I think those are the kinds of perspectives which mainline historians (e.g. Ehrman) have treated as most credible. Ehrman is simply not an historian at all . He is a theologian by education, degree and publication history. Though he prefers the title 'scholar of religious studies', which is often u...

Are you saying Carrier agrees that there is a formal error in OHJ? Where? Yes, just read his reply to me, but the issue is so obvious it hardly needs mentioning. I can't be bothered to read it in full, but a quick search reveals that he explicitly claims exactly the opposite: "[Hendrix' review...

Carrier himself defines (and uses) the "minimal historicity" thesis which is denoted by h in OHJ. Logically, the negation of h would be the general thesis of mythicism (the negation of the proposition that Jesus existed) and if we assume we can use probabilities in this context (which bot...

When I am talking about a specific hypothesis for historicity I am talking about Carriers specific, five-point scenario which falls into the general class of ahistoricity (the general class of ahistoric theories is the negation of "Jesus existed"). As Carrier explains in great detail, a '...

You mean that I say something wrong about BT or other aspects relating to probability theory? I would be very interested in knowing what. Thanks for joining the discussion. Have been terribly busy, I'll follow up on some other issues later but I'll address some main points to keep the debate going....

The fact of the matter is that Carrier is plainly wrong in claiming that this Joshua the high priest was a celestial forerunner to his 'hallucinated' Jesus. Maybe, but you have not presented any sort of intelligible argument that this is so. Just asserting that it is wrong is not very convincing, a...

Hi Johan. Well you upfront acknowledge that a lot of your presentation on the origin of Christianity is speculation, so it's not really evidence based which is what historians would generally be looking for. This is not really correct. There is nothing wrong at all with speculation, in fact it is a...

Prescribe as used here means: state authoritatively or as a rule that (an action or procedure) should be carried out. "rules prescribing five acts for a play are purely arbitrary" That doesn't include or exclude adjudication in the courts. That appears to me to be a non-issue. No, that is...

In any case Carrier makes the Rank/Raglan scale the centrepiece of his Bayesian data and this is the very thing you yourself critiqued! Yes. This is not a point against Bayes' Theorem, or Carrier's use of it. It is a point in favour of it! If he had not used BT, it would not be so clear what Carrie...

And here's another verse from Paul's letter to the Ephesians where Paul says that Jesus descended to the lower earthly regions. http://biblehub.com/ephesians/4-9.htm Eh, no. It says: "Now this, He ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descen...