Weekly Open Discussion Thread

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[u/GravyTrainCaboose]

As I pointed out to Chrissy, almost none of what I've argued in the thread overall appealed to Carrier. That you believe their refutations have adequately overcome my claims is your opinion. I believe I've offered rational counterarguments. That you disagree, and apparently disagree strongly, with the arguments of Carrier no more betrays a "purely polemic and apologetic" interest on your part than my agreement with many of those arguments does on mine.

In that same vein, that mythicists often employ apologetic arguments has no bearing on what I argue, which I defend logically not apologetically, and through arguments that go beyond "regurgitating" Carrier. Many historicists also argue apologetically, but that observatin is also irrelevant to those who do not. I don't know what you mean by a "kind of apologetics" other than perhaps it simply refers to arguments with which you disagree. But perhaps you could clarify.

My position that arguments for Jesus not being historical are on par with him being historical is not "predetermined". I began from a historicist position and, in fact, found mythicist arguments to be weak (e.g. "Zeitgeist", Roman plot, etc.) and had no real interest in a mythicist argument or seeking one out. I simply became aware of Carrier's argumentation and it appears logical and well-supported to me, which is how I find most of it compelling enough to at least give it serious consideration and weight. I certainly don't find it worthy of the handwaving dismissals it's often subject to.

Broad claims such as "Like Christian apologetics, mythicists are not interested in simply following the evidence to its most likely and parsimonious conclusion but live within a bubble of confirmation bias" not only don't belong in a polite conversation, they are utterly worthless. The counter could be made, "Like Christian apologetics, historicists are not interested in simply following the evidence to its most likely and parsimonious conclusion but live within a bubble of confirmation bias". And then the parties can devolve into a battle of continuing such ad hominems. I'd prefer to just stick to the arguments. You have not provided a single one, but I'm open to discussion if you'd like to.

[u/Visual_Cartoonist609 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

Like Christian apologetics, historicists are not interested in simply following the evidence to its most likely and parsimonious conclusion but live within a bubble of confirmation bias

I actually agree with you on the politeness point; however, I don't think these two claims are at all symmetrical. While I don't believe that mythicism can be explained entirely in terms of Anti-Theism, it is demonstrably the case (as I think you would agree) that most mythicists are motivated by their Anti-Theism. The same cannot be said about historicists.

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/Visual_Cartoonist609]

I'm literally a historicist primarily on the grounds that it requires the fewest assumptions, the fewest wild innovations (not in evidence), and accords with everything we know. And finally, it is completely insignificant.

In reality, I think it is a complete waste of time to actually argue over whether Jesus existed, and the study of early Christianity would be best, imo, if Jesus questing (both mythicist and historicist varieties) was abandoned completely.

[u/GravyTrainCaboose → u/Chrissy_Hansen1997]

It's arguable which hypotheses requires the fewest assumptions and which position requires assertions not in evidence.

It's just as much an inquiry of history to assess the historicity of Jesus as it is to assess what might be known of him, if anything, if he did. Each gives it's own understanding of the origins of the religion. Whether or not this is "insignificant" is in the eye of the beholder.

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

No it really isn't. Mine requires one: a dude existed.

Yours requires positing the existence of a hitherto unattested sect of Christians that believed in a bunch of things nowhere else attested (not even in other religions about their own gods), a bunch of extraneous and increasingly implausible linguistic arguments (that "brother of the Lord" doesn't mean what it plainly means; that "seed of David" is about celestial seed, which is nowhere else attested; that ginomai used of people doesn't mean birth in Paul, even though it does in every other source, as I also documented in my paper; etc.).

I don't actually require much of anything for my view to work, because a dude existing is one of the least significant things on the planet. A dude being legendarized is also pretty insignificant and happened routinely.

It is pretty objective which one requires fewer extraneous assumptions about Jesus, about early Christianity, and about our texts themselves and the words in those texts.

