GDon
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2013
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Hi all. It's been a while since I posted here last. I've completed a review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" and put it on my website here:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseidon/Carrier_OHJ_Review.html
I've given a short extract of my review below. Any comments welcomed!
-----------------------------------------
While Carrier's book 'On the Historicity of Jesus: Why we have reason to doubt' (OHJ) presents a fully developed 'Jesus Myth' theory for consideration, it is really the second of two books in a series, the first being 'Proving History'. In 'Proving History', Carrier reviews the criteria of authenticity used by modern Bible scholars and shows that there are major issues with their applicability. He also presents and explains Bayes's Theorem and how it can be used to evaluate questions of history.
In OHJ, Carrier looks through the evidence in early sources and evaluates them for their value to adding towards historicity or ahistoricity. As he analyses each section, he provides a figure in the form of odds for 'Best Case' and 'Worst Case' to be plugged into Bayes's Theorem.
On the positive side, Carrier outlines his case carefully, and generally backs each part up with references to primary sources. It gives readers an opportunity to inspect each element that Carrier uses to generate his probabilities for his final Bayes Theorem calculation. Carrier invites discussion on these points, encouraging readers to go over his evidence and calculate their own probabilities.
The sections where Carrier provides 'Background Information' on early Christianity and the pagan world is comprehensive, and Carrier refers back to these sections often throughout his book.
On the negative side, Carrier is wrong on some key points and seems to be drawing a stretch on others. Some of these errors significantly undermine his case. For example:
1. There are many questions about the suitability of using Bayes's Theorem for historical questions generally, and Carrier's use of it specifically. I give links to reviews of Carrier's use of BT in 'Proving History', and also give examples of where I see problems in his use in OHJ. (See Section 2 below.)
2. Carrier sees significance in the silence about a historical Jesus in Paul and other early writings. But he hasn't examined the wider range of literature of the time. Though that silence may seem bizarre to us today, it can be seen in many early texts, including those thought to be by 'historicist' Christians. (See Section 3 below)
3. I don't see that there is any evidence in Paul or other early writings for a celestial being getting incarnated and killed above the earth, in either Christian or pagan writings. Carrier does see such evidence in the Ascension of Isaiah, the Book of Hebrews and in Plutarch's 'Isis and Osiris', but as I explain below, Carrier is simply wrong. (See Section 4 below)
Since Carrier is wrong about there being evidence for the idea of incarnated beings being killed in 'outer space' in ancient times, his version of the 'minimal Jesus myth theory' is, to my mind, refuted. While Carrier notes that "[t]he original 'revealed' death and burial could have been imagined as occurring on earth and still be (from our perspective) mythical' (page 563, note 67), it's not what he argues for in his book. Such a view is more consistent with GA Wells, who proposes that Paul's Jesus was crucified in the far past. Possibly a future edition of Carrier's book may take up that case as a more realistic option.
This doesn't make the case for historicity a slam-dunk, since that case still needs to be established. Even if 'minimal historicity' is more likely than Carrier's 'minimal mythicism', it may be that the evidence for 'minimal historicity' is still not enough to make it a likely proposition. There are other mythicist theories that don't rely on a celestial Jesus element, in particular GA Wells' theory that Paul's Jesus lived and died on earth in Paul's remote past. Also, many of the elements that Carrier raises as problems for historicity – e.g. the lack of defence of a historical Jesus in Paul's speeches in Acts of the Apostles (see Section 5.2) – may still be pertinent for other versions of mythicisms.
Other disappointments: I had quite a few “WTF?" moments when reading through OHJ. One such moment was when I read his rationale for “Best Case” odds for the Prior Probability, built on the reference class of individuals in the Rank-Raglan class. After identifying Jesus as one in fifteen members as historical under 'minimal historicity' (with the other fourteen members being mythical, see list in Section 2.2), Carrier writes on page 243 (my bolding):
That is simply bizarre. To grant fundamentalists their “unwarranted assumption” is not “reasonable”. It is, well... unwarranted! Carrier might think it might be fair to 'historicity' to add these extra figures into the 'historical' bucket (he actually adds two more unnamed pagan figures as well), but it isn't fair to logic.
Another disappointment is that OHJ is poorly written in places. While that in itself doesn't detract from his theory, his writing is sometimes muddled, often when he is trying to communicate complex ideas. Interestingly, Carrier writes in the Preface on page xiii that (my bolding):
I wasn't aware that there was a problem of communication in technical books written for 'ordinary people'. I've read many such books, by Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov in the fields of science, and by Bart Ehrman and EP Sanders in the fields of history. I have no problem with Carrier's use of contractions and slang, but some of his paragraphs are hard to follow and need to be reread several times to try to understand what he is writing about. Such a situation is understandable for his blog, where he may not have the time to try to clarify his thoughts. But in such an important book, dealing at times with new and complex ideas, it's harder to forgive. Clear writing is an art, and I urge Carrier to put more effort into his writings in that regard when expressing complex ideas in the future.
