labarum
Master of the Arts
Posts: 122
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Post by labarum on May 25, 2012 10:00:37 GMT
Carrier has form on this point; his Masters thesis wasn't published: The description of his thesis is, shall we say, predictable? In other news, Carrier explains to a fan why he still doesn't have a job. So, you think maybe these are the excuses he gives his wife?
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Post by sankari on May 25, 2012 17:14:32 GMT
The description of his thesis is, shall we say, predictable? Frankly, I'm speechless. If ever there was proof that Carrier believes his own spin, this is it.
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Post by euglena on May 25, 2012 18:38:23 GMT
What a load of bull. The reason he can’t get a job is found right there on his CV: since getting his PhD five years ago, he has no teaching experience and has published no papers in the academic literature. It would seem to me that a brilliant scholar could not be held back by a recession. On the contrary, with all that free time over the last five years, he should have published several papers and could have taught courses as an adjunct somewhere. He instead chose to use his time to make money selling books to his fans and speaking at atheist conventions.
“If I even want one?” Oh please, it’s clear this guy would LOVE to pad his self-promotion efforts by citing his position at some university. It would be nauseating. But apparently, since they have not come knocking on his door, he’s now trying to create the illusion he is too good for them and has all this “academic freedom” he doesn’t want to give up. So I guess writing blogs and books for atheist publishers is supposed to count as academic.
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Post by sankari on May 26, 2012 2:45:28 GMT
- Ehrman hasn't really considered the myther arguments enough. - Ehrman is in an academic field so overwhelmingly biased toward Christianity that it's natural he'd retain some vestige of Christian belief. - Ehrman secretly has myther sympathies, but he knows the academic inquisition would come after him if he dared to question the irrational dogma of the historical Jesus, so he keeps his mouth shut about it and writes things like this for street cred. - Ehrman might be an agnostic, but he WANTS to believe in Christianity so much that he still holds onto this little bit of it. - Ehrman is an old-fashioned academic and real historians like Richard Carrier will destroy the brittle foundation of the historical Jesus (just wait till Carrier gets his book published!) - Ehrman is just doing this so Christians will take his other books more seriously. - Ehrman lives in a Bible belt state (North Carolina) and has had his mind poisoned by that climate so that he accepts the senseless proposition of the historical Jesus. - Ehrman is making this digital-only because he's ashamed of how weak his arguments are and doesn't want them subjected to too much scrutiny. - Ehrman is making this digital-only because he's not putting much effort into it. - Ehrman is a secret Christian just like Tim O'Neill. - Biblical studies aren't a real academic field, who cares what they say? Richard Carrier and Earl Doherty have shown just how pathetic New Testament scholars are. - Ehrman begs the question by assuming that "Paul" existed at all. It's amazing how prescient this turned out to be. Even some of the more amusing suggestions have been vindicated.
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joel
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 70
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Post by joel on May 26, 2012 18:50:36 GMT
I guess I'm a prophet. Well, a lot of the same things have been said about various people by mythers for years. In fairness to Carrier, while he isn't doing himself any favors, it IS really hard to find academic jobs these days, especially in liberal arts. A couple of years ago I briefly considered going to grad school for history (I still might someday), but one of the reasons I didn't at the time is because the market is already flooded with PhDs.
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labarum
Master of the Arts
Posts: 122
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Post by labarum on May 26, 2012 21:31:47 GMT
I guess I'm a prophet. Well, a lot of the same things have been said about various people by mythers for years. In fairness to Carrier, while he isn't doing himself any favors, it IS really hard to find academic jobs these days, especially in liberal arts. A couple of years ago I briefly considered going to grad school for history (I still might someday), but one of the reasons I didn't at the time is because the market is already flooded with PhDs. You are correct on the glut of PhDs in the humanities. Schools have been churning them out at a record pace far in excess of the academy's ability to absorb them. But this raises another question: Is a Ph.D in history that big a deal anymore when unaccompanied by other evidence of academic prowess? I am not saying it is not an accomplishment at all; just that it is the first step in being a historian and should be accompanied by other work at the academic level. If he had put his effort in post-doc studies and submitted papers for peer review, then this might have given him a step up the ladder. I still find it hard to believe a small college or local community college would not have taken the opportunity to hire a recent Ph.D from a prestigous university. This would have allowed him the chance to do some research and then perhaps give him a leg up on the competition a few years down the line. As it stands, his abilities as a researcher must now be seriouly called into question. I have pointed out his inability to read Ehrman correctly and the sources he quoted are now being called into question by those who have read them as here: thoughtsphilosophyculture.blogspot.com/2012/05/carrier-versus-ehrman-on-procurators.htmlSo is this guy even trustworthy? Let's just say I have my doubts.
