Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman

The argument from silence is old. Mythicists no longer make it the 'crux' of their arguments anymore because even they are aware of it's inadequacies.It's a lot like moon dust...

As I already said, I think Ehrman puts too much weight on the gospels and his reconstructed sources. Ehrman takes as given many things still up for debate.

I think I have mentioned more than enough times now what I think of Ehrman's claims to multiple sources, and his heavy reliance on them.Edited by Jon, : , → 's

Mythicists also make claims to explain the origins of Christianity; that is, afterall, the goal behind proposing an historical Jesus in the first place. Once Mythicists get rid of the historical Jesus, they have to come up with an alternative explanation to take his place. And that's where all the nonsense gobbledygook comes in about dying-rising god-men and other silly goofiness.Anyway; we already had a thread on this that didn't go anywhere. I think it was closed, but if we want to keep discussing this perhaps the admins will open it back up for us.As far as the matter goes here, I'm going to try to keep this thread more geared toward a discussion of Ehrman's book as it was intended.Jon

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Theodoric in Message 45:

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The crux of the Mythicist argument is that there is no historical evidence.

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LOL!

I share in Carrier's disappointment with Ehrman's book. Did Jesus Exist? could have just as well been written as a standard introduction to the issue of the historical Jesus as a reply against the Mythicist position, which just doesn't get the amount of attention it should get in the book. There are so many really bad arguments made by Mythicists that Ehrman could have easily destroyed the credibility of almost all of them had he chosen to and then argued that Jesus Mythicism is just a nonsense idea popularized by amateurs with little understanding of the topics they are talking about.Some of the things Carrier bugs on aren't really valid complaints. For example, Carrier makes a big deal out of Ehrmans short response to a point made by Freke and Gandy:

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Richard Carrier in Ehrman on Jesus:

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Ehrman declares (again with that same suicidally hyperbolic certitude) that we simply don’t have birth notices, trial records, death certificatesor other kinds of records that one has today (p. 29). Although his conclusion is correct (we should not expect to have any such records for Jesus or early Christianity), his premise is false.

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Carrier's excerpt is not representative of Ehrman's actual argument. In the sentence previous and in the sentence following what Carrier quotes, Ehrman makes it very clear that he is talking about only the first century (when Jesus would have lived):

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Ehrman in Did Jesus Exist? (2012):

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If Romans were careful record keepers, it is passing strange that we have no records, not only Jesus but of nearly anyone who lived in the first century. We simply don't have birth notices, trial records, death certificatesor other standard kinds of records that one has today. Freke and Gandy, of course, do not cite a single example of anyone else's death warrant from the first century. (p. 29)

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I don't see that Carrier has made this allowance.More to read...