Update 5/05: With this section we apparently stung Carrier the hardest, for it is here where he offers the largest response. Carrier continues to maintan that Zoroastrians thought of resurrection first, and Ezekiel must have stolen it from them, and he continues to believe that Greek writers verify this. He also adds to his error by seeing a difference between Satan in the Old and New Testaments, an error we have corrrected:

It's another one of those deals where the critics think they can detect evolution in action, and this time it's with the guy in the tights on the Spam can. The claim made is that Old Scratch in the OT is only a shadow of the Big Red Meanie in the NT. In between, it is said, some outside influences (usually Persian religion, it is said) transformed Satan from a slimy prosecution attorney to a Darth Vader in Total Evil. Is this the case? Not really. If anything it's a case of folks not thinking multi-dimensionally yet again.

Out data pool from the OT will be from Job alone. 1 Chr. 21:1 we will discard as we agree (with Glenn Miller) that the "Satan" here may not be the personal being but another adversary. We will also leave out Gen. 3, for though I think the serpent was indwelt by Satan, Gen. 3 would add little to the data pool not already found in Job. Ps. 109:6 will be ignored for the same reason, and Zec. 3:1-2 add nothing not found in Job. (A secondary idea, that Job itself is from the Persian period, we do not consider viable, but it is beyond the scope of this article.)

Our process will be to identify where Satan is found in the NT, then see if what he does is any different than what is in the OT. We will find that all of the cites are answered in one of two ways:

1. They show a distinct parallel to what is found in Job.
2. They show what is actually a universal motif for ANY evil being or any person doing evil, whether the Persian devil Ahriman, Screwtape, or Jesse James.

Now for relevant NT citations.

• The Tempter. Satan's role is as a tempter (obviously), and he claims to own the world (Matthew 4:9 and parallels). The former is obvious in Job -- Satan's whole purpose was to tempt Job to forsake God. That leaves his claim to be able to turn the world over to Jesus, which has no parallel in Job at all. Is this a problem? I think not. If it isn't bravado on Satan's part (hubris, an element that IS clearly visible in Job), then it is if nothing else an offer to turn over those persons who are under his sway. Now let me ask critics a question: In Job, Satan says that he has been "going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." Now given his character, what is it that critics suppose Satan to have been doing while he was wandering around the earth? Was he sightseeing? Collecting international green stamps? No, he was undoubtedly looking after his own interests. And since his primary interest in Job is to turn Job away from God, isn't it a simple idea that whatever else he was doing was intended to serve the same interest? And that means that Job implies directly that Satan had been out swaying people over to his side already. Satan's own profession in Job is to be doing what Peter says he is doing as "a roaring lion, [who] walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." Satan's role as a deceiver in the NT also comes under this rubric.
• Head Over Demonic Powers. We see this first in the NT in Matthew 12:26 and a few times more after this. In Job Satan has no obvious entourage, and here is where one might argue that later influence played some part. However, this is rather best understood as one of the universal motifs grounded in a reality. There is no leap in supposing that any figure or person would or could gather helpers or assistants. There is a difference here, but it is a "no big deal" difference that is meaningless.
• General Power. In the NT Satan has titles like Prince of the Power of the Air and "god of this world." Is this a promotion from the OT figure in Job? Not at all. Once again, when we realize that Satan in Job was probably not running around the world just painting pictures of himself on canned meats, it's obvious that these titles are not promotions but rather recognitions.

So in conclusion, there is no need to go wandering around to Ahriman or any other being to explain Satan's (non-)differences in the NT. The Satan of the OT is the same figure -- the NT is simply more theological in orientation and has a great deal more ideological space to talk about him.

Back to resurrection, Carrier claims that I "blindly assert" (though in fact, as I clearly cited, it was N. T. Wright who "asserted" this) that Jews would not "borrow" a religious belief from their captors, but he claims that this "ignores every precedent" -- though the only "precedent" he gives is that many Jews, like Philo, "borrow" religious ideas from their Greek captors, and the Greeks did not hold the Jews in exile in Athens, nor at the time of Philo did they rule over the Jews. He also claims that this ignores "the reality of ancient cultural belief systems" but offers not a bit of hard evidence to support this view, rather only appealing, circularly, to what he already supposes must have happened when the Jews met the Persians.

More specific is the accusation (as Carrier also insults his better, Yamauchi, in the process) that Zaehner also maintained that "Israel found a kindred monotheistic creed in the religion of the prophet Zoroaster" and "from this religion too she learnt teachings concerning the afterlife altogether more congenial to her soul than had been the gloomy prospect offered her by her own tradition, teachings to which she had been a stranger before". And he goes on (it is best to leave this intact for proper effect):

Thus, Zaehner supports me, not Holding. Indeed, on the Zoroastrian eschatological notion of a future eternal life, Zaehner says there was "surely" influence, for "the similarities are so great and the historical context so neatly apposite that it would be carrying scepticism altogether too far to refuse to draw the obvious conclusion" that the idea was derived from Zoroastrianism. Rightly so.

It is only after that sentence (on. p. 57) that Holding's quote begins: "the case for a Judeo-Christian dependence on Zoroastrianism in its purely eschatological thinking is quite different" (emphasis added) yet Zaehner immediately says that "a deathless existence in body and soul at the end of time is affirmed" in early texts, hence only apart from this one detail does Zaehner call for doubt. In other words, Holding's quote from Zaehner refers to other elements of Zoroastrian eschatology (Zaehner mentions the peculiar details in Paul and the book of Revelation in particular). Otherwise, Zaehner does not doubt that the general idea of a resurrection into paradise or perdition was a product of influence. To the contrary, Zaehner holds resurrection as the exception that is "surely" an instance of influence, while it is only in regard to particular details (like uniting soul and body) where independent development is credible.

Then, after Holding's quote, Zaehner immediately says "the case of rewards and punishments, heaven and hell, however, is very different" for "the theory of a direct Zoroastrian influence on post-exilic Judaism does explain the sudden abandonment" of the old idea of sheol "and the sudden adoption, at precisely the time when the exiled Jews made contact with the Medes and Persians" of what was essentially a Zoroastrian "teaching concerning the afterlife." In fact, he says Daniel presents a clear case of Persian influence, and "thus from the moment that the Jews first made contact with the Iranians they took over the typical Zoroastrian doctrine of an individual afterlife in which rewards are to be enjoyed and punishments endured" and "so, too, the idea of a bodily resurrection at the end of time was probably original to Zoroastrianism, however it arose among the Jews" (p. 58).

In other words, Zaehner is saying that the Zoroastrians came up with the idea of resurrection first and on their own, while the Jews did not develop any idea of resurrection until after their contact with the Persian religion. Hence when Zaehner expresses doubt whether the Jews borrowed their specific doctrines of resurrection, he does not mean what Holding claims (that the Zoroastrians got the idea from the Jews), but rather that the Jews got the idea after being influenced by the Zoroastrian doctrine of an afterlife, but developed their own resurrection doctrine in response to this influence, rather than simply adopting any particular Persian scheme. Even so, "the resurrection of the body," Zaehner says, "Christianity inherited from Zoroastrianism" (p. 316).

This says not in the least what Carrier claims, for all Zaehner refers to in these quotes is future eternal life -- NOT resurrection! Indeed note what Zaehner says in the very quote Carrier offers: "so, too, the idea of a bodily resurrection at the end of time was probably original to Zoroastrianism, however it arose among the Jews". Whatever the virtues of Zaehner's case concerning the mere idea of an afterlife (it could be disputed readily, see here), the concept of resurrection, he speaks of equivocally, quite clearly: "however it arose". In other words, as I summed up after quoting Zaehner: "Note especially the implication that an idea of resurrection could have come up independently in the Zoroastrians because they shared the Jewish perception of totality of body and spirit, which is also my view of the subject." Thus Carrier's further citations of Zaehner are completely in vain; he has, once again, in spite of himself, only validated my actual point. The only place one might charge me with error is with respect to summarizing Zaehner as saying that the Zoroastrians borrowed from the Jews. However, if this is so, then Zaehner plainly contradicts himself within the space of several pages, for on the one hand he admits to the lateness of the writings, while on the other (if Carrier represents him fully, which I have good reason to question) he speaks of borrowing. Since I have caught Carrier misreporting sources time and again, and he has done so to me again and again this round, I will just have to get a copy of Zaehner and report the results here at a later date.

