from no source at all but was fabricated by the author of the document we have.\u00a0I explain why this is ridiculous<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

27.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of non sequitur<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0again by arguing that if stories everyone agrees were fabricated were originally fabricated in Aramaic, then Jesus historically existed (try to wrap your head around that travesty of logic for a moment). I discuss two of his examples: Jesus\u2019 cry on the cross and Jesus\u2019 resurrection of the daughter of Jairus. Every (non-fundamentalist) expert on these materials agrees neither story is true, both are fabricated, and therefore these are not historical recollections of Jesus. Yet Ehrman argues that they probably derive from Aramaic sources, therefore they prove Jesus was a real person.\u00a0I explain why this is ridiculous<\/strong><\/a>. (Even granting the premise that they derive from Aramaic sources.)<\/p>\n

Even in the case where we know a source was used, obviously it can be wholly fabricated\u2013even fabricated in the original language of Aramaic, as clearly happened here (supposing Ehrman is right about these stories originating in Aramaic). Therefore the existence of such a source does not argue for historicity at all.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>I should add that this isn\u2019t the only way our knowing of sources doesn\u2019t help the case for historicity. The fact that we don\u2019t have that source also means we don\u2019t know exactly what it said, and that also makes it useless for determining historicity.<\/p>\n

For example, if someone used a book like Revelation as a source for some sayings of Jesus and put those sayings in the middle of his Galilean ministry, if we didn\u2019t have Revelation we would not know that it actually claimed those sayings came\u00a0from a vision of Jesus in heaven<\/em>\u00a0and not an actual historical Jesus. Likewise, if we did not have the\u00a0Epistle of Eugnostos<\/strong><\/a>, we would not know that the source used for the sayings of Jesus in the\u00a0Sophia of Jesus Christ<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0actually\u00a0originally<\/em>\u00a0claimed those sayings came from Eugnostos and not Jesus.<\/p>\n

Thus\u00a0not having the actual source<\/em>\u00a0makes it impossible for us to know whether that source would have supported historicity or not. The mere existence of such sources is therefore useless.\u00a0Even when we can confirm there were such sources<\/em>, which we cannot honestly do with the kind of certainty Ehrman claims anyway\u2013for\u00a0many<\/em>\u00a0leading mainstream scholars do not believe such certainty is warranted on this point.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

28.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman commits the\u00a0fallacy of affirming the consequent<\/strong><\/a>. As\u00a0I pointed out<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Aramaic\u2026was not only spoken in first century Judea; it was spoken in parts of Syria and to an extent across the diaspora, continually for centuries, so \u201cAramaic source = Judean source written in the 30s A.D.\u201d is a ridiculous inference, yet Ehrman uses it again and again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Repeatedly, Ehrman argues that because the lost sources behind the Gospels were in Aramaic (which is a double conjecture: that there were sources; and that they were in Aramaic), that therefore they originated in Judea in the 30s A.D. Because, you see, Aramaic was spoken in Judea in the 30s A.D. But this is a classic fallacy of affirming the consequent:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
If\u00a0p<\/strong>, thenq<\/strong>.<\/td>\nIf a source was written in Judea in the 30s A.D., then it was probably written in Aramaic.<\/td>\nIf a dog ate your homework, then you have no homework to turn in.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
q<\/strong>.<\/td>\nThe Gospels used sources written in Aramaic.<\/td>\nYou have no homework to turn in.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Therefore,p<\/strong>.<\/td>\nTherefore, those sources were probably written in Judea in the 30s A.D.<\/td>\nTherefore, a dog ate your homework.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

You can prove anything with logic like this.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

29.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Ehrman\u00a0ignores the relevant scholarship<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in classical studies demonstrating that fabrication was actually commonplace in the construction of biographies and stories about people, using as inspiration things they were thought to have said or an author wants them to have said, and borrowing models and elements from other stories about other people; and that ancient schools specifically taught students how to do this. And as a result, many elaborate biographies were written about non-existent people. This significantly reduces the value of the Gospels (and<\/em>\u00a0their sources) as evidence for Jesus, unless any element in them can be proved not to have been fabricated to a convenient purpose.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply<\/a>.<\/p>\n

-:-<\/p>\n

Closing Summary
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s where things stand. To all of which Ehrman has made some general replies worth closing with:<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

30.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>I carefully explain that hundreds of errors plague his book, and that I chose only a representative sample of them, a representative selection of all the errors in the book (and a large sample, to demonstrate I wasn\u2019t joking about their being a lot of them), and that it was their\u00a0vast number<\/em>\u00a0that ruined the book and made it useless to any and every reader\u2013as I put it, a \u201csad waste of electrons and trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:\u00a0Complains<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that I picked on only a few mistakes and no book can be condemned for a few mistakes. Also claims I\u00a0only picked random mistakes<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and didn\u2019t address his \u201cmounds of evidence\u201d for the historicity of Jesus. Then says\u00a0some other silly things<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0I myself said in my review, many times, that a few errors would not condemn any book (as we all make them). But I didn\u2019t pick on only a few mistakes; I documented\u00a0a great many serious mistakes<\/em>, and even the many mistakes I wrote about were, as I repeatedly said,\u00a0just a fraction of all there were<\/em>. A book\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0be condemned for\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0scale of error. And I\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0address his evidence (of which there were not \u201cmounds\u201d but barely a molehill), in the whole second half of my review demonstrating that his methods of arguing from it were illogical.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/a><\/p>\n

31.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:\u00a0<\/strong>Throughout my review of his book\u00a0<\/strong>I point out how the kinds of errors he made cumulatively and repeatedly demonstrate his shoddy and careless research for this book and his incompetence in relevant ancillary fields (like classical literature, historical methodology, and Roman history), which he clearly made no effort to make up for.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Complains that I am being mean to him and that my review is a personal attack.<\/p>\n

\u2022 CARRIER:<\/strong>\u00a0I point out<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that he must not understand the difference between a personal attack and an attack on a person\u2019s work product. As I wrote:<\/p>\n

I pointed out failures of wording, failures of fact, and failures of logic, and showed why these all entail his book cannot be trusted, that his research and writing of it was sloppy and careless, that it fails at its every professed aim, and that he (professionally) doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s doing here\u2013ironically, considering how much hay he tries to make over the point that the rest of us can\u2019t know what we\u2019re doing because we have the wrong degrees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is not a personal attack. It\u2019s a valid criticism, and a relevant deduction from the evidence I adduced.<\/p>\n

\u2022 EHRMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0No reply.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a summary of the current state of the debate after the mini blog war between myself and Bart Ehrman over his latest book, Did Jesus Exist?, which attempted to argue against various scholars (both legitimate and crank) who have concluded, or at least suspect, that Jesus never really existed, but was an invention in myth, like Moses or King Arthur or Ned Ludd. Some of this exchange involved other people, or were tangential to Ehrman\u2019s book. But I will give a state-of-play for everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[74,73],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}