|
Post by ignorantianescia on Apr 22, 2012 6:49:51 GMT
Good grief, there's even a reply to Ehrman (in German) by Hermann Detering, a über-liberal East-German Lutheran or Reformed preacher (EKD), who seems to become a new favourite among Mythicists, despite being a theologian and "Christian preacher", not a New Testament scholar. His pet theory is - I'm not kidding - that Paul was invented out of Simon Magus by Marcion. Not that the Mythicists can read it of course, but they know it's great because Google Translate tells them it is. www.radikalkritik.de/Ehrman.pdfAmusingly, Dettering also questions Ehrman's knowledge because the latter was startled that Jesus mythicists existed. Dettering makes hay out of the fact that this was a well known debate back in the days of Albert Schweitzer and Ehrman should have known this. Of course, this only shows Dettering's own foolishness because Ehrman never stated there had not been Jesus mythicists in the past. He certainly knew about Bauer and others from the nineteenth century. His shock was that there existed this Jesus mythicist subculture in the popular culture today. Thus Ehrman was not taken aback by Bruno Bauer so much as Hermann Dettering. Yes, that was an interesting exercise in reading into a text what one wants. It's even sillier that he takes Ehrman to task for not addressing the criticisms of the long-extinct Dutch Radical school. Wasn't this about the new brood of Mythicists? This should be obvious even to Detering, who describes "the brood of Mythicists" as "devising dark conspiracy theories in the worldwide channels of the net" (ironically of course, since he's a Myther himself) - doesn't quite sound like Allard Pierson.
|
|
|
Post by sankari on Apr 22, 2012 8:11:22 GMT
|
|
|
Post by ignorantianescia on Apr 22, 2012 14:31:58 GMT
Here's part two of Detering's review, in which he seems to state that Book X of Pliny's Epistulae is inauthentic. www.radikalkritik.de/Ehrman2.pdfThe I want my money back quote: "The question [of why miracles went unnoticed] has not been posed wrongly, but Ehrman ostensibly is uneasy. Therefore the crafty professor makes use of a widespread scholarly trick: Who can't answer questions, declares them methodologically illegitimate." In part three he claims that the Tacitus reference and the Testimonium Flavianum are inauthentic, while James was the bro of Jesus son of Damneus: www.radikalkritik.de/Ehrman3.pdfOddly, Detering often accuses opponents of not presenting evidence that is damaging to the cause, while not mentioning the Arabic and Syriac evidence. In addition he also displays a very snooty attitude towards professor Ehrman.
|
|
labarum
Master of the Arts
Posts: 122
|
Post by labarum on Apr 22, 2012 18:24:14 GMT
Here's part two of Detering's review, in which he seems to state that Book X of Pliny's Epistulae is inauthentic. www.radikalkritik.de/Ehrman2.pdfThe I want my money back quote: "The question [of why miracles went unnoticed] has not been posed wrongly, but Ehrman ostensibly is uneasy. Therefore the crafty professor makes use of a widespread scholarly trick: Who can't answer questions, declares them methodologically illegitimate." In part three he claims that the Tacitus reference and the Testimonium Flavianum are inauthentic, while James was the bro of Jesus son of Damneus: www.radikalkritik.de/Ehrman3.pdfOddly, Detering often accuses opponents of not presenting evidence that is damaging to the cause, while not mentioning the Arabic and Syriac evidence. In addition he also displays a very snooty attitude towards professor Ehrman. He also fails to explain why scholars who study Tacitus say the language is authentic (and hence why someone in the medieval period would have a contemporary understanding of textual criticism), why Christians would go through the bother of intepolating the text and then never using it, why they would bother interpolating a text to prove the existence of Jesus when no one in the ancient world had any doubt about it in the first place (perhaps there was a psychic Christian ages ago who prophesied the Tubingen school?), etc. It is easy to see why even those who are not exactly supporters of traditional Christian beliefs (e.g., Ludemann) treat this guy like he should be a regular on the Ancient Aliens TV program.
|
|
joel
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 70
|
Post by joel on Apr 22, 2012 19:32:52 GMT
The publication of Ehrman's book seems to have sparked an atheist civil war on the internet over whether Jesus existed - and I think the mythers are winning (in the sense that there are more and they're louder, not that they're correct).
|
|
|
Post by euglena on Apr 22, 2012 22:22:25 GMT
I’m new here and found this place because of something Dr. Jerry Coyne wrote on his blog. He is clearly siding with the mythicists and promoted Richard Carrier as “an expert on history and a Biblical scholar.” I had never heard of Carrier and thought it odd an expert would adopt the mythicist position. When I googled, in addition to finding this place, I learned that Carrier has a PhD from 2008, but has not secured a position in academia since. Neither has he since published in the peer reviewed literature.
