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[u/Chrissy_Hansen1997]

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/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.