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Post by fortigurn on May 27, 2012 1:04:00 GMT
In support of his claims concerning Tacitus' reference to Pilate, he cited a paper by himself and one other source; Millar. As we've seen, Millar does not say what he claimed. This is not exactly cutting edge scholarship he's providing.
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Post by sandwiches on May 27, 2012 12:32:53 GMT
Maurice Casey summarises matters: rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/the-jesus-process-maurice-casey/Finally the main point is that Doherty, and his followers, are drastically incompetent, and quite incapable of following evidence or argument. I was sorry to have to comment in my essay, ‘I hope this is sufficient to indicate that the mythicist view is based on ineducable ignorance, prejudice and absolute contempt for anything like learned scholarship.’ I regret to say that this has been abundantly confirmed by the comments on the essays of Stephanie and myself. They also attribute to both of us an astonishing degree of incompetence and insincerity to find which they must have gazed into their mirrors.
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Post by fortigurn on May 27, 2012 13:09:55 GMT
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Post by turoldus on May 28, 2012 12:40:19 GMT
How typical of him. Still, what do you think of this new "argument"? It isn't addressed in your post.
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Post by fortigurn on May 28, 2012 13:08:29 GMT
How typical of him. Still, what do you think of this new "argument"? It isn't addressed in your post. I don't think it's worth bothering with, at least in this series of posts. The aim of this series of posts is to test Carrier's claims that Ehrman was in error, and showing Carrier performed a complete backflip after Ehrman turned the tables on him demonstrates his original challenge was a waste of time, so Ehrman's original point stands.
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Post by fortigurn on May 29, 2012 2:04:20 GMT
I think the fact that Carrier only lists eight scholars (including James Tabor!), for his view that Jesus' resurrection didn't involve the raising of his original body speaks for itself; if this were the scholarly consensus, he wouldn't have to list scholars, and any such list would fill pages.
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labarum
Master of the Arts
Posts: 122
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Post by labarum on May 30, 2012 0:31:05 GMT
Next blog post below __________________________________________ One of the most interesting subjects in the exchange between Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier occurs when they discuss the subject of dying and rising gods. Ehrman dismissed the claims of such deities using a scholarly consensus on the matter and appealing in particular to the work of Jonathan Z. Smith. He also mentioned Mark S. Smith although one might have missed this because of the two having the same last name. In order to understand Carrier’s response and why it fails completely, one must first have some background in the debate on the subject. At the turn of the twentieth century, the work of James Frazer in The Golden Bough posited the idea of “dying and rising gods” based on vegtative cycles. While Frazer was no mythicist, he did believe the idea of the dying and rising god crept into Christianity as it merged with the Roman state. At the time, the earliest manuscripts were from the post-Constantinian period and such a theory was plausible then but subsequent discoveries have pushed the date of the New Testament writings back to the latter half of the first century. Frazer’s “dying and rising god idea” still had support but was weakening and has been abandoned within the last few decades. The work of Jonathan Z. Smith all but put the final nail in the coffin as his extensive work on Frazer’s thesis exposed its inherent weaknesses. Thus, by the mere fact that Smith destroyed one of the mythicists favorite arguments, they have attempted to dismiss Smith as incompetent. Unfortunately for them, they do not realize that he is considered to be perhaps the greatest scholar on the history of religious ideas in the last century and their attempt at character assassination in this regard only makes them look all the more foolish. Even worse, it appears most mythicists are only aware of Smith from an article in a religious encyclopedia editied by Mircea Eliad. Mythicists will say Smith gives no real evidence in this article but they prove they simply are ignorant of his work on this subject. The article in question is just that – an article in an encyclopedia – and was certainly not intended to be a thorough scholarly exposition of the subject. Smith merely summarized the scholarly consensus on the subject, which he played a large