Another example of the above is how he lays out his Bayes's Theorem calculations. It is confusing sometimes what he is doing. For example, on page 594, odds of '72:25' suddenly become 100%! I wonder if there is anyone who can work out what he is doing with the BT figures after going through them the first time? Carrier does refer back to “Proving History”, but unfortunately “Proving History” also suffers the same problems of being poorly written.
To emphasize: I'm not saying Carrier is wrong in his calculations. Simply that, given the importance of introducing BT as a viable element for use in history studies, he could have done a much better job in integrating them into the text so it is clear what he is doing. I hope that he rectifies this in any future edition of OHJ.
But perhaps that is just me? Perhaps others had no problems understanding what Carrier does with his BT odds. But if you also are having problems reading Carrier on this, I recommend you reading through the following thread (warning: it is quite long with many digressions!) on the Biblical Criticism and History Forum, where several forum posters (including myself) work through trying to understand what Carrier is trying to show in his BT calculations.
Other nitpicks include:
1. 'Euhemerization'. Carrier describes it on page 222 as:
And also on page 613:
But 'Euhemerism' is the idea that the myths of the gods were actually stories about real mortal kings. These kings were so fondly thought of, that they were later deified through apotheosis. The term 'Euhemerism' was inspired by the ideas of ancient writer Euhemerus, who wrote a 'fantastic voyage' story in which he discovered that the gods were originally mere mortal kings later claimed to be divine. For example, Zeus was just a mortal king who died on Crete, and other gods had similar mundane origins. Euhemerus was accused of being an atheist by later writers, since he appeared to disparage the existence of the gods.
The term does have a broader usage today. Some use it for the origins of heroes instead of just kings. But the essence of the term is that 'the gods were really just men'. Under that definition, the Gospels are not euhemerized accounts at all. An euhemerized account would strip the Gospels of Jesus' supernatural features (virgin-birth, ascension to heaven) and leave him as a man – something similar to the definition of Carrier's 'minimal historical' Jesus.
2. Carrier uses the term 'outer space' frequently in OHJ. Although he defines how he uses it (page 63), it isn't a useful term in context of ancient thought. Generally people at that time thought that the corruptible part of the universe existed under the moon or firmament. These incorporate the lower heavens, the realm of the air and the firmament. Above the firmament existed the higher heavens, the true heavens, in which God dwells. Metaphysically these were very different areas. Using 'outer space' as a catchall phrase is simply confusing
3. Carrier talks about “half-corrupt imitations” of models in the firmament, on page 194. Carrier writes (my bolding):
I would like to understand what he means by “half-corrupt imitations” existing in the firmament. It sounds a little like the Platonic version of being “half-pregnant”. It is a very weird concept in terms of the thinking of the times.
4. Not really a problem with OHJ, but Carrier notes that the amount of forgery and interpolation in early Christian writings is so great that 'it would alarming in any other field' (page 277); but nevertheless he still uses a lot of assumptions from mainstream scholarship in his analysis. There are a lot of things he simply assumes, like the existence of a 'Paul' who wrote in the First-Century CE. But is Carrier confident that there really was a historical Paul? And that the epistles generally attributed to Paul were in fact written by him, and in the First Century CE?
Of course, it is not reasonable to expect OHJ to cover everything, since it would have had to have been ten times larger. And I'm sure Carrier would agree that that discussion is worth having, and would love to be involved there as well. Despite its flaws, OHJ is a good start.
Perhaps that is the most important thing to take away from OHJ: I find Carrier's 'minimal mythicist' theory itself to be unconvincing, but Carrier has also shown us a potentially exciting new way to investigate questions of history.
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseidon/Carrier_OHJ_Review.html
I've given a short extract of my review below. Any comments welcomed!
-----------------------------------------
While Carrier's book 'On the Historicity of Jesus: Why we have reason to doubt' (OHJ) presents a fully developed 'Jesus Myth' theory for consideration, it is really the second of two books in a series, the first being 'Proving History'. In 'Proving History', Carrier reviews the criteria of authenticity used by modern Bible scholars and shows that there are major issues with their applicability. He also presents and explains Bayes's Theorem and how it can be used to evaluate questions of history.
In OHJ, Carrier looks through the evidence in early sources and evaluates them for their value to adding towards historicity or ahistoricity. As he analyses each section, he provides a figure in the form of odds for 'Best Case' and 'Worst Case' to be plugged into Bayes's Theorem.
