I’m sorry, I don’t follow you. You are saying exactly the same thing I said. Ehrman asked a question that provoked Price to advertise his archconservatism. Which he then did. Which is a fallacy of poisoning the well (this issue should not be raised before a debate; it’s emotionally manipulative).

Also, I was literally there. I didn’t have to watch the video (though I did to make sure I got everything right for this review). You haven’t described anything happening differently than I did. So I have no idea what you think you saw on the video that I am not literally describing here already.

The above comment is pretty bad. I appears that you did not watch the video carefully. Ehrman asks the audience who will vote for Clinton, then he asks who will vote for Trump. The camera angle is such that you cannot see Price in toto, but we see his hand going up when Ehrman asked who will vote for Trump. Tsk,tsk…

I proved, with evidence, that Ehrman lied. And got basic facts wrong.

He wants to avoid facing that by calling it uncivil to prove he lied and made mistakes.

That’s not incivility. It’s academic responsibility.

Proving a man lied and made mistakes on the point at issue is not ad hominem.

I don’t think you can know what an ad hominem is.

“I did a podcast a couple of evenings ago for the Skeptical Fence Show, and was asked whether it is true that I am not interested in having a public exchange with Carrier. My response was, and is, that I am not. He is not civil and he is not a generous scholar. He is a mean-spirited and out for blood, the kind of scholar who prefers mockery to the reasoned exchange of ideas. Life is too short for me to engage at length with people like that.”

He gives several examples of this kind of “mean-spiritedness” in his blog, and I feel like there was also some of that here in this posting as well. Carrier constantly berates Bart for “dishonesty” and implies that he has not thought through certain arguments carefully enough or suggests that he is just a shitty scholar who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This kind of immature ad hominem criticism is why Bart Ehrman won’t debate him.

At the relevant point Paul only contrasts the wisdom of God with the wisdom Of This Aeon. This Aeon refers frequently to the demonic forces controlling this aeon (see the section in OHJ where I show this from many examples). There is no reference to “human” wisdom in that line. In the previous line he mentions he did not preach “words of wisdom,” only with the power of God, hence his preaching did not come from human wisdom (which means philosophy). It is in the next line that he contrasts God’s wisdom with another wisdom, that of This Aeon and the Archons of This Aeon (which are not philosophers; and there is no reference here to humans), who are “being destroyed” (which certainly did not refer to any human powers; but the demonic powers who were falling to Christian exorcism, the displays of “power” Paul refers to exhibiting as proof in the previous line). In the next line Paul talks about humans he preaches to, and the difference between those who believe him and those who don’t. But those who don’t believe him, would have gone ahead with the crucifixion. To instead stop the magical effects it would have by not crucifying Jesus, requires actually believing everything Paul was saying. This describes no human being. So the relevant line isn’t talking about people. It’s talking about creatures with magical knowledge.

If these were humans, and God told them what the crucifixion would do—end death and save the world—and they believed God, they would have effected the sacrifice. Only the demonic forces want to keep death in the world, and thus only they would refrain from being tricked into ending it with a magical sacrifice (and per Romans 13, only they would want to thwart the will of God; human rulers only do the will of God). And of course in reality the human rulers wouldn’t have believed any such superstitious nonsense. If some scripture or preacher “told them” what the crucifixion would accomplish, they would just laugh and crucify him anyway, not believing any such mumbo jumbo. Only the demonic forces would actually know the magic was real and the threat to them valid, that the sacrifice would actually work. So only the demonic forces have a motivation to not effect that sacrifice (and let Jesus go for that magical reason).

The whole thing makes no sense on the supposition that the killers were human. Humans would not have possessed the requisite magical cosmic knowledge needed to even know the importance of refraining from the crucifixion; nor would refraining accomplish anything any human desired (if they actually believed in its arcane effects and God’s plan for it, killing Jesus would then be obedient to God’s will, just as Abraham with Isaac, and hence the rulers would have done it, just as Romans 13 entails). Only the demons want to keep humans in thrall by preventing this magical spell from changing the world and saving the human race. So it’s the demons God needs to keep this plan hidden from. And this is exactly how this same line is used in the Ascension of Isaiah, where indeed it is the demons who are the Archons of This Aeon and it is they whom God needs to hide this from.

