Thanks IanS, but I have Carrier's book, so I do know what he says on this. I'd be more interested in your own analysis. That is, present the data but tell me what you think is correct, incorrect, speculative, etc.
OK, well one of us needs to write the entire passage of what is said in Carrier's book "Element 6, pages 81-83", and in "Element 40, pages 200 to about p 205. So that we can see what Carrier actually does say. The mods may object to that (very long quotes from a book), but as far as I know there is no link that can be given to that as the relevant section of text under discussion.
But when you ask what is my opinion - as I made clear over the past few weeks when I have on probably 4 separate occasions in 4 separate posts mentioned what I think Carrier is claiming as his interpretation of what is said about "Jesus" in the book of Zechariah ... I do not have any firm opinion about it one way or the other, because I have no access to what was actually written in the earliest extant copies of Zechariah, and I would have to rely on the accuracy and impartiality of various translators anyway.
But what I did say about it is - that in his YouTube films, and now in his book, Carrier does claim that in Zechariah there is talk of what Carrier describes as a "pre-existent celestial being, named Jesus, crowned king in heaven, and given supreme power over God's domain, who will somehow rise up from below to cleanse the world of all sin". But where he (ie Jesus) is at some point confronted by Satan and where his "rising" is somehow supposed to be connected to a dying and rising "Christ" (i.e. a "messiah) described in other books of the OT such as Isaiah and Daniel. That seems to be what Carrier is proposing.
And what I said about that was, to paraphrase from previous posts (from rough memory), what I think Carrier is saying is that in the book of Zechariah, you can actually find not only the name "Joshua i.e. Jesus" being used for a pre-existent celestial son of God, but that those prophecies in Zechariah, perhaps in conjunction with other writing that Paul regarded as "scripture" (such as the book of Isaiah and the writing called "The Ascent of Isaiah", for example), would appear to be a very obvious source from which Paul may have got his belief that the messiah was a figure named "Joshua" (i.e. Jesus), who was according to scripture crucified but then raised up by God on the third day, in an act proving to the faithful how they too would surely be raised unto heaven providing they kept the faith which Paul preached.
As I cautioned many times in those posts - I do not know if Carrier is correct in that interpretation, and I did not check further than to see what Bible Gateway said about those particular passages in the book of Zechariah, where I could not actually find a direct example of what Carrier was claiming and where there seemed to be some confusion about the actual translations of words apparently meaning "Rising" and/or "Branch", but that overall it seemed that you certainly can find the passages that Carrier is referring to, and that his overall interpretation may well be correct.
The point, as far as I was making it was, and is, only to say that passages such as that in Zechariah, in Isaiah, in Daniel, in The Ascent of Isaiah etc., do seem to be very obvious examples of what Paul described as "according to scripture", from which he may easily have got the idea that the scriptures had foretold a message "hidden so long" (iirc correctly, that is how Paul somewhere described it), by which he believed that the messiah was a figure named Jesus, who would be killed (perhaps by his own people, or by "the rulers of this age", eg see 1-Corinthians 2:8), but who would then be raised up again on the 3rd day in an act demonstrating to the faithful that they too would be raised up from death if they just kept the faith which Paul preached.
IOW - sources like that appear to be a likely place from which Paul got his Jesus belief, when he insisted that it was "according to scripture".
Here is Earl Doherty's opinion on Carrier's use of Philo and Zechariah 6:
http://ntweblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/did-jesus-exist-with-richard-carrier.html
What he [Carrier] seems to have done is make a deduction about what was in Philo's mind, something that would have been dependent on an (uncertain) implication in Zechariah. Perhaps Carrier was right, but the difficulties in demonstrating that compromise his claim. Perhaps he should have made the uncertainty clear.
I agree with Doherty here. The problem is that Carrier's point is highly speculative, but it leads people who read his book uncritically to make the claim as you did: that there are passages "in the book of Zechariah, describe a figure actually named there as “Jesus”, who is a celestial being and described as the Son of God." That's simply not true. The Jesus in Zech 6 is a man. Carrier's actual case is much more speculative, as it is based on Carrier's 'reading' Philo's mind on what Philo thought the Zech 6 text meant, as Doherty points out. But once you see that Zech 6 is about a man, it not only undermines Carrier's 'celestial Jesus' point, but it provides strength to the idea that Paul saw Jesus as a man with all those titles like "Son of God", etc.
Well you say that you agree with Doherty, but if you read the whole of Doherty's replies in your own link, he is not in fact disagreeing with Carrier, and he actually takes to task another poster there who implied that he (Doherty) was disagreeing with Carrier. Here is that exchange from your own link -
http://ntweblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/did-jesus-exist-with-richard-carrier.html
By the way, on Richard Carrier’s Logos as Jesus, I do feel he did stretch things a bit. One can make that link through rather indirect channels, but the difficulties compromise the specific connection he seemed to be trying to make. Which is not to say that he is not right in the general point that Philo’s Logos was a paternal grandparent to Paul’s Jesus.
Earl Doherty
Earl Doherty said...
BM: " '(Doherty)By the way, on Richard Carrier’s Logos as Jesus, I do feel he did stretch things a bit. One can make that link through rather indirect channels, but the difficulties compromise the specific connection he seemed to be trying to make."
It's a sweet way to say that Carrier is wrong on that matter."
I did not say that Carrier was wrong. What he seems to have done is make a deduction about what was in Philo's mind, something that would have been dependent on an (uncertain) implication in Zechariah. Perhaps Carrier was right, but the difficulties in demonstrating that compromise his claim. Perhaps he should have made the uncertainty clear.
Don't put words in my mouth, please.
