Would They Die for a Lie?

[Vicki Q]

I have no idea why you would refer to Dr. Carrier as being "ilk".  He is an independent scholar who has his opinions about things, but his academic credentials are foundational in the areas in which he does his research, even though his views are outside of mainstream scholarship.

By the way, the reference above is to an undergraduate textbook in New Testament criticism and not one of Dr. Ehrman's popular books.

Er.............ilk is not an insult. It means 'the same sort of thing'. So when I said, "including Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier and their ilk" I mean that I am familiar with the range of ideas of the mythicists.

I'm pretty sure that I've read that book, incidentally. If it has it's own website referencing, enlarging on the chapters, definitely. However since it's been a while, I'll look for something from him in the New Year.

I'm still very unclear about the point you're making.

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That's pretty much all bullshit.  From the records the church didn't burn for contradicting it's own mythology we know the Romans were very reluctant to kill the couple of hundred or so martyrs killed before Diocletian (yes, before he came to the throne there were very few christians killed by the state.  The idea of martyrdom is a lie instilled by the church to big up itself and it's sense of worth).

The BBC has its critics, but it is an excellent source of summary of the state of play from experts. You are welcome to deny the consensus view, but that doesn't alter its status as the consensus view.

The Wikipedia article linked to by Jehanne earlier (!!) backs all this up.

In addition, I'd like to repeat what I said about the NT as a collection of sources on this:

If we drop any idea for textual inspiration and treat the sources the same way as any other historical documents, it's a done deal historically. Whether it's the Gospel prophecies, the Gospel narratives, the letters of Paul to churches undergoing persecution, Paul's own personal accounts, the advice from the pseudepigrapha, or the martyrs of Revelation, there is a very, very consistent picture of what people were going through.

Indeed, with the multiplicity of sources and multiplicity of forms, it's an extremely fixed point to work from.

For the reasons I outlined earlier, this is absolutely what we would expect, given our knowledge of C1 Mediterranean society. Given there's nothing miraculous about being hit for half an hour by large men with big sticks, we can safely assume that it happened.