On the positive side, Carrier outlines his case carefully, and generally backs each part up with references to primary sources. It gives readers an opportunity to inspect each element that Carrier uses to generate his probabilities for his final Bayes Theorem calculation. Carrier invites discussion on these points, encouraging readers to go over his evidence and calculate their own probabilities.
The sections where Carrier provides 'Background Information' on early Christianity and the pagan world is comprehensive, and Carrier refers back to these sections often throughout his book.
On the negative side, Carrier is wrong on some key points and seems to be drawing a stretch on others. Some of these errors significantly undermine his case. For example:
1. There are many questions about the suitability of using Bayes's Theorem for historical questions generally, and Carrier's use of it specifically. I give links to reviews of Carrier's use of BT in 'Proving History', and also give examples of where I see problems in his use in OHJ. (See Section 2 below.)
2. Carrier sees significance in the silence about a historical Jesus in Paul and other early writings. But he hasn't examined the wider range of literature of the time. Though that silence may seem bizarre to us today, it can be seen in many early texts, including those thought to be by 'historicist' Christians. (See Section 3 below)
3. I don't see that there is any evidence in Paul or other early writings for a celestial being getting incarnated and killed above the earth, in either Christian or pagan writings. Carrier does see such evidence in the Ascension of Isaiah, the Book of Hebrews and in Plutarch's 'Isis and Osiris', but as I explain below, Carrier is simply wrong. (See Section 4 below)
Since Carrier is wrong about there being evidence for the idea of incarnated beings being killed in 'outer space' in ancient times, his version of the 'minimal Jesus myth theory' is, to my mind, refuted. While Carrier notes that "[t]he original 'revealed' death and burial could have been imagined as occurring on earth and still be (from our perspective) mythical' (page 563, note 67), it's not what he argues for in his book. Such a view is more consistent with GA Wells, who proposes that Paul's Jesus was crucified in the far past. Possibly a future edition of Carrier's book may take up that case as a more realistic option.
This doesn't make the case for historicity a slam-dunk, since that case still needs to be established. Even if 'minimal historicity' is more likely than Carrier's 'minimal mythicism', it may be that the evidence for 'minimal historicity' is still not enough to make it a likely proposition. There are other mythicist theories that don't rely on a celestial Jesus element, in particular GA Wells' theory that Paul's Jesus lived and died on earth in Paul's remote past. Also, many of the elements that Carrier raises as problems for historicity – e.g. the lack of defence of a historical Jesus in Paul's speeches in Acts of the Apostles (see Section 5.2) – may still be pertinent for other versions of mythicisms.
Other disappointments: I had quite a few “WTF?" moments when reading through OHJ. One such moment was when I read his rationale for “Best Case” odds for the Prior Probability, built on the reference class of individuals in the Rank-Raglan class. After identifying Jesus as one in fifteen members as historical under 'minimal historicity' (with the other fourteen members being mythical, see list in Section 2.2), Carrier writes on page 243 (my bolding):
Of course, fundamentalists would refuse to accept that Moses and Joseph are mythical (two of the fourteen in that class); but that they are not historical is accepted by almost all secular experts in biblical antiquities and even most religious experts (Jewish and Christian), and is pretty hard to deny on the evidence we have (Element 44). Nevertheless, because I want to produce a prior probability as far against myth as I can reasonably believe it to be, so as to produce an argument a fortiori to my eventual conclusion, I will 'grant' the fundamentalists their unwarranted assumption, even against our background evidence, and count Moses and Joseph as historical persons.
That is simply bizarre. To grant fundamentalists their “unwarranted assumption” is not “reasonable”. It is, well... unwarranted! Carrier might think it might be fair to 'historicity' to add these extra figures into the 'historical' bucket (he actually adds two more unnamed pagan figures as well), but it isn't fair to logic.
Another disappointment is that OHJ is poorly written in places. While that in itself doesn't detract from his theory, his writing is sometimes muddled, often when he is trying to communicate complex ideas. Interestingly, Carrier writes in the Preface on page xiii that (my bolding):
… there is a more fundamental reason for my frequent use of contractions, slang, verbs in the first person, and other supposed taboos: it's how I believe historians should speak and write. Historians have an obligation to reach wider audiences with a style more attractive and intelligible to ordinary people... As long as what we write is grammatically correct, accurate and clear, and conforms to spoken English, it should satisfy all the aims of history: to educate and inform and advance the field of knowledge. This very book, just like the last, has been written to exemplify and hopefully prove that point.
I wasn't aware that there was a problem of communication in technical books written for 'ordinary people'. I've read many such books, by Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov in the fields of science, and by Bart Ehrman and EP Sanders in the fields of history. I have no problem with Carrier's use of contractions and slang, but some of his paragraphs are hard to follow and need to be reread several times to try to understand what he is writing about. Such a situation is understandable for his blog, where he may not have the time to try to clarify his thoughts. But in such an important book, dealing at times with new and complex ideas, it's harder to forgive. Clear writing is an art, and I urge Carrier to put more effort into his writings in that regard when expressing complex ideas in the future.
