Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Anniversary post 3 my response to An Ill Tempered Richard Carrier written by Bart Ehrman, read by Ken Teutsch.
[00:00:12] Here is the third post in my series celebrating our 14th blog anniversary, a post from each of our 14 past years.
[00:00:21] This is the one I've chosen from April 2014.
[00:00:26] It's another one that involves a response to a rather spirited attempt to show that I'm an idiot.
[00:00:31] I tried not to respond too much in kind, but, well, I guess it is a bit feisty.
[00:00:39] Sometimes I think that if I'm getting it from all sides, I may be doing something right the religious conservatives seem to be up in arms about my book How Jesus Became God, both conservative evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics like the Very Reverend Robert Barron.
[00:00:58] In fact, as I've said, I do not think anything in the book is inimical to Christian faith unless it is completely committed to a view of the infallibility of the Bible and its full historical accuracy. The Christianity I admire is not like that, but I get it from the non religious left as well. Yesterday a member of the blog sent me the following critique delivered in terms of mocking incredulity by Richard Carrier, the mythicist that is one who does not believe that Jesus existed, who has shown more vitriol, hatred and mean spiritedness toward me than almost any of the fundamentalists who attack me from the other side.
[00:01:40] The following is in reference to my point that we do not have any references to Pontius Pilate in any non Christian or non Jewish pagan sources of the first century. A point I make in order to put into perspective the fact that we don't have any reference to Jesus in any non Christian, non Jewish sources of the first century. My point being that if the most important figure historically, culturally, politically in all of Palestine during Jesus adult years, the Roman governor of Judea, is never mentioned, what are the chances that Jesus would be?
[00:02:14] This point is made to counter the common but erroneous claim that if Jesus really existed, the a lot of sources would have mentioned him. Really, when they don't mention even someone like Pilate.
[00:02:27] Read Carrier's critique, then read the statement beneath it, taken straight from my book Did Jesus exist?
[00:02:36] But that is not the extent of his mistake. Forgetting or not knowing about Philo or even Josephus mentioning Pilate is bad enough. Worst of all is the fact that Ehrman's claim is completely false. It is even on the most disingenuous possible reading of his statement.
[00:02:53] For we have an inscription commissioned by Pilate himself attesting to his existence and service in Judea that's as Roman an attestation as you can get. And it's not just contemporary attestation, it's eyewitness attestation. And not just eyewitness attestation, but its very autograph. Not a copy of a copy of a copy, but the original text, no doubt proofed by Pilate's own eyes, and that literally carved in stone. How could anyone not know of this who intended to use Pilate as an example? Even the most rudimentary fact check would have brought this up. And one of the most fundamental requirements of Ehrman's profession is to check what sources we have on pilot before making a claim that we have no early ones. Ehrman thus demonstrates that he didn't check, which is an amateur mistake.
[00:03:43] I've occasionally made errors like that, but only in matters of considerable complexity. We're talking about something he could have corrected with just 60 seconds on Google.
[00:03:54] Contrast that with what I say in my book Did Jesus Exist?
[00:04:00] I might press the issue further. What archaeological evidence do we have about Pilate's rule in Palestine? We have some coins that were issued during his reign and one only one fragmentary inscription discovered in Caesarea Maritima in 1961 that indicates that he was the Roman prefect. Nothing else. And what writings do we have from him? Not a single word. Does that mean he didn't exist?
[00:04:28] No. He is mentioned in several passages in Josephus and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo, and in the Gospels.
[00:04:37] He certainly existed, even though, like Jesus, we have no records from his day or writings from his hand. And what is striking is that we have far more information about Pilate than about any other governor of Judea in Roman times. And so it is a modern myth to say that we have extensive Roman records from antiquity that surely would have mentioned someone like Jesus had he existed.
[00:05:02] Pages 44 and 45 Carrier thinks I'm a fool for not knowing about the sources that I both know and write about. By the way, I've been to Caesarea Maritima twice and have examined the inscription. Its replica is on the site now. To be fair to Carrier, his comment was posted on his blog about a short piece that I wrote for the Huffington Post. In that very condensed version of my views, I pointed out that Pontius Pilate is not mentioned in any Roman sources of his day. This sent Carrier ballistic We have the inscription, we have Philo, we have Josephus. Ehrman is an idiot.
[00:05:45] But if he had simply waited to read my book before blasting off at me, he would have seen what I meant. There is not a single Roman literary text that mentions Pilate, Philo and Josephus, by the way, were Jews. And that puts into better perspective the fact that, stressed by Carrier and others like him who are beyond the fringe that Jesus is not mentioned in such sources.
[00:06:07] Why would he be mentioned?
[00:06:09] At the least, I think Carrier should have retracted his vitriolic comments once he actually got around to reading my book. I don't know if he did make a retraction, but I doubt it. That's not his style. Maybe someone on the blog knows. My point is that it is very easy to take someone's words out of context and then start sending in the nukes if your goal is to ridicule those who have the temerity to disagree with you.
[00:06:36] 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 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.
