As promised earlier, some commentary from Carrier about the fucking gospels.
From Page 396
To this we can add a footnote from Pg. 395:
It seems that at this point we must add Borg and Mack to the list of scholars who think that everything written about the godboy was "mythic" but somehow he is still real. That seems like grasping at holy straws, to me.
From Page 396
Quote:Several scholars have confirmed that by the standards of myth I just spelled out, the Gospels are primarily and pervasively mythical. In the words of Marcus Borg, we have to admit '(1) that much of the language of the Gospels is metaphorical; (2) that what matters is the more-than-literal meaning and (3) that the more-than-literal meaning does not depend upon the historical factuality of the language'. That makes the Gospels allegorical myth, not remembered history.
Quote:Elsewhere I have already demonstrated that they lack all substantive (as opposed to superficial) markers of being researched histories, even by the lax standards of antiquity. At no point do the Gospels name their sources or discuss their relative merits or why they are relying on them; at no point do the Gospels exhibit any historiographical consciousness (such as discussing methods, or the possibility of information being incorrect, or the existence of non-polemical alternative accounts); they don't even express amazement at anything they report, no matter how incredible it is (unlike a more rational historian); and they never explain why they changed what their sources said, nor do they even acknowledge the fact that they did (as when, e.g., Luke or Matthew alters what they derive from Mark). And unlike many other ancient authors, they do not explain who they are or why they are qualified to relate the accounts they do. Only one Gospel, Luke, employs even the superficial trappings of actual history writing, such as explaining what his purpose i n writing is and attempting to date events. But as we already saw (in Chapter 9) that appears to be a ruse.
To this we can add a footnote from Pg. 395:
Quote:See Burton Mack, The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy (New York: Continuum, 2001), who also argues we need a better theory of the origin of Christianity, one that takes the role of mythmaking in early Christianity seriously (and I agree). Mack also extensively discusses what the term 'myth' means and what its
functions were, much in line with what I have argued here.
It seems that at this point we must add Borg and Mack to the list of scholars who think that everything written about the godboy was "mythic" but somehow he is still real. That seems like grasping at holy straws, to me.
