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Richard's Revisions
The Monumental Manipulation of the Empty Tomb Story
James Patrick Holding
We proceed now to a select look at part 2 of Carrier's "The Spiritual Body of Christ" in which, having assumed a case proven in Part 1, Carrier goes on a higher flight of exegetcial fancy to explain the "origins of the empty tomb legend." The bulk of Part 2 is little more than an expression of the fallacy-ridden and historically inaccurate thesis of Randel Helms, in which it is assumed that similarities and echoes of prior texts somehow manage to prove a lack of historicity; as such, we can spare some further comment on portions thereof.
Carrier tries to force-fit his "two body" thesis of resurrection into the text of Mark. His exegetical errors in this regard are quite astounding. He quotes Mark 14:58, “We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.’ ” and claims that here Mark "seems to be quite overtly calling up Pauline resurrection doctrine" as he reads it. [157] But Carrier "quote overtly" leaves out "we heard him say" from the quote, thus hiding that these words were said not by Jesus, but by his accusers; no such words appear in Jesus' mouth in Mark, and the closest parallel is in John, where it is clear that there is no "two body" doctrine described and that Jesus never says that he himself will destroy the Temple. The opponents misreport what Jesus does say. Carrier also badly abuses Mark 12:25, For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. He deliberately quotes ONLY the last phrase for support and says, "angels were typically ethereal." But it is clear from the context that Jesus is only saying raised persons will be "like angels" in the very particular sense of not having marriage and sexual relations -- not that they will be like each other in terms of bodily content!
Carrier's violation of the text for his purposes does not end here; he also contrives a symbolic meaning from Mark's "young man" who fled without his clothes an analogy of the spirit fleeing the body, and of the alleged same young man dressed in while at the tomb "representing the celestial body." Even granting this contrived exegesis that would make a Jehovah's Witness proud, why let it symbolize a new body? Why not rather, new life in Christ? Or else a transformed body? It speaks for itself that Carrier in the end admits that "all of these passages are ambiguous" for it is clear he must abuse them heartily to force them to say what he needs for them to say.
Carrier's primary thesis is that Mark's "empty tomb story" is a rewrite of OT texts (after the manner of Helms' thesis). As such, again, it deserves little unique comment; for example, it would never occur to Carrier that Jesus purposely enacted, historically, the "third-day motif" found in Hosea in a way that his contemporaries would find meaningful. Secondarily Carrier contrives a Marcan reliance on Psalms 22-24 for his Passion narrative, though beyond the clear allusions to Ps. 22 by Jesus on the cross, his connections are tenuous beyond repair: Ps. 23 is said to represent "Christ's sojourn in the realm of the dead" but the author of Ps. 23 is in danger, not dead, and the righteous dead such as Jesus would be in Paradise, not in fear as Ps. 23 would have it. Ps. 24 is said to correspond to the Resurrection and Ascension, but Carrier does no more than stretch concepts like taffy so that Ps. 24's "gates" (24:7) are made out to be the stone over the tomb of Jesus! [160] This, and the tenuous reflection that Ps. 24 in the LXX is said to be "for the first day of the week" (whereas Mark uses the phrases, "on the first from the Sabbaths") in the best that can be had from Carrier on this point, and he still does not explain why, even if he is right, Mark might see a correspondence in real history that he could readily exploit for his purposes. After all, if Carrier is right about Ps. 22-24, then these could have been used for the death of any righteous man: Forsaken at death (Ps. 22), traipsing through the land of the dead (Ps. 23), raised to heaven (Ps. 24). That is why this sort of exercise in parallelism is fruitless.
