OK, moving along:
Carrier then gives us the same old line about Paul getting all his info about Jesus from "revelation" again and says there is no mention of an earthly ministry or Jesus choosing disciples in the epistles... Well since Paul wasn't one of the "Super Apostles" who knew of the Lord in the flesh, he wouldn't be emphasising that, would he? He claims his version of Jesus is superior to those other Apostles because their knowledge comes from the flesh, but his is from the spirit. Carrier mangles this into the idea that no one knew the flesh Jesus, ignoring the fact that Paul was selling a different theology to those other guys.
Which throws out dejudge's claim about Paul being concurrent or after the Gospels out the window because if the writer was that late (ie 70 CE or later ) he could have simply said "Paul" got his knowledge from James Brother of the Lord instead of investing in this whole vision thing..
I have not read what
dejudge has said about any of that, so I don't know what Carriers explanation does to anything dejudge has said. But obviously the main point which Carrier makes as an actual fact is that Paul makes
"no mention of an earthly ministry or Jesus choosing disciples in the epistles." In Paul's letters there
are no "Super Apostles" who knew of the Lord in the flesh"; that's the factual point that Carrier explains.
As Carrier says in the film, neither Paul nor anyone else named by Paul, ever met Jesus except as a vision after supposed death. Paul only knew Jesus as a vision
"according to scripture", that is the factual point which is very clearly made there by Carrier. And nobody else named by Paul ever met Jesus except as a deceased vision. That's a fact as given in Paul’s letters, i.e. - as Carrier correctly says - in the letters Paul and others only knew Jesus as a resurrected vision of belief from scripture.
But
Craig in particular should say no more on this subject, and should not repeat any of the same claims he has been making as evidence of a human Jesus, until he has taken a very good look at that film and if necessary cross-checked that with Carriers book and the references he gives there. Because what Carrier answers in that film, are all the same main claims that Craig and other HJ people have made ... and in the film Carrier gives factual rebuttals to each of those claims, and he does that with what he says are full academic references published in a peer-reviewed book on the subject.
Then he goes on to the gospels and makes a silly point about them being written 40-50 years after the supposed life of Jesus. He says 40 years was a lifetime back then, because the average lifespan was only about 40 years. That may have been average, but there are plenty of examples from antiquity of people who lived much longer than that.
Given Carrier gives a more detailed explanation that agrees with the above in
Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) I can only assume this oversimplification is due to the imposed time limit. I also suspect there was some playing to the audience there as well as the idea that life expectancy is maximum life span is a VERY common misconception.
"In the ancient world, the average life expectancy (for anyone who survived to age 15) was 46 years,
while fewer than 1 in 20 would live to 70, and fewer than 1 in 200 would live to 85. Any witness, who survived the war and was at least fifteen years old by 35 A.D. (and thus could recall events of previous years with any kind of reliability), would probably be dead before 75 A.D. (having only a 34% chance of survival, even without an intervening war and persecution), and would almost certainly be dead by 100 A.D. (with only a 1.5% chance of survival, and that's again without an intervening war and persecution, which would have reduced the probability of survival a great deal more). See "Estimated Life Expectancy in the Ancient World," adapted from "Frier's Life Table for the Roman Empire" (see Note 7). Likewise,
Josephus himself says 20 years is enough time for witnesses to no longer be available to rebut a story (Life 360; cf. Jewish War 1.15 & Against Apion 1.55)."
As you can see from the above Carrier actually knows better.
That point about the lifespan of people in biblical times, and comparing that to the estimated or guessed earliest possible dates for any of the canonical gospels (none of which exist in any such supposed earliest "original" forms), is just about the least significant part of an entire debate which otherwise covered the dozen or so most important claims about evidence for a HJ. So I don’t know why any HJ supporter here would pick that out and omit to discuss all the main evidential points on such things as the origin of the name Jesus, the reason that "James" was called a "brother of the Lord", what Greek or Hebrew word was actually used for the "seed" of David, whether modern scholarship does or does not accept that David and Moses were probably fictional, whether it was more probable that Isaiah really could predict the future as a gift from Yahweh (as claimed by the Christian side lol!) or whether it was more likely that later gospel writers simply copied that prediction from the book of Isaiah, etc. etc. ... those are the sort of questions that are of vastly more direct importance here, and they were very fully answered by Carrier with factual references etc.
As I say, HJ people here should double-check those references and his explanations in more detail in his book, because there is always a chance that the references do not say what Carrier says they say. On the other hand the book has been through an academic peer review process, so there should not be any major errors of that kind, and all the references are there for HJ people to confirm for themselves what Carrier says.
My issue with the debate is the sound is total crap.
Sound is not great. But you
can hear it. And it is generally much better in the 2nd half of the film when we get to their extensive discussion stage, where the Christian side were actually humiliated and all their pro-HJ claims destroyed. Also revealing was the final Q&A from audience members where Christians in the audience were losing their tempers and making quite absurd arguments which were nevertheless supported by the two Christian speakers on the stage, even though those arguments were again shown by Carrier to be childish nonsense as well as little more than the product of overt blind religious faith.
