Why Does Richard Carrier think that Jesus never existed?

[alwayson]

Why does Columbia PhD in Ancient History, Richard Carrier, think that Jesus never existed?

[TRANSPONDER]

Lastly and by the way, the original synoptic gospel was not Mark. Mark added to the original just as Luke and Matthew did.

I think you've mentioned, but I don't remember. Do you think that Luke and Matthew had gMark as well as a Q document?

My Hypothesis is that Luke used an original synoptic gospel, and also 'Q' document. Both of those are now missing. Mark and Matthew both used a common original synoptic gospel which had already been amended - e.g with the syrio -Phoenecian woman, the feeding of 4,000, the cursing of the fig -tree and the quote from Psalms on the cross. Otherwise i can't explain how Luke duplicates much of their material , though he amends and moves a lot of it about (the rejection at Nazareth, the calling of the disciples, the anointing at Bethany, but omits all of the Matthew/Mark common material.

I might be quite wrong, but it does explain many of the puzzles and does seem to pan out, even predicting how various bits of Gospel text ought to be used. For example, anything common to Matthew and Luke ("Q") will appear (partially at least) in different places. Notably the sermon material.

I should mention that some use "Q" to refer to an original source - either the Synoptic original, or the original story common to all 4, but I apply it specifically to Matthew- Luke material. Note that the 'Law not passing away' passage is typical Q - in the sermon in Matthew, but a saying on the journey to Jerusalem in Luke. . Indeed, remarkably, the Lord's prayer appears to be "Q" material and thus not part of the original gospel. But over 2,000 years of Bible study nobody seems to have noticed that - no more than anyone noticed that Jesus is shown as dismissing the Sabbath and Church -attendance as irrelevant.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #28]
Early Christians worshipped a heavenly Christ that hadn't come to earth yet. This early Christ was sacrificed in a heavenly realm and had risen. Paul promised his followers that Christ would come down to earth in their lifetime on a cloud of glory.

I can relate to a lot of that, but did he get this belief from the apostles? I know that he says he got the teaching from God (or Jesus, maybe) and not from Man, and I take it that his third -person reference to the man who went to the third heaven was himself where he heard all this stuff. Is it possible that Paul originated these beliefs himself and didn't get them from the disciples? That seems hard to believe. Elements of the story do seem to indicate a real person crucified in Pilate's time, give or take the rest. I find it hard to believe that this can just be screenplay built up around a belief out of Paul's head, but I could be convinced.

P.s of course, there's 1st Corinthians, isn't there? Paul refers to the disciples of Jesus seeing this Resurrection and Paul was the last to "See" it. So presumably they were teaching the resurrection before Paul ever converted.

[neverknewyou]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #32]

Paul never referred to disciples, nor did any of the early epistle writers. You are reading the epistles through a gospel lens as it were, it happens to the best of us.

[neverknewyou]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #28]
Early Christians worshipped a heavenly Christ that hadn't come to earth yet. This early Christ was sacrificed in a heavenly realm and had risen. Paul promised his followers that Christ would come down to earth in their lifetime on a cloud of glory.

P.s of course, there's 1st Corinthians, isn't there? Paul refers to the disciples of Jesus seeing this Resurrection and Paul was the last to "See" it. So presumably they were teaching the resurrection before Paul ever converted.

This Christ they all had visions of had never lived on earth.

[The Nice Centurion]

Why does Columbia PhD in Ancient History, Richard Carrier, think that Jesus never existed?

There will always be gadflies who buck the established scholarly consensus on any matter.

Carrier does admit that his notion of a "non-historical Jesus" remains "a hypothesis that has yet to survive proper peer review."

And now it survived. His two books that raise great dobts on a historical Jesus have been peer revived years ago.

The ball is in the historicists yard, but for some reasons they restain from throwing the ball back.

Not even, as Carrie himself mentioned, one single long time due book about why Jesus must be historical!

(The Bart Errorman sham "Did Jesus exist?" doesnt count. Bartholomew was called out on his lies by Carrier and only reaczed with arrogance and more lies.)

[Tcg]

(The Bart Errorman sham "Did Jesus exist?" doesnt count.

Can you present anything beyond an obvious misspelling of the author's name what issues you have with this book? I know little about it, but don't think that a simple assertion that it doesn't count is very helpful.

Tcg

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #32]

Paul never referred to disciples, nor did any of the early epistle writers. You are reading the epistles through a gospel lens as it were, it happens to the best of us.

That's possible. But I think that reading Paul has enabled me to break out of that mindset. It has stopped me relating the visions of I Cor to the gospel resurrections, it has stopped me seeing the conversion as the road to Damascus, but rather a personal conclusion of Paul's related rather to the visit to the 3rd heaven ,and it has stopped me seeing the relationship with the disciples as Acts shows it, and of course breaking away from the Christian idea of Jesus inhabited by the spirit of God (1) where Paul (or so I gather) sees Jesus as inhabited by the spirit of Adam making a loophole in the sin -death his disobedience brought about (2), by obedience to death.

That said, I rather see the gospels through a Pauline lens. I see an evolution of Jesus from Mark's Meat Puppet, trundled about the landscape by the Spirit to John's glass Jesus with God shining though in person. I see the 'reforming Rabbi' so popular with the Bible skeptics as a Christian take on Paul's doctrine that Jesusfaith makes the Law obsolete, and a lot of puzzling remarks become explainable. e. g "I was sent to the lost sheep of Israel". Which sounds a bit obvious until we realise (or I do - you please yourself ) that Matthew was explaining why Jesus didn't go to the Gentiles right away. Because his mission was to the Jews (who rejected him) and the mission to the gentiles was earmarked for the disciples - as Matthew understood it. This is stamped and sealed when Jesus meets the disciples on the mountain in Galilee and tells them to make converts of all nations.

Luke however, knew from Paul's letters that the disciples didn't do that but the Christian mission was "appointed" to Paul, nobody else. So he wrote Acts (loosely based on Paul's letters) to show how this happened. And, as I have said many times. changed the angelic message from going to Galilee to staying in Jerusalem because Luke knew that was what happened. Matthew didn't.

No doubt Dr. Carrier twigged all this long ago. I don't know, I haven't read anything of his, nor Ehrman, I have a sorta dislike of cribbing other people's ideas.

(1) which surely inhabited him at the baptism, never mind that Luke wants to tell us that Jesus was God incarnate from the zygote.

(2) which of course explains what is meant by 'The son of man'. A rather puzzling expression made clear to me, at least, through reading Paul NOT through the gospel lens.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #28]
Early Christians worshipped a heavenly Christ that hadn't come to earth yet. This early Christ was sacrificed in a heavenly realm and had risen. Paul promised his followers that Christ would come down to earth in their lifetime on a cloud of glory.

P.s of course, there's 1st Corinthians, isn't there? Paul refers to the disciples of Jesus seeing this Resurrection and Paul was the last to "See" it. So presumably they were teaching the resurrection before Paul ever converted.

This Christ they all had visions of had never lived on earth.

From the evidence of what Paul wrote, I have to conclude that this 'Christ' had lived on earth, at least in incarnation, if not in originally -created form, as Adam. But this is just m,y own conclusion.

[neverknewyou]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #38]

You don't think that the earliest Christians worshipped a heavenly mythical Christ as Richard Carrier suggests?

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #38]

You don't think that the earliest Christians worshipped a heavenly mythical Christ as Richard Carrier suggests?

Yes, and no. Given various ideas of what 'worship' meant to the disciples, I go with the idea that (if those people were real) they did believe that Jesus was in heaven (in bodily form or - as I theorize - the messianic spirit form).

Now the Greek -gentile Christians of the gospels surely 'worshipped' Jesus in heaven, just as Christians do today, but they also reverenced his deeds and teachings while on earth, just as Christians do today. But Paul has no interest in anything the the living Jesus might have done or said apart from the single act of being handed over to death as a saving sacrifice. Whether the disciples showed more interest in Jesus' doings and sayings, I can't be sure, but that original basic story came from somewhere. And it placed Jesus in Galilee and had the Romans kill him which, along with some other stuff, was a story the gospel -writers didn't much like and set out to amend it.