I was shocked. While Carrier might be knowledgeable, a true scholar is someone who applies their knowledge in an intellectually honest fashion. And such a person would have no problem securing a position in academia if their supposed revolutionary finding was deemed at least interesting to the rest of the community of experts. Carrier comes across as someone with a vendetta against academia. And someone who is trying to make money off the internet atheist culture. But those are just my first impressions.
Anyway, I’m not shocked that there is yet another self-proclaimed genius out there who, from his basement computer, promises to overturn the academic world. I’m shocked that someone like Coyne, who is a respected member of academia, would help promote this guy as an expert. If the New Atheist movement embraces Carrier and the mythicists, I’m thinking this is a real jump the shark moment.
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Apr 23, 2012 1:00:11 GMT
I’m new here and found this place because of something Dr. Jerry Coyne wrote on his blog. He is clearly siding with the mythicists and promoted Richard Carrier as “an expert on history and a Biblical scholar.” I had never heard of Carrier and thought it odd an expert would adopt the mythicist position. When I googled, in addition to finding this place, I learned that Carrier has a PhD from 2008, but has not secured a position in academia since. Neither has he since published in the peer reviewed literature. Carrier actually claims to have better and more relevant qualifications than Ehrman. He claims to be a credentialed academic in Christian history, on the basis that one of the majors of his M. Phil was Greco-Roman religion. The fact that he has no formal qualifications in the study of either Judaism or Christianity, explains a lot about what he writes.
|
|
labarum
Master of the Arts
Posts: 122
|
Post by labarum on Apr 23, 2012 1:49:52 GMT
Anyway, I’m not shocked that there is yet another self-proclaimed genius out there who, from his basement computer, promises to overturn the academic world. I’m shocked that someone like Coyne, who is a respected member of academia, would help promote this guy as an expert. If the New Atheist movement embraces Carrier and the mythicists, I’m thinking this is a real jump the shark moment. Don't be shocked. Coyne is a biologist. It is actually far too common for those with academic credentials in one field to think their standing makes them qualified to speak with expertise in any field - including those that are completely unrelated to their own (e.g., a biologist speaking on ancient history). All one needs as further evidence is Barry Fell's ventures into archaeology or G. A. Wells' ventures into Historical Jesus studies. I have also noticed that some scientists do think their particular field makes them arbiters of truth in any other. Their speaking as though they had any authority in this area is logical positivism run wild where only questions deemed "scientific" could be true or false and only "sceintists" could determine their value and veracity.
|
|
|
Post by ignorantianescia on Apr 23, 2012 5:11:04 GMT
|
|
|
Post by sankari on Apr 23, 2012 5:31:38 GMT
Brilliant reply. Ehrman has absolutely nailed it.
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Apr 23, 2012 5:38:18 GMT
I have added a supporting comment, which is basically a rewording of my previous post here on the subject. It is currently awaiting moderation, and I hope Bart approves.
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Apr 23, 2012 14:18:41 GMT
I'm glad to see my comment has been approved. There are a few other comments too.
|
|
|
Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 23, 2012 15:21:25 GMT
Though I did love the bit in Carrier's blogpost where ol'Artie Ziff, like a woolly-haired Harry Potter, waved his Bayer Theorem magic wand and - evidencio transformio! - changed the reference to "the brother of the Lord" in Galatians. He managed to use his pseudo mathematical jiggery pokery to transform it from a reference to one of the siblings of Jesus (multiply attested, in both Christian and non-Christian sources) into a reference to some early initiatory level of the Jesus sect (totally unattested and unknown to any except Jesus Mythers). I thought this was pretty hilarious (scroll down in the comments) freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/749No, your math is not correct. N is not relevant. The frequency of Jameses in N will be the same as in P (the population of Judea). Therefore you don’t need N and it makes no difference to the odds, whereas P is already included in the frequencies I listed.