Update, 6/3/05: It seems that I was completely right in the above, and we have thus caught Carrier either trying to pass off an outright lie as truth, or else failing to use his sources properly. Odd as it seems, Zaehner IS saying that the Jews borrowed certain notions of an afterlife from Zoroastrians; but he also says this, quite clearly, on pages 57-58 -- two pages Carrier himself quotes from: After noting that the eschatology of the Pahlavi books "do not correspond at all closely" with the writings of Paul and John, Zaehner says --

They do, however, agree that there will be a general resurrection of the body as well as soul, but this idea would be the natural corollary to the survival of the soul as a moral entity, once that had been accepted, since both Jew and Zoroastrian regarded soul and body as being two aspects, ultimately inseperable, of the one human personality. We cannot say with any certainty whether the Jews borrowed from the Zoroastrians or the Zoroastrians from the Jews or whether either in fact borrowed from the other. (emphasis added)

Thus it is clear that at worst, the cite by Yamauchi -- which Carrier blames me for naively accepting -- does not favor a borrowing BY the Zoroastrians, as I first indicated (here, though not in my original article on Zoroastrianism, where I first used it); but it does indicate what my further analysis says: That the two parties readily could have arrived at the idea independently. However, the critical point is that Carrier -- who wishes for us to believe that he consulted Zaehner's book himself to correct me -- has falsely reported that Zaehner said that the Zoroastrians came up with the idea of resurrection first and on their own, while the Jews did not develop any idea of resurrection until after their contact with the Persian religion. For resurrection specifically, Zaehner does NOT say this -- he says it is one of three options, and none of the three can be said to be true with certainty. In short, Zaehner supports neither of our views.

In light of this as well, it does remain peculiar that Zaehner also says that Christianity inherited the idea of resurrection from Zoroastrianism [! - 316] and not from Judaism. But the bottom line is that Carrier has either lied about or badly used his source, and this is yet another case where we have caught him doing this. (There can be no excuse that Carrier has a different edition, either; I have the same 1961 version he cites. I will keep a copy of the two relevant pages.)

It is no accident that the only contemporary scholars Holding can find arguing anything contrary are Yamauchi (Persia and the Bible, 1990) and Bremmer (The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, 2002). They are pretty much the only ones left who maintain such skepticism. Yamauchi does not argue against borrowing (nor for any reverse influence), but merely argues the evidence is not sufficient to convince him and therefore we should reserve judgment. But Yamauchi engages the dubious tactic of citing outdated and obsolete scholars against current, updated scholarship. He also uses selective quoting and special pleading--e.g. he simply dismisses late texts without considering any arguments for the antiquity of their contents (an approach that would destroy most of the bible as well). Ultimately, Yamauchi concedes the very fact I stated in the first place: that the widest consensus of scholarship stands against him (p. 458; see the scholarship cited now in Note 3.1).

Once again Carrier is being far from honest; Wright [125] offers a list of scholars "for" and "against," and in addition to Bremmer, there is Eichrodt, Lacocque, Barr, Goldingay, and Collins, and none of these are "outdated and obsolete" unless Carrier thinks that 1967 (the earliest) and 1993 (the latest) is "outdated". In any event, we leave the rest as nothing but a vague temper tantrum by Carrier, whose note only refers the reader to books and does not offer any arguments, and whose accusations against his better are worthy of nothing but contempt, especially given his past record of deception in citation.

Secondary update, 5/26/05; 6/3/05: And Carrier's integrity continues to suffer blows. I have ordered a copy of Zaehner's book, and the results are seen above; I have confirmed the citation our reader reported earlier. The same reader in possession of Yamauchi's work has re-checked his use of Zaehner, as well as the quote Carrier alludes to on p. 458 of Yamauchi, which Carrier twists to get Yamauchi to make a concession that "the widest consensus of scholarship stands against him." It reads as follows:

Since the initial suggestion of Count Constantin in 1791, numerous scholars have assumed that Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism. This point of view was vigorously promoted at the beginning of this century by the History of Religions School. Especially influential was Wilhelm Bousset's Die Religion des Judentums in spathellenistischen Zeitalter (1902; 3d ed., 1926). Other early scholars who affirmed a strong Iranian influence on Judaism included Nathan Soderblom (1901) and Alfred Bertholet (1916).

Currently many important scholars maintain the thesis of Zoroastrian influence on Judaism. These include Duchesne-Guillemin, Gnoli, Hinnells, Anders Hultgard, Joseph Kitagawa, Shaked, and David Winston."

Yamauchi certainly concedes that "many scholars" hold and have held the view, but Carrier is clearly twisting his words to get some sort of unequivocal admission that "the widest consensus" holds the view.

Our reader adds:

Meanwhile, Yamauchi writes that most scholars disagree with Boyce that the Gathas allude to resurrection, and he cites a monograph by Franz Konig that concludes the earliest attestations to Zoroastrian belief in resurrection cannot be dated before the fourth century B.C. (p. 461)

But he is not through insulting his betters yet. Carrier now turns his heels against Bremmer, and it is worth while to debunk this one in detail:

Right off the bat I was suspicious of this guy, since everything Holding quotes him saying is false. Does "the whole genre of Iranian apocalypticism...postdat[e] Christian times"? (The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, 2002: p. 50) Theopompus proves the contrary.

Theopompus proves no such thing, as we showed; but Carrier offered some reply to this, and we will get to that.

Is it at least the current consensus of scholars that the contents of all the relevant Zoroastrian texts are themselves post-Christian? No. The widest consensus of scholars has come to the opposite conclusion for the content of at least some Persian texts. Continuing this tendency to misrepresent the facts, Bremmer claims "Mary Boyce, has consistently presented a static view--against all evidence and common sense" (p. 48), yet that is completely false: Mary Boyce presents a very nuanced and careful analysis of the historical development of Zoroastrian doctrine over time, taking into account numerous developments and changes. She does not regard all Zoroastrian texts and beliefs to predate later eras. Why would Bremmer say the opposite? Did he not really read her work? Or is he playing fast and loose with hyperbole and invective? Last but not least, Bremmer claims that "Mary Boyce quotes only Aeneas, not Diogenes Laertius" (p. 49), which is again completely false: in her three volume history Boyce discusses both passages in detail.

In all of this, all we have from Carrier is one vague, undocumented assertion ("at least some of the Persian texts" -- but which ones? of what relevance?); one vague opinion ("I thought Boyce did OK myself!"), and one claim of error -- but the quote Carrier offers is not referring to Boyce failing to quote Laertius throughout her three volume history! It refers only to a specific discussion of writers who quote Theopompus, and Bremmer is saying that Boyce only quoted Aeneas with respect to Theopompus! If Carrier can't get this simple point right, what of his claim to "dismiss Bremmer as unreliable"?

Carrier's further charge of error by Bremmer is comical. He says, ...Bremmer claims that Josephus never attributed "the idea of resurrection to the Pharisees" but "mentioned only their belief in the immortality of the soul" (p. 46), which is completely false... So it is, but that is not what Bremmer says at all! The full quote is, "Hippolytus thus not only doctored Josephus' report regarding the Essenes but also attributed the idea of resurrection to the Pharisees, even though Josephus only mentioned only their belief in the immortality of the soul." In other words, the entire passage is about Hippolytus and his use of Josephus, not about what Josephus believed! Bremmer does not say anywhere that Josephus never attributed the idea of resurrection to the Pharisees; in fact, on page 43, he refers to the Pharasaic belief in resurrection attested by Paul in Acts, and then says that this "positive reference to the Pharasaic position" is "corroborated by extrabiblical sources such as Josephus and the rabbinical literature." (Emphasis added.) In other words, Bremmer affirms the very opposite position than the one Carrier attributes to him!

Carrier next tries to overcome another problem with hype, thus:

Finally, when Holding tries to play the expert himself, we get a fatal dose of fallacies and lazy research. For example, he argues that "Ezekiel speaks of the dead being raised from graves" and yet "the Persians exposed their dead" as if that mattered even remotely. It doesn't. The fact is, the Persians collected the bones of those they exposed and interred them in ossuaries or shafts to await resurrection (Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 1, 1975: pp. 325-30). This is exactly what the Jews did, so there is no relevant difference here after all.

