History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show – Part 1

History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show – Part 1

Yesterday I had a great conversation with Steve McRae and Kyle Curtis of the Non Sequitur Show about History for Atheists, atheist bad history and why non-believers need to get history right if they want to be taken seriously. This was the first of what we plan to be several conversations and this time around we discussed the myth of the Medieval flat earth, touched on Jesus Mythicism and talked a little about the myth of Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope”. Steve and Kyle seemed to enjoy our chat as much as I did and most of the feedback from the listeners and viewers was positive (though, inevitably, there were some convinced Mythicists and a few others who didn’t like having their fringe ideas criticised by a fellow atheist). If you didn’t catch it, you can watch it on YouTube below and I will be notifying of upcoming shows via Twitter (@TimONeill007) and posting them here when we have completed them.

66 thoughts on “History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show – Part 1

  1. Very interesting as ever, thank you. One question. Could you point me to some reading on medieval universities? I’m currently teaching some stuff on it and the exam board’s resources are a bit useless. Some more information would be really useful.

      1. Since these books are being mentioned, I’m wondering if you have an opinion on Johannes Fried’s The Middle Ages. I just started reading it, and in the first few pages it manages to claim that Christians until the 10th century essentially despised the works of Virgil and Horace, that the writings of the Christians in the Roman period carried no further scholarship like the pagans, etc.

        1. I am not aware of that particular book, but those claims are total nonsense and if they are indicative of the rest of the book I’d suggest reading something better. Chris Wickham’s Medieval Europe is the gold standard for current, quality overviews of the period.

          1. The book Jimmy mentioned is actually written by a German historian and mediaevalist.

          2. Those words only encompass a tiny minority of the contents of the book, which are generally very informative and good. The book was published by Harvard University Press, but I’m not very confident in Fried’s ability to discuss the Christian engagement with scholarship. I am not at all sure, but also once suggested Pope Gregory, in answering on the question between religion and scholarship, suggested a form of blissful ignorance. Fried also trots out the myth of the closing of the School of Athens under Justinian hastening the collapse of scholarship until the 10th century (perhaps he did not state it that badly, but something to this effect).

            I’d ask you if you could throw the book on your reading list. Fried, no doubt, has very good credentials and the publishers of the book themselves are fine. But it’s small things like this that make me wonder.

            By the way, I heard Wickham was a Marxist and had some kind of marxist-historiographical views. Do those ever get in the way of that book? Otherwise I’d love to read it.

          3. Also ugghh I’d hate to bother you one more time on this thread Tim, but do you know any books on the medieval hierarchy? Like, kings, dukes, marquess, count, viscount, baron, etc? I’m having trouble finding answers to some simple questions I have (such as how one became a duke, count, the exact parameters of their power and notable figures, etc) and if I have to read one more Wikipedia page I’ll tear my eyes out.

  2. Hey Tim

    What are some good books out there defending the view that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher whose followers felt he spiritually rose from the dead.

    Thanks

    1. For an introduction, start with Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (2001). For how this beginning evolved into the later conception of “Jesus Christ” as divine and as saviour, see Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ (1988). For a more advanced and detailed analysis of the historical Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet see Dale C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (1998). And for a good introduction to the socio-religious context in which these ideas about a coming apocalypse and Messiah arose, see Philip Jenkins, Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World (2017).

  3. Great interview, Tim. Here’s hoping this is just the beginning of further fruitful exchanges between you and the fellas over at Nonsequitor podacst.

    As someone who finds it hilarious when people accuse you of secretly being religious, I read your exchange with Ron Johnson on the comments. Congratulations on getting to add “Secret Jew” alongside “Crypto Catholic”, “Closet Christian”, and the other slanders thrown your way. I’m still holding out hope that you’ll get accused of being a taqiyya practicing Muslim before the year is out!

    1. Yes, that was one of the weirder exchanges I’ve had there. Though I may have missed the part where he said I was a “secret Jew” – I actually found that guy’s rambling rather hard to follow, to be honest. I have been told I am a “secret Jew” before, though it’s usually been by Holocaust deniers.

      1. In fairness to the fellow, “secret Jew” weren’t his words; ‘I think you are jewish now that you think the romans despised and persecuted the jews’ is a direct quote.

        You’ve touched on Christian antisemitism when discussing the myths surrounding Pope Piux XII and the Nazi before. While I hope this is not interpreted as making light of Christian antisemitism during the middle ages, I had been taught that the religious antisemitism in those periods was different than the racial antisemitism that manifested after the 18th century. When it was persecution based on religion, a Jewish person could convert and potentially avoid antisemitism after a few generations. This was obviously not an option offered to Jews under racial antisemitism, as a Jewish person could not convert out of their biology.