Further strains paralleling Mark's narrative to Orphic practice speak for themselves, with such atrocities as Carrier trying to parallel Mark's young man in white to a "white cypress" [162] in Orphic rites that signifies where to go for eternal life. Carrier moreover fails to report the full text of this Orphic narrative, which says:
In the house of Hades there is a spring [i.e. Lethe, of forgetfulness] to the right; by it stands a white cypress. Here the souls, descending, are cooled. Do not approach this spring! Further you will find cool water flowing from the lake of recollection. Guardians stand over it who will ask you in their sensible mind why you are wandering through the darkness of corruptible Hades. Answer: "I am a son of the earth and of the starry sky, but I am desiccated with thirst and am perishing; therefore quickly give me cool water flowing from the lake of recollection." And then the subjects of the Chthonic King (?) will have pity and will give you to drink from the lake of recollection.... And indeed you are going a long, sacred way which also other mystai and bacchoi gloriously walk.
Carrier mentions the white tree, but fails to mention the spring as well as what happens after the dead are challenged; and thus he makes it sound like Mark is a great deal like this account, when it is clear that it is not. It is telling, again, that Carrier then wanders freely around texts to create such parallels, and contrives inane, esoteric readings worthy of Acharya S or Alvin Boyd Kuhn, such as: "[The women], too, are told are supposed to go further (physically, to Galilee; but psychologically, to a recognition of the truth)". [163]
The strain to make Mark's story an expression of his "reversal of expectation" motif [163f] is a failure on the same grounds we have already noted; obviously, "reversal of expectation" is a regular component of normal life, and so it is asburd to pretend that Mark's employment of such a motif proves anything about historicity. Carrier's claim that it "begs credulity to suppose that so many convenient reversals of expectation actually happened" [164] bespeaks a sheltered life. (But his examples of reversals are also in some cases misguided; for example: 1) there is nothing strange about Simon Peter vs. Simon of Cyrene, because "Simon" was one of the most common names for Jewish men of the period; 2) Jesus' burial by an enemy and a member of the Sanhedrin has been shown by McCane to be what we would expect to happen; 3) Pilate's surprise at Jesus' death, and other points, are not a "reversal of expectation" but a modification of expectation; 4) the mocking of Jesus by his own people, the Jews, reflects the sort of riposte that would be thrown at one crucified; and so on.)
Matthew, Luke and John are thereafter dismissed as "embellshing" Mark's story, based on an assumption of Marcan priority (not very wise) as well as the usual canard that anything that reports miraculous events must be ahistorical. [165] The errors Carrier offers otherwise are remarkably similar to those of Dan Barker.
A section is devoted to comments on Craig's use of Sherwin-White and the growth of legends. As our own take is somewhat different than Craig's (see here), and as it would involve complexities not involved in examples used by Shewrin-White (eg, the need to challenge a deviant movement's claims), we will not offer a direct reply. For us the issue is not just how quickly legends may grow, but how well they could stick after growing, in specific conditions. Carrier's diatribe against Craig does not address this point. Carrier also offers extended appeal to the stupidity and gullibility of ancient people, which is a rehash of his "kooks and quacks" thesis which Miller has demolished here. Parallels to what people thought of how lunar eclipses happened (witches did it! [171]) offer no parallel; the moon is not accessible to investigate, and there is no "honor challenge" or deviance in the claim that witches caused lunar eclipses. The parallel to the recorded life of St. Genevieve [172], and other parallels drawn from Herodotus, Josephus, etc. fail on one or more of the same considerations we have already discussed.
Carrier's points re "argument from silence" [177f] and the lack of contrary witnesses is one I see no need to address; for my own views make no issue of the silence as significant, for the social setting itself guaranteed numerous challenges to the Christian movement, whether recorded or not. Of course if Carrier wishes to resort to the idea that we have merely lost the slam-dunk rebuttal needed because it was suppressed by the church, or if he wishes to abuse silence [180 or lack of record as an excuse for why he can't provide evidence to support his theory, we can just as readily (and with as much evidence) hypothesize that Papias or Quadratus or some third volume of Luke-Acts contained a slam-dunk in our favor, but was destroyed by Nero, Domitian, Trajan, or even Julian.