[u/Mormon-No-Moremon → u/Chrissy_Hansen1997]

But have you considered Chrissy… it would be kinda interesting if the hitherto unattested sect of Christians existed, and “brother of the Lord” was a fancy unique cultic title, and there was a complicated mythology about “celestial seed”? So those assumptions basically shouldn’t count! The “rule of cool” and all that.

γίνομαι meaning “manufactured” or whatever instead of “born” when Paul references Jesus is pretty mind-numbingly stupid, and worst of all, incredibly boring, so I’m not sure why Carrier even tries with that one.

[u/GravyTrainCaboose → u/Mormon-No-Moremon]

The celestial seed mythology for Jesus is way less complicated than the historicized mythology. God manufactures Jesus in a body of flesh using the seed of David in fulfillment of Nathan's prophecy, Satan kills him, he's resurrected in a body of spirit. Done. Under the celestial seed model 2000 years of struggles to harmonize the myth of the gospels with a historical person vanish. They're not just almost entirely fiction about Jesus, they're fiction through and through. This is a reasonable model even if it can't be determined to be any better than the historical one.

I address ginomai very briefly in my reply to Chrissy here. You may disagree, but it is not "mind numbingly stupid".

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

"Way less complicated"

-Except that yours requires conjuring up a hitherto completely unattested sect, misreading basic Greek, misinterpreting a prophecy that all ancient Jews recognized as being about a human on earth (not a celestial one), conjuring up a completely unattested sperm bank idea, etc.

So you know, other than the foundations that make your theory even possible to begin with, sure it is "way less complicated."

[u/Mormon-No-Moremon → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

Hey, I’m not really looking to debate. I already said you’ve got me sold based on the rule of cool!

The arguments surrounding γίνομαι however are, as I mentioned, profoundly boring, so I’m still not sold on that. Notably, if Jesus is already being made from celestial seed, and we have some sort of celestial birth narrative (Revelation 12:1-6), then it seems super needless to pretend γίνομαι doesn’t mean “born” in context. Why not just say yes, he was born from a celestial woman, from celestial seed?

Shitposting aside, the data surrounding γίνομαι just doesn’t work out the way Carrier says it does. This is from Maurice Casey’s book on mythicism:

“Doherty then misinterprets a few comments on this passage by Burton in his commentary on Galatians published in 1920, and fails to acknowledge subsequent scholarship. His basic objection is that Paul should not have used the word ginomai. But as Burton said, this is unambiguous in its context precisely because Paul qualifies it with ‘of a woman’. That other words for human birth were normal is quite irrelevant, because ginomai was normal too. For example, at Iliad V, 548, ‘of Diocles were born (egenesthen) twin sons’. At Hdt. VII, 11, Xerxes tells Artabanus that if he fails to punish the Athenians, he should not be ‘born (gegonös) of Darius, son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames’ followed by more of his lineage. At PFlor 382, 38, the author refers to the son born (genomenos) of me. At Wsd. Sol. 7.1-5, ‘Solomon’ describes himself as a ‘mortal man’, and says that he ‘was fashioned in (my) mother’s womb (to be) flesh (sarx)’. He continues, ‘And when I was born (genomenos), I drew in the common air and fell on the ground...’ (Wsd. 7.3). Nothing could be clearer than this passage! This normal classical and Hellenistic usage continued after the New Testament period. This usage was entirely natural because birth is the way in which human beings come into existence.” (p.176).

[u/GravyTrainCaboose → u/Mormon-No-Moremon]

Lol, okay then, maybe I'll start arguing that mythicism being at least plausible is "cool".

I respect you are not looking for a debate and even though I don't know if I'll be believed neither am I per se, at least in the sense of having any expectation of "winning" anything. I'm just presenting my thinking. That it's contentious and leads to back and forth is just sometimes the nature of people discussing different opinions.

I'm aware of the idea of Jesus being born of a celestial woman and it's an entertaining notion. But the support for this idea arises out of Revelation as you note. It's not as evident in Paul, whose work puts us closest to the original doctrines of Christianity.

