I don’t see the relevance of any of that information here.

That Paul lies doesn’t change the question of who he is lying about. And Paul couldn’t lie about everything because the Galatians were in communication with the Jerusalem elite and thus could check his facts with them. So he couldn’t claim the apostles accepted him when they didn’t, as then he would be immediately exposed, so that isn’t a lie he could tell. And 1 Clement confirms the apostles accepted Paul, not rejected him. So clearly that worked out.

Also, Paul’s argument is not that he had a different gospel, but the same one (read Gal. 1). He was only interpreting that same gospel to mean Gentiles don’t have to become Jews to become Christians (read Gal. 3-4: not a single quotation of Jesus in support, so clearly his “gospel” revealed to him from Jesus did not contain that information).

And he does imply he explained that the first visit. The only thing he does differently the second visit is seek an official leadership vote on that (though by then he was bringing back sacks of cash, by his own inadvertent admission elsewhere, so the vote was kind of a lock for him by then). The first time he only met one leader (Cephas). And he could not get an official decision without the others, so that’s why he came back (to convince all “those esteemed as leaders”).

Likely Cephas told him as much: “if you come back showing success and adequate bags of cash, then we’ll give you our endorsement” whereas until then they only had a detente, whereby Cephas wouldn’t oppose his mission but warily not openly endorse it either, and that was probably the first agreement reached, as that fits the sequence of events and other data.

Acts, meanwhile, is revisionist fiction. Hence that Paul killed Stephen is itself a lie: Paul was never even in Jerusalem until after he converted (as the Galatians knew: Gal. 1); Stephen is a made-up name; and his death is counterfactual (the Sanhedrin procedure for trial and stoning looked nothing like that). Paul never tells us what he meant by persecution. Did he get Christians killed on trumped up charges? Or only flogged? Or did he just harass them in the streets? Or just convince money-supplying members to leave? We don’t know.

Comments are always welcome when relevant. And yours is relevant here.

On the use of the article, see first comment thread above.

On the grammar, see Galatians 1:19, Ancient Grammar, and How to Evaluate Expert Testimony.

Dr. Carrier, I don’t know if you still respond to comments here. I’ve been enjoying your videos and interviews immensely but have yet to read your books. (I promise I will!)

I’ve been stumbling over the phrase used by Paul and translated “THE brother of the Lord” (emphasis added) rather than simply “A brother of the Lord”.

I also don’t understand classical Greek. Could you explain a bit why the latter construction would not have been used if?

You should be aware, several experts in the field have called Ehrman out for his misbehavior here, including Philip Davies and Justin Meggitt.

I mean your premise that he Ehrman doesn’t want to read your book and doesn’t want to spend much time debating with Mythicists so hence he’s an armchair historian hack. Wow. I mean you could just take him at face value that he doesn’t see the merits in mythicist arguments and just genuinely doesn’t want to spend his time in those discussions.

Ehrman never shows any awareness of what the mythicists arguments even are, and often doesn’t even know we have arguments for the things he says. So he clearly has not read any of our academic work. Even after a decade (you can find interviews of him where he says the most ridiculously ignorant things about our studies). And this is how he chooses to treat us. He deserves to be called out for his actual behavior.

Also I think we get it, you are referencing (and submitting) peer reviewed literature, you don’t need to mention it literally 49 times seemingly as a guise to troll Ehrman.

Note you are coming in at the end of a two-decade long argument, where we keep being denigrated for not passing anything under peer review. We are thus forced by their own argument to mention that their claim to that is false. This is their doing, not ours.

It is particularly insulting to have Ehrman make this point in his own book that was not a peer reviewed academic study but an unvetted popular market book (resulting in quite a large number of errors).

You should not mistake this for any belief that peer review is confirmation. We have never said that. That is a false accusation made against us by our opponents. We have always maintained that all peer review does is establish a study meets the standards of the field and thus should be taken seriously, not that it is correct.

It is them who keep dismissing our positions and arguments as not really peer reviewed, instead of taking it seriously by reading it and engaging with what it actually says.

I mean I’ve been bouncing between Bart’s blog and yours and though yours is far longer and contains a lot of substance (the quality of which I won’t make a claim in either direction) Ehrman’s tone comes across as someone annoyed and impatient to move on and a bit dismissive and yours comes across as a petulant child again more akin to an internet troll.

I mean your premise that he Ehrman doesn’t want to read your book and doesn’t want to spend much time debating with Mythicists so hence he’s an armchair historian hack. Wow. I mean you could just take him at face value that he doesn’t see the merits in mythicist arguments and just genuinely doesn’t want to spend his time in those discussions.

Also I think we get it, you are referencing (and submitting) peer reviewed literature, you don’t need to mention it literally 49 times seemingly as a guise to troll Ehrman. To apply your own level of skepticism, do you know he doesn’t read other peer reviewed literature? Where’s your proof there. I guess it makes a 50/50 but like you I’ll say 2/3rds he does. If so then it’s just yours and the ones you referenced he doesn’t want to read. Just because it’s peer reviewed doesn’t make it absolutely true. Certainly BIblical scholarship has to have quite a bit of peer reviewed literature that one can’t read them all, certainly if people have their own initiatives. “peer reviewed” isn’t in and of itself a weapon you can just brandish constantly pretending to have the high ground. “peer reviewed” scholarship in any field commonly contradicts and disagrees with each other… yet it feels like you wield that term like your peer reviewed work and those that you cite are the only legitimate ones. That all other scholarship is inferior. Almost like the fundamentalist Christians I left many years ago, brandishing labels like “the word” or “scripture.” I mean if someone were to find a “peer reviewed” scholarship that contradicts your readings of Galatians does that immediately invalidate your “peer reviewed” scholarship.

I mean your tone here is insane. You really almost had me going, thinking about buying your book, diving deeper… though now I get why you get treated the way you do. From seeing this vs the videos I’ve seen you have a split personality. On videos you act significantly more respectful and when someone is a bit dismissive and doesn’t want to read your book (and yes is a bit petty themselves) you go into full troll mode on them in your blogs.

A recent study by Reidar Aasgaard found Paul uses that word 122 times and only twice does he mean it literally—conveniently, the very two times historicists need him to be. This is contrary to usual probability logic. Normally that would signal it is unlikely he means it literally those two times.

I’m not sure what you mean, but English instances of the article won’t correspond perfectly to Greek instances, because it doesn’t translate that way. There are many cases where in English we have to leave the definite article out because it violates English syntax, yet the definite article is still there in Greek (because it doesn’t violate Greek syntax). And sometimes it’s vice versa.

I cite verse examples in the cited note.

Also every other example using that prefix uses human names, “the Lord” is a mythical title, Paul continually uses term “Jesus IS Lord” or that Jesus is our slave master? & James is the brother of the slave owner/ sir?

Translation ἀδελφόν brother is used by Paul to describe non siblings;
Romans 14:10, 1 cor 8:13, 2 cor 8:18 in fact majority he uses that term brother = followers not sibling