        Had I been taught accurately about the differences between religious and racial antisemitism? Did those differences play any role in the Catholic Church condemning Nazi antisemitism while simultaneously harboring views that would be considered antisemitic today?

        1. On the whole, the anti-Semitism of the Middle Ages was more motivated by religious prejudices than what we would see as racism, though given the overlap between those who were racially “Jewish” and those who practiced Judaism and were periodically persecuted for doing so was virtually 100%, that is not much of a distinction. Certainly the official Church position on Jews and Judaism was based purely on their beliefs and practices, but the charge of Jewish Deicide, founded as it was on Matt 27:24-25, meant that anti-Jewish teachings were always going to be at least in part based on ancestry. The fact that Jewish converts were often suspected and accused of being crypto-Jews is probably also based on a lingering suspicion of them due to their ancestry.

          So I don’t think we can completely separate “racial anti-Semitism” from its theological roots. The Catholic Church’s condemnation of Nazi anti-Semitism was based on a long tradition, dating all the way back to the Gregory the Great in the sixth century, that the Jews were not to be persecuted, killed, driven out or forced to convert. The bull Sicut Judaeis was promulgated as a response to and condemnation of pogroms against Jews in the eleventh century and was reissued by at least 17 other medieval popes. The fact they had to keep condemning persecution of Jews shows that something other than high theology was driving the repeated persecutions the Church had to condemn.

          But, again, the modern concept of “race” really developed much later and it is hard to project that idea back onto the Middle Ages. Actual examples of people being victimised or hated purely because of what we would call “racism” are hard to find in the Middle Ages as a result. Despite this, largely in response to the Alt-Right and its fetish for a weird, white supremacist caricature of the Middle Ages, I’ve noticed left-leaning academics working very hard to assure everyone (particularly themselves) that the medieval period was very, very racist and not at all “woke”. Or something. As usual the politics, of both sides, works only to distort our understanding of the past.

  4. Here’s hoping there’s more podcasts you can be on. You deserve the recognition that Carrier unjustly gets. Relating to the university topic, weren’t the Hindus the first to come up with it?

    1. Plenty of cultures have had schools or centres for advanced study and learning for a professional class of intellectuals. What made the medieval university unique was the fact that it conferred degrees – a gradated series of qualifications that were recognised both at other universities and in the world outside as evidence of a certain level of intellectual attainment and status. This meant someone who graduated from the University of Cracow could travel to Bologna or Cambridge and have their status recognised and, if at an appropriate level, be qualified to teach others. It built a network of scholarship, a shared and constantly growing body of recognised knowledge and the beginnings of things like peer review. No other culture developed the same kind of network, which is one of the reasons universities form an international network to this day.

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  5. An off-topic question: I just came across this old Quora answer of yours. https://www.quora.com/What-are-Tim-ONeills-specific-objections-to-the-Christian-belief-that-Jesus-is-God

    I’m curious as to whether any of your views changed about early Christian Christology in light of Ehrman’s “How Jesus Became God”, which I believe hadn’t yet been published at the time you wrote that post. If I recall correctly, Ehrman explained that he himself changed his views in some respects while writing the book, particularly as regards whether Jesus is portrayed as divine in the Synoptics.

    (For the avoidance of doubt, I’m an atheist too, and I agree with you that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who likely never claimed to be God during his lifetime. So I’m not asking about the historical Jesus as such, but rather about your view on the development of Christology in the first century. I myself am not knowledgeable enough to have an informed opinion.)

    (No worries if you don’t have time to answer this – I know it’s a broad question and isn’t on topic for the things you’re currently writing about. Apologies if it is a derail.)

    1. I found Ehrman’s book very useful, especially on the Jewish background to the later Christologies, where he showed that the concept of divine “hypostases” that were part of Yahweh yet distinct from him already existed in Second Temple Judaism. Where I differ from him is more in terminology – in using the word “divine” to describe how Paul and the synoptic writers saw Jesus as exalted Messiah. He doesn’t mean divine as in “equal to Yahweh” and what he is talking about is closer to something angelic which is then exalted to above the angels after Yahweh raises Jesus from death. But Christian apologists have leapt on the book declaring that Ehrman has admitted Jesus WAS God, which is not what he is saying at all. I also don’t find his arguments that the writers of gMark and gMatt saw Jesus as having a pre-existent heavenly status convincing. This is clearly found in Paul and most obviously in gJohn. But the only evidence of it I can find in the synoptics is in gLuke – in the strange “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” saying at Luke 10:18, which has no parallel in the other synoptics but which also could be read other ways. I’d still say that while Paul and perhaps gLuke see him as having a heavenly angelic pre-existence, we don’t get anything like “divine” until we get to gJohn, and even then the idea is not fully formed (e.g. John 14:28 “The Father is greater than I”).

