I hadn’t heard that story, so thanks. I guess I don’t watch enough mythbusters.
Not at all. However you were the one who initiated this exchange by trying to make Peter and James into creatures of Paul’s visions. You have no basis for that conjecture and you missed the point of the discussion at that point.
There is no point to “Paul” (or whoever) describing visions of Peter and James–which are your invention–so challenging Skammer on that point was a straw man and you missed his point in your attempt at a rebuttal.
No big deal. I have no intention of being sucked further into this quagmire.
That was 1920s era myth busting.
This is obviously a very different issue than the question of whether the Gospels borrowed from Pagan sources. The best treatment of this topic that I’ve read was written by Christopher Price:
While no one disputes that the gospelers employed Old Testament passages as a source for some language in the gospels, Price points out that this is absolutely not a reason to regard New Testament documents as non-historical. In fact, once we understand how Jews and early Christians viewed the Old Testament as a lens for interpreting present events, it points us exactly the other way.
Such a methodology, however, is untenable. Of course the value of the Hebrew Bible to Jews and Christians at that time cannot be understated. For both groups it was the only scripture they had. Because of its centrality to Jewish and Christian thought, it would be foolish to deny it influenced their writings. However, it is going too far to assert that these writers only used it to invent stories. Far from it. Jews and Christians were almost obsessed in their belief that God had acted and would continue to act in human history. The stories in the Hebrew Bible were not just stories, they were types showing how God might act in the future. They included prophecies of future events. As a result of this, and their belief in a God very active in human affairs, Jews and Christians saw recent historical events in terms of the Hebrew Bible. This perspective caused them to describe recent events in Hebrew Bible terminology and pursuant to Hebrew Bible themes
Price then delves into many examples where both Jewish and Christian writers employed Old Testament references when writing about historical figures including Emperors Vespasian and Constantine, Simon bar Kosiba, and John the Baptist.
I’ve seen this issue brought up before, but most scholars don’t think that the similarities between the gospel narrative and Jewish Wars are strong enough to indicate anything meaningful.
Sure, this particular aspect is different from pagan sources, but despite Christopher Price saying otherwise, I think his view is the more untenable one. When you have gospel writers lifting word for word verbatim texts elsewhere into their documents, at least for me and others, it gives more credence to the fact they are making things up, borrowing heavily and using literary construct instead of writing an actual historical document.
If referencing most scholars is directed at traditional and conservative scholars, I’m sure most will not waiver from the main conservative script to find anything meaningful, but I do think most scholars outside of that circle do. How a believer or nonbeliever can have these parallels laid out before them side by side, and not even blink an eye, and basically just a shrug, so to speak kind of response, does make me wonder, what would it take for anything to give them pause, and reflect upon their position.
For me, it is persuasive to see Mark getting this from Josephus.
And something is clearly odd with Paul’s Jesus, for him to leave us with thousands of words, not to have him mention at least a miracle or two that he performed, any of his teachings, not to give us anything about his biographical sketch if he was truly a historical person, but yet he was much closer in time than the gospel writers ever were, and it does seem he is getting his information by scripture and revelation.
While it seems quite likely that the biblical stories – most of them – were borrowed from other sources and reworked, as a skeptic’s skeptic, I caution that we must be on our guard against drawing parallels that we want to save and discarding those we don’t. One calls to mind the Lincoln/Kennedy comparison, not to mention most every interpretation of Nostradamus.
That said, I’m presently reading a 2002 book by Gary Greenberg, 101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History that purports to find close parallels between at least 101 biblical stories, both Old & New Testaments, with Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek myths and/or events. The author makes no judgement call about whether either story is true; he’s merely comparing them. Basically, his thesis is the entire Bible is a vast work of plagiarism without attribution.
Note his wording, “…ancient scribes invented…history.” That pretty much sums up my position in this thread.
Caution noted, and thought snopes did a good of the Lincoln/Kennedy coincidences. I enjoyed Randi’s book on Nostradamus and think he did a good job of putting everything in perspective with that as well.
I just find conservative scholarship generally not remotely even considering it as much of a possibility in the slightest that Mark could have gotten some of his material from Josephus here or for that matter much of anywhere else, and still want to treat it like he is writing history.
And it’s not the only plausible scenario, Josephus could have invented this Jesus out of thin air, or Mark and Josephus could have both been borrowing from another source entirely, or even possibly, Josephus borrowed from Mark (the most unlikely), regardless, there seems to be a great deal of evidence that supports a lot of borrowing and rewrites going on.
And for I think most scholars outside of traditional biblical scholarship, most will agree they were inventing history.
We’re discussing the passages in which Paul specifically says that Jesus was “descended from David according to the flesh”. Most would see this as straightforwardly meaning Paul believed Jesus was a human descendant of David, but Carrier says that Paul instead believed that some of David’s sperm was carried up to Heaven and stored in a "celestial sperm bank " (Carrier’s term), where it was later used for the conception of Jesus in Heaven. Neither of these sources supports the claim that Paul or anyone else ever believed such a thing.
The article on Igrath in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism doesn’t mention the demoness collecting sperm, storing sperm, or transporting sperm. It merely mentions that Igrath was said to have sex with David. Moreover the source for this myth is Jewish Kaballah, dating from the late Middle Ages, more than 1,000 years removed from Paul. If Carrier actually claimed that this article supports his bizarre interpretation of Paul’s words, he’s being very dishonest.
Likewise the passages Carrier cites from Irenaeus also make no mention of collecting, storing, or transporting sperm. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence that any human, anywhere, at any time believed in the “celestial sperm bank” that’s at the center of Carrier’s argument.
Since Carrier has produced vast amounts of anti-Christian material, I’ll accept that he means what he says. But really his arguments are so loony it’s hard not to wonder if he’s playinging a jolly good hoax and privately laughing at anyone who believes it.
