Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Minimalist]

J. D. Crossan, one of your boys, insists that the most certain thing in history is that jesus was crucified by Pilate.  And then he backs up his assertion by appealing to the definite (Josephus) and most probable (Tacitus) forgeries out there.

Carrier takes the time to demolish both of those.  But as usual, I imagine you don't want to hear that.

[rexbeccarox]

I want to see numbers for this unsupported claim.

Easy. There are just two scholars who advocate for Jesus mythicism: Robert Price and Richard Carrier. I can name at least three historians that are holocaust deniers: David Irving, Arno Mayer, and Robert Faurisson. In fact the denial movement is much bigger and has the support of well over a dozen qualified historians, the mythicism movement doesn't have anywhere near the academic support. Mythicism and Denialism are just as crazy as each other.

Uhhhh... bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. First, there are at least ten modern historians alone who support Jesus-as-myth, let alone historians prior to this era. On top of that, when googling "historian holocaust denial" or "historian holocaust denier", it's evident that the only name that even matters is David Irving, who is ironically enough considered, in your words, a "quack" by other historians.

You have some audacity. Holy fuck. To laugh at others for quoting or citing historians who actually have legs, and the best you can do is name those idiots? Really?

I'm not even a Jesus mythicist... I couldn't care less one way or another... but holy fuck.

[Aractus]

I think we can safely dismiss Irving.  Maybe, if I feel like it, I'll look up your other "examples."

Indeed, just as we can safely dismiss Carrier and Price, and that's my point. None of them are distinguished scholars in their fields. They're the bottom of the barrel. Indeed if you bothered to actually read the Hurtado's blog I've posted several times now, you'd see he clearly says "Along with the view of pretty near all scholars in the field .." and he mentions another mythicist Thomas Brodie who was having a book published titled "Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus". The fact is that he, Carrier, and Price all have wildly different hypotheses about how this "Jesus myth" came about, and none of them have amassed a scholarly following, or even executed their arguments with sufficient evidence. If you look up Brodie you'll actually find that he held this mythicist belief before he even learned about scholarship, and never seems to have subjected his opinions to scholarly standards - in otherwords, as far as scholarly standards go he's not at the level of Hurtado, or even Ehrman. He was reportedly never that interested in receiving criticism from other scholars. Or at least that's what I just read according to another scholar, James F. McGrath. There is an essay on mythicism here by another scholar (Jon Burke), note that he also says there's scholarly consensus: "Jesus’ existence is considered well established by professional historiography, and the idea that he did not exist is typically not taken seriously."

I just read Burke's essay it's quite interesting:

"All Carriers arguments have been contradicted by qualified scholars in the relevant fields, and his books have failed to shift the scholarly consensus on the historicity of Jesus, despite his claims that the first book (now two years old), would have a massive influence on Jesus studies and overturn the case for historicity. Carrier is the only online skeptic of Jesus’ historicity worth taking seriously."

So again Min, it's up to you to provide evidence that goes against the clear consensus that exists among academics. The burden of proof is on you.

[Firefighter01]

CARRIER's quote from Freethought blogs:

Ehrman falsely claims in his book that there are no hyper-specialized historians of ancient Christianity who doubt the historicity of Jesus. So I named one: Arthur Droge, a sitting professor of early Christianity (previously at UCSD; now at the University of Toronto).

And of those who do not meet Ehrman’s irrationally specific criteria but who are certainly qualified, we can now add Kurt Noll, a sitting professor of religion at Brandon University (as I already noted in my review of Is This Not the Carpenter) and Thomas Brodie, a retired professor of biblical studies (as I noted elsewhere). Combined with myself (Richard Carrier) and Robert Price, as fully qualified independent scholars, and Thomas Thompson, a retired professor of some renown, that is more than a handful of well-qualified scholars, all with doctorates in a relevant field, who are on record doubting the historicity of Jesus.

Most recently, Hector Avalos, a sitting professor of religion at Iowa State University, has also declared his agnosticism about historicity as well.

That makes seven fully qualified experts on the record, three of them sitting professors, plus two retired professors, and two independent scholars with full credentials. And there are no doubt many others who simply haven’t gone on the record.

Plus have a look at some of the rest listed here: http://vridar.org/whos-who-among-mythici...agnostics/

[Aractus]

Again the claim is misleading in a number of ways. Of those seven, only one is qualified and puts forward a scholarly argument - Carrier himself. The others such as Rober Price and Thomas Brodie refuse to publish things academically (in fact Brodie insisted upon publishing his 2012 book with a Christian publisher, not with a publisher with strong academic standards). And they all put forward vastly different hypotheses, and all completely discount each others competing mythicist hypotheses.