      1. A helpful answer – thank you. As regards Paul I find the Philippians Christ-hymn particularly intriguing, and difficult to interpret. I also recall the debate between Ehrman and Hurtado about whether Paul is calling Jesus an angel in Galatians 4:14.

        On another note I’m looking forward to your post about the Ascension of Isaiah. I don’t think I’ve yet seen a comprehensive critique of Carrier’s claims on that front (although I vaguely remember it came up in a review by James McGrath? But I might be misremembering). From experience I don’t trust Carrier about most things.

        In the forthcoming post, will you also be commenting at all on the debate between Carrier and Thom Stark about the Targum of Jonathan and the Melchizedek scroll? I was re-reading that recently. Though I can understand not wanting to make the post too lengthy / jump around between topics.

        1. I’m generally with Ehrman on Paul’s Christology – he held the common Jewish belief that the Messiah had a heavenly pre-existence, that he was definitely not equal to God (Phil 2:6-8 makes this very clear) and that he was exalted above all other beings when God raised him from death, but was still subordinate to God. This is all in keeping with Jewish theology.

          I am planning an article in the “Jesus Mythicism” series on Mythicist claims about a pre-existing, celestial, divine, heavenly Jesus, which will tackle the problems with Carrier’s interpretation of the Ascension of Isaiah and will probably deal with or at least refer to Stark’s debunking of the Targum of Jonathan and Melchizedek scroll claims. Stark does a pretty comprehensive job of exposing Carrier’s weaknesses there, so I don’t think I’ll need to rehearse all of that argument again.

          1. Some Mythers have conjectured that people believed in a celestial Jesus decades before he was even born

  6. I get a little irritated when Carrier knocks you for not having an ivy league PhD like he does. For instance, Carrier writes:

    “Another sign of a crank is being a total amateur who can’t get anything published under peer review, and instead mocking any opponents who have prestigious credentials and publication histories. O’Neill likes to hide or disparage the fact that I have a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University (a prestigious Ivy League school) and numerous peer reviewed academic publications, including two books and several journal articles on this very subject. Tim O’Neill has no relevant credentials, no relevant graduate degrees, and no peer reviewed publications in history—at all, much less on the subjects I write.”

    “So O’Neill’s argument doesn’t even make logical sense. Which is likely why none of my paper’s peer reviewers saw a problem here. And they would have been actual experts, with relevant Ph.D.’s and subject-specific publications and experience, not rank unpublished amateurs like O’Neill.”

    see: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14324

    1. Plenty of his other critics also have doctorates, as well as all the other things Carrier does not have – actual academic jobs, successful careers, a large body of published work that doesn’t include any self-published hobbyist books, research grants from major funding bodies, a string of papers and panels at major conferences, a teaching career with a succession of supervised higher degree students etc. Yet they are, according to Carrier, all incompetent, stupid liars and/or insane too. I think I’ll stay in good company with those guys, regardless of what this unemployed failure says.

      1. Carrier makes a big deal that his OHJ was published through peer review by Sheffield Press, but he fails to mention Sheffield also published the mythicist book by Thomas Brodie, so I don’t think it is really that big a deal. Sheffield seems to like idiosyncratic stuff!

        1. Sheffield-Phoenix was actually a two man band operating from the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield. I say “was” because it effectively ceased operation in 2016. Carrier certainly did make a big deal of being published by ““Sheffield-Phoenix, the publishing house of the University of Sheffield (UK)”, despite the fact that the press was not “the publishing house of the University of Sheffield” at all. He later quietly edited that claim, once it had been noted as wrong, to read ““Sheffield-Phoenix, a publishing house at the University of Sheffield (UK)” – a subtle but rather important difference. He doesn’t seem capable of resisting the temptation to boost himself constantly and seems oblivious to how fatuous he appears by doing so.

