By way of mop-up of this thread, I'm running through some points in Richard Carrier's response that I haven't mentioned yet.
Carrier wrote:
I’ve “undermined the importance” of my effort by conceding uncertainty. The uncertainty actually objectively entailed by the state of the evidence. Russell thus thinks it’s far more important to defeat Christianity than to tell the truth; therefore any method that gets results too uncertain to be useful for that political aim, must be discarded. Not because it isn’t a valid method or because there is any other method better able to ascertain the truth; but because the truth is a liability to our political goals. Therefore objective methods must go. This is the summation of a crank’s very modus operandi.
This was off-topic to my review, but it's correct that I think that Atwill's method is far better at yielding results that are reliably accurate.
In this context, it's important to note that Carrier in
"On the Historicity of Jesus" vs. Atwill in
"Caesar's Messiah" are addressing two different historical periods. Carrier is primarily interested in the 1st half of the 1st century, when (he believes) Christianity originated. Whereas Atwill is interested in the period beginning after 70 AD and the fall of the Jewish temple, which is the time frame when the Gospels were most likely written.
Carrier:
I’ll also not bother much with Russell’s totally crank suggestion that all the messianic movements Josephus documented were versions of Christianity. There is exactly zero evidence of that, and no plausibility to it whatever (see OHJ, Ch. 6.5 & Element 4, Ch. 4). Russell seems to think any messianic movement should be considered “Christian,” which is an equivocation fallacy: we do not mean by “Christian” just any “messianism,” but specifically the belief in a resurrected savior whose death atoned for all sins, a belief present in no other messianic sect attested. But it’s just like a crank to go off on pattern hunting to a level of lunacy, and rest a bizarre conclusion on fallacious tricks with words.
We have a difference in definitions here. By "Christian" (or, more specifically, early Christian) I mean any one of the various amalgamating sects which eventually contributed to the formation of medieval Christianity, either by contributing narrative elements and theological nuggets, or by institutional merger.
Carrier:
Even more typical of crankery is reasoning by bizarre non sequiturs that experts actually agree with you when in fact they do not. Russell does this when he says “Carrier’s belief” is that Christianity was like “a singular kernel [that] exploded through a process of conversion driven by evangelism and managed by a tightly controlled hierarchical leadership,” and “yet as Carrier himself admits, nothing could be farther from the truth,” since “we know … the chaotic nature of early Christianity.” This is all false.
Carrier says "this is all false", and then in the very next sentence:
I do believe Christianity launched from a singular origin: because that’s what our only eyewitness to its formative years tells us (1 Corinthians 15; Galatians 1). And there is zero evidence of it being otherwise.
Which is it, Richard? Everything I said is wrong? Or, at least half of what I said about your beliefs is correct?
But I have never said it was “managed by a tightly controlled hierarchical leadership.” To the contrary, I explain in OHJ that that same witness confirms the leadership could only barely control anything, and the movement fractured and spiraled into numerous competing sects (OHJ, Element 21, with Elements 10, 15, and 20, in Ch. 4). It is also a total non sequitur to argue from that, that therefore Christianity didn’t start exactly as that same witness says who attests to its fracture; and outright bizarre to conclude that therefore “I admit” it didn’t.
OK, I was confused about this part. Carrier's position is consistent: he believes that Paul was telling the truth about the singular origins of Christianity, and also that this church suddenly fragmented into a bewildering variety of competing sects. And it is equally obvious to me that Paul was either lying about both issues, or that our surviving copies of Paul have been distorted either historically or theologically, or both.
This leaves me with a question for Richard: when did the hierarchical, militant leadership of the Roman church emerge, and why?
Carrier:
Non sequiturs are also present in Russell’s strange move in arguing “surely the near-silence of history regarding that exploding Church is … far more damning to the view that Paul’s epistles reflect the genuine historical state of the Christian movement.” I struggle to discern any logic at all in this statement. Why would the obscurity of a tiny fringe movement, resulting in next to no document survival (and on Russell’s crank view, no document survival at all, as he thinks all the letters of Paul are forged), argue against it being too obscure and fringe to have documents survive? The idiocy in this reasoning is perplexing to me.
The reason we have next to no documents about the early church, and indeed no third party references to it either, is because it was too small and inconsequential for anyone to notice it in any records we now have; and the much later church that effectively acquired total document control chose not to preserve any of its first century of documentation (apart from some very few edited letters it deemed safe). No other explanation is possible. If there were many parallel versions of Christianity in the way Russell maintains, the silence of the record is just as peculiar. Unless you adopt exactly the same explanation for it.