It seems clear to me from the argument in 1 Corinthians that this is indeed Paul’s exact point. The HUMAN rulers (clear from the contrast between human wisdom and spiritual wisdom described in the verses immediately before and after) did not understand the wisdom of the cross. If they had comprehended, it they would not have crucified Jesus. It is important to read verses in their actual context in order to understand what words or phases mean. Yes we look at how words and phrases are used elsewhere, but the immediate contexts trumps what a word means in other contexts.

But I see what Ephesians 4:8-12 says:

Scripture says: “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train, and gave gifts to men.” Now, the word ‘ascended’ implies that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is no other than he who ascended far above the heavens, so that he might fill the universe. And these were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ. [NEB/NIV]

The construct ”the lower parts of earth” seems very similar to where Attis discended according to Julian (Mother of the Gods, 7):
Instead he [Attis] continued his descending until to the extreme limits of matter.

From Philippians 2:10 :

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,

…it seems that the idea of a three-layers cosmology is possible in Paul.

Therefore doesn’t Ephesians 4:8-9 moves the remaining pauline evidence more in favor of a crucifixion meant in the sheol (hence still a mythical one, because not on the earth) than one in the sublunary realm?

Note the suggestive possible allegorical meaning behind ”Golgotha” in the Gospels: place of the skull. Is it called so because it is a place of burial ?
And if so, what better allegory of the ”realm of dead” that appeared in the previous myth as the place of the crucifixion of Jesus ?

Thanks in advance for any answer,
Giuseppe

The author of Acts is fabricating that. See Chapter 9 of OHJ. So we can’t tell anything from it.

The notion that Jesus “was” God didn’t exist yet. Luke is using standard Pauline theology adapted to the euhemerized “earthly” Jesus invented by Mark.

Paul makes clear Jesus was an eternal archangel, not God, that he was the first entity created, and that he wore a body of flesh manufactured for him by God to be slain to effect the requisite blood magic, and for this sacrifice he was assigned powers by God, being adopted and thus becoming God’s theological (not biological) son. We can’t tell from Paul whether Jesus underwent this incarnation sacrifice on earth, or in outer space as the Ascension of Isaiah originally portrayed (see Chapter 3 of OHJ). Acts doesn’t help us much in figuring that out either, because it’s all fake.

The first time we hear any Christian suggesting Jesus “is” God is the Gospel of John, the final redaction of which composed possibly decades after Luke-Acts. John then had to revise everything.

The celestial sacrifice drama in Hebrews etc. is discussed in OHJ (e.g. see scripture index for Heb. 5). It’s fully in accord with the mythicist hypothesis, in which that drama was indeed believed to have occurred…in outer space, as the Asc. Is. depicted. Likewise it’s commonly agreed by mainstream scholars that Mark’s cry on the cross is fake. He invented it to allegorize the cosmic drama laid out in Philippians 2 using a common Jewish suffering hero trope. See my discussion of Meier on this very point in Proving History.

P.S. You mention being a patron. Can you email me the name you are a patron under, so I can put this email address you are using here on the white list for posting comments? (Or use for comments from now on the email address you have on Patreon, as that will already be on the white list.)

For instance, a very early source about Jesus preserved in one of the speeches in Acts says:

“Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God through miracles and wonders and signs THAT GOD DID THROUGH HIM … (Acts 2:22-24).”

So, it is not thought here that Jesus was an all powerful God doing miraculous things on earth, but rather that Jesus was a man THROUGH WHOM God was doing miracles. That God, not Jesus, was understood as the source of Jesus’ power here is also evident in the gospel of Mark where Mark has Jesus identify himself as a fallible human prophet who can’t perform miracles in his hometown (Mark 6:4-5). If Jesus had the powers of a God, he would have been able to perform miracles in his hometown.

Many things also speak against interpreting Jesus as a “high Christology” divine figure resolutely going forth on a suicide mission to atone for the sins of the world (and expecting a speedy resurrection). Rather, Jesus is terrified of dying, as demonstrated by his desperate prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-42). This is even clearer when Jesus is on the cross, desperately questioning God as to why He has abandoned Jesus and begging for Elijah to miraculously come and save him from the cross (Mark 15:34-36). This is not a “God Incarnate” resolutely fulfilling his mission. The letter of the Hebrews also preserves the tradition that Jesus was frantically trying to get out of dying. Hebrews suggests Jesus offered up prayers and loud cries and tears to be saved from death (Hebrews 5:7)