          1. Tim, I noticed that Carrier employs many lurid descriptions he attributes to you while being completely oblivious to the fact that they (sometimes much better) suit him. The italicised bits are meant to indicate extreme irony:

            “the amateur rage blogger . . . a hack and a liar”
            “an asscrank, a total tinfoil hatter, filled with slanderous rage and void of any competence and honesty”
            “cranks tend to be obsessively wordy whiners who obsess over insults and personal honor, and thus respond to being challenged with elaborate slanders. When you catch them lying and screwing up, they build massive word walls devoid of relevance expressing only rage and anger and ad hominem speculation and excuses, consisting only of libelous insults, before or even in lieu of addressing any substantive facts of the matter”
            “a total amateur who can’t get anything published under peer review, and instead mocking any opponents who have prestigious credentials and publication histories”
            “the miles of whining and slander”
            “a thoroughly dishonest man. . . . deploys thoroughly stupid arguments”
            “rage blogs, rather than reasons or attends to evidence or truth”
            “lies about his competence, pretending to know expert things that in fact are totally wrong”
            “massive word wall of continually specious and dishonest arguments”
            “he cannot be trusted. He cannot be trusted to tell you the truth about what I have argued. He cannot be trusted to actually know what he’s talking about”

            Furthermore, I wonder where Carrier gets this bullshit from: “O’Neill’s account of how once years ago he tried to make it seem as if I had misspelled several words, is not true. He weaves a false tale instead, about it being someone ‘else’ who did that. But the evidence has long since been lost, so I can no longer demonstrate it. Just be aware: he is making up a story. As he tends to do. That he is not an honest man I demonstrated in the article he is responding to here, in which I show how he lies to his readers (and to Bart Ehrman) about what is and isn’t argued in my peer reviewed article that he was then responding to. He continues his lying here.”

            I wonder whether you are planning to respond to Carrier. (If not, I can understand why.)

          2. Yes, I find that projection is pretty common with people like him. I will be responding, mainly because his responses to my arguments (the ones he doesn’t deftly dance around and avoid completely) are remarkably weak once you strip out all the cocky bluster and they simply underscore the problems with his contrived interpretation of the James reference in Josephus.

            The strange reference to how I “tried to make it seem as if [he] had misspelled several words” is a tedious piece of weird psychodrama that is the origin of Carrier’s bizarre insistence that I am a “liar”. It is so utterly petty that it’s barely worth detailing. Back in 2010 a commenter called “Valjean24601” on the now defunct IMDB discussion board for the movie Agora was using some arguments by Carrier and kept referring to an argument that one relevant source was “almost verbatim” what another said. Except whenever “Valjean24601” used this argument he spelled it as “almmost verbatum”. So, to gently indicate to him that he was misspelling these two words, whenever I replied I put the phrase in quote marks and added a helpful “(sic)”, but since “Valjean24601” was not very bright they never got the hint.

            Two years later Carrier and his acolytes (e.g. Dave Fitzgerald) began dismissing any mention of me by declaring that Carrier had “caught” me “deliberately [doctoring] a quote of Dr. Carrier’s just to try and make him look bad”, but were unable to substantiate this allegation when challenged. Then in 2014 Carrier repeated this claim and said he had proof in the form of “a screenshot in my files”. When asked to produce this, he did – here it is.

            He had seriously taken a screenshot of a discussion that he took no part in and saved it for four years. Except he had misread the exchange and didn’t scroll up to see where “Valjean24601” had been the one repeatedly misspelling the phrase as “almmost verbatum” and so – because everything is perpetually about him – Carrier decided I was attributing these misspellings to him. Naturally, I went to his blog to explain his mistake, note that he himself had noted me attributing the correct spelling to him in other discussions and point out that the discussion with “Valjean24601” had obviously included a link to or quote from Carrier himself using the phrase (it included both, actually) and so it would make no sense to pretend he had made this misspelling when anyone could see that he had not.

            But Carrier can’t admit he is wrong and his “liar” fiction serves his rhetorical purposes. So he has stuck with the slander in the face of the evidence. Since IMDB deleted their message boards a couple of years ago, there is now no way to show Carrier he is wrong, so he gets to create some “fake news” and pretend that it’s me who is lying about all this. Tedious, but this is how he spends his time.

            Keep in mind that this childish little person is a middle aged Ivy League PhD graduate. One who behaves like a spiteful child.

          3. By the way, I probably gave off the wrong impression, but when writing my remark about “where Carrier gets this bullshit from,” I was already cognisant of the context, viz., Carrier being an asshole about your “(sic)” indicating Valjean24601’s misspelling of almost verbatim. However, I was trying to express my bafflement over how an Ivy League PhD graduate could genuinely believe such a preposterous and idiotic statement.

