* The Pauline Epistles – Part Two . COVERED IN THIS POST: “Words of the Lord”: from earth or heaven? Why doesn’t Paul quote Jesus more extensively? The epistles exclude an historical Jesus Paul’s conversion chronology Paul’s crash course on Jesus from Cephas and James How much interpolation in Paul? Surveying the counterarguments Ehrman answering … Continue reading “19. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Pt. 19”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Ken Humphreys posted what I think is a brilliant review of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? on the Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board, or FRDB, on 5 April. (Or was it first posted on Ken’s own website, JesusNeverExisted?) Steven Carr’s comments alerted me to it on FRDB, and when I read it I was envious. … Continue reading “Review: Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” – Apologetics Lite (by Ken Humphreys)”
Like this:
Like Loading...
I have been studying the first half of Richard Carrier’s chapter 3, “Introducing Bayes’s Theorem”, in his recent book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. I mean studying. I want to be sure I fully understand the argument before tackling the second half of the chapter, headed Mechanics of Bayes’s … Continue reading “Carrier’s “Proving History”, Chapter 3(a) — Review”
Like this:
Like Loading...
[1.] Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Introduction Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapter 1 Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapters 1-2 Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapter 2 continued Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: A Roman Trio Earl Doherty’s … Continue reading “Earl Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman‘s Did Jesus Exist?“
Like this:
Like Loading...
Until I can get time to do my own reading and comments on Bart Ehrman’s “new book”© I invite anyone who has not yet checked it out to visit the Freeratio discussion board and enjoy the discussion there. Bart Ehrman himself has made an appearance, though a none too auspicious one. He apparently attempted to … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman’s New Book: Did Steven Carr’s Prophecies Come True?”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Continuing here my series of outlining Paul Louis Couchoud’s work The Creation of Christ (English translation 1939), with all posts in the series archived, in reverse chronological order, here. The previous post in this series presented Couchoud’s argument that Paul’s Christ was a God crucified in heaven, the result of a combination of feverish interpretations … Continue reading “The War of the Heavenly Christs: John’s Sacrificed Lamb versus Paul’s Crucified God (Couchoud continued)”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Couchoud thought that John the Baptist epitomized and popularized the Jewish hopes for a coming Judge from Heaven — as shown in my previous post in this series (the entire series is archived here). Christianity was born of the travail of the days of John. The Baptist gave it two talismans with which to bind … Continue reading “The First Signs of Christianity: Couchoud continued”
Like this:
Like Loading...
I have been attempting to engage a biblical scholar in a discussion on the theoretical underpinnings of how historians can know if an event or person in ancient times were truly historical or a mere fiction. Here was my initial proposition: The theoretical underpinning of the historicity or factness of the contents of any report, … Continue reading “A rational foundation for investigating the mythicist (and Christian origins) question”
Like this:
Like Loading...
I don’t really do comedy so I start out with a very serious link to an even more substantively serious article: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science by Chris Mooney. It’s a four page article so don’t forget to continue after reading page one. It explains what most people reading this blog understand … Continue reading “Anti-mythicist scholars shooting their own side”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Ron Goetz posted a comment elsewhere that reminded me of the works of Walter Schmithals on Paul’s letters. The one I have read most of, Paul & the Gnostics, is not the easiest of reads but is packed densely with detailed argument and detailed references to the scholarship of his day. But it does force … Continue reading “Reading Galatians afresh: a Gnostic Paul, James, Peter and John?”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Dr McGrath’s review of the first part of Doherty’s chapter 10 is here. My response is here and between that post and this I have posted a number of McGrath’s defences against my criticisms. Earl Doherty has today posted his response(s) on McGrath’s blog and I copy them here. There are two. The first is … Continue reading “Doherty’s responses to McGrath’s ch.10 (pt.1) review”
Like this:
Like Loading...
In response to Dr James McGrath’s post on Mythicism and Peer Review Earl Doherty wrote the following: Jim, you are a piece of work. I only wish that your mindless animosity toward the idea that, just possibly, the Christian record could represent something which two thousand years of hidebound and confessionally-driven tradition could never have … Continue reading “Mythicism and Peer Review”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“You aren’t allowed to make up your own facts.” That’s a brilliant piece of wisdom that is lost on many of us from time to time because a certain familiarity with habitual ways of thinking prevents us from seeing that we sometimes really do just make up our own facts — or at least just … Continue reading “The fallacy that invalidates historical Jesus studies, conspiracy theories and creationism”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Continuing from the previous post, addressing McGrath’s comments on Doherty’s chapter 7. I have so often heard scholars repeat, as if it were a truism, that in pre-modern cultures that relied more on oral traditions and story-telling than on stick-it notes people had trained themselves to have remarkable memories. But I was obviously mistaken. McGrath … Continue reading “Doherty’s chapter 7 (2): reviewing McGrath’s review”
Like this:
Like Loading...