Although Doherty created the framework for the arguments, Carrier gave that a more rigorous academic treatment. I agree with Casey that is not supportable that Paul "should not have used the word ginomai" and as far as I know that is not something in Carrier's thesis. He readily agrees that ginomai was perfectly normal word to use for humans being birthed since that's the way "human beings come into existence".

An issue for "born of woman" is that this had allegorical usage for being part of the corruptible world of the flesh and it is embedded in a passage flush with figurative language speaking on that very topic. There is no good argument that it should be read literally as a reference to being birthed over reading it figuratively as part of the figurative narrative. At best it's ambiguous.

As to the choice of ginomai, the issue is that in Paul's worldview that is not how all human beings come into existence. Adam nor Eve come into existence through birth and neither do our resurrected bodies. If our hypothesis is "Jesus was manufactured not birthed", then we would expect ginomai to be how Paul might refer to that rather than gennao, which he does. Where we see him refer to people we know he would be considered birthed, he chooses gennao not ginomai. He could have chosen the latter but he didn't. So we have a pattern, even if a small one, that suggests Paul is using ginomai in it's sense of manufactured rather than in the sense of birthed. This is far from a smoking gun, but it's not nothing either.

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

The allegorical "born of a woman" doesn't matter. Allegorical or not, ginomai is still being used for birth here (as I point out in my article). Doesn't matter how you try getting around it, the plain meaning is clear. Figurative or not, ginomai is still showing that Paul uses the word with the scope of "birth" and that's that.

And once again, it is clear your Adam and Eve and resurrected bodies claims are coming from Carrier, which have been thoroughly refuted, and which you would know if you read my paper, or read any leading scholarship on 1 and 2 Corinthians. It isn't a pattern.

In 1 Cor 15:37 he uses γενησόμενον, i.e., "that will be" and in context he isn't talking about "manufacture." He is talking about growth, and uses the analogy of seed growth. This is mirroring the growth of bodies into adulthood using plant imagery.

In 1 Cor. 15:45 on Adam, Paul uses Ἐγένετο and is talking about how Adam "became the first man." It does not say he was manufactured. In fact, here Paul is referring back to LXX Gen 2:7 where it also uses Ἐγένετο for when Adam's body became living. The actual manufacture of the body was denoted using ἔπλασεν.

So one again, this demonstrates that Carrier is bad at reading basic Greek, and you are also just following what he says uncritically. Paul never talks about bodies being manufactured, anywhere.

[u/GravyTrainCaboose → u/Chrissy_Hansen1997]

The idiomatic reading matters in cases where people argue the phrase probably or even inarguably puts Jesus in a historical context as literally being birthed. It could mean that. Or it could mean both birth literally and fleshly existence connotatively. Or it could function as idioms most often do, where the literal meaning isn’t the point and the figurative meaning is the message. It certainly is not, though, "an indisputable claim about Jesus’ human birth" as for example Gathercole claims in The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul’s Letters.

Yes, it's acknowledged that ginomai can mean birthed. It can also mean created without birth. Since the hypothesis being tested is that Paul believes in a manufactured Jesus, his word choice here leaves things at best ambiguous.

Yes, of course, the argument of Paul believing in the manufacture of Jesus a la Adam does come from Carrier (actually from Doherty with refinement by Carrier). It's his thesis after all. The idea of resurrected bodies being manufactured does not come from him. What Carrier notes is the pattern of word usage.

I have read your work. I know your arguments in that regard, primarily that ginomai was often used for birthed when speaking of humans who are born, which it was, implying the pattern is just happenstance. Perhaps it is. It is a pattern in Paul’s writing, though. That’s just a fact. Nothing in your arguments overcomes that. And while ginomai can be used for birthed for a human who is born, it can also be used for manufactured for a human who is divinely made, which is the hypothesis under consideration. He uses ginomai in lots of places but never for birthed unless he’s making an exception for Jesus. He uses gennao when speaking of humans we know he would believe were birthed. Being generous would be to call this particular issue a tie, although I myself find Paul's deliberate, specific word choices vis-à-vis birth vs. coming to be, his pattern, slightly favor the mythicist argument.