            As a further example, while he (ironically) accuses you of “mocking any opponents who have prestigious credentials and publication histories,” vitriolic Carrier claims that Ehrman casually approving your comment on his blog site demonstrates that “Ehrman doesn’t know what he’s talking about, nor bothers to. He just gullibly believes any falsehood told him that fits what he wants to be true. That’s the very worst way to behave as a historian. It discredits your opinion as unreliable.” And then Carrier asserts about your insignificant error as “demonstrating O’Neill read none of the scholarship on this passage, didn’t correct Ehrman on it, and isn’t an observant reader nor well acquainted with Josephus, and just makes shit up from the armchair before checking his facts first.” Either Carrier is a master of hiding sarcasm or actually batshit crazy here.

            For a final dose of utterly-ridiculous bullshit, Carrier states, “What does O’Neill have to say about this? Nothing. He evades the matter, and moves the goal posts by pretending we were arguing about something else. Take careful note here: this is how dishonest he is. He lied to Ehrman, and the public, about what my paper argued. I demonstrated that he lied about it. And then he pretends that that didn’t happen, and tries to make up a new argument instead.”

            Wow—I swear even Ken Ham could teach Carrier a lesson on how not to be delusional.

          4. I assume that Carrier’s objection is to this passage in the screenshotted thread:

            “Carrier was trying to dismiss Ammianus’ account that mentions the libraries of the Serapeum in the past tense by claiming that it wasn’t an eye witness account because it was an “almmost verbatum (sic)” and identical to an account of the earlier Great Library by Aulus Gellius. He sneered something about how I hadn’t even read the source material. Unfortunately for him, I had. I replied noting that it was odd that Carrier made the bold assertion that the two accounts were “almmost verbatum (sic)”, yet didn’t back this up by actually quoting them. I then did so, showing that they were not only not verbatim but actually didn’t overlap at all. Thus his whole argument collapsed. For some strange reason, my reply was never published on his blog.”

            To be fair to Carrier, reading that, I can see how it looks like the words “almmost verbatum” are being attributed to Carrier and not to Valjean. (Though of course it depends on the context of the entire thread, which is not contained in the screenshot.)

            But it seems like a really trivial and disproportionate thing over which to hold a grudge for eight years. If I were still angry about things people said about me on the internet eight years ago, I’d be in a constant state of rage.

          5. Yes, but the context of the entire thread makes it absolutely clear that it was “Valjean” who used the misspelled form of the phrase, not Carrier, and so I was (correctly) attributing the misspelling to “Valjean”. This is because (i) the thread linked to and quoted Carrier using the phrase correctly, (ii) it included posts by me where I refer to Carrier using it correctly and (iii) anyone reading the thread properly would be able to see multiple instances where it was “Valjean” using the term with the weird misspellings. So either Carrier read that one post in isolation and decided I was attributing the mistake to him and then took his weirdly self-obsessive screenshot or he read the whole thread and decided to misrepresent what I was saying by only screenshotting that one post out of context. I’d like to think it was the former and the whole thing is based on a mistake rather than spite, but with Carrier you never can tell.

            Your last point goes without saying, though that would only be the case with normal people.

      2. At least he spelled your name correctly this time!

        Though I don’t know why he always decides to accuse everyone who disagrees with him of being dishonest, insane, incompetent or all three. I do wish this debate were more civil on all sides, in general. And considering that he’s previously written about a variety of matters that are far outside his formal expertise – like when he argued at length with Luke Barnes, a physicist, about physics / probability theory / cosmology – I don’t think he can sensibly say that you aren’t qualified to disagree with him about history.

        I really *am* a total amateur – I’m a lawyer, not a historian, and I have zero qualifications in biblical studies – but I’m curious about this aspect of Carrier’s post:

        “For “the one called Christ” is not a patronymic; nor is it an intelligible designation at all, to anyone likely to be reading this passage in Josephus—anyone who wasn’t already a Christian, which is one of several reasons I list in my peer reviewed paper that we know a Christian must have written this (which reasons O’Neill omits to mention and never addresses; more dishonesty).”

        Surely Carrier is assuming what he needs to prove here? If part of the Testimonium is genuine (I know Carrier says it isn’t, but let’s assume it is for the sake of argument), then Josephus had already told his readers in an earlier volume who this “Jesus called Christ” was, and so the reference to “James, the brother of Jesus called Christ” in a later volume would be perfectly intelligible to someone who was reading the whole work. But maybe I’m missing the point of his argument. (I have absolutely no expertise.)