First of all, if Carrier wants to throw around an accusation of "fallacies and lazy research," it goes to Wright, from whom I got that point, and is thus a case of Carrier yet again, insulting his scholarly betters. Second, the point is only that Ezekiel's vision specifically cannot be related to Persian practice because of this difference, which Carrier does not refute with his reference to ossuaries. Thus Carrier is once again answering a caricature and an argument never made.

6/4/05: And in fact, this is another case where Carrier fails to adequately report what his sources tell him. The cite of a span of five pages is rather shifty, but in those five pages, here is all that Boyce says that resembles what Carrier offers:

• Carrier pretends that this difference in method doesn't matter, but Boyce's further explanations belie that claim. She notes that the purpose of the exposure of bones was to put them under the sun, which "makes a path of light to draw the soul upwards to the Cinvat Bridge" (a bridge to the afterlife). This is said to be the "chief merit of exposure". The sun also "burns away the pollutions of the body" and the degradation of the flesh is said to prevent "sullying of the creations of earth or fire or water." Finally it "marks a disdain" for the body left behind. [325] These are elements decidedly NOT present anywhere in Judaism (other than a general commonality between disdain for the flesh, albeit for different theological reasons) and thus it is quite clear that the difference of method cited by Wright and his source (Day) matters a great deal in terms of deciding whether the Jews borrowed the idea.
• While bones were interred in raised tombs or ossuaries, or otherwise protected from canine predators [326], the material that notes this is from the Vendidad, a mixed source with material of no certain date; Boyce will only say that such sections are "old" in "substance" but gives no specific date for them (elsewhere she says it is a "collection of miscellaneous pieces of varying antiquity, put together at some relatively late date" [274]; various sources I find date it to 200-400 AD in its final form!). Some of the material may indeed be early, but there is no certainty, and that which is granted to date it earlier is given with a generous spirit one rather seldom sees granted to the Gospels!
• The same source also indicates that "for the poor" [327] the sanctioned custom was to simply let the bones stay outside! Use of ossuaries was "helpful rather than necessary" and was merely a function of the common necessity of resurrection: To aid in the later reassembly. And thus there is nothing in the use of ossuaries that counts against the critical difference in use of graves versus exposure.
• Furthermore, for the Zoroastrians, burial in the ground was a pagan idea [328] for "despatching the soul to the kingdom of the dead," and so absorption of the idea of resurrection by the Jews, coupled with what was regarded as a pagan idea, makes Carrier's thesis even MORE unlikely.

Carrier then attempts to sanitize Plutarch for his purposes, thus:

As another example of his specious tactics, Holding selectively quotes Plutarch, leaving out material that undermines his case, and then jumps to conclusions without actually researching them. Holding claims that Plutarch's quotation of Theopompus in On Isis and Osiris 47 gives us "a seemingly contradictory description" and "Plutarch makes no clear reference to resurrection of the body." But had Holding actually looked at the passage in context, he would have seen that it began like this:

A destined time shall come when it is decreed that [the Author of Evil]...shall be utterly annihilated and shall disappear, and then the earth shall become a level plain, and there shall be one manner of life and one form of government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue. But Theopompus says that, according to the magi, one god is to overpower the other each in turn for the space of three thousand years, [etc.]...and finally Hades shall pass away, then shall the people be happy, and they shall neither need food nor cast a shadow.

In other words, Plutarch is not quoting everything Theopompus said, but only what he said that disagreed with what Plutarch had just described, and Plutarch is here only concerned with a disagreement over how the end would come about--whether all at once or after several ages of reversal. Otherwise, Plutarch's description is clear: the future paradise he is talking about will be a life on earth (two details Holding left out), and it will involve the final elimination of death (Hades), and those who enjoy this ultimate paradise will not need to eat. This certainly sounds like a resurrection: an immortal return to earthly life. Even including the peculiar detail that in the future people will cast no shadow, there is nothing here that contradicts Diogenes Laertius, nor does Plutarch's description allow Holding's inference that only a disembodied afterlife was meant.

The details "left out" prove nothing other than that Carrier needs imagination to prop up his reading of Plutarch. Plutarch's entire description comports just as readily with an afterlife in a mere spirit form (since spirit was also regarded as a form of matter), or with a race of humans who continue to live in mere flesh -- not resurrection. Notice that Carrier is forced to admit that this "sounds like" a resurrection -- an admission that his finding is based on but a narrow, subjective assertion. And what of my point that "casts no shadows" does not comport with physical resurrection? Carrier claims that he cannot understand why this would not be the case (! -- maybe he thinks that it was believed that the resurrection body was transparent!) and insults his betters again (it was Bolt, not I, who cited Plutarch on this point) before trying to squirm out with this explanation:

Instead, he cites yet another passage that he obviously did not actually check himself, claiming that "Plutarch elsewhere says, those who 'cast no shadows' are those who have been liberated from the body," as if this meant the only way to cast no shadow is to have no body (already a fallacious inference). But in actual fact, it is not Plutarch who says this, but a Pythagorean ghost, in a story Plutarch relates from another source (On the Delay of Divine Vengeance 24, = Moralia 564d, his source appears to be a lost work by a certain Protogenes, cf. 22 / 563e). Hence this reflects a particular sectarian doctrine and not Plutarch's own assumption (as he makes clear elsewhere).

Unfortunately we are not told where Plutarch "makes clear" any disagreeing point about such a thing, and we are also not told why this makes a difference in the chain of argument I made: As if "cast no shadows" would mean anything different from Plutarch. And Carrier is oblivious to the point that it is not that "the only way to cast no shadow is to have no body" but that "if you have a body, you're going to cast a shadow"! Unless of course Carrier wishes to contrive some excuse like, "they believed a resurrected body was transparent" or "the sun would go out" or "there were also unmentioned magic fairies who stole all the shadows and sold them on the black market to Peter Pan." Carrier notes that the ghost also says that the dead had form and color and facial features; but that is exactly what a shade would have as well. He notes that it is said that they "experienced physical torments and pleasures"; well, so likewise did the Jesus say of the unresurrected rich man. I agree with Carrier -- these are astral bodies. They are not resurrected bodies. And thus Carrier shoots himself in the foot for my sake yet again, as he proves my original point, that Theopompius does not confirm a Zoroastrian belief in resurrection as the Jews saw it. (His appeal to 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 5 as though it taught the same thing is bogus, as we showed here.) Please note that it matters not in the least to me what Plutarch believed, but rather, what he described as the belief of the Persians, and what words he used -- indeed, contrary to Carrier, I never say that any of this reflects Plutarch personal beliefs).

I have facetiously commented that Carrier may contrive some excuse for why it was said souls cast no shadows, and he does so, ironically, though he borrows them from Plutarch, though it doesn't really apply! Thus:

The tale that no shadow is cast by a person who enters the Lycaeon [the holy inner sanctum in the temple of Arcadian Zeus] is not true, although it has acquired widespread credence. Is it because the air turns to clouds, and lowers darkly upon those who enter? Or is it because he that enters is condemned to death, and the followers of Pythagoras declare that the spirits of the dead cast no shadow, neither do they blink? Or is it because it is the sun which causes shadow, but the law deprives him that enters of the sunlight?

This is not about the afterlife, but is Carrier going to now claim that the dead, by Persian beliefs, wandered around with clouds around them or over the sun? Or maybe he'll say that they spent their afterlife in this inner sanctum! It speaks for itself that Carrier must prop his lame thesis by using this comment about a temple on the earth to illuminate beliefs held by Zoroastrians, and even add to the above an explanation not made, that the presence of a god caused all darkness to be abolished, including shadows, and uses this to infer fallaciously that Theopompus "clearly did not think casting no shadow meant a bodiless state" where a dead person not even in this inner sanctum was concerned!

Extra: Guest writer "Antero" offers us an item on the date of Zoroastrian writings with a challenge to Skeptics.

