Such an incredibly flawed analysis. First, Bart has spent the last 20 years building his apologetic against Christianity: first, he wrote that the manuscripts are unreliable; then he wrote that most central Christian doctrines (even including the divinity of Jesus) were later developments; next he asserted that most of the NT canon was not written by the attributed author; then, Bart wrote polemics against oral tradition and memory; and finally he asserted that orthodox Christianity represented just a fraction of early Christian beliefs.
Along the way, Bart adopted certain positions that even most non-Christian scholars did not hold: such as the Crossan hypothesis that Jesus’ corpse was thrown into a bit to be eaten by dogs, and that Papias was referring to a different gospel of Mark than the one we have now.
If Bart could find any way to justify adopting the mythicist viewpoint, he would do it. But he knows he can’t because it’s demonstrably ahistorical and non-scholarly, and has the characteristics far more of a conspiracy theory than an academic conclusion.
Carrier
Ehrman does throw some shade around minute 4:20 with his usual false claim that mythicism isn’t seriously debated by experts, despite the fact that two peer-reviewed monographs and forty bona fide experts, and to date zero peer-reviewed monographs establishing historicity in response, refutes his disingenuous rhetoric on that point. Clearly it is debated, and indeed remains an open debate in the field. He just wants to ignore it.
…sources say Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to people; the Gospels even construct detailed historical narratives of this. Ehrman would agree the Risen Jesus in those documents and histories, even claimed eyewitness testimonies, is a myth;
no such events occurred, no such man existed. That all records agree as to that man’s existence, and that we have lots of such records, Ehrman agrees still does not support the conclusion that he existed. He didn’t. There was no real Risen Jesus. That’s a myth, something people merely imagined.
As Paul says … he saw this guy only in a revelation, inside his mind, and spoke to him only in his mind, not out in the real world. So Ehrman knows you can have tons of “records” of something that nevertheless isn’t true. The Risen Jesus didn’t really exist. Despite all our “records.” So Ehrman knows (but won’t admit) that this argument can’t establish the historicity of the pre-risen Jesus any more than it does the post-risen Jesus. Because the quality of evidence is not any better for either (e.g. Paul seems to only know of either Jesus the same way: by revelation)…
Steefen
Bart D.E. would agree the risen Jesus is a myth.
Carrier
This makes historicity a circular argument: you must presume oral traditions were circulating, which entails presuming Jesus existed (as how else could oral traditions of him be circulating), in order to use those oral traditions (as conjectured to survive under layers of redaction in the Gospels) as evidence Jesus existed.
Proper method would be to first prove there really were such oral traditions (and that they weren’t just of post-mortem revelations or coded readings of scripture, and that they didn’t just derive from the Gospels themselves, like Papias’s absurd myth of Judas swelling to the size of a wagon trail and exploding into a worm-bomb).
…even if we were only one step away, it can still be the case that the Gospels had oral traditions, but we now have no way to determine which things derived from it.
And we aren’t just that one step away. We’re two. In fact, three—when you add the fact that Ehrman declares these oral traditions were independent of each other, which is yet a third claim that no one has ever demonstrated to be true.
Different does not mean independent.
That the Gospels make stuff up is actually extensively established…
An utterly trivial claim since we have many examples from antiquity of invented or embellished stories about people who no one doubts existed.
Steefen your newfound respect for Carrier is interesting given he is one of the chief critics of the Flavian Jesus hypothesis.
Bart thinks the risen Jesus did not exist based on the philosophical presupposition against the supernatural. Indeed, Bart has never said he could prove that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Rather, Bart believes that such a conclusion is beyond the grasp of a critical historian, because we lack evidence that resurrection is possible. On a personal level, Bart doesn’t believe in the supernatural.
But none of this applies to the historicity of Jesus as a late Second Temple figure who was crucified.
It’s funny how christian apologist always attempt to put the cirlce in the square to justify the fallacy of christianity. Dr. Ehrman has done the most complete, thorough and historic analysis of all biblical scholars who attempt to understand biblical literature and history. Dr. Ehrman is not here to impress or toot his own accomplishments but to provide evidence as he has discovered and he has proven that if evidence prevails itself, he will be the first one to change and correct his former thoughts and understandings of what he’s researched.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert