Has anyone read Richard Carrier, or other authors on Christ Mysticism?

[Anonymous No.19089109]

I've been listening to new testament debates on YouTube, and this Richard Carrier fellow seems to demolish pretty hard. Has anyone read his book?

Basically Carrier argues that it is more likely that Christ was a historicized mythical figure, than that he was a genuine historical figure. The data he appeals to from the early church, and contemporary religious movements around the Roman Empire is all very autistic and interesting.

[Anonymous No.19089110]

*Mysticism
whoops, I meant mythicism

[Anonymous No.19089175]

>>19089109
It's pretty much universally agreed that Jesus actually existed because it makes no sense that Christianity spread as fast as it did if he didnt. What are his arguments?

[Anonymous No.19089338]

>>19089175
>there was an earlier Jewish sect which venerated an archangel with the same name, and a similar biography as Jesus.
>there were historicized rising messiah religious cults around the Mediterranean, including Osiris in Egypt which Jews would have been familiar with
>the oldest parts of the new testament, the genuine Pauline epistles, are all consistent with Jesus being a being who lived in the heavens, and not someone who physically walked the earth.
>there were some epistles forged specifically to attack the view that Jesus was not real, which indicates the view they were attacking was in circulation somewhere in the early church, but was subsequently suppressed
check out his debates on youtube for a better rendition

[Anonymous No.19089978]

I find his books pretty interesting even if I don't entirely agree with him. (Robert Price too.) There's not a lot of other authors willing to tackle the subject. His nemesis Ehrman is just such a stuck-up faggot who refuses to consider syncretism in early Christianity.

[Anonymous No.19089980]

>>19089338
>there were historicized rising messiah religious cults around the Mediterranean, including Osiris in Egypt which Jews would have been familiar with
And in fact, we have the writings of the Naassenes preserved where Jesus is explicitly compared to a whole host of dying-and-rising god figures. Ehrman is completely disingenuous when he borrows the arguments of the fundamentalists to dismiss these.

[Anonymous No.19089989]

>>19089980
>Ehrman
didn't they have an argument via blog posts or something? I wonder if that's still accessible somewhere.

[Anonymous No.19090005]

>>19089989
This? https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/1794

Robert M. Price's books are also very entertaining to read while presenting some very dry material. He has a good podcast as well.

[Anonymous No.19090368]

>>19089338
My problem with all of his arguments is that they're purely suppositional. Carrier takes disparate parts of Jewish mythology, compares them to those parts of Christianity he considers to be similar, and then declares that these must in fact be referring to the same thing because he considers them similar.

[Anonymous No.19090379]

>>19089980
>we have the writings of the Naassenes preserved
Which writings were preserved, aside from the Gospel of Thomas, which doesn't refer to what you're saying?

[Anonymous No.19090380]

>>19089109
>it is more likely that Christ was a historicized mythical figure, than that he was a genuine historical figure

[Anonymous No.19090394]

>>19089109
I don't take it seriously. He just assumes Christianity is false and then interprets historical facts in this light, like all modernists do. If you want to "disprove" Christianity, try actually following it and seeing if you internally experience what it talks about, thus "showing" how it is internally inconsistent. But no, the bugmen won't do this because cooming and pleasures and intellectual pride are an indispensable part of their life.

[Anonymous No.19090423]

>>19089175
It isn’t. There isn’t any definitive proof that Jesus existed, only a dozen of weak evidence pieces that pile together

[Anonymous No.19090441]

>>19090423
>>19089109
You have to be 18 in order to post here OP

[Anonymous No.19090470]

I don't find his arguments very convincing, he has to posit a hypothetical mythology that doesn't survive, and he dismisses some strong pieces of evidence for historicity with relatively weak objections. One is the reference to Jesus's brother James in Josephus' Antiquities 20.9.1(200), which states:
>he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned
Carrier claims that "who was called Christ" started as a Christian marginal note and was accidentally interpolated into the text by a scribe. But that's purely hypothetical and the main reason he seems to believe it is because the passage would undermine his theory otherwise. It doesn't make sense for a Christian scribe to write "who was called Christ" of they believed the figure was Jesus Christ, they would write that he was Christ, not just called so. We have an actual Christian interpolation earlier in Josephus which does insert a reference to Jesus being Christ (i.e. Messiah). The best Carrier can say is that the authenticity of "who was called Christ" is debated (pretty much only by Carrier), but he writes as if it's certain to be an interpolation and dismisses the possibility that it supports historicity.

There are other examples, but this demonstrates the kind of problems he has, which are especially bad when he uses these arguments as data points in his bayesian analysis of the likelihood of historicity. The data points are arbitrarily chosen and are just his own views on certain pieces of evidence, any stats he produces are garbage in, garbage out.

Another thing is that there is no evidence of a resurrecting angel called Jesus before the Christian movement. Jesus was a common jewish name at the time, which makes sense for a historical figure, while good angels usually had the suffix -el in their names, such as Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, etc.

[Anonymous No.19090473]

>>19090394
That is nonsensical; if you turn away from Christianity after having "truly experienced it" they will just say that you never "truly experienced it," because then you would have not "fallen into prelest/turned away from God's grace." It's pure veganism

[Anonymous No.19090484]

>>19089978
>who refuses to consider syncretism in early Christianity.
Considering how there were debates over minutiae like circumcision, the law and kosher, I doubt Jews would have permitted any pagan influences to creep in. Even early Roman sources described them as more zealous than normal Jews

[Anonymous No.19090487]

>>19089109
>Christ was a historicized mythical figure
the absolute state of /lit/ 2021
i'm closing this retarded board and going to read some books

[Anonymous No.19090516]

>>19090473
>if you turn away from Christianity after having "truly experienced it"
You can not turn away from knowing Christ's existence after experiencing Him.
What you do afterward is your choice, you can choose to turn away from following Him, but the experience itself is something you would not be able to deny the existence of. You would necessarily have to interpret it away using a false self-contradictory solipsistic/materialistic framework.

[Anonymous No.19090536]

>>19090516
Religious experiences obviously happen, but they don't tell you whether a particular theology is correct. People of every church and religion have experiences.

[Anonymous No.19090549]

>>19090536
Christian theology correctly and experientially explains all other theologies though.

[Anonymous No.19090558]

>>19090549
Yes, you need to justify the theology, just citing experiences doesn't demonstrate anything.

[Anonymous No.19090559]

>>19090441
Go back to your tradcuck discord, newfaggot

[Anonymous No.19090571]

>>19090516
You cannot "know" Christ's experience, which is a historical possibility, in a spiritual sense. "Experiencing Him" does not equate to Him having existed, you could have experienced anything and there's no way to prove what it was. It does not even have to be materialistic or solipsistic, either of which are entirely valid. It could easily be explained as a "spirit," a pagan deity, wherever your imagination will take you. Perhaps it is a demon, tricking you.

>>19090484
Early Christianity which relied on syncretism and compromise to spread the faith, not the Jews (implying)

[Anonymous No.19090628]

>>19090571
Early Christians were mostly Jews.

[Anonymous No.19090633]

>>19090628
Early Christianity as in the universalistic imperial faith, not the small communities of mostly Jews at its inception.

[Anonymous No.19090653]

>>19090571
>materialistic or solipsistic
>either of which are entirely valid

[Anonymous No.19090737]

>>19090423
What definitive proof exists that Socrates, Buddha, Cyrus the Great existed? You know absolutely nothing about how to validate whether or not someone was real. There are over 40 sources that attest to Jesus. 2 of those are from secular sources. That's about as definitive as it gets

[Anonymous No.19090787]

>Jesus never existed
>a group of 12 guys just made him up for the lulz
>the same group is brutally tortured and killed
>they don't admit that they were lying because it's for the lulz
>somehow a bunch of people who have never heard or seen Jesus believe he is real
>they are also brutally tortured and killed
>this is what Carrier actually believes

[Anonymous No.19090795]

>>19090737
That depends on the individual historical figure. The Buddha is much worse attested than Jesus, the earliest written sources being the pali nikayas, committed to writing in the 1st century BC, they clearly had an oral history before that but its open to speculation how old any of the dialogues are. For Socrates we have written sources from two undisputed contemporaries who knew him personally, Plato and Xenophon, so in that regard you can argue his existence is better attested than Jesus, all the sources claiming to be by his disciples are of disputed authorship. For Cyrus we have the Cyrus cylinder commissioned by the man himself, so his existence is definitely attested better than Jesus'.

Jesus is decently well-attested as a historical figure, there's no need to exagerrate.

[Anonymous No.19090817]

>>19090795
>ll the sources claiming to be by his disciples are of disputed authorship
Josephus and Tacitus are not Christian sources.

[Anonymous No.19090824]

>>19090817
Sorry ignore. I'm poor at reading.

[Anonymous No.19090828]

>>19090817
Re-read that sentence you quoted

[Anonymous No.19090833]

>>19090795
>all the sources claiming to be by his disciples are of disputed authorship
Yes nearly all are disputed. I think there are some Pauline epistles that are accepted as written by Paul. These and the gospels do tend to exaggerate, but I don't think this warrants throwing them out as historical sources

[Anonymous No.19090878]

>>19090833
I'm not throwing them out at all, they're valuable sources. But all the ones supposedly by his disciples are disputed. At least seven of Paul's epistles are considered genuine, but of course he never met Jesus face to face. He did meet Peter, John and James the brother of Jesus, and possibly the other disciples, so he's still a great source for historicity. I was just comparing the New Testament sources to Plato and Xenophon, who both knew Socrates directly and wrote about him.

[Anonymous No.19090886]

>>19090559
Do yourself a favor leave and return when you're 18 years old kiddo

[Anonymous No.19090927]

>>19090878
I'm in agreement with pretty much everything you wrote, just wanted to provide at bit more detail to this thread. I'm not a christcuck, but it annoys me when atheists try to say that Jesus never existed like Carrier in OP

[Anonymous No.19090928]

>>19090737
>There are over 40 sources that attest to Jesus.
Anything that attests to Jesus is pretty late and could also be attesting to the gospel narrative floating around the early church of a historicized Jesus.

>>19090833
>These and the gospels do tend to exaggerate, but I don't think this warrants throwing them out as historical sources
The amount of extra canonical material like the gospel of Thomas and the gospel of Judas is very large. The early church was fabricating stories and modifying them constantly. Given that the Gospels are fairly late, and seem to derive from a single source, it doesn't seem like a wild idea that they were also fabricated.

You are correct that most of the Pauline epistles are legitimate, but Carrier deals with that extensively.

[Anonymous No.19090940]

>>19089109
>it is more likely that Christ was a historicized mythical figure, than that he was a genuine historical figure.

[Anonymous No.19090951]

>>19090927
you should just watch some of Carrier's debates
the premise of mythicism does sound cringe and fedora-y, but he is pretty persuasive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akd6qzFYzX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1_ZEVDC7rw

The funny thing about Carrier, is that him and the leading secular historicist new testament scholar, Bart Erhman hate each other and refuse to speak to each other. So unfortunately we don't have debates of them going at it it. But you can watch a bunch of Erhman's debates and determine for yourself if you think he is aware of, and deals with the problems that Carrier raises. Sometimes audience members bring up Carrier's stuff to Ehrman during Q&As.

[Anonymous No.19090961]

>>19090928
>Anything that attests to Jesus is pretty late and could also be attesting to the gospel narrative floating around the early church of a historicized Jesus.
Most of those sources were written within 100 years of Jesus's death. That is extremely fast documentation of a carpenters son. You also have a poor understanding of the early church. It was not a centralized structure like it is now. It was very loosely connected people with a wide range of beliefs.

[Anonymous No.19090964]

>>19089109
>Christ was a historicized mythical figure, than that he was a genuine historical figure.
Holy Christ, OP. What are you doing?

[Anonymous No.19090971]

>>19090787
The amount and brutality of anti-Christian purges may have been consciously exaggerated by Christians themselves once in power, with following writers inventing ever new ways to torture recently coined ancient saints. You can see it right now in any underdog-like ideology, their narrative does not switch when they stop being underdogs and start being state-endorsed, it gets amplified even further.

This reality distortion reaches new limits, when one can imagine Roman amphitheaters used exclusively for brutal torture of Christians and mortal kombat of gladiators. Except when a Classicists rolls in to inform you those were used same as the stadiums now - for basically sportsball, with gladiators being overglorified wrestlers. Nazi Germany ended barely 75 years ago, with USSR even less so, yet the amount of myths about them is staggering.
And then you have events that happened not 30 years ago, and neither 300, but more like 1700.

[Anonymous No.19090992]

>>19090787
Carrier thinks most of the history of the early church is made up.
>>19090961
100 years is a long time, my dude.

[Anonymous No.19091016]

>>19090992
>100 years is a long time
To us, yes. In ancient times this is very short. They didn't have mass media back then. It took time for them to decide what was important to write down. The fact that so many people, including non Christians, wrote about a carpenters son within a century of his death is astounding.

[Anonymous No.19091089]

>Carrier is new atheist fedora cringe
New Atheists are all historicists
The only people who know about Carrier are autistic people who are interested in the latest edgy scholarship on the New Testament.