Zalmoxis Shazam, Part 2

Beyond this Carrier pulls the inevitable shebang of "resurrections" which are not resurrections, and of dishonestly erasing any distinction between a true Jewish resurrection and someone "raised from the dead" by some other means (though in this, he is merely following Martin uncritically; see below). His absurd use of Zalmoxis we have already refuted in the past; to this he had no response, other than childishly retreating behind the Secular Web. Let us recourse again to that debate, on the particular issue of resurrection. The earliest source on this matter is the Greek historian Herodotus. Here is his account of the matter (Persian Wars 4.94-6):

The belief of the Getae in respect of immortality is the following. They think that they do not really die, but that when they depart this life they go to Zalmoxis, who is called also Gebeleizis by some among them. To this god every five years they send a messenger, who is chosen by lot out of the whole nation, and charged to bear him their several requests. Their mode of sending him is this. A number of them stand in order, each holding in his hand three darts; others take the man who is to be sent to Zalmoxis, and swinging him by his hands and feet, toss him into the air so that he falls upon the points of the weapons. If he is pierced and dies, they think that the god is propitious to them; but if not, they lay the fault on the messenger, who (they say) is a wicked man: and so they choose another to send away. The messages are given while the man is still alive. This same people, when it lightens and thunders, aim their arrows at the sky, uttering threats against the god; and they do not believe that there is any god but their own.

I am told by the Greeks who dwell on the shores of the Hellespont and the Pontus, that this Zalmoxis was in reality a man, that he lived at Samos, and while there was the slave of Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus. After obtaining his freedom he grew rich, and leaving Samos, returned to his own country. The Thracians at that time lived in a wretched way, and were a poor ignorant race; Zalmoxis, therefore, who by his commerce with the Greeks, and especially with one who was by no means their most contemptible philosopher, Pythagoras to wit, was acquainted with the Ionic mode of life and with manners more refined than those current among his countrymen, had a chamber built, in which from time to time he received and feasted all the principal Thracians, using the occasion to teach them that neither he, nor they, his boon companions, nor any of their posterity would ever perish, but that they would all go to a place where they would live for aye in the enjoyment of every conceivable good. While he was acting in this way, and holding this kind of discourse, he was constructing an apartment underground, into which, when it was completed, he withdrew, vanishing suddenly from the eyes of the Thracians, who greatly regretted his loss, and mourned over him as one dead. He meanwhile abode in his secret chamber three full years, after which he came forth from his concealment, and showed himself once more to his countrymen, who were thus brought to believe in the truth of what he had taught them. Such is the account of the Greeks.

I for my part neither put entire faith in this story of Zalmoxis and his underground chamber, nor do I altogether discredit it: but I believe Zalmoxis to have lived long before the time of Pythagoras. Whether there was ever really a man of the name, or whether Zalmoxis is nothing but a native god of the Getae, I now bid him farewell. As for the Getae themselves, the people who observe the practices described above, they were now reduced by the Persians, and accompanied the army of Darius.

Carrier tells us in one essay that Herodotus "told of a Thracian religion that began with the physical resurrection of a man called Zalmoxis, who then started a cult in which it was taught that believers went to heaven when they died."

I find in this description two instances of illegitimate terminological usage by Carrier. First, nothing described in Herodotus leads us to accept what is believed by the Thracians to have happened to Zalmoxis as a "physical resurrection." They believe that he has died, yes, but there is no indication that they believed, as the Jews did concerning resurrection, that his original body was physically revived or reconstituted. Indeed we are not told what mechanism they believed in. Second, Carrier uses the word "heaven" -- Judeo-Christian terminology -- to describe Herodotus' "place where they would live for aye in the enjoyment of every conceivable good." This is not an accurate representation of the Christian doctrine of heaven. It does correspond perhaps with popular (incorrect) perceptions of heaven in Christendom, but not with the historical and Biblical doctrine -- except in a very vague and generalized way that is meaningless, for one of necessity thinks we either have an afterlife or not, and if so, must think to be either pleasurable ot not....

Carrier provides no source material on Zalmoxis, other than Herodotus, and there actually is little available, other than Mircea Eliade's Zalmoxis the Vanishing God (1972), from which the following quotes are provided. What little we have, however, tells us that:

• The Zalmoxis account presupposes a very clever and educated person bamboozling ignorant persons (and indeed, very ignorant -- the disciples saw the death of Jesus, and it is testified to in secular accounts; Eliade finds the account "incomphensible" on this point, for the Thracians assumed Zalmoxis was dead, without ever seeing his body! -- 23). This bears resemblance to some theories proposed by doubters, who suppose Jesus to have been a charlatan (or an "honest deceiver" out to give hope to the masses); but this runs thereafter into the difficulties entailed by the trilemma, and the great difference between seeing a body that had once been clearly dead (or at least very badly injured!) after a gruesome execution, and thinking it raised, and a mere disappearance....
• There are a host of social factors unmatched here. The "Zalmoxians" were not under the cloud of being part of a religion that was a minority and regarded as a superstition by the powers in charge. There was nothing to test "faith" in Zalmoxis or to force critical re-examination and consideration.

  In this regard, it becomes clear that Zalmoxianism, if it indeed had the origins ascribed to it, shows little evidence of having continued to emphasize Zalmoxis' putative "resurrection". Strabo's later report has Zalmoxis learning not only from Pythagoras, but also from the Egyptians, and gives him an ability to "report the will of the gods" [58] which impresses his king so much that he became a priest, and was then regarded as a god. As such, Strabo tells us, he went to live in a cavern, seeing few people other than the king and his servants. This laid the ground for a sort of prophetic officer who lived in this cavern.

  Eliade tells us, "[w]e do not know to what extent the initiatory and eschatological structure of Zalmoxis' 'mystery' as it can be in Strabo's day." [61] She supposes that it did survive, among some hermits and strict religious folk. But this leads to our next point: "...all that we know about Zalmoxis and the religion of the Dacians we owe entirely to the accounts and commentaries of foreign writers." [67] There are not even arguable works by disciples of the faith as with Christianity.

My conclusion, such as one can be drawn from such meagre evidence, is as follows: Carrier's parallel to Zalmoxis is simplistic and vastly overstated. That he makes a point of this figure at all suggests to me a pointed lack of discipline and confidence in his primary thesis.

And now an update. An alert reader pointed me to some commentary on this piece by Carrier, which contains some rather peevish comments to begin and end, to wit:

I see no need anymore to respond to Holding. His method is typically polemical, childish and disrespectful, he rarely comprehends anything I or any opponent says or means, and he has a nasty tendency to make wild, unsubstantiated claims about antiquity, and then, when he is called on it, deletes or alters his essays without notice, and modifies them to suit research he conducted only after his lack of research was pointed out.

By now you would think the Infidels know how much I enjoy this sort of thing. When they have taken to this extreme, they have essentially waved the white flag. I hear the sound of elephants trumpeting thunderously, indeed, but very little in the way of specifics. (I have at times altered essays "without notice" for the sake of convenience, but I hardly see why this is an issue!)

In this case, his argument against me is simply bizarre. He says that a story about a man who died and came back to life and founded a religion wherein believers went to eternal paradise has no parallel with Christianity. That is to engage in some pathetic special pleading, and I think it is patently absurd to any reasonable observer.

This seems to allude to point 1 above. It's hard to tell, since it only marginally matches what I actually said. I did not use the words "no parallel" -- I indicated that there was inadequate data for the first, the supposed "resurrection" (since it is not said what process Z used to allegedly come back to life -- if we are allowed to use a broad classification, "died and came back to life," then that could describe everything from the vegetable-deity Osiris to the guy who came back from advanced life support), and that the second, at best, was too vague to be useful to Carrier's case, and at worst is based on a misconception of the Christian doctrine of heaven. Herodotus' description sounds much closer to the heaven experienced by male Islamic martyrs, or perhaps something a Bacchan would dream of, but at any rate is so general that it is useless for his case of a social parallel, indeed pointless. As noted, it just as well reflects an understandable variation on the theme of afterlife, a logical extension whether such an afterlife exists or not. I can add to this that there does not seem to be any indication in Herodotus or elsewhere that believing in Z's "resurrection" was somehow tied to going to this place of bliss, which makes the idea of a parallel even more pointless.

But even with regard to details he is beating a straw man. That the Jews had a particular take on resurrection is wholly irrelevant to my use of the material regarding Zalmoxis--for such a Jewish view would actually inform a Jew's reading of that story in Herodotus (and any well educated Jew would be likely to have read it), and a Jew could certainly syncretize any borrowing of ideas from it in just such a fashion.

If this is the case, then Carrier's entire argument is again pointless and a mere exercise in skeptical creativity. I can just as readily see Acharya S arguing that the story of Osiris and other "dyin' and risin'" gods "informed" the Jewish reading of those stories as they manufactured a resurrection from it. It is the same bait-and-switch tactic that the pagan copycat crowd has always pulled:

1. "This is where they copied the Jesus story from!"
2. "But, uh, it has all these differences."
3. "Of course it does! They syncretized the details based on their own culture!"

