A summary of the main points I attempted to bring out in my previous two posts has been posted as comment #24 on Bible and interpretation in response to McGrath’s review there. (McGrath has additionally discussed his review on his blog.)
For convenience here is the shorter version of my previous two posts that appears on Bible and Interpretation. (I am well aware it scarcely reads with much fluency. Something had to be sacrificed to time and other pressures.)
McGrath stresses that Carrier’s thesis depends on the strength of the details but by focussing on an introductory discussion of the Asc. Isa. he does not address any of arguments in support of the basic myth hypothesis. Carrier makes it clear that his discussion of the Asc. Isa. is part of his definition of the mythicism he will be arguing and that his arguments will be given in future chapters.
When McGrath suggests there is a problem with Carrier’s approach given that many details are compatible with a historicist or mythicist scenario, he is failing to register the very point Carrier is making: his book intends to explore the probabilities of those respective contradictory reconstructions. Continue reading “Summing Up: On McGrath’s Review of Carrier (Short Version)”