Another example of the above is how he lays out his Bayes's Theorem calculations. It is confusing sometimes what he is doing. For example, on page 594, odds of '72:25' suddenly become 100%! I wonder if there is anyone who can work out what he is doing with the BT figures after going through them the first time? Carrier does refer back to “Proving History”, but unfortunately “Proving History” also suffers the same problems of being poorly written.
To emphasize: I'm not saying Carrier is wrong in his calculations. Simply that, given the importance of introducing BT as a viable element for use in history studies, he could have done a much better job in integrating them into the text so it is clear what he is doing. I hope that he rectifies this in any future edition of OHJ.
But perhaps that is just me? Perhaps others had no problems understanding what Carrier does with his BT odds. But if you also are having problems reading Carrier on this, I recommend you reading through the following thread (warning: it is quite long with many digressions!) on the Biblical Criticism and History Forum, where several forum posters (including myself) work through trying to understand what Carrier is trying to show in his BT calculations.
Other nitpicks include:
1. 'Euhemerization'. Carrier describes it on page 222 as:
Element 45: A popular version of this phenomenon in ancient faith literature was the practice of euhemerization: the taking of a cosmic god and placing him at a definite point in history as an actual person who was later deified.
And also on page 613:
The Gospels were simply constructed to euhemerize Jesus, as all mythical demigods had been (Element 45), modelling him after other historical and mythical counter-cultural heroes (Element 46), and then ultimately integrating him into the ubiquitous Rank-Raglan hero-type (Element 48), and matching an equally popular model of celestially translated heroes (Element 47), all appropriately Judaized.
But 'Euhemerism' is the idea that the myths of the gods were actually stories about real mortal kings. These kings were so fondly thought of, that they were later deified through apotheosis. The term 'Euhemerism' was inspired by the ideas of ancient writer Euhemerus, who wrote a 'fantastic voyage' story in which he discovered that the gods were originally mere mortal kings later claimed to be divine. For example, Zeus was just a mortal king who died on Crete, and other gods had similar mundane origins. Euhemerus was accused of being an atheist by later writers, since he appeared to disparage the existence of the gods.
The term does have a broader usage today. Some use it for the origins of heroes instead of just kings. But the essence of the term is that 'the gods were really just men'. Under that definition, the Gospels are not euhemerized accounts at all. An euhemerized account would strip the Gospels of Jesus' supernatural features (virgin-birth, ascension to heaven) and leave him as a man – something similar to the definition of Carrier's 'minimal historical' Jesus.
2. Carrier uses the term 'outer space' frequently in OHJ. Although he defines how he uses it (page 63), it isn't a useful term in context of ancient thought. Generally people at that time thought that the corruptible part of the universe existed under the moon or firmament. These incorporate the lower heavens, the realm of the air and the firmament. Above the firmament existed the higher heavens, the true heavens, in which God dwells. Metaphysically these were very different areas. Using 'outer space' as a catchall phrase is simply confusing
3. Carrier talks about “half-corrupt imitations” of models in the firmament, on page 194. Carrier writes (my bolding):
There are even versions of earthly things in the firmament, as we learn in the Ascension of Isaiah 1.10, which says, 'as it is above, so is it also on the earth, for the likeness of that which is in the firmament is also on the earth'. Although those things would not be the perfect models, which resided only in the perfect heavens above, but half-corrupt imitations, in between the models above and their earthly copies below.
I would like to understand what he means by “half-corrupt imitations” existing in the firmament. It sounds a little like the Platonic version of being “half-pregnant”. It is a very weird concept in terms of the thinking of the times.
4. Not really a problem with OHJ, but Carrier notes that the amount of forgery and interpolation in early Christian writings is so great that 'it would alarming in any other field' (page 277); but nevertheless he still uses a lot of assumptions from mainstream scholarship in his analysis. There are a lot of things he simply assumes, like the existence of a 'Paul' who wrote in the First-Century CE. But is Carrier confident that there really was a historical Paul? And that the epistles generally attributed to Paul were in fact written by him, and in the First Century CE?
Of course, it is not reasonable to expect OHJ to cover everything, since it would have had to have been ten times larger. And I'm sure Carrier would agree that that discussion is worth having, and would love to be involved there as well. Despite its flaws, OHJ is a good start.
Perhaps that is the most important thing to take away from OHJ: I find Carrier's 'minimal mythicist' theory itself to be unconvincing, but Carrier has also shown us a potentially exciting new way to investigate questions of history.
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