The question never answered, but which I would like to see answered, is: "How would the reports look different if the resurrection of Jesus actually did happen?" Indeed, why not cut out the middleman and say that the idea was syncretized from Daniel or Ezekiel, or from one of the Jewish intertestamental works? It seems much easier, since the Jews already believed in "heaven," to argue for a theft from that direction.

Moreover, it would not be possible for Greek observers to invent the trickery story unless they believed the resurrection was physical, and thus any reader of Herodotus would see this as having been understood as a physical resurrection wholly regardless of what the Thracians might really have thought.

This is still Carrier misusing terms. Again, there is no indication of a reconstituted body here -- no indication at all that Zalmoxis came back with a body driven and directed by a spiritual nature; there is no "glorified body" that we are told of, no details at all. Perhaps it was a resurrection in the Jewish sense (but then, we would also like corresponding data showing that this type of rez was a Thracian paradigm); more likely this was perceived as a revivification, similar to the raising of Lazarus, or perhaps (since they did not actually see his dead body) it was perceived of in terms of a translation. Again, the bottom line is, there is insufficient data. I would hope that Carrier at least is not as simple-minded as C. Dennis McKinsey, classifying all of this under the heading of a resurrection.

The point is that here we have a story that is clearly of a physical resurrection, with eternal paradise for believing it, as understood by Herodotus and his informants, a story that existed and would have been read by many Jews of Jesus’s day. But all this is so obvious I should not have to argue it. A plain reading of my work would make it all clear--to anyone except Holding, apparently.

Again, I see no indication of a cause-effect relationship "for believing" in Zalmoxis' "resurrection". I do see that Z's return was thought to verify his teaching of eternal paradise (Why? Because he told them he had been there?), but the indication is that this paradise is there regardless of what Zalmoxis was on about. Where is the cause-effect relationship stressed? This is the sort of presumptive or careless reading that also "informed" Carrier's attempts to help Lowder out of a jam -- and here I am being blamed for a lack of comprehension!

Likewise with his attempt to argue that getting to live in an eternal paradise "isn't really" what Christians meant by heaven and so there is no paralell [sic] . This is bizarre as well. For example, he claims "heaven" is a Judeo-Christian word. Oh dear. Here we have a typical case of a man completely ignorant of the language and culture he is discussing sticking his foot in his mouth...

I do not say that "heaven" is a Judeo-Christian word; I say that Carrier is using Judeo-Christian terminology; and I do not use the words (despite the quotes) "isn't really"; I say that the terms used, drawn from Herodotus, are not an accurate representation of the Christian doctrine of heaven except perhaps in a popular sense. None of this has anything to do with the Greek origins of the word "heaven" but with the modern use (and in Carrier's case, abuse) of the term. Again, this is the sort of careless reading we get from Carrier time and time again, apparently feeling he has no need to consider carefully the work of any person below him. First of all, Herodotus actually doesn't say -- unless someone isn't translating well -- that this "place" of paradise is in any way associated with the skies or "heaven" -- it is a "place": where? Underground? Saturn? Kolob? It might well have been skybound, but we aren't told. Second, Carrier uses the word "heaven" by itself whereas Herodotus refers to a "place" and gives a description. Carrier knows well enough that in using the descriptive phrase "believers went to heaven when they died" he is invoking terms and phraseology in popular use in Christian churches. It is no more than a subtle and illict attempt to evoke a parallel (as even MacDonald does in Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark) by collapsing terms down to a lowest common denominator -- the old "Lincoln and Kennedy were both concerned with civil rights" game. I daresay it is also a blatant attempt to deceive a Christian audience.

In closing, Carrier repeats his first charges, and accuses me of "obsessing on details wholly irrelevant to my comparison..." The details are in the devil: they show that there is no comparison, other than by illicit collapsing of terminology and by unsubstantiated speculation designed to comfort the skeptical mind. Carrier has nothing over Acharya S other than entertainment value -- his parallel remains simplistic and vastly overstated. One wonders why he bothers to use or defend the argument at all.

Other Candidates Unelected

What then of Carrier's other candidates for "resurrection"? These do not reflect any original research by Carrier; they are taken, often verbatim and uncritically, from Dale Martin's book The Corinthian Body. We will have more to say of this work below, but for now, here is a look at the primary candidates:

This is like some of the Greek fables of Aristeas the Proconnesian...for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's workshop, and his friends, coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton.

In this there is not one shred of account for any idea associated with resurrection properly defined -- no glorified body; no action by a deity, much less an association with an eschatological judgment. Then we have this from Herodotus (History 4.14):

As to Aristeas who composed this, I have said already whence he was; and I will tell also the tale which I heard about him in Proconnesos and Kyzicos. They say that Aristeas, who was in birth inferior to none of the citizens, entered into a fuller's shop in Proconnesos and there died; and the fuller closed his workshop and went away to report the matter to those who were related to the dead man. And when the news had been spread abroad about the city that Aristeas was dead, a man of Kyzicos who had come from the town of Artake entered into controversy with those who said so, and declared that he had met him going towards Kyzicos and had spoken with him: and while he was vehement in dispute, those who were related to the dead man came to the fuller's shop with the things proper in order to take up the corpse for burial; and when the house was opened, Aristeas was not found there either dead or alive. In the seventh year after this he appeared at Proconnesos and composed those verses which are now called by the Hellenes the /Arimaspeia/, and having composed them he disappeared the second time. So much is told by these cities; and what follows I know happened to the people of Metapontion in Italy two hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of Aristeas, as I found by putting together the evidence at Proconnesos and Metapontion. The people of Metapontion say that Aristeas himself appeared in their land and bade them set up an altar of Apollo and place by its side a statue bearing the name of Aristeas of Proconnesos; for he told them that to their land alone of all the Italiotes Apollo had come, and he, who now was Aristeas, was accompanying him, being then a raven when he accompanied the god. Having said this he disappeared; and the Metapontines say that they sent to Delphi and asked the god what the apparition of the man meant: and the Pythian prophetess bade them obey the command of the apparition, and told them that if they obeyed, it would be the better for them. They therefore accepted this answer and performed the commands; and there stands a statue now bearing the name of Aristeas close by the side of the altar dedicated to Apollo, and round it stand laurel trees; and the altar is set up in the market-place. Let this suffice which has been said about Aristeas.

Once again, there is not a shred of any idea that sounds like Jewish resurrection. Carrier is merely equivocating with his terminology, as usual.

You say he prophesied that he would himself rise from the dead, and he did rise. How many others produce wonders like this to convince simple hearers whom they exploit by deceit? Zalmoxis, the slave of Pythagoras, told the Scythians that he had come back from the dead. So Pythagoras told the Italians. Rhampsinitus pretended to have played dice with Demeter in Hell, and he showed a golden napkin which Demeter had given to him. Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, Hercules at Tænarum, Theseus, all are said to have died and risen again. But did anyone really rise—really—in the body in which he had lived? Or shall we say that all these stories are fables, but that yours is true?

Note that Celsus is making no comment about similarity of process; what is happening, again, is that Carrier is equivocating on the meaning of "resurrection" to be any reversal of death by any process.

There are also stories within which Dionysus, as an infant, was set upon Zeus' throne to play at being Master of the Universe; as he sat there, some of the Titans -- bad boys of Greek mythology -- snuck up with some toys and distracted him. While Dionysus was thus distracted, the Titans picked him up, tore him to pieces, and boiled and roasted everything but his heart and ate it. When Zeus got wind of this, he blew the Titans to smithereens. As the story goes in a later version, from the ashes of the Titans came forth the race of men; Dionysus himself was "eventually restored to a new life" from the heart that was left over from the heart-rejuvenation above, which in another version has the heart placed in a body made of gypsum [Harr.PGR, 490]. Frazer [Fraz.GB, 323] did try to piece together such a story of resurrection; he did so first by appealing to a version of the Titan story in which Apollo (or Rhea), at the command of Zeus, reeassembled the pieces and buried them. Frazer goes on to say that "the resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the myth it is variously related"! How? In one version, which has Dionysus as son of Demeter, momma reassembles the pieces and makes Dionysus young again. In others, "it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead [in what form???] and ascended up to heaven; or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded; or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele...[or] the heart was pounded up and given in a potion to Semele, who thereby conceived him." With such a panoply of options, it may be no surprise that at least one variation bears a superficial resemblance to what happened to Jesus ("rose from the dead and ascended to heaven"), but this vague description does not match with the Jewish concept of resurrection.

Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patricians, of noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius Proculus by name, presented himself in the forum; and, taking a most sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was travelling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and comelier than ever, dressed in shining and flaming armour; and he, being affrighted at the apparition, said, "Why, O king, or for what purpose have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city to bereavement and endless sorrow?" and that he made answer, "It pleased the gods, O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain so long a time amongst men as we did; and, having built a city to be the greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power; we will be to you the propitious god Quirinus." This seemed credible to the Romans, upon the honesty and oath of the relater, and indeed, too, there mingled with it a certain divine passion, some preternatural influence similar to possession by a divinity; nobody contradicted it, but, laying aside all jealousies and detractions, they prayed to Quirinus and saluted him as a god.

We search still in vain for anything like resurrection properly defined. Indeed it is not even clear that Romulus had an actual body as we would know it, and was not merely a spiritual manifestation.

"Osiris was murdered and his body dismembered and scattered. The pieces of his body were recovered and rejoined, and the god was rejuvenated. However, he did not return to his former mode of existence but rather journeyed to the underworld, where he became the powerful lord of the dead. In no sense can Osiris be said to have 'risen' in the sense required by the dying and rising pattern (as described by Frazer et.al.); most certainly it was never considered as an annual event."

So Osiris' "resurrection" is no resurrection at all -- and in fact was actually a sort of function of the way the Egyptian gods were, shall we say, being half Frankenstein, half Lego set. There are in fact many stories of the Egyptian gods flinging various body parts around, and to no overall harm, because "divine bodies were thought to be impervious to change" [Meek.DL, 57] and so O's dead body neither rotted nor decomposed as it waited to be put back together. This is how it was with all these Egyptian gods: Seth and Horus have a fight in which they throw dung at each other then steal each others' genitals. Horus' eye is stolen by Set, but Horus gets it back and gives it to Osiris, who eats it. Horus had a headache, and another deity offers to loan him his head until the headache went away [Meek.DL, 57]. Osiris did pay a price for his dismembering death, in that he was limited to the world of the dead [and manifestly ignorant as a result of what went on "above ground" -- Meek.DL, 88-9], but that is only because he had actually died once before when his father accidentally killed him [ibid., 80]. It is absurd to compare this to "resurrection" in a Jewish sense -- especially sense this refers to a god, and thus has no application for what may happen to men in an ancient view. (Meek.DL -- Meeks, Dimitri. Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. 1996.)

But in succeeding ages, besides several other circumstances that moved the Athenians to honour Theseus as a demigod, in the battle which was fought at Marathon against the Medes, many of the soldiers believed they saw an apparition of Theseus in arms, rushing on at the head of them against the barbarians. And after the Median war, Phaedo being archon of Athens, the Athenians, consulting the oracle at Delphi, were commanded to gather together the bones of Theseus, and, laying them in some honourable place, keep them as sacred in the city. But it was very difficult to recover those relics, or so much as to find out the place where they lay, on account of the inhospitable and savage temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in his life), and had a great ambition to find out the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, when on the sudden it came into his mind, as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus and, laying them in some honourable place, keep them as sacred in the city. But it was very difficult to recover those relics, or so much as to find out the place where they lay, on account of the inhospitable and savage temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in his life), and had a great ambition to find out the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, when on the sudden it came into his mind, as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus. There were found in that place a coffin of a man of more than ordinary size, and a brazen spear-head, and a sword lying by it, all which he took aboard his galley and brought with him to Athens. Upon which the Athenians, greatly delighted, went out to meet and receive the relics with splendid processions and sacrifices, as if it were Theseus himself returning alive to the city. He lies interred in the middle of the city, near the present gymnasium.

To call THIS a "resurrection" is the height of dishonesty!

And so, the general conclusion: Describing any of these as "resurrected" is an argument we would expect from Acharya S, or Freke and Gandy, but not an alleged Ph. D. candidate for a degree in history. Put it simply: Carrier has now gone off the deep end and removed himself from all chance of credibility by affirming a view of "resurrection" as anything that he says it was, and claiming that the difference "makes no difference" and this, as noted, contrary to the overwhelming consensus as represented by the likes of Perkins and Wright, that belief in a human (not divine gods and immortals) being raised from the dead in a body that would last evermore, was completely rejected as repugnant and/or impossible by the Greco-Roman world.

We now close this section with a comment on Carrier's conclusion that "the shear [sic] abundance of these tales reflects a widespread hope of returning to life in the pagan community." The premise has slipped by without proof that these stories reflect a widespread hope concerning a renewal to life for human beings. But a third to half of Carrier's candidates are either gods, demigods, or mythical beings (a dryad!) which hardly says anything about any "hope" that mere mortal human beings had for a return to life. Moreover, even those that do involve mortals clearly do not reflect any particular hope in connection to a resurrection as properly defined. None of the mortal deaths involve, as Carrier claims, returning with a better body -- though someone like Asclepius might get back as a deity, if his performance was superb. At best Carrier shows a vague hope for apotheosis, which by itself indicates, as the chief alternative, that resurrection of the physical body used on earth was not considered an option. As Peter Bolt reports in "Life, Death and Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World," (Life in the Face of Death, 74) these temporary restorations cannot be compared to resurrection; those actually buried, who then returned from the realm of the dead, amount to none but Alcestis and Eurydice -- and even the latter did not quite make it. In contrast, everywhere what is properly called "resurrection" is mentioned by the ancient writers, it is deemed impossible:

And so on. Lest Carrier retort that this was just some view of a literary elite -- a desperate counsel to begin with -- Wright [33] appeals to the Epigrams of Callimachos (15.3) and a conversation between two average people, one dead, the other still alive:

And then there is a "well known" epitaph of the day inscribed on Greek and Latin tombstones: "I wasn't, I was, I am not, I don't care!" [34] Bolt meanwhile finds no evidence on tombstones of any hope of return [68]: "We are mortals, not immortals!" "When life ends, all things perish and we turn to nothing!" "We are and were nothing." These epitaphs on the tombstones of non-elite persons suggest, contrary to Carrier, that "elite" ideas about the afterlife were not at all limited to the elite. But more of this later in this essay. It is enough for now to repeat that Carrier's attempt to reduce the matter to the lowest common denominator of "a bodily returning to life" is a preposterous absue of terminology.

Excursus: Dale Martin's The Corinthian Body

What some may take as original work by Carrier in this section is actually little more than a sometimes-verbatim report of what is contained in this work used by Carrier. It is not our purpose here to review the whole contents of The Corinthian Body; it has received numerous reviews in the literature, offering a mix of high praise and due cautions; the only portion actually relevant to this essay is a single chapter, and a very few pages of that chapter.

Martin acknowledges the clear evidence of a belief -- even among common people -- in the complete disposal of the earthly body after death. In addition to the epitaphs above, he finds others such as, "And your soul has escaped the body, it's antagonist." [109] That said, Martin deigns to call the view of bodily resurrection as undesirable by these peoples "oversimplified and ultimately misleading" -- not because he actually has any evidence that it was not, but because he believes that the examples of resuscitations (as cited by Carrier above) allowed for analogies in which the ancients could accept resurrection. This leap of supposition is bad enough; but it gets worse. Martin further hypothesizes that the inroad for accepting resurrection is allowed, "even if they did not understand by such language precisely what Paul intended." [108] In other words, Martin also tries to admit bodily resurrection into the paradigm-fold by supposing that when Paul said "bodily resurrection," his converts understood, "resuscitation" -- essentially meaning, they really didn't accept "resurrection" at all! How this amounts to evidence that bodily resurrection could truly be accepted as a concept is indeed a mystery.

In the end we are faced with two alternatives. Martin's idea is that Paul and other apostles were so careless and so indifferent that they permitted this misunderstanding, only "fixing" the problem when they realized what had happened; our idea is that the idea was perfectly or adequately understood, but was adjusted to suit the preferences of the people, by the people. Given the syncretistic nature of Greco-Roman religion, and the care and shepherding of Paul as an Apostle, and that this "misunderstanding" apparently cropped up nowhere else than Corinth, itself a difficult city, the second choice is prima facie the most likely to be true.