What I actually said was this:
Carrier also makes much of the silence from history about a world-renowned Jesus figure living during the first half of the first century; but when you think about it, if there really was a Pauline Christian Church that was spreading all over the Mediterranean during Paul’s time, surely the near-silence of history regarding that exploding Church is far more significant, and far more damning to the view that Paul’s epistles reflect the genuine historical state of the Christian movement circa 50 AD. It seems far more likely that Paul’s church is a highly fictionalized version of one or more cults that really did exist at that time.
To further spell out my position: there were many sects existing circa 50 AD which could be considered as embryonic Christian churches in one way or another. Regarding these sects, a significant amount of historical documentation that has survived (although not nearly as much as we would like.) The letters of Paul need to be interpreted carefully, because there might (or might not) be some core portion that was written in the 50's.
In their received condition, the letters of Paul certainly do describe a Christian church which is exploding all over the Mediterranean, not a tiny and obscure fringe movement.
Carrier:
Does Russell imagine Rome completely invented these Romulus passion plays after Mark wrote his Gospel in (at its earliest) the 70s A.D.? Based on what wild speculation contrary to all evidence and plausibility?
No, what I said was:
the quoted aspects of the Jesus narrative also represent a close parallel to the birth narrative of Augustus Caesar, and the death narrative of Julius Caesar. These narratives all seem somewhat mythologized, and may very well have co-evolved.
No Richard, I didn't read all your footnotes. Cicero, Livy and Ovid all lived during Augustine times, and thus they were well familiar with the legends of the death of Julius Caesar and the birth of Augustus.
Carrier:
Russell then bizarrely insists euhemerization “is actually defined as the process by which a human person is converted into a myth.” Um. No. Euhemerus did not take a historical Uranus and Zeus and mythologize them. He took a mythical Uranus and Zeus and historicized them. That’s why that is called “Euhemerization.” That Russell doesn’t know this shows he didn’t read my book’s discussion of Euhemerism, and doesn’t even know why it’s called Euhemerism—why it is named after Euhemerus, what Euhemerus did that the term references (see Euhemerization and my Brief Note). Total ignorance.
First of all, if there's any total ignorance on display here, it's that Carrier seems to have ignored or failed to understand what I wrote:
Euhemerus argued that the well-known mythological gods of his time, were actually historical characters that had been deified through the respect of their followers and heirs.
In writing that, I exhibited some knowledge of historical Euhemerus, eh? Here's Wikipedia on the definition of Euhemerism:
Euhemerism (/juːˈhiːmərɪzəm, -hɛm-/) is an approach to the interpretation of mythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages.
The problem here is that Carrier never uses or defines the word "Euhemerism", but rather he discusses the process of "Euhemerization". I wasn't aware at the time I wrote my review, that Carrier had already addressed this issue at his blog (or, I think he did; the publication dates indicated at Carrier's current website seem to be delayed from when the material might have originally appeared at Freethought Blogs --
(see Euhemerization and my Brief Note)).
I consider Carrier's definition of "Euhemerization" to be a confusing obfuscation, and what it's hiding is that Euhemerus was the first of a long line of philosophers & historians who agree with Euhemerus, that characters such as Zeus and Hercules were men that became deified. And as Don Gakusei wrote at Carrier's blog site comments section:
I think you will continue to receive flak on this because your definition is not consistent with the mainstream one. You keep correctly pointing out that Euhemerus turned the gods into men, but you don’t seem to realize the implication: they were just men. To paraphrase the Soup Nazi: “No ascension for you!”
There are, of course, many historically documented examples of men who became deified; for example, all the Pharaohs, Julius Caesar, and Augustus. So how does that affect your prior probabilities, Richard Carrier?
Regarding my points about the book of Acts, Carrier wrote:
And I demonstrate both points there mathematically. I highlighted certain things here to make a point: Russell only mentions “the trial speeches lacked any mention of a historical Jesus,” as if I didn’t also adduce many other oddities in Acts, and tabulate all of them in their mathematical effect. Omitting the best arguments for a conclusion, “refuting” the weakest one instead, and claiming to have refuted them all, is a common cognitive error humans are prone to.
No, I was refuting a single point (actually, two points), as examples within a brief book review.
As to my claim to have refuted the book's entire argument: it is rooted in my view that the two hypotheses proposed are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are constructed in denial of the hypothesis that best fits the evidence.
) and Harrisification?