Also from those same posts in your link, I notice that you yourself appear to have been active there arguing this same stuff about Zechariah, and where that thread appears to be dated Dec. 2012 (also appears to be a "blogspot" run by a well known Biblical Scholar named Mark Goodacre?). E.g., as in this exchange -
Roo said...
What is this “Greco-Roman (Platonistic) culture”?
Critic GakuseiDon rejects Doherty's "World of Myth" as his invention, irrelevant to the practices and beliefs of ancient Greek religion. See
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=320326&page=4
with a full selection of the relevant texts of Doherty.
He also has a Jan. 2011 four-part review of Doherty’s last book:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseidon/JNGNM_Review1.html
There was no "World of Myth" in the ancient Greeks' Weltanschauung — a concept likely borrowed from the title of a high-school primer by David A. Leeming (1992). Doherty's first book describes a celestial sublunar sphere where the mythical gods were supposed to act out their stories and lollygag for eternity, as "a Platonic higher world (even if just above the earth)", assumed to originate from the very idiosyncratic Plutarch.
But Gilbert Murray, in "Five Stages of Greek Religion" (1951) and Walter Burkert, in "Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical" (1985) warn that the musings of one specific writer, casually expressed in a few lines, can in no way reflect the multitudes of ancient Greeks, whose beliefs were never dogmatic, but flexible, open to variation, according to their city, social status, literacy, knowledge, and period in history.
The "World of Myth" concept, also dismissed out of hand by G.A. Wells as a spurious concoction, seems to be an invention contrived by an autodidact who pounced on the phrase of David A. Leeming to claim he is bringing "new" ideas to the field. Hence, Doherty's rough proletarian language against a critic like GakuseiDon, who kept pointing out how vacuous and artificial this concept was.
Ehrman had also pointed out the wildly hypothetical character of this idea:
"In the first edition of Doherty's book, he claimed that it was in this higher realm that the key divine events of the mysteries transpired; it was there, for example, that Attis had been castrated, that Osiris had been dismembered, and that Mithras had slain the bull.
In his second edition he admits that in fact we do not know if that is true and that we do not have any reflections on such things by any of the cult devotees themselves since we don't have a single writing from any of the adherents of the ancient mystery cults.
Yet he still insists that philosophers under the influence of Plato-such as Plutarch, whom we have met-certainly interpreted things this way." ("Did Jesus Exist?" p. 253)
Then Doherty, to correct his thesis, started invoking "a failure of nuance", now limiting the "World of Myth" concept to the devotees of mystery cults. This "failure of nuance" is a phrase most likely borrowed from Gilbert Murray's Ch.4 title, "A Failure of Nerve", in his famous book "Five Stages of Greek Religion". A comical lampoon for future critics. "Hey, look, another failure of nuance by Doherty!" No wonder, Doherty is a free-wheeling tale-spinner, an amateur floating adrift in a vast universe of ancient culture where he has no qualified expertise, but where he grabs a few lines as guideposts for his modern construction
GakuseiDon, a student of ancient pagan mythology, planned to demonstrate with scholarly quotations that even in Doherty's last book, the "World of Myth" did not fit mental images of the ancient Greeks, as ascertained from their writings, inscriptions and art.
.
GakuseiDon got so violently lambasted by Doherty (who compared him to a Hamas terrorist, and later invoked Hitler versus Churchill to justify his demonization of an honest critic) that the sensitive Japanese-Australian withdrew, licking his wounds. A street-fight with proletarian Doherty is a royal waste of time. You’ll end up drowned in his typical “flow of a collapsed reservoir”, or by a “juggernaut that has overswept its banks”.
8:35 a.m.
But going back to what Carrier says in his book about Zechariah being a likely source for Paul, or at least my impression that Carrier is presenting this as quite obviously a likely source, what I had not noticed in my previous very quick skim through those passages in Carrier's book (also stated by him in his YouTube clips, so people can watch/listen to those for simplicity), is that he is tying all of that in with the writing of Philo circa 25 BC to 50 AD, i.e. writing at about the same time as Paul, or perhaps even a little earlier) where if I understand him correctly, Carrier says that Philo was partly misunderstanding, or if not actually misunderstanding then drawing a particular inference (see Carrier's quote below) from what was written in the translated Greek Septuagint copies of the book of Zechariah, and assuming that Jesus who is there referred to as Jesus ben Jehozadak, was a spiritual figure of prophecy rather than actually a real man.
So that, according to Carrier, Philo then writes of this same "Jesus" as if he thinks that same Jesus in that same passage from Zechariah, most likely should be taken to mean a celestial firstborn "Logos" Son of Yahweh in the heavens. Though, crucially - Carrier appears to think that Philo is correct to interpret Zechariah in that way, because in his book Carrier actually says this about that passage in Zechariah (Carrier, p 82) -
"As I mentioned, an "esoteric" reading of Zechariah 3 and 6 would conclude the author originally meant the first high priest of the second temple, Jesus ben Jehozadak (Zech. 6.11: cf, Hag 1.1) who somehow came into an audience with God, in a coronation ceremony (one would presume in heaven , as it is in audience with God and his angels and attended by Satan) granting him supreme supernatural power over the universe (Zech. 3.7). But such a scene hardly seems descriptive of any living person, and would more readily be "esoterically" read as being about a celestial being named Jesus (as in fact we know it was. Philo of Alexandria having made exactly this inference: see Element 40), who was given by God supreme authority over the universe in defiance of Satan (Zech. 3.1-2). As it happens, the name Jehozadak means in Hebrew "Jehovah the Righteous", so one could also read this as "Jesus, the son of Jehovah the Righteous", and thereby conclude this is really "Jesus the son of God"."
Do you want to write out and post the whole of Carrier pages 81 -83 (Element 6) & pages 200 to 205 (Element 40), or shall I do it?