One other source used by Carrier is not even relevant. As I have confirmed through book reviews, Bynum's item on resurrection indeed is about Christianity in the years from 200 to 1336, which is hardly the subject of our study! Her appeal to the "range of interpretation" of the Gospels and Paul is a chimera without substantiation; if Carrier thinks he can prove that 1 Cor. 15 for example does not teach what the consensus claims it does (as he did in his debate with Licona), we will refer him and the reader to our excursus on the subject further down.

Carrier's appeal to the reactions of some in Athens, who said they wanted to hear Paul again on the subject, shows that he is far behind on the scholarship on this issue. As N. Clayton Croy has discussed in his article, "Hellenistic Philosophers and the Preaching of the Resurrection" (Novum Testamentum 39/1, 21-39), this particular reaction would have come from the Stoics, and not because of a genuine interest in being resurrected. Croy characterizes the response as one of "sincere, if still hesitating, interest" [28], and attributes it to the fact that the Stoics had many different ideas about what would happen in the afterlife. Carrier's "curious and considered it" reaction is in the ballpark, perhaps, but beyond the foul line.

Croy notes that it would require "generous qualification" to say that the Stoics here "found something like resurrection comprehensible." What likely happened, he argues, is that the Stoics here viewed the soul "in somatic terms" (e.g., as a "body" in its own right) such that "philosophical language about the immortality of the soul" had for them "affinities to that of bodily resurrection." In other words, their main interest was in the ways they might adapt and relate to Paul's message -- the sort of syncretism I believe happened in Corinth, contrary to Martin.

Croy's interpretation is one option; Witherington in his Acts commentary [532] suggests that the tone of the Stoics is in fact dismissive: "enough for now, perhaps another time" -- in other words, don't call us, we'll call you! The other appeal Carrier makes, to those who believed, is only confirmation of my own thesis, that there existed those who considered the evidence Paul presented and found it compelling. (Acts would hardly reflect the whole content of Paul's speech, though from later criticisms, he seems inclined to assume that this is all Paul said, and nothing more! -- More on this in another point.)

And yet again, as before, to create a case out of whole cloth, Carrier invents wholesale a group for whom "disdain for the flesh was less common," this, without providing a shred of literary, historical, or other evidence that any such group existed, anywhere; no, Carrier merely invents this group out of his imagination, with the argument that they must have existed, because that was who must have been there for Christianity to appeal to. These people had a belief that "satisfied their desire to live forever without the stains and burdens of our present bodies." It was called apotheosis, and it meant NO body of an earthly sort to worry about, and no business for the body once it died.

In contrast, the cautions of Pheme Perkins in Resurrection are well warranted. Adding to the evidence of epitaphs above, Perkins notes [57]:

Elements of the iconography of heavenly ascent appear on individual tombstones and in a more general sense this imagery could be seen to crystallize the rather nebulous hopes for immortality held by individuals.

In contrast, if what Carrier says is true, where is the "iconography" or evidence for a belief in resurrection -- or even of returning from the dead, as he claims there was? Stories told are one thing; epitaphs like these represent however the real nitty-gritty of what "hopes" there were for life after death. Where is the tombstone that says, "Like Alcestis, I'll be back!"? None exist. And Carrier's nebulous appeal to a "desire to live forever" deserves another caution from Perkins [62]: "We cannot assume that resurrection answers a longing already being expressed in pagan society" and must be careful not to attribute to these times "spiritual needs that were first created by Christianity." The evidence of tombstones tells us of no such "desire"; only of either indifference or despair and no real hope of return.

There is a greater irony yet. Carrier has been insistent upon some invisible, unattested division in class over views of the body in this regard. Yet he is forced to admit that this was also a "feature of the more popular mystery religions" (emphasis added) And it is to these very "popular" mystery religions that his supposedly body-desiring lower classes flocked! There is an open contradiction between the claim that the Christian message would not be found offensive on this point, because these people really didn't disdain their physical bodies and wouldn't mind them back after death, and the point that the "more popular" mystery religions offered a rejection of this very view -- despite not being products of any "elite"!

Carrier's attempt to drive between the hydra and the whirlpool of this contradiction slips by like a shadow: "...as far as the evidence goes, those were the very people [Platonists, Orphists, and members of "more popular" mystery religions] the Christians failed to evangelize in their first hundred years." Excuse me: What evidence? There is none! Carrier possesses no hidden insight into how many converts came or did not come from these camps. None is available. Rather, his sentence here is a subtle attempt to hide a desperate fallacy: That they must not have been successful, because otherwise, they would have been! But without actual demographic data, this is nothing but an enormous deception. A later sentence by Carrier plainly reveals the circularity of his argument: "...we cannot claim what those critics say is what the converts believed. To the contrary, it almost certainly is not -- that is why they converted." In other words, Carrier's only "evidence" for a different view is that must have existed, for otherwise these people would not have become Christians! The vicious circularity of this argument speaks for itself.

And indeed, Carrier in his usual fashion tries to have his cake and eat it to, from one side of his mouth declaring how little "success" Christianity had among these people, while from the other side of his mouth pointing to passages that he says show Paul's effort "to articulate a view of the resurrection that appealed to the very sensibilities of the Orphic mindset." Why not say rather that it appealed to the senisiblities of the broader, "anti-body" mindset that we have argued for all along? Carrier merely assumes for the sake of his thesis that Orphists are Paul's specific target, even as he goes out of his way to argue for "evidence" that Paul would have had no such targets to begin with, since Christians "failed to evangelize" such people at the time. In essence he has Paul talking to nobody and for the sake of no one who would be listening!

It is unfortunate that Carrier cannot remember the answer to one of his own points further on, that "popular concern to save the flesh is reflected in the popularity of personal and funerary beliefs that obsessed over the relative integrity of the corpse and body." Carrier apparently wishes to suggest that this means that people wanted to preserve the body, either because they did not really think it was a bad thing, and/or in hopes of (or amenable to) a resurrection. But has Carrier forgotten so soon his own response to Farrell Till, about why Isis was so concerned to find every piece of Osiris, which explains the real reason people of this day had this concern?

First, [Till] is a fish out of water when he asks the rhetorical question "why did Isis go to such great lengths to find all of the scattered body parts and reassemble them?" Any expert in ancient cultures would know the answer to this: because the souls of the deceased could not find rest, could not pass into the underworld, until their whole bodies were properly buried. Greek tragedies are rife with the notion, as is Jewish Talmudic law, even history: the Athenians actually executed their naval commanders who did not try to retrieve the bodies of sailors lost at sea. There is no need here of any connection with a resurrection motif.

Apparently by his own reckoning, given this false application to the issue of resurrection in Jewish terms (not merely Carrier's willy-nilly everything-goes definition) and/or views of the material body, Carrier is now a "fish out of water" and no longer qualifies as an "expert in ancient cultures" who "would know the answer to this." Or more likely, as we have seen in the past, he has no scruples whatsoever when it comes to speaking out of both sides of his mouth with a forked tongue. Perhaps he will say that when he said "ancient cultures" he didn't really MEAN "ancient cultures" but just some of them, not the ones (conveniently) we are concerned with (which wouldn't work well, since he did specify the Athenians, and at any event, an academic site here affirms, "... the Romans believed that a proper burial was essential for passage to the afterlife"); but if that is the resort, we still have the retort that keeping the integrity of the body was a matter of honor -- not of some forlorn hope of getting it back, or because it was held in higher regard than a state of spiritual existence.

