Richard Carrier on the Historicity of Jesus Reviews

Having simply read Daniel Gullotta's review of Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus I wait to be posting over the coming weeks a series of analytical responses. In the concurrently, some overview thoughts.

Firstly, the choice of journal for this review, The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 1 of the editors of JSHJ effectively declared that the editorial board is hostile to the very idea of Jesus mythicism. In December 2014 an commodity by Michael Bird was published in On Line Opinion: Australia's e-journal of social and political contend, and a calendar month later on his college's website, that stated the following:

The Jesus mythicists are a group of enthusiastic atheists who through websites and self-published books endeavour to prove the equivalent of a flat world. I serve on the editorial board for the Periodical for the Written report of the Historical Jesus, where we have an editorial squad of people from all faiths and none, celebrated experts in their fields; and I can tell you that the Jesus mythicist nonsense would never become a foot in the door of a peer-reviewed journal committed to the bookish study of the historical Jesus.

That gives you at to the lowest degree some idea what to expect of any discussion of mythicism that is published in JSHJ. (Daniel Gullotta, a doctoral student, surely knew the bias of JSHJ before he submitted it for their consideration.) Unfortunately, Gullotta's terminal paragraph does not belie expectations, and ironically declares that a shortfall in "academic detachment" is the trouble of the mythicists:

Scholars, withal, may rightly question whether Carrier's piece of work and those who evangelize information technology exhibit the necessary level of bookish detachment.130 If David Fifty. Barrett was right, 'That every generation discovers the historical Jesus that it needs', then it is not surprising that a grouping with a passionate dislike for Jesus (and his ancient and modern associates) has establish what they were looking for: a Jesus who conveniently does them the favor of not existing anywhere except in the imagination of deluded fundamentalists in the past and present.131 Whereas mythicists will accuse scholars of the historical Jesus of beingness apologists for the theology of celebrated Christianity, mythicists may in turn be accused of being apologists for a kind of dogmatic atheism. Only while some take no dubiety found their champion in Richard Carrier and his version of mythicism, like others before him, his quest has been in vain. Despite their hopes, the historical Jesus lives on.

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130 A business shared by Bart D. Ehrman, Maurice Casey, and besides Carrier. See Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, pp. 334-339; Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, p. viii; Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 14.

131 Quoted from David Fifty. Barrett, The Historical Jesus and the Life of Organized religion', in The Christian Century 109 (May half dozen,1992), pp. 489-493.

(the bolding is mine)

A passionate dislike for Jesus? Dogmatic atheism? That would be a huge surprise to the mythicists Thomas Brodie, Robert M. Toll, Herman Detering, Tom Harpur, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Francesco Carotta, René Salm, G.A. Wells, P.L. Couchoud (and a good number of other Christ Myth authors of yesteryear), certainly myself, not to mention others who are fence-sitters on the question such as Hector Avalos, Arthur Droge and Kurt Noll.

Nor, quite frankly, exercise I detect even in Richard Carrier's atheistic writings a "passionate dislike for Jesus" nor an endorsement for New Atheism. (I substitute New Disbelief for Dogmatic Atheism because I am not quite certain what Dogmatic Disbelief is supposed to hateful. I am certainly an atheist and past no means a fence-sitter on that question, but I exercise deplore the rising of what was for a few years labelled the New Atheism, a motility that I think would accept been better labelled Anti-Theistic rather than Atheist.)

For the tape, I cannot encounter that it makes the slightest bit of divergence to any atheist whether Jesus was a historical person or not. The unproblematic fact that atheists also populate the pro-historical Jesus biblical studies academic order likewise as being constitute among the ranks of mythicists ought to testify soundly enough to that point. Jesus is a cultural icon. He has served many causes to which atheists and any number of other religionists have associated themselves.

Anyway, back to the substance of Gullotta's review. It is thirty-seven A4 pages long (310-346) so don't wait a comprehensive disquisitional review presently or in a single mail. Gullotta'southward review is packed with footnotes and the time gap separating my responses will largely depend upon how accessible I find virtually of those citations. (Yes, I'thou one of those who does read all the fine impress and follows up as many footnotes every bit possible.)

The early office of Daniel Gullotta'due south review is an overview of how Gullotta has come to perceive the "Christ Myth" theory (the older term) or the "Jesus mythicism" view (the current term) historically. He so proceeds to an introduction of Richard Carrier himself, who he is, his academic background, and what led to the bookOn the Historicity of Jesusbeing reviewed.

In short, I establish the earlier criticisms of Carrier to be the almost on target. Gullotta zeroes in on what I besides happen to recall are a some of Carrier's weaker points. If I imagine Richard Carrier and Earl Doherty in a heated give-and-take over some additions Carrier seeks to bring to Doherty's original thesis, I confess that I might, in the end, side with Doherty and inquire Carrier to leave the argument as it is. (I mention Doherty because Carrier himself acknowledges his debt to Earl Doherty's arguments.)