        1. The claim that Χριστου would be “unintelligible” to Greek readers is highly dubious to begin with. After all, the translators of the Septuagint use it repeatedly for the Messiah and for various other “anointed” persons, and that would be very odd if the word was genuinely “unintelligible”. It seems what Carrier means is that Greek readers would understand the word (as meaning “anointed” or perhaps more literally as “smeared”), but not understand why this Jesus would be “called” this, unless Josephus stopped to explain the term and its relevance. But, as I detailed in my reply to his original charming “Asscrank” rant, Josephus often refers to people, places and things who are “called” by some cognomen and yet doesn’t stop to explain the nickname. He simply uses it as an identifier for the person/place/thing in question. I gave several examples of Josephus doing this. So Carrier’s insistence that Josephus somehow “should” have explained this cognomen if it was original to his text is demonstrably wrong, given the multiple places where he does not do this elsewhere.

          1. (Sorry to comment so much on this thread!)

            I notice that Carrier has elaborated his argument about this in the comments section:

            “Josephus is writing for a Gentile audience. They would have no idea what “anointed” means in this context or why it was important enough to mention or what information it conveys about anything. Just as they didn’t know what a Sadducee was or why it mattered whether someone was one (such as in this very story, where Josephus knows he has to explain why it matters that Ananus the killer in this case is one).

            “And notably, “christos” is never used by Josephus anywhere else—not anywhere in the whole of the Antiquities even, which is more or less a paraphrase of the Septuagint; it appears instead only in these two suspect passages, neither of which connected to the Septuagint or its historical period. Yet in neither is the word explained, something only a Christian would not think was needed. Indeed, Josephus never uses this word even when he is explicitly describing messiahs (as returning Joshuas promising the end of the world and the triumph of the Jews: OHJ, Ch. 4, Element 4, the “Josephan Christs” class, per Ch. 6.5); thus the real Josephus actually avoided ever using the word.”

            To an extent it seems to me that Carrier is dodging your argument here. If I understood your argument correctly (please correct me if I didn’t!), you are saying that Josephus often refers to a person or place as “X called Y” without explaining to his readers why X was called Y or what Y means. So on that basis, even if Carrier is right that Josephus’ Gentile readers would not have understood the cultural/religious meaning of “christos”, it may be that this doesn’t matter – it’s possible that Josephus just used the term in passing without bothering to explain it. But I do not read Greek and am not remotely an expert on Josephus, so I can’t venture a strong opinion.

            I would assume (again please correct me if I am getting the wrong end of the stick) that Carrier’s argument in this regard falls away if the Testimonium is partially authentic, because if that is the case, Josephus had already explained to his readers who Jesus was, and therefore had no need to explain the expression “called Christ” at 20.200. But of course Carrier has argued vociferously that no part of the Testimonium is authentic.

          2. “To an extent it seems to me that Carrier is dodging your argument here. If I understood your argument correctly (please correct me if I didn’t!), you are saying that Josephus often refers to a person or place as “X called Y” without explaining to his readers why X was called Y or what Y means. So on that basis, even if Carrier is right that Josephus’ Gentile readers would not have understood the cultural/religious meaning of “christos”, it may be that this doesn’t matter”

            That’s exactly right. Fopr Josephus’ gentile readers it would not matter why this person was “called” this (“anointed” or “smeared”) than it would matter why another guy was called “Cabi” (Antiquities, XX.196) or even why a hill would be called “the Eminence” (Antiquities IX.11). In the former case they may guess this is a Hebrew name and in the latter they could also guess that this hill was referred to this way because it was high or prominent, but the point is that Josephus usually doesn’t bother to explain these cognomia, he just uses them as a form of identification and differentiation. We should also remember that at least some of Josephus’ intended reading audience were fellow Jewish exiles in Rome, who would have been well aware of what Χριστός referred to. But that understanding is not necessary to the way Josephus is using the as a cognomen. He’s just saying what Jesus was “called”.

            “I would assume (again please correct me if I am getting the wrong end of the stick) that Carrier’s argument in this regard falls away if the Testimonium is partially authentic, because if that is the case, Josephus had already explained to his readers who Jesus was, and therefore had no need to explain the expression “called Christ””

            That’s true. But even if we don’t accept the TF as partially authentic the point above stands.

    2. I just noticed Neil Godfrey responding to this comment on his blog. Very amusing. Just as Carrier uses his “liar” smear as a way of deflecting my criticisms, Godfrey uses his pearl clutching over my supposed “insults” to do the same thing. Reading his conniptions, you’d think all my articles are nothing but strings of invective, when in fact I rarely do more than express some amused scorn occasionally. Despite his claims, the reason I don’t “engage” with him over at his cosy treehouse club at Vridar is I find him passive aggressive and a largely impenetrable waste of time. And his whole faux “I am a lofty and objective arbiter of truth” schtick pretty tedious. He’s a booster of Mythers, no matter how crackpot, and his reflex contrarianism skews everything against any kind of scholarly consensus and in favour of his grab bag of fringe theories and intricately contrived ad hoc arguments. Life is too short.