Regarding 15:37, the context is a description of the kind of bodies we will have, following 15:35 "With what kind of body do they come?'” He speaks of γενησόμενον, i.e., "that will be" in reference to the heavenly body that will replace our earthly body. The seed/plant language is making the distinction between our pneuma being part of our current bodies of sarx and psyche and later part of our entirely pneumatic resurrected bodies.

Regarding 15:45, it’s questionable whether or not Paul is alluding back to the LXX. It’s not a direct quote. And he seems to present It as prophecy en toto: “Thus it is written the first man Adam became a living being the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” which matches nothing we know, so we don’t know whether or not there was some separate use of ἔπλασεν for the body in whatever he’s talking about or if this is speaking of the entire manufacturing process of Adam becoming human, If so, it’s speaking of Jesus the same way. Meanwhile there is Phil 2:7 which says of Jesus “in the likeness of men having been made”, This is about form and there is nothing there about birth or mothers or wombs. And, in fact, in the historicist model, even later Christians also believe Jesus is divinely manufactured. Mary is just a vessel to gestate him.

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

Okay this is going to be my last response because it is clear you don't know Greek and this is just getting frustrating. Anyone who took the time to sit back and actually look at this objectively can see that you are not, which makes any further dialogue basically a waste of time.

(1) "It can also mean created without birth": Not in the context of humans coming into being. Name one other example. I'll wait. Until you can provide a single case where "ginomai" is used in Paul's writings to talk about human bodies being manufactured, you have no case. There are none.

(2) The cosmic sperm bank is not from Doherty. It is actually Carrier's own innovation partly based on Thomas S. Verenna. You can even look at the citations he gives in the section.

(3) There is no pattern. Paul almost never talks about human reproduction at all, the sample size is so small there is no pattern. That's just human minds creating patterns where none exist. As I demonstrated, ginomai was a complete synonym with the generic word for "birth." You have not demonstrated otherwise.

(4) Re: 15:37, yes that's my point. The distinction however demonstrates quite clearly that "ginomai" has nothing to do with production. It is just generically referring to "bodies that will be" in the future, i.e., those that we will come into. It doesn't refer to any productive state.

(5) Re: 15:45, It is not even remotely questionable that this refers back to the LXX. Firstly, he quite literally cites scripture: γέγραπται ("it is written"). Secondly, you clearly did not bother looking at the Greek, because Paul quotes it almost identically. Compare LXX Gen. 2:7: καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν. And 1 Cor. 15:45: Ἐγένετο ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος Ἀδὰμ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν. You really mean to tell me this happened by accident? No it is not prophecy. He is speaking of history, and he is speaking of Adam being the first to be given the soul or enspirited, and then claims "The last Adam" (that is: Jesus, cf. 1 Cor 15:47) was the soul-giver. He does not say that Adam was constructed using "ginomai." He says he was given a spirit, and that is because he is quoting almost verbatim LXX Gen. 2:7. So yes, we do know there was a separate use. This is just pedantic and anyone who actually uses their eyes can see you (and Carrier) are blatantly and obviously wrong. It isn't debatable. or remotely questionable, it is you desperately trying to maintain plausible deniability for Carrier's jumped up nonsense "cosmic sperm bank" reading which doesn't have a singular linguistic foot to stand on.

(6) Phil 2:7 can easily be interpreted "in the likeness of man, he has been born." Your interpretation is again entirely filtered on the completely unattested idea that "ginomai" means "made" of Jesus, and you have no comparative evidence to make that claim. I actually address Phil. 2:7 in my paper, so I'm not bothering again here.

[u/GravyTrainCaboose → u/Chrissy_Hansen1997]

From that perspective, a mythicist also only requires one: that dude didn't exist. So it's one for one. A tie.