I'll explain briefly why Carrier is wrong, because as I quoted in the last post he's the only one worth taking seriously anyway, and for that I will borrow from Hurtado's arguments. Let's say we get the books of the New Testament and do our best to arrange them chronologically (in the order in which they're written) - we're not particularly interested in the pseudepigraphal works, Jude, Revelation, or Hebrews. This is fairly easy to do with the 7 letters of Paul:

c. 50 AD - Thessalonians
c. 53 AD - Galatians
c. 53-4 AD - Corinthians
c. 55 AD - Philippians
c. 55 AD - Philemon
c. 55-6 AD - 2 Corinthians
c. 57 AD - Romans

That's a start anyway, now let's add James and the gospels. Let's be really really liberal with James - I think it's quite early, but there are plenty of scholars who argue for a date as late as 65 AD. There used to be scholars that were convinced it was written later still, but that number has been dwindling recently, in part because of its reliance on two things in particular: the Hebrew Bible, and the pre-gospel sayings of Jesus; as well as appearing to be a rebuttal of Pauline Theology in part. Josephus says that James the Just was martyred in 62 AD, but like I said we do have to assume we can't trust the authorship claim (only because it can't be verified against other letters written by the same author); therefore we'll assume any date from 46-65 AD is possible. We'll put in late dates for all the gospels. This is what we get:

Paul
c. 50 AD - Thessalonians
c. 53 AD - Galatians
c. 53-4 AD - Corinthians
c. 55 AD - Philippians
c. 55 AD - Philemon
c. 55-6 AD - 2 Corinthians
c. 57 AD - Romans
"James"
c. 46-65 AD - James
"Mark"
c. 70-75 AD - Gospel of Mark
"Matthew"
c. 75-95 AD - Gospel of Matthew
Luke
c. 75-95 AD - Gospel of Luke
c. 75-95 AD - Acts of the Apostles
"John"
c. 75-95 AD - Gospel of John

Now we can see a clear pattern. We have Paul writing quite extensively about Jesus at least over a seven year period. Around the same time James writes his letter. Then later, and probably about 20 years later, we get the four gospels and Acts. Paul rarely quotes Jesus directly, however he makes numerous citations to things Jesus is later quoted as saying in the gospels. For example in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 Paul delivers a teaching on divorce and attributes it directly to Jesus. It closely resembles what Jesus is quoted as saying in Mark 10:11-12/Matthew 19:8-9. And Paul's Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 closely resembles the gospel accounts of the Last Supper (and Luke's in particular).

Now this is despite the fact that Paul himself has his own theologies that contrast sharply with what Jesus taught in the gospels. A particularly good example of this is flesh theology that does not appear in the synoptic gospels, but does appear in the Gospel of John - perhaps indicating the gospel writer was more influened by Paul's theology than the writers of the synoptics.

Paul has detailed knowledge about Jesus: he was born a Jew (Galatians 4:4 of David's line (Romans 1:3), who has been raised to the celestial realm (Romans 1:4, etc), and has a brother he knows named James (Galatians 1:19). He also quotes an early Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15.

Right so let's break down Carrier's argument now. His argument is that Paul didn't think of Jesus as a real person - despite the fact he quotes him directly, has him interacting with real people, knows his flesh-and-blood brother James, and talks about his crucifixion in every letter! Carrier's argument is that 1. Paul is not talking about a historical person, but rather a celestial being; and 2. After Paul dies the other writers humanise Jesus and make the celestial being that Paul was talking about a patriarchal person. Basically what Carrier's argument requires is that none of the knowledge that Paul has about Jesus is valid. And by "valid" I mean that he came to learn about these things, rather than making them up.

However that argument simply doesn't stack up. It doesn't explain how James has detailed knowledge of the teachings of Jesus before the gospels, it doesn't explain how Paul has detailed knowledge of the teachings as well, it doesn't explain who taught Paul the creed in 1 Corinthians 15, it doesn't explain anything and it doesn't make any goddamned sense when compared with the evidence. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are not as theologically advanced as Paul - and yet are written later, which strongly suggests they're not based around Pauline theology. This can only happen if there are other leaders in the church and they aren't following Paul's theology. And that can't happen if Paul invented it all. How do we get three synoptic gospels all free from Pauline theology if they're all based on the celestial being that Paul invented? Not only is Paul's theology more advanced (and much more advanced than "Mark"'s), but there are two parallel sets of teachings throughout all of his epistles, whereby sometimes he re-purposes teachings delivered from Jesus that he knows about, and at other times he delivers his own teachings all the while going on about how he has the authority to do so.

