Lol. Alas.

Doughnuts now cost more than a dollar. That idiom will probably go the way of the Dodo like “that and 10 cents will buy you a cup of coffee” did long ago

Yes. And it’s a high school bully game: call me incompetent, and when people point out that that’s not true, claim you didn’t say that by moving the goal posts somehow. Ehrman did this too (and my discussion in that link is very pertinent here).

This is why Kipp keeps cornering himself with this pose, digging his hole deeper. By trying to claim I am “incompetent” he now has to face the fact that he is calling Timothy Lim and Geza Vermes incompetent. Rather than just saying he thinks they are wrong and giving his reasons.

Likewise all the other scholars who agree with me on the Element generally (counting me, it’s twelve I have documented so far).

And more.

For example, I fully expect Kipp will continue not to heed my advice. And so I will make a prediction. Just wait and see…

In his third video I know he will critique arguments in Element 6. Since he is critiquing the book before finishing it, he hasn’t read Chapter 5 and Element 40 where I make an argument for a point in Element 6 that I there state as established already (I should not have; I should have put qualifying language and pointed out the case is made in the next Chapter, so I have that marked already for a future revision): the fact that some Jewish interpreters were regarding Jesus as the Anatole in Zechariah 6 rather than (as was likely intended originally) Zerubbabel.

The position I take is actually normal in the field, not something I made up. But Kipp is lazy. He won’t follow Rule 1 of Critical Thinking and ask, “Is this a position any other scholars take?” He will just assume he knows the answer, and take the pose that no “competent” scholar would think this. I will then cite at him all the very competent scholars who think this (and their very sound reasoning).

So he will have put his foot in his mouth twice again: by not checking the literature, and thus exposing again his incompetence by wrongly accusing me of incompetence; and by not noticing, again (see following comment), that we are talking about Jews who were looking for messianic messages in these passages (pesher), and not Jews who were looking for their original historical meanings.

As someone who is a Dead Sea Scroll expert, to not understand how pesher works is astonishing to me. And I know he does know that. He just “forgets” all he knows whenever criticizing me. For whatever reason.

Dollars to doughnuts he does this. Just watch.

That’s a good point.

I have noticed that, too. But I tend toward charity and assume they aren’t doing that if that can still make sense of what they are saying. But sometimes charity is unwarranted. After several rounds with Kipp (including an exchange between us on Deep Drinks recently) I do suspect this is what has happened: he thinks this chapter is arguing against historicity, and thus he has to make its points “go away” to save historicity. And he can’t fight against most of them (he is forced to admit they are mainstream) and so cherry picks the weak links as best he can.

He denies this vehemently. Even manically. But I am starting to doubt his protestations. He does really seem to think I am arguing against historicity with these points. Your observation about how he misread my argument about Wisdom is a pretty glaring evidence of that. And his pose now that “historicity” doesn’t matter and he’s “not” arguing about that seems to be a post hoc face-saving move rather than an honest account of what he actually thought he was arguing (and thought I was arguing).

This illustrates reading a text in bad faith. That will always destroy your ability to read it accurately.

I’m not sure a logic class is even necessary for that. I learned what boolean operators are in my 1st semester required library class in 1989. We had to learn that to be able to operate the library database.

This seems to be an aspect that critics of Mythicism often misunderstand. It comes up a lot, such as in your discussion with Gnostic Informant. It should not be difficult for people to understand the difference, but for some it seems to be a Herculean task.

Another common mistake which Kipp appears to make in this critique is assuming that because you hold to a mythicist position, that each argument you make is intended to prove or directly support mythicism. (For example, when Kipp assumes your argument about the Wisdom of Solomon entails a “cosmic” messiah). I’ve been involved in a few conversations of late where the person I’m arguing with will retort “Even if you are right, this doesn’t prove Jesus was a myth”.

It reminds me of listening to Christian’s attempting to counter an argument with “that doesn’t prove God doesn’t exist” when the argument wasn’t about whether God exists or not at all in the first place.

Davis replied to me how it wasn’t about that, but bad scholarship, and that you were a amateur.

I called him out for being silly, and he kinda backpedaled and said you weren’t qualified for this specific area, the origins of Christianity – your main area since 15 years now…

Again, it’s just silly. It’s like a kid running out of arguments and and calls you ugly. It’s impossible to take it seriously.

Do post comments though. Those of Patreon or YouTube patrons will already publish automatically without me (unless you very recently became a Patron and I haven’t added you to the server’s whitelist yet). Everyone else’s will get published eventually!