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      1. That was quick. Carrier must have boasted his “roasting” of you to his fellow wannabe scholar. In what universe would either of them come close to being “objective”?

      2. On that note, I’m curious as to your view on the dating and composition of the Pentateuch, another subject Godfrey writes about a great deal. And the relevance, if any, of the Elephantine papyri. I’m completely unqualified to venture an opinion myself. (I read and enjoyed Friedman’s “Who Wrote The Bible?” and Finkelstein/Silverman’s “The Bible Unearthed”, but that is the limit of my knowledge of the field.)

        1. That’s not a topic I have studied – I’m more interested in rather later periods and texts and study OT stuff only so I can understand NT and early Christian material better. But I wouldn’t trust Godfrey on … well, anything. Behind his mealy-mouthed pretence at some kind of lofty neutrality usually lurks an agenda.

      3. Was in a facebook myther v “historicist” group with Godfrey. The groups founder, himself, having been a mythicist, invited Godfrey, but soon booted him for making stuff up.
        Dave invited him back (maybe because he thought he over reacted) but then booted him again.
        The group soon degenerated into a typical mythicist insult fest.

  7. I have a question about historical Jesus, that is somewhat offtopic:

    I heard some on Twitter allege (which is admittedly a terrible source) that DB Hart’s translation of the Bible indicates something like universal salvation — i.e. the idea that everyone will eventually be saved. Is that true?

    As an agnostic who doesn’t believe in Christianity at all, I don’t have a dog in this fight but I wonder if Jesus indeed preached something like that. You said that you have DB Hart’s translation and that it was pretty accurate, so I am asking you.

    1. I read certain passages in Hart’s translation that often get distorted in translation so they conform more closely to orthodox theology and found Hart seemed to closer to the actual meaning of the Greek than many, more theologically driven translations. This seems to be why N.T. Wright described Hart’s version as “pitilessly literal”. But there is a strong tradition of universal salvation in Orthodox theology and Hart supports it based on his study of Gregory of Nyssa. It’s not a subject that interests me much (I look at theology only so I can understand its role in history) but here is a list of readings on it, including a piece by Hart.

  8. > It’s not a subject that interests me much (I look at theology only so I can understand its role in history)

    I am the same way. My question is not about theology (in which I don’t believe regardless), but about whether Christianity in its early form preached something like that. What I heard was:

    1) Hart’s translation is more accurate than most and not theology-driven
    2) It supports universal salvation

    What I want to know is whether bits that support (or appear to support) universal salvation are correctly translated by Hart. If not, then when and why did the idea of universal salvation started and why if it was never in the bible?

    1. Perhaps I should have been more clear: I have not read the whole of Hart’s translation, just some key passages to get the feel of it and some selected, often-mistranslated texts to see how he handles them. I don’t know enough about (and am not very interested in) the relevant theology of salvation and have not read the whole of his translation anyway, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.

      1. Thanks for your answer.

        All I was trying to do was reconstruct what actual teachings of (historical, apocalyptic prophet) Jesus most likely were, that’s all.

        1. As far as we can reconstruct it, the historical Jesus seems to have held the apocalyptic view that there would be “sheep” separated from “goats” when the apocalyptic kingdom came and that the unrighteous were going to Hell. He does not seem to have had any of the more modern squeamishness about God damning people forever.

          1. I suspected as much, thanks.

            though now I do wonder how Hart dealt with those verses if he was interested in producing the most literal translation possible, because you are most likely right.

    2. Bart Ehrman’s forthcoming book on the afterlife will be interesting in this regard. I am looking forward to it.

      Of course, we shouldn’t assume that (a) all the New Testament authors held the same view about salvation, or that (b) their views are representative of those of the historical Jesus.

      (Tangentially related: over on Bart Ehrman’s blog I got into a discussion about “Amen I tell you today you will be with me in Paradise” in Luke. This has some important implications for Luke’s view of the afterlife, because, read literally, it obviously implies that there is a differentiated afterlife *between* death and the future resurrection. I once read a blog by an evangelical who believes in “soul sleep” – the notion that there is no conscious afterlife between death and resurrection – and who was arguing that it should instead be punctuated as “Amen I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise”, removing that implication. But Ehrman was very sceptical of that argument, and I trust him on matters of Greek grammar! Of course, we can’t assume that Luke’s view was the same as that of Jesus.)