Yeah, some (not all) of Gullotta's criticisms are on target, I recall. I will elaborate in a future post. But Gullotta's subsequently criticisms of Carrier announced to me to be based, ultimately, on piffling more than than sweeping generalizations arising from ideologically-grounded arguments.

Sometimes Gullotta gets Carrier's point but right, but at other fourth dimension, I remember, he misses the point entirely and simply fails to understand. For instance, I saw no indication in Gullotta's review that he had e'er read the volume that Carrier wrote as a prequel to On the Historicity of Jesus, and the piece of work he encouraged readers of OHJ to consult.

In the cease, I plant myself mentally "screaming",

Okay, have any of your alternative models/scenarios etc, and so apply the Bayesian model to them and see what happens!

Unfortunately, Gullotta indicates that he had no involvement in what, in fact, was the entire foundation of the method underlying On the Historicity of Jesus. That was Proving History: Bayes'southward Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 2012. Worse than lack of interest, Gullotta confessed to complete befuddlement:

But despite his call for historians to write with 'a style more bonny and intelligible to ordinary people', many, myself included, volition find Carrier's Bayesian analysis unnecessarily complicated and uninviting.47 I would echo Petterson'due south critique that at the 'worst of times information technology felt like I had stepped into a Jesus Seminar, a seminar armed with a reversed agenda and τι-89 Titanium calculators'.48

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47 Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, p. thirteen.

48 Petterson, 'Review of Richard Carrier'southward On the Historicity of Jesus', 254.

I am most definitely no mathematical genius just even I could follow the argument in the Bayesian grooming to On the Historicity of Jesus. Maybe it'south because I did read Carrier's preparatory book, but I found nothing in the least obscure or problematic with the On the Historicity of Jesus summary discussions at the cease of each chapter on the probability calculations to each argument. Unfortunately, Gullotta gives no indication in his review that he even read Carrier's preparatory book. What disappointed me the near, no doubt a outcome of Gullotta's failure to do the background reading, was his reference to a baroque mis application of Bayes theorem by Swinburne in an attempt to bear witness the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus:

All the same I cannot help simply compare Carrier's approach to the work of Richard Swinburne, who besides uses Bayes' theorem to demonstrate the high probability of Jesus' resurrection, and wonder if it is not fatally telling that Bayes' theorem tin can be used to both testify the reality of Jesus' physical resurrection and prove that he had no being equally a historical person 49

———-

49 Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

The most simplistic syllogisms can exist used to "evidence" any nonsense — "all men have two legs; a chicken has 2 legs; therefore a chicken is a man" — and the aforementioned applies to Bayes' theorem. Gullotta's apparent fearfulness of a mathematical term seems to accept led him to jettison the unabridged logical arrangement underlying the fundamentals. All Bayes' theorem does is assign mathematical symbols to the most cardinal processes of everyday reasoning. The bespeak of those symbols is to assist in alerting the thinker to any details overlooked in the normative reasoning procedure, or to any lapse in the logical validity of the thinking process.

Ane can easily toss aside the mathematical symbols and merely focus on the logical and methodological process.

That was the biggest disappointment in reading Gullotta's review. He failed to address the primal point of the book — that information technology is the method and assumptions that are central to all evaluations of each argument.

What followed was what amounts to a deadening repeat of the apologist arguments confronting specific arguments of Carrier without ever, at any point, addressing the core of Carrier's give-and-take.

I found myself screaming (mentally) when Gullotta claimed that some alternative concept could be used equally a starting signal for an statement. "Swell," I plant myself proverb (mentally), "Test any or each of the alternatives y'all are proposing and permit's see how the argument pans out in the end." But no, there was no (mentally conveyed) response. The whole point of the Bayesian method is that information technology enables the testing of divergent hypotheses. You tin forget the maths. Just focus on the central reasoning processes that the mathematical symbols represent. The symbols just serve every bit an aid so you don't forget cardinal processes besides easily discarded otherwise.

Okay, to conclude. I plant Gullotta's before criticisms of Carrier's argument to be valid. (That ways null more than than that I agreed with much of them.) I found other criticisms inadequately informed. (That means that I retrieve Gullotta has confined his views too narrowly to biblical scholars and remains uninformed of the relevant scholarship in the wider field of Classical studies.) And still other criticisms of Gullotta I found to be grounded on a fundamental misunderstanding of Carrier's statement — in detail, he failed to grasp the bespeak of the Rank-Raglan hero blazon. That's when I found myself mentally screaming for him to apply any of the other "types" that he proposed as alternatives. Instead, Gullotta seemed to think that the mere possibility of alternative types somehow undercut Carrier'south thesis.

What I would like to do in hereafter posts is take Gullotta'due south criticisms on board and adjust Carrier'due south Bayesian figures every bit if they acquit more weight than any alternative and and so see what happens to the Bayesian probability for the historicity of Jesus.

More to come. In due grade.

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