part in forming, and gave a broad outline of the reasons why it developed. You never, for instance, see the mythcists treating Smith’s 300+ page dissertation on the subject nor his similar treatment of mystery religions in Drudgery Divine. One has to wonder if Carrier has ever read anything by Smith apart from that single article (or excerpts from it). It certainly does not show in his responses. For example, Carrier acts as though J. Z. Smith were some isolated voice on the topic rather than the most quoted scholarly authority. In fact, T. N. D. Mettinger, one of the few notable scholars to disagree with Smith, stated those who still supported elements of the dying and rising god thesis were looked upon as “residual members of an almost extinct species.” Mettinger further stated that Smith had left the dying and rising gods hypothesis to “die the death of a thousand wounds”, that the concept’s history had been one of “initial triumph and subsequent demise”, and that “the words of J. Z. Smith aptly summarize the present state of research.” Apparently Carrier is simply ignorant of the current scholarly consensus. Even more amazing is when Carrier mentions Ehrman citing Mettinger but claims Ehrman argument that these could not have influenced Christianity is implausible. What is amazing is that he is apparently unaware that Mettinger said the same exact thing himself and Ehrman was merely relaying it! This related to one of the odder elements of Jesus mythicists and the dying and rising gods thesis: the mythicists’ reliance upon T. N. D. Mettinger. Mettinger is often hailed as a conquering hero by mythicists because he is one of the few real scholars to state there were some dying and rising gods. I will not make any claim in the scholarly debate between Smith and Mettinger (both being great scholars and myself not knowledgeable about the finer points of Ugaritic) other than to point out that the consensus still sides with Smith. More importantly, however, is that Mettigner does not help the mythicist cause. He makes quite clear at the beginning of his work that his aim is to show there were some dying and rising gods but without assuming any real thematic connection between them. In other words, there were gods who died and came back to life within the context of their own religious traditions but without assuming any overall thematic unity. As Mettinger himself stated, his work “does not intend to resuscitate Frazer’s category” and “the category of dying and rising deities as propagated by Frazer can no longer be upheld.” In closing, he concludes one should not hypostasize these gods into a specific type called “the dying and rising god” since these gods are actually of very different types. As for the case of Jesus, he makes his view quite clear: There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions. The misunderstandings of Mettinger and the ignorance of the bulk of Smith’s work only underscores how ignorant Carrier and other mythicists are concerning this question. Carrier also questions Ehrman concerning Osiris because Ehrman pointed out Osiris died and stayed dead. Carrier pointed to a passage in Plutarch but Ehrman noted the passage actually has Osiris communicating from the world of the dead only to return there. Carrier, whose argument of a bodily resurrection for Osiris had been exposed, then suddenly switched gears and claimed that Jesus did not have a bodily resurretion either. He pointed out some debates over what the term “spirit body” meant but wrongly asserted they were akin to the Osiris cycle. In fact, these were arguments over whether Jesus rose in the same body or exchanged bodies for a completely new type. Either way, it is quite clear in Paul that Jesus had conquered death and did not return to the abode of the dead. Jesus was as alive or even more so that any of us. Finally, it was amazing that Carrier would make the argument that Jesus was resurrected in outer space. After wrongly chiding Ehrman for citing one scholar (who happened to be one of the greatest living scholars in the subject) and labeling it the tactic of a “hack”, here is Carrier making an assertion based on a single nonscholarly source – namely Earl Doherty – who has no academic standing whatsoever. One supposes now that Carrier must hope one day to qualify as a hack.
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Post by fortigurn on May 30, 2012 2:01:35 GMT
Nice work.
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Post by sankari on May 30, 2012 15:47:34 GMT
Champion! That'll leave a bruise alright. I notice Godfrey is rather peeved by the almighty beatdowns posted by Hoffman, et al. While I personally feel that Stephanie Fisher's post was far too polemical (frequently resorting to intemperate language), her central argument was superb. Casey's was even better. Hoffman's was arguably the best.
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