Reading the relevant part of Book 5, Chapter 5, Section 3 in Josephus, as one can pull up in the wiki of Jesus ben Ananias:
I can only think its a quite a stretch to say that Mark based Jesus of Nazarath on this guy who ran around yelling “Woe is Jerusalem”, was tortured by the Romans, let go by the Governor as maniac, was able to go around yelling Woe for 7 more years, and then was killed by a stone hurled from the ballista.
You work with the messiah you’ve got…
I believe that Jesus (the) Christ was a REAL person. Now, if you were to ask me: “Do you think that he was the son of God?” then I would not be able to answer that question with any degree of certainty.
Except he doesn’t say “descended” from the Greek, but this is the word used for the English. Paul’s Greek meaning actually has it saying manufactured from the seed of David according to Carrier. And further says this is the Greek word Paul uses when he manufactured Adam too, while using a different word for human birth throughout. Carrier says later Christians were disturbed by this and actually tried to change Paul’s words to where it read like it did elsewhere to indicate human birth.
With Irenaeus in Against All Heresies the particular sections to read from book one that Carrier cites are 1.1.1; 1.5.6; 1.8.4 and of Jesus being fully understood as having been born to a “’woman’ of exactly that sort”, 1.30.1-3.
In the Trent Horn debate with Carrier, this Catholic apologist covers the seed bank of the Jewish legends, not sure if he covers Irenaeus there, but he didn’t think Carrier was dishonest or making it up, he acknowledges they exist, but his defense of them is that they are much later Jewish legends that Paul wouldn’t have used.
Regardless of what side one stands on, or is neutral, I think virtually all will agree how well both carried themselves in this debate and were very respectable to one another. It also brought out some good laughs on both sides, and you couldn’t help liking both, at least I couldn’t. They both seemed like really good friends who enjoy talking about the same things, even if they don’t always agree on the same positions or arrive at the same conclusions. I think Horn defends the historicity position the best of any apologist I’ve seen thus far. Carrier likewise defends the mythicist side every bit as well in that debate.
I don’t see this at all of where you get this impression of him, and upthread you stated Carrier makes * no effort to hide the fact that he’s motivated by hatred of Christians.* As long-winded as Carrier is, with his books and blog, you should be able to substantiate something fairly easily to support this with a cite if you truly believe it. I asked you before, and since you didn’t comply, I let it go, but since you’re still insisting on this, go ahead and provide it.
And concerning the conservatives position of probably most still going with a historical Adam and Eve, Moses, Noah, probably Noah as well, not to mention accepting pretty much most of the preposterous stories as historical, not sure you’re in much of a position to determine what is loony.
Those “parallels” are more than a bit strained, but even using them, where is the evidence that Mark was actually writing after Josephus when the usual chronology dates Mark to a period several years prior to Josephus’s War?
Is this something ITR Champion has affirmed, or are you assuming he thinks these things?
Because the dates put on the gospels are arbitrary, scholars are all over the place, and don’t have much clue on how to date it more precisely. Other than they know Mark had the destruction of the temple on his mind, so figure at the earliest it was probably written in the 70’s, although he was writing it as a prophecy, and of course some conservative scholarship going considerable much earlier than that. It could have just as easily been much later 1st century, and possibly early 2nd century.
Perhaps the parallels are a bit strained, certainly not a slam dunk and not as persuasive as Mark borrowing from Psalms and getting some of his material there, but reasonably persuasive to me. Two translations I’ve compared are Whiston and Williamson’s.
I’m not aware of him ever detailing much of his specific beliefs, but I gather this mainly from traditional conservative apologists in general and their beliefs, of which he continuously uses for sources such as J. Patrick Holding and the like in this thread and elsewhere. And in past threads him acknowledging his belief in the supernatural and what he considers miracles.
I don’t think this is true. In Galatians 4, Paul describes the birth of Jesus and of other humans with the same verb. Now it’s not exactly the same word because the tense is different (ginomai vs gennoa) but it’s two forms of the same verb. Other New Testament authors sometimes use a different a different word for birth (tekto) but Paul never does.
Strong’ s Concordance says that ginomai can mean “to be made”, but also “to receive being” or “be created”, so it’s not an unusual formulation for a plain and ordinary birth.
Confirmation bias, perhaps? 
I have a Strong’s concordance too, which is certainly a conservative source, but it’s still good for a fast word search. In the back of mine it still lists over 40 Prophecies of the Messiah fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It even goes so far as listing scriptures in the OT that is prophesized and in the NT shows where it becomes fulfilled.
Despite Erhman and Carrier’s differences, as I mention in post #338, this is something they seem to agree, and that attempts were made to change the wording of Romans 1.3 and Gal 4.4. Not interested in buying Erhman’s book for just this, but if you or others have The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture and want to weigh in, I’d enjoy hearing what any have to say about it.
Your logic seems to me highly flawed. Almost anyone who writes uses phrases and sentences that either come from, or are similar to, things written before. Just consider how many lines from the Bible are still used today: “Money is the root of all evil.” “Pearls before swine.” “The meek shall inherit the earth.” “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” “Separate the wheat from the chaff.” If a writer uses some of these in a piece presented as non-fiction, would you automatically assume he or she is making things up? Or if a magazine article uses phrases like “a plague on both your houses” and “kill with kindness”, would you call it a fabrication just because it borrows text from Shakespeare?
Using poetic license, no problem, but if a writer is writing about history, and is supposedly writing about actual events and wanting to be taken seriously, yeah, I wouldn’t give as much credence to the story, if I found out they had lifted many word for word verbatim texts trying to make things fit from older texts; not to mention others going on still, to show that this is prophecy.