[Anonymous No.19091295]

>>19091016
you should just watch a carrier debate
given that Jesus embodies a copy pasted trope of historicized dying and rising gods that was frequent around the Mediterranean, it seems like more likely that the Jesus "cult" just caught on, a particular sect had the most attractive message, and they eventually gained hegemony and partially suppressed earlier heterodox teachings.
100 years is a fairly short amount of time for beliefs to spread. Look at early Islam. God's final prophet (pbhuh) was a real figure, but his entire biography ultimately arrives to us via charismatic story tellers that would constantly invent and remix material. Very quickly his biography was adjusted to match tropes from the life of Moses, and the oral "historians" invented (often conflicting) cute stories to cover every conceivable moment of his life, and the pseudo-historical context for every confusing passage Quran. Within a few generations, no one knew any better.

What Carrier is saying, is that a documented pre-Christian Jewish cult who believed in Yeshua the martyred archangel historicized their divine messiah, (as other groups did at the time), and a body of psudeo-history emerged to back it up. This body that includes not only the canonical gospels, Acts, etc, but also the enormous amount of stuff which was later deemed to be non-canonical.
Nothing here seems inconceivable to me. But you should just watch a Carrier debate, he cites all the supporting evidence.

[Anonymous No.19091344]

>>19091295
The fact his ressurection managed to happen historically while this event also had a mythic parallel in other pagan religions is simply proof of why and how fast it managed to spread all ocross the world and further attests to his life death and ressurection more than anything else

[Anonymous No.19091375]

>>19091344
you've got the chronology wrong, pagan resurrection myths in the Mediterranean predated Christ

[Anonymous No.19091475]

>>19091375
>pagan resurrection myths in the Mediterranean
Jewish tradition knew that there will be a resurrecting savior. The demons thus also knew this and spread this all around the nations under their dominion to mock the resurrection and lead people astray.

[Anonymous No.19091507]

>>19089109
Choose your fighter!
>Dr. William Lane Craig, Non-denominational Protestant, Analytic Philosopher, black belt in academic debate, Kalam finishing move!
>Dr. James White, Calvinist, new testament textual critic, destroyer of Muslim apologists!
>Dr. Steven Anderson, Baptist, King James Only schizo, hot takes so spicy he is banned from entering Europe!
>Dr. Bart Ehrman, Fedora (formerly evangelical), new testament textual critic, leading secular historicist, enemy of Carrier!
>Dr. Richard Carrier, Fedora, new testament textual critic, leading christ mythicist, enemy of Ehrman!

>>19091475
>I make ad hoc adjustments to my hypothesis on the fly, so it predicts all outcomes
wtf atheism destroyed

[Anonymous No.19091537]

>>19091507
kek, Steven Anderson does not have a PhD

[Anonymous No.19091620]

even if christ was a mythical figure it would in no way invalidate christianity. whether something existed in the material world or not is completely irrelevant from the immaterial divine point of view

[Anonymous No.19091634]

>>19091507

[Anonymous No.19091663]

>>19090473
Nah, getting pinned railroaded into either of those two options is not necessary. People fall away from the faith and this is recognized by the faith and explicitly stated in the Bible. We should praying for their return, though.

[Anonymous No.19091687]

>>19091620
>burns you at the stake for heresy
our disagreement was not personal in nature

[Anonymous No.19091711]

>>19091507
>Dr. Darth Dawkins, Van Tillian presuppositionalist, academic philosopher, author of 15 books, loving father and husband

[Anonymous No.19091739]

>>19091295
There's no evidence for a pre-existing cult of Yeshua the resurrected angel. The earlier parallels to Jesus in Jewish religion are divinised Biblical figures and well-attested archangels like Michael. For example, in 1 Enoch 37-71, Enoch is described as the divine Son of Man who will enact God's judgement. Jesus' resurrection probably arose from the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the righteous at the time of judgement. Jesus' historicity explains why a jewish cult would include a common Roman method of execution in their beliefs, because their founder waa executed as a criminal.

[Anonymous No.19091789]

>>19091475
Demons is how we got your belief

[Anonymous No.19091811]

>>19091739
>There's no evidence for this
Philo of Alexandria describes this sort of angel

[Anonymous No.19091847]

>>19091811
Yes, an angelic lieutenant of God, he never mentions an angel called Yeshua who is executed and resurrected.

[Anonymous No.19091857]

Carrier is a fringe scholar. There’s only like 17 biblical scholars that are mythicists.

[Anonymous No.19091858]

>>19091739
>Jesus' historicity explains why a jewish cult would include a common Roman method of execution in their beliefs, because their founder waa executed as a criminal.
A historicized mythical figure would also be inserted into those sorts of stories, that isn't a novel prediction of the historicist view.
Carrier claims that there is zero independent corroboration for Roman provincials, jewish or otherwise, getting to pardon criminals on holy days. If true, those sorts of details lend credence to the mythcist hypothesis.

