(September 22, 2014 at 3:17 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Interesting. The third bullet point is the one I'd be most curious to learn more about. Just going off the top of the dome, isn't Philippians typically considered to be an authentic Pauline epistle and isn't that the one where he writes about Jesus as being born of a woman? Anyway, any additional text on this point that you can link me to?
It's probably best to watch the video or go and look at Carrier's books. I haven't read any of his works, so I can't really speak to their contents or quality. In the video, he does get into reasons about why he uses the Epistles to get to the conclusion he reaches. He spends maybe the first 20 or so minutes hitting on the first two bullet points. He spends a pretty good chunk going over the Epistles. A very high-level review of what I remember is:
- The Epistles are the earliest known books included in the Bible.
- Several Epistles are known to not be written by Paul, so these are excluded.
- Of the Epistles included, there were some minor edits to wording seen in older manuscripts. One such word that was changed in several places has to do with how Jesus came to be. I don't remember the exact verb used, but it was changing something like "begotten" or "made" into "born". From my understanding, that was an edit to the original texts, and Carrier is asserting that it was done after the Gospels were written to legitimize the notion of Christ existing on Earth.
Still, it's been a while since I've seen the video, and I haven't read his books, so that's about the best I can do. If you have an hour you can carve out, I'd suggest watching the video. He goes into depth and references his book, and possibly other works, as well.
(September 22, 2014 at 3:21 pm)robvalue Wrote: Haha, he says a load of intellectual stuff to criticize the text, then the next thing is saying "so this is bullshit". I like his style.
I always find that style humorous, too, but sadly, because he swears, there are times I want to link to him on other forums/groups and cannot. I prefer forums with looser rules on language.
(September 22, 2014 at 4:01 pm)Chuck Wrote: One should not cherry pick the explanation that strengthens one's own point of view when equally good explanations in the opposite direction also,exist.
I'm not saying it's correct; I was just listing the main points liked asked. Note that I said "he thinks" in the conclusion. I found the video informative and interesting, but there's enough I don't know about Biblical history to know if he can make a slam dunk case that the Epistles were edited with the sole purpose of retconning a physical Jesus into them.