Specifically, Paul has a different perspective on salvation than that delivered from Jesus himself. Jesus came for the Jews - he says specifically that he "was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). He defends the Law of Moses and says it will not pass away (Matthew 5:18), refuting the prophecy made in Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is completely contradictory to what Paul teaches, in reaching out to the gentiles and telling them not to bother following the Law of Moses.

These are just some reasons why Carrier's argument is not carried, and why scholars are not persuaded by it (even other mythicsts). In short, for his hypothesis to hold water he has to ignore all the evidence that disagrees with his point of view, and then cherry pick a few bits of evidence that support it.

[Pat Mustard]

Easy. There are just two scholars who advocate for Jesus mythicism: Robert Price and Richard Carrier. I can name at least three historians that are holocaust deniers: David Irving, Arno Mayer, and Robert Faurisson. In fact the denial movement is much bigger and has the support of well over a dozen qualified historians, the mythicism movement doesn't have anywhere near the academic support. Mythicism and Denialism are just as crazy as each other.

Just one last post, to expose your blatant lying. As Minimalist has already pointed out Irving has been shown in a court of law to have extensively lied in order to promote his holocaust denial, and by all accounts is essentially a neo-nazi.

Arno Mayer doesn't dispute the holocaust happened, he simply disputes some of the consensus about how and why it happened (he believes it wasn't as planned as most historians do, and he also ties it in to the larger European anti-semitism following WW1 much more than most Europeans). Mayer's biggest controversies vis a vis the holocaust is his stance that Israel is milking the genocide to mask its own bad deeds, and that it wasn't a planned genocide. He doesn't dispute that 6 million people were killed.

And Faurisson is the French David Irving, another holocaust denier, who has gone so far as to claim to have been beaten up by a fictitious jewish terrorist group in order to "silence the truth", who used a letter written on his behalf by Noam Chomsky in another matter to try and legitimise his holocaust denial.

So we've got one proper historian, who doesn't discredit the Holocaust, just disagrees with the mainstream on some aspects of it, and we've got two professional liars who have both been found out in court, and who have subsequently decided to turn to the neo-nazi community for their income.

No wonder nobody takes you seriously, Aractus. When your ideology falls apart from your inability to defend it you resort to lies and racism.

[Aractus]

Just one last post, to expose your blatant lying. As Minimalist has already pointed out Irving has been shown in a court of law to have extensively lied in order to promote his holocaust denial, and by all accounts is essentially a neo-nazi.

So? That just proves my point. My point is that they're the bottom of the barrel, they're the lowest and least respected in their fields, their theories are completely discredited by their academic peers, and finally, many of them (as I noted about James McGrath) are not open to receiving academic criticism for their positions. With that said, not all 'deniers' (Christ deniers or holocaust deniers) are as bad as Irving, but the academic standard is not much better anyway, and their versions of history have been rejected by their academic peers.

Arno Mayer doesn't dispute the holocaust happened, he simply disputes some of the consensus about how and why it happened (he believes it wasn't as planned as most historians do, and he also ties it in to the larger European anti-semitism following WW1 much more than most Europeans). Mayer's biggest controversies vis a vis the holocaust is his stance that Israel is milking the genocide to mask its own bad deeds, and that it wasn't a planned genocide. He doesn't dispute that 6 million people were killed.

Right, that's a form of denial. It was a planned genocide, and (IIRC) three camps were specifically designed as execution camps, not as concentration camps, and that has been well established. So for his position he needs to deny the existence of purpose-built execution camps.

And Faurisson is the French David Irving, another holocaust denier, who has gone so far as to claim to have been beaten up by a fictitious jewish terrorist group in order to "silence the truth", who used a letter written on his behalf by Noam Chomsky in another matter to try and legitimise his holocaust denial.

And let's not forget there are 40,000 Scientologists who also deny the Holocaust. That is to say they blame the discipline of psychiatry and not Nazi Germany, which is a form of denial, and I think demonstrates clearly there are way more holocaust deniers than there are Jesus mythicists.

As you just noted, people will misuse stuff written by serious academics for their wacky ideas when they can't amass actual academic evidence; this is no different for Mythicism. There is no academically vetted evidence, so instead they use arguments from outside the disciple and poorly adapt them to use within it. This is what Carrier does anyway, and it's a bit like saying "I'm going to tell you what women's rights were in the Third Dynasty of Egypt, by looking at the Yellow River Civilisation". It's like trying to categorise the culture of Australian Aborigines before white settlement by looking at the Sentinelese people.

I'm not trying to convince you that Christianity is correct. Just that objectivity and academia is what gives us an accurate picture of the past, not opinions held by people who are not qualified historians or scholars. There are some people who claim that Shakespeare didn't write his plays, there are even some that claim that he didn't even exist. Yet both English Historians, and English Literature Scholars firmly reject that argument.