[Anonymous No.19091882]

>>19091847
Basically you are saying that Carrier is lying and misrepresenting Philo. I can't claim to know that he isn't. I guess I should be an autist and go dig up the primary sources.

[Anonymous No.19091883]

>>19091858
You do realize that crucifixion was an embarrassing way to be executed. Why would a cult make up their savior being crucified?

[Anonymous No.19091952]

>>19091883
>You do realize that crucifixion was an embarrassing way to be executed.
the pre-christian, mythicist cult of Osiris, right next door in egypt, believed their messiah had his cock either eaten or bitten off by a fish.
>Why would a cult make up their savior being crucified?
Just watch a Carrier debate, he has some ideas about this. The permanent divine sacrifice was meant to usurp the temple cult of less powerful, annual, animal sacrifices.

[Anonymous No.19091964]

>just watch it bro

[Anonymous No.19092279]

>>19091858
That means that part of the story probably isn't historical. Doesn't mean there was no Jesus who lead a cult and was executed. Every historical source is best read critically, it isn't all or nothing in terms of historicity vs myth. The issue with Carrier's hypothesis is that the mythical origin he constructs is inferred from disparate snippets of sources. He cites the Talmud (codified 4th century AD) to claim that Paul believed Jesus was birthed from a cosmic sperm bank. There's no evidence of that at all from any Christian source or any Jewish source earlier than the Talmud. Being skeptical about parts of the Christian version of events doesn't lead to Carrier's specific thesis.

[Anonymous No.19092895]

>>19090653
Yeah, solipsism can suck my ass, but at least materialism isn't totally delusional.

[Anonymous No.19093570]

>>19090379
Hippolytus, Philosophumena (AKA The Refutation of all Heresies), Book 5.

[Anonymous No.19093638]

>>19089109
>richard carrier
Isn't he one of the crazies who started Atheism+?

[Anonymous No.19093662]

I'm pretty minimalist on what we can know about Jesus but we have zero reason to presume actual mythicism. There's nothing prima facie implausible about a Jewish prophet being crucified by the Roman government in 1st century Judea. Trying to prove that it couldn't have happened is just motivated reasoning.

[Anonymous No.19093664]

>>19090379
The Naassene Sermon. Basically a Hellenic mystery religion that decided Jesus, and the Bible in general was pretty cool. Awesome read.

[Anonymous No.19093699]

Also we have letters from Paul where he discusses going to Jerusalem and meeting James, the brother of Jesus. Seems pretty implausible that someone there could cover up Jesus being mythical.

Of course this counterpoint is why you have the even more hardcore mythicists like Robert Price who believe that Paul is a mythical figure too.

[Anonymous No.19093715]

>>19093664
They've never been described that way. A good read nevertheless.

[Anonymous No.19093721]

>>19093699
Carrier addresses this. He says that elsewhere in Paul phrases like “brother of the lord”, are used to refer generically to disciples of Christ. Meaning that Paul could have been calling James a brother in a non-biological sense, since he was apt to do that.

[Anonymous No.19093767]

>>19089109
Carrier's entire argument rests on the existence of a hypothetical jewish sect that he invented through novel interpretations of texts published by people who were neither contemporary with, or members of that sect. There's less proof for his Yeshua cult than there is for a historical and merely human Christ.

[Anonymous No.19093799]

>>19093715

[Anonymous No.19095059]

How certain can we be that Richard Carrier really existed?

[Anonymous No.19095714]

>>19093721
James is referred to as the brother of Jesus by Josephus in his Antiquities. It is really a stretch to claim that Paul just means it in a metaphorical sense.

[Anonymous No.19096123]

>>19091375
Re-read my post again

[Anonymous No.19096652]

>>19092895
>materialism isn't totally delusional
>NOO I am using this immaterial faculty to refute there existing anything immaterial!!!!

[Anonymous No.19097561]

>>19095059
He was actually an amalgamation of different writers.

[Anonymous No.19097718]

>>19095059
It's possible that he originated from Nu-athiest cults that sprang up at the beginning of the 21 century.

[Anonymous No.19097884]

>Carrier argues that it is more likely that Christ was a historicized mythical figure, than that he was a genuine historical figure.
Is Carrier talking Jesus? He never admited beeng Christ.

[Anonymous No.19097948]

>>19097884
>He never admited beeng Christ.