I see why non-historians, and I guess a few fringe historians, think that Carrier has really got something. After looking at a bunch of his stuff, and interacting with other very intelligent people in other fields who look at what he is doing from a philosophical or scientific angle, I have come to the conclusion that his method does not work. Much of the problem that I have seen is that people are not schooled in historical reasoning, and they are unable to distinguish between the methods of ancient and modern history, or between evidence and proof. People will confuse the latter, for example, such that they think something that does not prove a case is not evidence in favor of it. There are many degrees in this broader problem. Some are more impacted by the misunderstanding than others.dastardly stem wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 2:15 pmI hope we see this conversation come to an end at some point and we can move on with mutual respect. On the question of whether Jesus lived i can certainly be convinced he did, as i said when this all started im personally swayed in thinking he did. I thought Carriers position was being misconstrued so I persisted as I think he has a pretty strong case.
On the question of whether Jesus lived, I only have to consider the evidence offered by those claiming he did and point out whether it works or doesn't work and why. On the claim that the mention of Pilate is evidence id maintain its not evidence for Jesus living. Its actually irrelevant on the explanation I offered. Shrug...a little. I couldbe wrong. But I don't see how. The concept of verisimilitude seems to be used to explain history and connect elements of the stories so they make sense and come out a little more full and acceptable,, but I admit I don't think it can be taken as evidence for a claim since by far the most parsimonious explanation, particularly in this case, is that Pilate was already rumored as a governor who was cruel and persecuted and killed. There certainly could have been others but as has been said it only takes one to make the story work and any old one will do.
I'd be happy to address other evidence as I'm quite aware there is other pieces. I know Carrier and many others have considered and addressed each piece of claimed evidence. I appreciate the conversation. Its interesting at least to think about these things in this way.
Ancient history is built on small amounts of evidence, but it is based on evidence. If we say that Jesus did not exist based on these kinds of probabilities, we may as well question the existence of very many other people of whom there is even less evidence. Evidently the existence of so many pieces of evidence in the text that are plausible or clearly historical do not matter, if we are able to whittle away individual parts based on our own sense of whether it could have happened or not. Just be able to plug it into a sciencey-looking symbolic notation, and you're good.
What we are left with, oddly, is a quasi-scientific way of supporting what is essentially a kind of conspiracy-theorist approach, or at least the other side of one. You have focused on the tearing down part, and yet what is also interesting is the building up part. This is the Spalding Theory aspect of the Carrier story, wherein we are left to imagine what kind of author using which kind of materials and for what kind of motives wrote the Gospels. And the answers are pretty damned dubious. Really, they are much less convincing than simply accepting that someone has dressed up the life of Jesus much as Suetonius dressed up the life of Augustus in an account that was written for his own purposes. Yes, there is a big difference in the number of verifiable facts brought to bear on the work of constructing the biography, but there is also a big admixture of ideology and theology in both works too.
I invite you to consider whether Pythagoras actually lived, and whether the Pythagorean theorem is really Pythagoras' work. I could imagine Carrier arguing that Pythagoras is clearly made up, but it is interesting that he never took the time and trouble to do so. Another person we might doubt the existence of is Apollonius of Tyana, or Alexander of Abonuteichus, both of whom lived much later than Pythagoras, in the Roman imperial period, in fact. Go read the works that describe their lives.
This is the part that is frustrating to me as a historian. I have so much experience with this material, as well as with the life of Jesus in the Gospels, and it is pretty obvious to me that so many of the same things are going on in all of these cases, but today we have such a profound level of historical illiteracy and so many assumptions about how the past should be reported, that we have no problem applying our uninformed assumptions to texts like the Gospels. Because nature abhors a vacuum, instead of asking whether one knows enough to know the answer to a question, it seems all we need is to find the right authority to stand behind, preferably one who uses pie charts and equations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_TyanaThe earliest and by far the most detailed source is the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a lengthy, novelistic biography written by the sophist Philostratus at the request of empress Julia Domna. She died in 217 AD.,[5] and he completed it after her death, probably in the 220s or 230s AD. Philostratus's account shaped the image of Apollonius for posterity. To some extent it is a valuable source because it contains data from older writings which were available to Philostratus, but disappeared later on. Among these works are an excerpt (preserved by Eusebius) from On Sacrifices, and certain alleged letters of Apollonius. The sage may have actually written some of these works, along with the no-longer extant Biography of Pythagoras.[6] At least two biographical sources that Philostratus used are lost: a book by the imperial secretary Maximus describing Apollonius's activities in Maximus's home city of Aegaeae in Aeolis, and a biography by a certain Moiragenes. There also survives, separately from the life by Philostratus, a collection of letters of Apollonius, but at least some of these seem to be spurious.[7]
One of the essential sources Philostratus claimed to know are the “memoirs” (or “diary”) of Damis, an acolyte and companion of Apollonius. Some scholars claim that the notebooks of Damis were an invention of Philostratus,[8] while others think it could have been a real book forged by someone else and naïvely used by Philostratus.[9] Philostratus describes Apollonius as a wandering teacher of philosophy and miracle-worker who was mainly active in Greece and Asia Minor but also traveled to Italy, Spain, and North Africa, and even to Mesopotamia, India, and Ethiopia. In particular, he tells lengthy stories of Apollonius entering the city of Rome in disregard of emperor Nero's ban on philosophers, and later on being summoned, as a defendant, to the court of Domitian, where he defied the emperor in blunt terms. He had allegedly been accused of conspiring against the emperor, performing human sacrifice, and predicting a plague by means of magic. Philostratus implies that upon his death, Apollonius of Tyana underwent heavenly assumption.[10]
How much of this can be accepted as historical truth depends largely on the extent to which modern scholars trust Philostratus, and in particular on whether they believe in the reality of Damis. Some of these scholars contend that Apollonius never came to Western Europe and was virtually unknown there until the 3rd century AD, when Empress Julia Domna, who was herself from the province of Syria, decided to popularize him and his teachings in Rome.[11] For that purpose, so these same scholars believe, she commissioned Philostratus to write the biography, in which Apollonius is exalted as a fearless sage with supernatural powers, even greater than Pythagoras. This view of Julia Domna's role in the making of the Apollonius legend gets some support from the fact that her son Caracalla worshipped him,[12] and her grandnephew emperor Severus Alexander may have done so as well.[13