As for “weighing factors” that has no relevance here, unless you are making a confused reference to completing the Bayesian equation. In that event, P(match|chance) = .23 and P(match|only biologicals so named) = 1. That’s why the priors matter (“only biologicals” requires an ad hoc assumption that “chance” does not), as well as the other evidence (e.g. Mark shows no knowledge of any James or brother of Jesus ever becoming a Christian much less a leader of the Church; the absence of any such brothers in the leadership of the history of the church in Acts; etc.), all of which reduce P(e|only biologicals so named), thus when we compare hypotheses, P(match|only biologicals so-named) is no longer relevant (because “they match” is just one part of e and 1 x any N is always N, so P(match|only biologicals so-named) = 1 has zero effect on the probability of “only biologicals so-named”).
At best, we may adjust the results for the opposing hypothesis to reflect P(match|chance) = .23 (when pure chance is the hypothesis; I offered more hypotheses than that). And there are some other things I think could change my analysis, since in order to make it as a fortiori as possible, I needn’t rely on my own opinions but can make assumptions against them specifically to make my argument stronger. But the end result still does not support the “only biologicals so named” hypothesis.?!?!?!?!?!?!?
|
|
|
Post by fortigurn on Apr 23, 2012 15:52:39 GMT
I thought this was pretty hilarious (scroll down in the comments) Now you've made me post this.
|
|
|
Post by ignorantianescia on Apr 23, 2012 15:57:32 GMT
What he was referring to is this post by Mr Ramsey:
To be more precise about probability here, the probability that Christian “j” (where j is an integer index) would be called “brother of the Lord” by Paul is P(j) = W(j)/N, where N is the number of Christians of which Paul knows, and W(j) is a weighting factor dependent on the value of j. The sum of all possible weighting factors is N. This formulation is very general, and the differences between historicist readings and your reading is basically an argument over what W(j) should be. If Paul is no more likely to refer to one Christian than another as “brother of the lord,” then W(j) = 1. If there’s some favoritism on his part, then the weighting factor for some Christians will be greater than others. If historicists are correct, then the weighting factor is zero for all Christians who are not literal brothers of Jesus. If there are “m” Christians with the name “Simon”, then if j_1, j_2, j_3, …, j_m, are the indices belonging to those Christians, then the total probability that one of these Christians will be called brother of the lord is P(j_1) + P(j_2) + … + P(j_m). Of course, the exact values of W(j) and N are unknown.
Basically Mr Ramsey is correcting Carrier's model that uses the Mythicist assumption that "brother of the Lord" simply means "Christian". He's pointing out that if Paul would randomly label Christians "Brother of the Lord", it is quite a coincidence that it is only attached to a Christian with the same name as Jesus's brother in gMark. Richard Carrier tries to evade this point by claiming that there's a chance of 0.253 that a Christian randomly called "Brother of the Lord" shares his name with one of Jesus' four "invented" brothers. But he ignores that it's still a coincidence that that name would be "James", which had a prevalence of about 1 in 65.
Mr Ramsey explains the corrections in more detail here:
"As for “weighing factors” that has no relevance here, unless you are making a confused reference to completing the Bayesian equation." Um, no, the weighting factors that I mentioned have nothing to do with Bayes. It’s much more basic than that. Imagine Paul throwing a dart labeled “brother of the Lord” at a board. N is the area of the whole board, and W(j) is the area of piece “j” of the board. That’s all. There’s nothing fancy about it, except perhaps for the notation. I’m not even bothering with Bayes’ theorem here. Anyway, there’s the matter of what probability are we estimating here. You’ve talked about the probability of Mark choosing the names James, Joses, Judas, and Simon as a name of a brother of Jesus. You and I have also talked about the probability that “Paul randomly happened to use the full title [brother of the Lord] for any Christian,” and I’ve mentioned the probability that Paul would have called “brother of the Lord” a Christian with the same name as one of the brothers that Mark actually mentions. These are not all the same probability. There’s also that Mark and Paul would both happen to choose the same names (regardless of what those names are), which is yet a different probability again. This conversation is a mess.
I personally find his point based on 1 Cor 9:4-6 ("Do we not have the right to our food and drink? Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?") a lot better; did all Christians have a right to refrain from working and be supported by the church? That'd be an interesting economy!
J. J. Ramsey: "Considering that the “one right” to which I alluded was the right to not have to work, I think you are the one who lost track of the argument. Or do you think that Paul thought that Christians in general had that right?"
R. Carrier: "Your very question betrays the fact that you have completely lost track of the argument at this point. You are starting to talk in circles now."
I suggest the following interpretation: "You've pointed at a vital flaw in my interpretation but I'll just try to bluff myself through it hoping nobody notices."
|
|