Comments on: Appearing in Kenya! (And You Can Watch)

By: John MacDonald

John MacDonald — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 02:15:26 +0000

As Gould argues, a fascinating story from Acts is Simon Peter’s famous “tablecloth vision” from Chapter 10 [It will be recalled that “Peter” (i.e., “Rocky”) is a nickname that Simon has acquired, presumably because his support of Jesus was “solid as a rock”.] Peter is going to be invited to dinner by a centurion, Cornelius from the Italica regiment in Caesarea, who is improbably described as “fearing God”, “giving many gifts to the poor”, and “supplicating God continuously” (Acts 10:1-2). Peter has a vision in which a heavenly tablecloth descends, covered with various animals, which he is instructed by a voice to “kill and eat. ‘Surely not, Lord!’ Peter replied. ‘I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.’ The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ ” (Acts 10:13-15). Later, Peter summarizes his visit: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:28).

This story is one of the most revealing and explosive in the entire New Testament. First, it demonstrates unequivocally that the whole “inclusivist message”, which is directly attributed to Jesus via innumerable Gospel stories, was in fact completely foreign to the historical Jesus. Otherwise, it would not have been necessary for Peter, one of his closest and “rockiest” supporters, to receive a vision about it well after Jesus’s death. Thus, this story, by itself, tells us that vast portions of the Gospels, in which Jesus is pictured as associating and engaging in table fellowship with all kinds of forbidden persons (tax collectors, prostitutes, etc) and dismissing Jewish dietary law in favor of a universalist, humanitarian message (“What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him unclean but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean.” Matt 15:10), are just invented from whole cloth. In fact, it is astonishing that anyone can remain a believing Christian after pondering this clumsy addendum to the Jesus Gospel stories.

By: John MacDonald

John MacDonald — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 01:16:39 +0000

In your book OHJ, you say the crucifixion narrative was, in part, invented as a rewrite of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. On his blog, Ehrman argues Isaiah 53 would not have inspired the crucifixion narrative because it was not originally about the messiah: http://ehrmanblog.org/the-suffering-servant-of-isaiah-for-members/ I disagree with Ehrman. I think Isaiah 53 inspired the crucifixion narrative. For instance, in Acts:

The conversion of Ethiopian Queen Candace’s eunuch is yet another Acts parody of a
story prized by the resistance. The eunuch “who had charge of all her treasury” was on the
road to Jerusalem and was reading the “suffering servant” passage from Isaiah (53:7–8),
when Philip approaches him saying “Do you understand what you are reading?”. (Acts
8:30). After interpreting the text, Philip convinces the eunuch to declare “I believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God” and immediately baptize himself.

By: Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 13:02:07 +0000

In reply to urkidding. Sorry. But, that's not true.

By: Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 12:57:38 +0000

In reply to John MacDonald. Incarnation theology in antiquity could make ready sense of that. I assume Price has read OHJ and liked it. But you'd have to ask him!

By: Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 12:56:36 +0000

In reply to Shivam Brahmin. They have to ask me. You can recommend it to them if you want to see that. But their thing is generally current events, not ancient history.

By: urkidding

urkidding — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 03:25:25 +0000

The hoax exists in not recognizing the obvious. No one made up the accounts of Christ’s life. No one could have. Many died who were accused of promoting this jesus character when they could have lived by merely acknowledging they made up the whole thing.

By: jacobaliet

jacobaliet — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 03:54:06 +0000

Thanks for this Carrier. And Harrison, this is great work! Keep it up!

By: John MacDonald

John MacDonald — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 18:38:35 +0000

In reply to John MacDonald. I also find it hard to reconcile Ehrman's claim that Jesus in Paul was "the great angel of heaven," with the idea that Jesus was also the "seed" of David. By the way, has Robert Price read your book "On The Historicity Of Jesus? It would be interesting to hear his take on your book.

By: Shivam Brahmin

Shivam Brahmin — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:48:18 +0000

P.S. It looks like they put their Sam Harris interview on their other channel:

By: Shivam Brahmin

Shivam Brahmin — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:08:08 +0000

Richard,

Why haven’t you done an interview with The Young Turks on Youtube?

Sam Harris and Reza Aslan already have done interviews:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TYTInterviews/videos