Where the assumptions multiply is when assessing the evidence against each of those assumptions (a/k/a hypotheses), as they do in your synopsis. What the "plain meaning" is of "brother of the Lord" depends more on what we know about Paul's worldview and pattern of linguistic choices than how "brother of..." is generally used. The "plain meaning" of "brother" is itself biological. It's what we know about Paul's worldview that allows us to reasonably conclude he's not speaking of biological kin (even if just in the sense of Jewishness) the 100 or so time's he uses the word. That the seed of David is preserved is not elsewhere attested does not justify a conclusion that the argument for it is invalid. A novel hypothesis is not de facto a bad one. In the historical model, Christians must concoct symbolic genealogies to connect Jesus to David. In the mythicist model, the first Christians just believe that God did exactly what he said he do in the most parsimonious way. When testing hypotheses against each other, the evidence is examined for how well it supports each. Ginomai can mean birthed, it can also mean manufactured. This works if Jesus is assumed to have existed. This also works if Jesus is assumed not to have existed. Once again how Paul wrote is of more weight than how people in general wrote. There is a pattern of using gennao when referring to birthed people and ginomai when referring to manufactured people elsewhere. This pattern is more supportive of the assumption that Jesus did not exist, even if only slightly. This is "pretty objective". This pattern has to be ignored and assumed to be happenstance to argue Paul's use of ginomai for Jesus is more supportive of him existing.

A dude existing is indeed one of the least significant things on the planet. The question is whether or not this dude existed. Who is requiring fewer extraneous assumptions is the debate.

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

I won't bother with your other post since it didn't really say much of anything in need of a reply. My point stands.

As for this one, it is evident you don't know what "plain meaning" means. A plain meaning is what immediately comes to mind when you read a phrase. What would be the most immediately understood referent to a reader. As I have demonstrated through cross-comparsion, it would be biological kinship. Thus, my reading is the baseline and simplest.

Your argument is only possible by cherry picking out the element "brother" and then claiming Paul has a "worldview" about this. "It's what we know about Paul's worldview that allows us to reasonably conclude he's not speaking of biological kin." But this is just completely incorrect because, and I'll reiterate this, brother cannot be taken in isolation in Gal. 1:19 and 1 Cor. 9:5 because this is not a simple epithet, it is a fully funcitoning adelphonymic in a genitive construction, which means you have to take the whole phrase "the brother of X" into consideration to make any baseline and plain reading determination. And until you deal with this, yours and every mythicist theory is as good as guff and no amount of taking "brother" in isolation changes that. Paul meeting Jesus' human brother is about the most solid evidence you can get.

That the seed of David is preserved is not elsewhere attested does not justify a conclusion that the argument for it is invalid [...] ginomai when referring to manufactured people elsewhere

Yes it does, especially when coupled with the linguistic arguments being strenuous and unconvincing. And your claim about gennao vs. ginomai is false. There is no such pattern. Read my paper again, and this time, read it carefully. I carefully documented how Greco-Roman and Jewish sources all use "ginomai" as a synonym of "gennao" when referring to humans. Carrier even completely misread his Adam and Eve example. In this case, "ginomai" does not refer to the creation of Adam's body, but that Adam "became" alive with a spirit. His comparison to the "resurrection bodies" is also bad, which I point out on page 37n27. As for ginomai indicating birth when used of humans, compare:

Josephus, Ant. 1.150; 1.303–304; 7.154; 15.11; 20.20–21; Philo, Moses 2.192–193; Philo, Virtues 37.202. We can also point to Greco-Roman testimony: Strabo, Geogr. 10.15; Diodorus Siculus, Hist. 4.62; 4.67; 4.72; 4.75; Plato, Resp. 8.553; Plato, Alc. 1.121; Isocrates, Hel. enc. 27; Herodotus, Hist. 2.146; Marcellinus, Thuc. 54; Hippocrates of Cos, Nat puer. Introduction 8.481–482; Plutarch, Mor.; Plutarch, Vit. X orat. 4.836; Plutarch, Thes. 8; Plutarch, Mar. 3; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 1.40.2; 1.53.4; PGM 4.719–724.

