Upcoming Deeper Waters Debate

[Apologiaphoenix]

For all interested, I will be debating on November 20th Ken Humphreys of Jesusneverexisted.com on if Jesus existed or not. We will be debating on The Mind Renewed, a Christian apologetics podcast hosted by Julian Charles in the U.K. Please be in prayer for me in this debate that it will go where and the audience will see the strong weaknesses of Christ-mythicism.

[Truthseeker]

"Strong weaknesses"? A group of weaknesses and another group, the former being stronger than the other?

[Boxing Pythagoras]

For all interested, I will be debating on November 20th Ken Humphreys of Jesusneverexisted.com on if Jesus existed or not. We will be debating on The Mind Renewed, a Christian apologetics podcast hosted by Julian Charles in the U.K. Please be in prayer for me in this debate that it will go where and the audience will see the strong weaknesses of Christ-mythicism.

Website, for anyone interested: http://themindrenewed.com/

I'll certainly give it a listen. It'll be interesting to see if Humphreys has any mythicist arguments with which I am not familiar, or if Nick's defense of historicity is greatly different from the way I've argued for it.

[Apologiaphoenix]

"Strong weaknesses"? A group of weaknesses and another group, the former being stronger than the other?

I mean that the Christ-myth position is unusually weak. It's one of the flimsiest you can hold.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Website, for anyone interested: http://themindrenewed.com/

I'll certainly give it a listen. It'll be interesting to see if Humphreys has any mythicist arguments with which I am not familiar, or if Nick's defense of historicity is greatly different from the way I've argued for it.

If you've never heard Humphreys, he really doesn't debate well. JPH tore him apart on Unbelievable? and Humphreys was still convinced he won that one.

[Truthseeker]

If you've never heard Humphreys, he really doesn't debate well. JPH tore him apart on Unbelievable? and Humphreys was still convinced he won that one.

No sweat, then.

[Apologiaphoenix]

While I agree it's no sweat, it doesn't mean I'm being foolhardy. I'm still making sure to be reading plenty and preparing myself mentally as well. Cockiness is a weakness of Humphreys. I don't want it to be one of mine.

[Truthseeker]

Crush him!

[KingsGambit]

This should be good.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

If you've never heard Humphreys, he really doesn't debate well. JPH tore him apart on Unbelievable? and Humphreys was still convinced he won that one.

I just made an initial attempt at navigating Humphreys' website. If his thoughts are as disorganized as that, you can likely expect a gish gallop. I had no idea where to begin, or if there is a particular mythicist view which he advocates (as opposed to a conglomeration of the usual suspects).

[Bill the Cat]

cz2Nq.gif

[Apologiaphoenix]

I fully hope to do so. The more and more I read up on the issue, the more I am further convinced it is absolute lunacy.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

I fully hope to do so. The more and more I read up on the issue, the more I am further convinced it is absolute lunacy.

At the popular level, I find that it is intensely fueled by people who don't understand the difference between historical Jesus research and simply taking the gospels at face value. The problem is that such people tend to think the historicity of the New Testament is a binary prospect: either the whole thing is literally factual, or else the whole thing should be discarded from historical research.

At the scholarly level, I don't think Carrier's and Price's particular mythicist hypotheses are "absolute lunacy," but I would certainly classify them as being unreasonably speculative. Price's work tends to rely on ideas regarding the dating and authorship of the NT texts which are not really supported by the prevailing scholarship. Carrier's formulation (though, I admit that I haven't gotten his latest book, yet, so I'm basing this on previous writings I've read of his) tends to require some fairly eisegetical reading of his source documents.

That is, of course, not to say that the lunatic fringe mythicists are themselves a myth. There are certainly a number of pseudo-scholars and anti-theists who have latched onto mythicism with a fairly zealous fervor, as if its promulgation will spell the downfall of that oh-so-hated Christianity. Of course, it is the lunacy of people like this, combined with the apparent scholarship of people like Carrier and Price, which leads to popular-level mythicism, so perhaps your point is fair, after all...