Let us again speak further to Carrier's idea, as applied here, of "oppressed, disgruntled masses" who supposedly would not share the "elite" disdain for the mortal body (assuming they did not believe the word of the popular Homeric epics, that there could be no resurrection anyway; and also assuming that their lives didn't make them think worse of the body than the elite did, which Carrier doesn't have enough imagination to consider). Carrier has no evidence for such persons existing; and what evidence we do have, indicates the opposite. Naturally we have little left from these lower classes, but again, Peter Bolt (Life in the Face of Death, 51ff) has collected such evidence as can be found. It is clear from the evidence that these common people did find their solution -- in apotheosis. As Bolt puts it, "it was the mystery religions that served to democratize the idea of a happier existence beyond the grave." [66] In such circumstances, one of two things is suggested: Either the people really did not want their body back; or else, having it back would be superfluous. Let us keep in mind that the pagans did not share the Jewish and Zoroastrian view of body and spirit as a unity -- resurrection would be neither conceived of, nor thought of as required for an afterlife of whatever nature. The inscription of a deceased follower of the Orphic mystery religion -- "I have flown out of the sorrowful, weary wheel" [69] -- reflects satisfaction with a view in which at death, "the soul remained in the air, but the body returned to the earth." [73] If the "masses" did not share with the "elite" this value of the material body as rubbish or a burden, or in fact expand on it, then one is inclined to ask why the popular mystery religions fulfilled by promise of a purely astral existence. Note that, as Bolt says, the "Orphic eschatology that lay behind Pythagorean-Platonic philosophy probably had its greatest impact on the rank-and-file of people in the first century A. D. through the mysteries." (Emphasis added.) The low regard for the body in terms of afterlife value is furthermore indicated in that during the time of Christianity, and up until the third century, the most popular method of burial among the common people was cremation, essentially the annihilation of the body! (See here, particularly this line: Under the empire burning was almost universally practised, but was gradually discontinued as Christianity spread (Minuc. Felix, p327, ed. Ouzel. 1672), so that it had fallen into disuse in the fourth century.) Thus the evidence points only to a sharing of this value between the levels -- not a dichotomy. It is therefore useless to claim that Christianity held out some special hope to the masses (note again the caution of Perkins above); this would not be simply taken for granted -- not without, yet again, the vindicating evidence of Jesus' own resurrection. As always, all of my points here are of a piece; and that they cohere together, as a whole, recommends them as a correct solution -- far better than such things as Carrier's special pleading for undocumented dichotomies among classes.

There is no need to speak to Carrier's fantasy construction of "sarcicist" parties and agendas; there is no evidence at all for such parties, which are constructed purely put of his imagination (just as are his conceptions of "masses" with a nascent desire to be resurrected) and with complete disregard for the Jewish background which provides all the data we need (as if there could be a "more radical" sort of belief in resurrection, as though saying one could have a "more radical" conception of up and down). A point worth note is the bland assertion that Christianity offered resurrection of "easy terms" while Judaism had "very hard" terms. Carrier is apparently infected with a notion of Christainity as easy-believism. Jesus did say that his yoke was easy and his burden was light; but this was compared to the yoke of eternal damnation! Christianity offered a contract of patronage between YHWH and His people. To be YHWH's people meant to be His slaves and to do His bidding. Moral guidelines like the Sermon on the Mount were not required to be followed for salvation; but if you had YHWH's salvation, it was expected, as a matter of course, that your life would be ordered on these principles as a result of your newfound patronage! Thus Carrier is grossly in error to speak of Christianity's "easy terms". The burden is lighter than eternal damnation, but it still requires one to take up one's cross. And is that "easier" than Judaism? No -- in fact it is just a step up the Jewish ladder, which itself required a covenant relationship with YHWH with different, not easier or harder, expectations.

Finally, note that Carrier's use of Celsus, in terms of "making the same claim of resurrection as many pagans," deserves the qualification noted for his use of Justin's comment, re note 19 below. It is also an equivocation to say that Celsus criticizes Christians for making the same claim. This is not in evidence at all; there is nothing showing that Celsus specified resurrection properly defined, and Carrier does not show that he does. Furthermore, Origen's comment that Celsus' view "being that of an Epicurean, and of one who does not hold the same views with the Greeks, and who neither recognises demons nor worships gods as do the Greeks" is not said with any reference to attitudes about the body. Carrier is illicitly trying to cull the Epicuran minority view of demons and gods over to their view of the body. Furthermore, Carrier misses the very salient point that Celsus puts a certain argument about alleged parallels in the likes of Zalmoxis into the mouth of a Jew, and not as an Epicurean (himself). The full passage he refers to and quotes a phrase from (but does not site) says (2.55):

The Jew continues his address to those of his countrymen who are converts, as follows: "Come now, let us grant to you that the prediction was actually uttered. Yet how many others are there who practise such juggling tricks, in order to deceive their simple hearers, and who make gain by their deception?--as was the case, they say, with Zamolxis in Scythia, the slave of Pythagoras; and with Pythagoras himself in Italy; and with Rhampsinitusin Egypt (the latter of whom, they say, played at dice with Demeter in Hades, and returned to the upper world with a golden napkin which he had received from her as a gift); and also with Orpheus among the Odrysians, and Protesilaus in Thessaly, and Hercules at Cape Taenarus, and Theseus. But the question is, whether any one who was really dead ever rose with a veritable body. Or do you imagine the statements of others not only to be myths, but to have the appearance of such, while you have discovered a becoming and credible termination to your drama in the voice from the cross, when he breathed his last, and in the earthquake and the darkness?

In other words, the Jew's point of comparison is not resurrection per se, but acts of trickery and deceit associated with reversals of death (this in line with the Jewish polemic that the body of Jesus was stolen)! And it is for the Jew, not "for Celsus," as Carrier wrongly says, that the question is "whether any one who was really dead ever rose with a veritable body." And Origen knows this and responds accordingly: "Now, since it is a Jew who makes these statements, we shall conduct the defence of our Jesus as if we were replying to a Jew..." His further answer says nothing about the nature of bodies or whether (as an Epicurean would care) resurrection was possible, but goes on to address issues of trickery. When he addresses the "veritable body" phrase, this is what he says (2:57):

But observe whether this Jew of Celsus does not talk very blindly, in saying that it is impossible for any one to rise from the dead with a veritable body, his language being: "But this is the question, whether any one who was really dead ever rose again with a veritable body?" Now a Jew would not have uttered these words, who believed what is recorded in the third and fourth books of Kings regarding little children, of whom the one was raised up by Elijah, and the other by Elisha. And on this account, too, I think it was that Jesus appeared to no other nation than the Jews, who had become accustomed to miraculous occurrences; so that, by comparing what they themselves believed with the works which were done by Him, and with what was related of Him, they might confess that He, in regard to whom greater things were done, and by whom mightier marvels were performed, was greater than all those who preceded Him.

In all of this not one word is breathed about Epicurean or Greek concerns over the actual possibility of resurrection. Nor is the issue one of Christians "making the same claim" as pagans, in terms of the process of resurrection. Carrier has grossly abused these few phrases from Origen and pulled them completely from their argumentative context.

We now move to the problem of the specific resurrection of Jesus among the Jews; and once again, Carrier plays the game of defining "resurrection" any way he pleases, so as to include in the mix OT and NT persons resuscitated from death, without any indication of glorified bodies. Carrier's ignorance and desperation on this point is so profound that he refers to a belief that Jesus may have been "the resurrected Elijah," oblivious to the point that in the OT, Elijah did not even die! Carrier tries to equivocate by saying, "well, he went to heaven, and that's where the dead go" and in so doing, not only stands against the OT story that shows no such death, but bypasses that NOWHERE in the OT is "heaven" designated as a place where the dead go! OT persons believed that death meant going to Sheol, and specifics beyond that, especially for the righteous dead, are lacking (see Johnston, Shades of Sheol, for a detailed study of OT beliefs about the afterlife). And Carrier of course "resurrects" the singular comment of Herod, asking if John had risen, despite that this comment is completely devoid of contextual information declaring how the "rising" was accomplished.

Carrier's further appeal to variety in belief about resurrection timings in Judaism present a further counsel of his despair. He notes beliefs in resurrection in "stages", as for example: "in one scheme there would be four stages: first Adam, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then those buried in Palestine, then everyone else." The rub in this appeal, which Carrier doesn't even realize flubs his case, is that for this to be of any relevance would mean that people would have to think that Jesus was a figure of prestige on the order of Adam, Abe, etc. -- in other words, it only proves my point, that something special had to be accepted about Jesus to accept that he had been resurrected! Yet again Carrier ends up arguing my case on my own behalf with his misdirected commentary. (And one would like to know as well, whether Adam, et al. were resurrected in this view tens of hundreds or thousands of years before all others; if the interval is of seconds or minutes, the claimed parallel is of complete irrelevance!

Carrier also claims that "Paul expected the end to come in his own lifetime," and in this falls for the usual misreading of NT eschatology, for which we refer the reader to the series here. The "end" Paul refers to is not that of the current age (the age of the law) but that