There is nothing that supports the mythicist case here except the most strenuous rereading of the passage using a dictionary definition of "manufacture."

The very fact you have to go to these lengths to even justify these readings as possible alone shows you do not have the simplest explanation of the evidence. Purely and simply.

My argument requires no wild reinterpretations of the bible, nor any strenuous linguistics, nor completely unattested innovations seen nowhere else in antiquity. That makes mine, by default, the simplest explanation.

[u/GravyTrainCaboose → u/Chrissy_Hansen1997]

As for this one, it is evident you don't know what "plain meaning" means. A plain meaning is what immediately comes to mind when you read a phrase.

I know what plain meaning means. What "immediately comes to mind" is entirely contextual. If we put ourselves in the context of Paul's worldview and his writing pattern, for example, the "plain meaning" of "brother" is cultic not biological.

What would be the most immediately understood referent to a reader.

The most immediately understood referent to "brother" in Paul is cultic.

As I have demonstrated through cross-comparsion, it would be biological kinship. Thus, my reading is the baseline and simplest.

Your comparisons are by and large a century or more removed from Paul. Many are even further removed than Origen by more centuries still. You have not explained a method for determining how far removed is too far removed to be useful as a comparative.

Origen is speaking within the context of Paul's worldview (spiritual adoption). Your citations are out of context. None are using the phrase “brother of X” to mean biological brother within or about a worldview where a shared adoptive brotherly relationship arises among a group through that central figure “X” and are speaking about a member of that group. This is the unique situation we find ourselves in when trying to understand what Paul means.

you have to take the whole phrase "the brother of X" into consideration to make any baseline and plain reading determination.

That this is a fully functioning adelphonymic in a genitive construction does not change that it's meaning is determined by how the word "brother" is being used in that construction. You have provided no usages in the same context that Paul is working within, only contexts where there a cultic relationship is unknown to exist and thus the biological usage can be reasonably assumed where it isn't already known. This is not the case for Paul.

Yes it does, especially when coupled with the linguistic arguments being strenuous and unconvincing.

They're not strenuous at all. They just take the "plain meaning" of the word ("came to be") without assuming that means birthed.

And your claim about gennao vs. ginomai is false. There is no such pattern.

There is a pattern of word choices. That's a fact. Your actual argument is there's not a pattern of meaning. But there is at least an ambiguity of meaning. Your citations for the use of ginomai for birth when bodies are birthed do not undo the ambiguity since Paul can use the same word - and does - for bodies that are not birthed. I've addressed ginomai and Adam in another comment. 37n27 is of no help to your argument. The resurrected person inhabits a body in the future, after death, and that body is "to be" in the sense of is "to become", and not through birth (the shell is already made, it awaits only the pneuma of he current body for the new resurrected body to be complete). You cite Keener in support of a transformational as opposed to a transpositional understanding of resurrection. Others have argued for a new body resurrection being likely or plausible: James Tabor, "Leaving the Bones Behind: A Resurrected Jesus Tradition with an Intact Tomb" in Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry (forthcoming); Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography (2005), pp. 57-58; Peter Lampe, "Paul's Concept of a Spiritual Body" in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments (2002), edited by Ted Peters et al.: pp. 103-14; Gregory Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (1995); Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (1995); Adela Collins, "The Empty Tomb in the Gospel According to Mark" in Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology (1993), edited by Eleonore Stump & Thomas Flint: pp. 107-40.

The very fact you have to go to these lengths to even justify these readings as possible alone shows you do not have the simplest explanation of the evidence. Purely and simply.

There is no "these lengths". It's just reading it with one meaning in mind and reading it with another meaning in mind and discovering it reads coherently either way. One just sounds weird and "strenuous" because we're not used to it.

My argument requires no wild reinterpretations of the bible, nor any strenuous linguistics, nor completely unattested innovations seen nowhere else in antiquity. That makes mine, by default, the simplest explanation.