    1. Yes, yet again he gives us a lesson in how an Ivy League PhD graduate engages with critics. Sift out all the screaming and there really isn’t much there. He avoids most of my arguments, misrepresents two of them and then focuses his only substantive points on what was merely a passing observation. And I waited two years for … that? I will be replying to the few feeble points he makes, with some wry notes on the rest of the psycho-drama that surrounds them. He really is a very odd little man.

    2. Antimule: That post has already been linked here several times and has been discussed at length on other threads. Carrier spends so much of the post ranting angrily, making lurid allegations of dishonesty, and obsessing over perceived personal slights – including a misattributed spelling mistake on an obscure IMDB thread eight years ago – that it obscures his points. It would have been more helpful if he’d spent more of his post discussing the actual issues.

      The real substance of the issue is this: is it plausible that Josephus would have written “James, the brother of Jesus called Christ” without explaining what “Christ” meant or why Jesus was so described? Carrier says no; O’Neill says yes. And Carrier hasn’t dealt with O’Neill’s central argument on that point, which is that Josephus often refers to a person or place as “X called Y” without explaining why X was called Y or what Y means. If that’s right, then there’s no obvious reason to think the passage is an accidental interpolation as Carrier posits.

      And the whole “Origen was confusing Josephus with Hegesippus” line of argument just seems needlessly convoluted. Though it may be that I haven’t fully understood the subtleties on that issue.

    3. Good grief. Those first couple of paragraphs do a pretty good job of describing their own writer ;-).

      1. It’s called projection. If that’s not a pot calling a kettle black, idk what is. I’m not sure if he’s trying to be edgy to give us the [false] impression that he’s “in the know” or that he really does lack self-awareness. He not only hates God but anybody who dares challenge his crackpot ideas. It’s almost as if he’s insecure about it and doesn’t really believe half the shit he peddles

  9. Carrier, as a self-styled “Probability Guru” when it comes to establishing the probability/likelihood that something occurred historically, is a bit of a comical figure in my eyes. My favorite quote from Carrier is:

    Of course Habermas tries to sell Strobel on the tired apologetic line that “no one dies for a lie.” Surely not, “if they knew it was a hoax,” we hear said. This is a classic straw man. And as such, another lie. It’s one thing to ask how likely it is the resurrection appearance claims were a hoax. It’s altogether another to ask how likely it is they were like every other divine appearance experience in the whole history of all religions since the dawn of time: a mystical inner vision. Just as Paul tells us. Our only eyewitness source. Of course, a case can be made for the apostles dying even for a hoax: all they needed was to believe that the teachings attached to their fabricated claim would make the world a better place, and that making the world a better place was worth dying for. Even godless Marxists voluntarily died by the millions for such a motive. So the notion that no one would, is simply false. See https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12263

    So, basically Carrier is saying: The most reasonable explanation for Christian origins is that it started out as people experiencing what they thought were revelatory experiences of the celestial Jesus. But, Carrier is saying, if you don’t like that explanation, another perfectly reasonable explanation of the evidence is a “Conspiracy Theory.”

    I wonder what objective calculations Carrier is engaging in to assign probability/likelihood in favor of his Conspiracy Explanation? lol

    1. And you can see how paranoia and conspiracy surround Carrier’s project. Carrier writes, for instance:

      “This appears to be what typically happened to the evidence. It was erased, doctored or rewritten to support a historicity party line against a mythicist one” (Carrier, On The Historicity of Jesus, p.352).

      On this, Dr. McGrath comments that:

      Just as distrust of government can foster conspiracy thinking in the political realm, an exaggerated distrust not just for religion, but for all people associated with it, can apparently render conspiracy thinking seemingly plausible in relation to early Christianity.

      1. Carrier’s conspiratorial, paranoid thinking shone through on his blog post today entitled “What’s The Harm? Why Religious Belief Is Always Bad:” Carrier writes:

        “First, all religions are systems of lies, designed to keep us trapped and controlled by fear. Liberal, conservative. Doesn’t matter.” https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14557

        Apparently Carrier no more knows the meaning of the word “lies” than he does “overgeneralizing.”

          1. One last comment on Carrier’s Conspiracy Thinking:

            If anyone hasn’t seen it, here is a video, the relevant part starting around 1:10:41, where Dr. Carrier claims the conspiracy theory that Paul lied about seeing visions of Jesus is a reasonable interpretation of the historical evidence:
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=1w3ppNIm41U

            – I have no faith in Carrier’s abilities to assign probability/likelihood to determine whether historical events probably happened.

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