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Post by sankari on Mar 31, 2012 6:47:57 GMT
Well, the sheep-like believers who swallow it are, anyway. The actual peddlers of the nonsense are fairly small in number. But ... I think the peddlers are a huge group. They also have enormous funding and enjoy a stupendous amount of publicity. The mythicists are invisible by comparison. Whether qualified in a fully relevant field or not, they are nonetheless qualified professionals. How many mythicists hold doctorates or master's degrees in... anything? I reckon that'll be a pretty short list. Nobody even knows if Doherty's claims to higher education are true, because he refuses to provide any details. He might have gone no further than Year 10 and the local pub. That is not what I said. I said they engage with peer review and academic literature, albeit very badly. I'm referring to the material they're responding to, not the material they're producing. Having said that, there is a peer reviewed creationist journal (though I suspect it's worth less than the budget brand toilet paper my wife buys every fortnight). Absolutely, no argument there. Thanks, I appreciate the distinction now.
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Post by fortigurn on Apr 3, 2012 2:26:53 GMT
I can't believe Carrier actually claims Psalm 89 and Daniel 9 'explicitly predict the humiliation and death of the messiah'. Atheists (together with standard New Testament scholarship), have always maintained that these prophecies of a suffering messiah are actually no such thing, and that such interpretations are post-hoc Christian misreadings of their own doctrine back into the original text.
Now Carrier is saying the complete opposite. Fundamentalist Christian apologists must be rejoicing. Of course Carrier attempts to insulate himself from the otherwise damaging implications of this by claiming that it's ok because Jesus wasn't a historical figure after all, but I wonder how many atheists and mythicists are willing to follow him down this path?
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Post by sankari on Apr 3, 2012 6:54:12 GMT
I can't believe Carrier actually claims Psalm 89 and Daniel 9 'explicitly predict the humiliation and death of the messiah'. What's his motivation for doing this?
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Post by fortigurn on Apr 3, 2012 7:29:04 GMT
What's his motivation for doing this? He wants to claim that the Jesus of Paul was a fictional literary creation, a composite of passages from the Old Testament.
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Post by timoneill on Apr 3, 2012 7:31:27 GMT
I can't believe Carrier actually claims Psalm 89 and Daniel 9 'explicitly predict the humiliation and death of the messiah'. What's his motivation for doing this? He's trying to counter the argument that no Jews were expecting a suffering/executed Messiah, therefore the fact Jesus is presented as one is a post factum "explanation" for why this supposed Messiah ended up nailed to a cross.
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Post by fortigurn on Apr 3, 2012 8:04:59 GMT
He's trying to counter the argument that no Jews were expecting a suffering/executed Messiah, therefore the fact Jesus is presented as one is a post factum "explanation" for why this supposed Messiah ended up nailed to a cross. Yes, this seems to be part of his argument against the criterion of embarrassment.
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Post by sankari on Apr 3, 2012 9:24:26 GMT
Well he's not doing a very good job of it. The argument seems almost circular.
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Post by unkleE on Apr 4, 2012 1:19:24 GMT
Atheists (together with standard New Testament scholarship), have always maintained that these prophecies of a suffering messiah are actually no such thing, and that such interpretations are post-hoc Christian misreadings of their own doctrine back into the original text. Richard Longenecker would describe this as a 'pesher' interpretation. (Pesher means interpretation, or more specifically "this is that" or "this means ...", and describes a way of adding meaning and reinterpreting scriptures in the light of later events.) They are not just post hoc christian interpretations, but were common with Jesus and with the Qumran community.
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Post by fortigurn on Apr 4, 2012 4:29:49 GMT
Richard Longenecker would describe this as a 'pesher' interpretation. (Pesher means interpretation, or more specifically "this is that" or "this means ...", and describes a way of adding meaning and reinterpreting scriptures in the light of later events.) They are not just post hoc christian interpretations, but were common with Jesus and with the Qumran community. Yes, I understand this method of interpretation was common to Second Temple Judaism.
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joel
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 70
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Post by joel on Apr 9, 2012 13:58:04 GMT
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Mike D
Master of the Arts
Posts: 204
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Post by Mike D on Apr 9, 2012 16:23:32 GMT
That is a rather unimpressive summary - it seems to miss out an awful lot about the credibility (or lack thereof) of some of the evidence.
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Post by unkleE on Apr 10, 2012 0:03:13 GMT
That is a rather unimpressive summary - it seems to miss out an awful lot about the credibility (or lack thereof) of some of the evidence. Yes I saw that article. The minority view represented by one recognised scholar, one hopeful scholar and one non-scholar got more space than the majority view represented by thousands of scholars. But that's the mass media for you!! : (
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Post by ignorantianescia on Apr 13, 2012 17:18:17 GMT
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Post by sandwiches on Apr 13, 2012 17:51:59 GMT
From the conclusion of Part 2 of the review linked to above:
"The reactions of many mythicists to Ehrman’s book, and the manner of response seen in some comments on this blog and elsewhere, says a lot. Several have pointed out what may or may not be errors, or at least examples of imprecision, in the book, in a manner that suggests they think that being capable of error means that everything one writes can be summarily dismissed.....But because they are mostly former fundamentalists, one distinctly gets the impression that mythicists are still on a quest for inerrant sources of truth, and that dismissing mainstream scholarship on the basis of its lack of inerrancy is foolish...Bart Ehrman’s book offers a fantastic example of a scholar doing precisely that, explaining how historical conclusions are reached – and where the claims of denialist critics are wrong or irrelevant – in a manner that allows the reader to understand the relevant evidence and why the consensus is so strong about this particular topic. I highly recommend this book."
Hear hear.
One does wonder if it is wise for any scholar to answer the mythicists? One answers them and they claim it lends their views credence (look they are taking us seriously - we must be right) but if no-one does then they claim that is because all the scholars are in a vast conspiracy. However they will pick up on the slightest detail to claim it invalidates the whole case against the mythicist argument.
Credit to Ehrman though he must be finding that it is like fighting against some mythological monster like the Hydra - you cut of one head and two more grow?
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Post by ignorantianescia on Apr 13, 2012 18:39:21 GMT
One does wonder if it is wise for any scholar to answer the mythicists? One answers them and they claim it lends their views credence ( look they are taking us seriously - we must be right) but if no-one does then they claim that is because all the scholars are in a vast conspiracy. However they will pick up on the slightest detail to claim it invalidates the whole case against the mythicist argument. Yes, as if they haven't put the bar arbitrarily low for themselves, they also seem to be of the opinion that a few errors completely invalidate the scholars' case. It's like playing "heads I win, tails you lose" with a biased coin. Credit to Ehrman though he must be finding that it is like fighting against some mythological monster like the Hydra - you cut of one head and two more grow? It seems to be getting quite public now as well, if this really can be taken as Mythicism: www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/09/atheist-group-jesus-christ-is-a-myth-banner-theft-is-a-felony-hate-crime/I wonder whether stealing banners saying "Giordano Bruno died for your science" or "Hypatia discovered heliocentric elliptical orbits" would also be claimed to be a hate crime or just petty thievery.
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