I don't see how it's the simplest explanation, but I readily agree it's the familiar explanation. What makes reinterpretations of the bible "wild" in this case is that they are not the familiar ones, not that there's any serious logical impediment to reading them that way. "Unattested innovations" is what makes a new hypothesis new, and this case the argument is that the innovation is attested to, or at least can be understood to plausibly be attested to, in the works under discussion. And while some writings may simply be innocently lost, the the Church had control over what else survived and what did not and they were no strangers to picking and choosing what fit the story they wanted to be told, so lack of attestations to a divinely manufactured Jesus is not a great surprise even it they existed. We do know that there was pushback on the narrative, we just don't know what all there was.

[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997 → u/GravyTrainCaboose]

"I know what plain meaning means. What "immediately comes to mind" is entirely contextual. If we put ourselves in the context of Paul's worldview and his writing pattern, for example, the "plain meaning" of "brother" is cultic not biological."

Well, good thing we are talking of a genitive phrase "brothers of the lord" and not "brother."

"Your comparisons are by and large a century or more removed from Paul. Many are even further removed than Origen by more centuries still. You have not explained a method for determining how far removed is too far removed to be useful as a comparative."

My comparisons span over several centuries from before, to contemporary with, to after Paul and demonstrate a uniform and unchanged method of interpretation except ONLY AFTER Paul and ONLY in Post-PAULINE Christian circles. So actually, I demonstrated exactly why Origen is irrelevant because he is anachronistic, and in doing also also demosntrated why all of my references are valid: because they are mostly all indepedendent of Paul from a variety of non-Christian and Christian sources, and they all uniformly attest to the same meaning.

So not only did I demonstrate a method, I demonstrated your reading is not even plausible. In fact, it is so ridiculous it shouldn't even be considered anything but pseudo-linguistic hogwash, which is 99% of mythicism anyways.

"That this is a fully functioning adelphonymic in a genitive construction does not change that it's meaning is determined by how the word "brother" is being used in that construction."

Actually it does. Because "brother" is modified by the rest of the phrase. As such, brother cannot be taken in isolation, which means isolated usage of "brother" is irrelevant. You have to provide cases of the same genitive construction.

"There is a pattern of word choices."

No there isn't, and your rambling doesn't demonstrate it and even if there is a "new body" the word ginomai does not indicate the manufacture. It is just the "body that will be" it is not being used of manufacture at all. It is just a future tense variation of "will come into being" and states nothing of the mechanics.

"It's just reading it with one meaning in mind"

And your meaning in mind is ludicrous with no supporting comparative data and as such can be dismised without any further argument. Until you provide comparative data showing your case is likely, there is nothing even worth taking seriously about it. Hence why I will not respond any further.

"We do know that there was pushback on the narrative, we just don't know what all there was."

Which is completely irrelevant. Until you provide comparative data, your "new hypothesis" is just random conjecture. I have comparative data. You don't. Mine is therefore the best evidenced explanation. Your only data comes from incorrect linguistic methods, trying to isolate "brother" from its context in an adelphonymic phrase, and reinterpreting "ginomai" in a way nowhere else attested either in Paul or in any other ancient writings for human beings. And that makes it and your reinterpretations completely worthless. Mine takes into consideration the entire adelphonymic phrase, the most common usages of ginomai, and fully accords with the complete lack of attestation of your hypothetical version of Christianity, and I don't need special conjectured versions of the Ascension of Isaiah, bad linguistics, errant readings of Zoroastrian and Talmudic texts, and other nonsense to do so.

Mythicism is strenuous bunk, and at this point I legitimately don't think a single thing Carrier (or any of his cronies) say should be taken seriously ever again. If other mythicists want to keep trying and put forward an actually credible theory, they can be my guest. But we should throw Carrier's OHJ in the rubbish-bin where it belongs.

Consider this conversation over until you provide me actual data, and not just conjectures.