You said earlier "The consensus of biblical scholars is as valuable as the consensus of creatards." So my question to you is are you going to apply the same level of disrespect equally to ALL historians and scholars, or is this a prejudice you specifically have against NT scholars? And if so why do you stigmatise one group of academics and continue trusting others? That is the part I don't understand. Yes, in any field there are wackjobs - in Egyptology there are vocal loons. There are historians in every field that have crazy ideas. But we can weed them out and find the respected academics among them, just as we can do the same for NT scholarship.

So we've got one proper historian, who doesn't discredit the Holocaust, just disagrees with the mainstream on some aspects of it, and we've got two professional liars who have both been found out in court, and who have subsequently decided to turn to the neo-nazi community for their income.

No wonder nobody takes you seriously, Aractus. When your ideology falls apart from your inability to defend it you resort to lies and racism.

I'm not pushing an ideology, I simply do not understand why you think you can say the experts are all untrustworthy? Do you think this of other fields as well? Do you think all physicians are untrustworthy? I mean where do you draw the line? If you understand history properly you can effectively attack any religion you want; if you don't then you can't launch an effective argument. This goes right back to the thread topic - "why can't Christians verify exactly where Jesus was buried", which I answered from a purely critical point of view: that is historians wouldn't expect us to know that. We don't know where John the Baptist was buried either, and he (it is believed) had a greater following than Jesus during his lifetime.

A much better question is this - why was the Old Testament written in a horribly primitive language? It could have been written down in a form of Greek very similar to Koine Greek, which is what was used for the New Testament. It would have been much more expressive and easier to understand, and there would be many many more scholars today who could read it in its original language, and ordinary laypeople could read it even today without much trouble if they learned Greek. Not to mention we wouldn't have had the awful LXX or the other 2nd century translations (Theodotion, etc) created either. And because of its ease of use, there would have been plenty more copies made of it, just like the New Testament. The choice of Hebrew indicates that Jehovah either: 1. didn't want the laity reading the Bible, or 2. was too incompetent to give people an easy-to-read original. Which is it?


See? A perfect argument that Christians cannot refute, based on real evidence and not opinion.

[Gemini]

Richard Carrier denies you "consensus."

He's a complete quack. Stop quoting from fringe scholars who aren't respected by their peers.

I think the experts who vouch for historicity are making their arguments in good faith, and that they are respectable and credible academics. And I believe Jesus was a historical person. But I don't think it's fair to call Carrier a quack. Probably the most common characteristic of quacks is the grandiose confidence they have in their views. Read what Carrier has written about mythicism (in response to Dan Fincke, a philosopher who I hope you will agree is another non-quack):

"Meanwhile, Fincke explains, 'we should either be agnostic on the issue,' as Fincke is, or 'defer to historical consensus,' or, 'if we really find [e.g.] Carrier’s arguments compelling' then we should 'still be cautious and qualified in our declarations, acknowledging that we are agreeing with a minority view (and one that even Carrier seems far from certain about).'

Amen."

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/4733

[Cyberman]

Your underlying assumption seems to be perfect knowledge on the part of the authors of the Gospels, and that seems pretty questionable, to me.

It's extremely questionable, if that's what's going on. There's a reason that eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence.

I spoke last year about the incident on Hallowe'en night when I intervened after a guy slapped Shell across the face and I got punched in my own face in the event. Of the three witnesses to the assault - myself, Shell and one other friend - I clearly recall taking two blows in quick succession, whereas the others swear I had been struck three times. This is three individuals observing (and in my case, experiencing) the same event at the same time and recalling it between an hour - when giving police statements - and a few days afterwards. What would several years if not decades do to our memories? I know that events that my sister and I both shared growing up have been remembered differently - I remember specific details which she swears blind either happened contrary to my recollection or didn't happen at all.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Aractus, you either did not see, or have chosen to ignore, this post of mine, so I'll emphasize it a little:

Easy. There are just two scholars who advocate for Jesus mythicism: Robert Price and Richard Carrier. I can name at least three historians that are holocaust deniers: David Irving, Arno Mayer, and Robert Faurisson. In fact the denial movement is much bigger and has the support of well over a dozen qualified historians, the mythicism movement doesn't have anywhere near the academic support. Mythicism and Denialism are just as crazy as each other.

I'm sorry, your sources for those claims didn't post. Try again, this time linking data that I may review for myself.

To be clear, I want to see polling data demonstrating these claims. Otherwise, you're simply talking out your ass ... something that should only be done in a men's room, not the pages of the forum.