Carrier plays the part of Dennis Ronald MacDonald in arguing that what is found in a biography of Romulus by Plutarch parallels the Passion narrative: "It certainly looks like the Christian passion narrative is a deliberate transvaluation" of Rome's ceremony for Plutarch, we are told [181]. Note please the slippery verbiage used by Carrier: "transvaluation" and "skeletal model." This is the same error as MacDonald, of stripping down to a least common denominator that would make ANY story of the death of a great man into a "transvalued" version of some other story. Indeed Carrier is recklessly dishonest in his description of Plutarch; for example, he says:
...later, Proclus, a close friend of Romulus, reported that he met him "on the road," and asked him, "Why have you abandoned us?" to which Romulus replied that he had been a god all along, but had come down to earth to establish a great kingdom and now had to return to his home in heaven; then Romulus told his friend to tell the Romans that if they are virtuous they will achieve a great empire.
Carrier's own description, however, hides a multitude of sins; the full text that he describes reads:
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.
Told in full, Carrier's alleged parallels evaporate from the record as strained contrivances: ie, there is no parallel between Jesus' ideological kingdom of Heaven and the Roman "kingdom" (city, empire!).
Carrier's thesis of hallucination [184ff] is grounded for the same reasons that Parsons' is in the same volume. There is also some irony in Carrier's report that he himself has experienced what he considers a hallucination of a demon trying to harm him: "I could see and feel the demon sitting on me, preventing me from breathing," but it was insubstantial when he punched at it. This would have to count as an indication, if any were needed, that evidence will always be interpreted within the paradigm, no matter how substantive it is. As an aside, as a preterist, I consider such an event to be unlikely in itself, so I can hardly be accused of being biased in favor of a non-materialst explanation!)
In a final section, Carrier offers an "analysis" of the burial and resurrection traditions in each Gospel; he works on the assumption of Markan priority (obviously we do not expect him to re-invent the wheel in this context, but see here) and also briefly employs the standard canard about contradictions between the accounts (see here.
Matthew's tradition he waves off with the sort of Helmsian illogic we have described above; with the same false interpretation of Mat. 28:17 we have more than once corrected; and with merely dismissing clear indications of a "renovated body" form of resurrection as "didactic or dramatic embellishment" [190]; in essence, whatever convenient explanation can be dreamed up by Carrier, is used on the presumption of materialism and Christian stupidity and gullibility.
Luke's tradition Carrier explores creative avenues with as well: Every possible excuse is suggested for the Emmaus road encounter (hallucination, dream, "mythic fabrication" [191] with of course not one shred of evidence, merely the presupposition that it can't be true as it is commonly interpreted. Carrier has problems understanding why the disciples were "terrified" by a spirit of Jesus possibly being around when it did not bother Pliny or Paul; aside from that Paul very likely WAS terrified (as if it needed saying!), we have noted that what the disciples thought the saw would be a "guardian angel" and it may well have come to mind that it was Jesus' own seeking some sort of retribution for their abandonment of Jesus. Other than that Luke is simply waved off as "polemical" and "embellished" for no other reason than that Carrier says it is because he starts from his own assumptions. So likewise is the ascension dismissed as "invented"; then parallels are strained between Paul's record of the appearance to the 500 and Luke's Pentecost event based on the similarity of the Greek word for "five hundred" and the Greek "Pentecost" (presumably the whole holiday was named by pre-Christian Jews anticipating the five hundred witnesses); the "similarity" of "in the same place" (epi to auto) in Acts and "more than" in Paul (epano), and "all were together" (pantes homou) and "all at once" (ephapax) though not in Greek. From thios we can mainly conclude that Carrier has so co-opted Dennis MacDonald's parallelomania that he will next propound a thesis that Kennedy was a myth based on the life of Lincoln. Carrier also exegetically embarrasses himself by saying Paul wanted women to "shut the hell up" [193] and "proves" this by appealing to 1 Cor. 14:34-35 which is Paul quoting and rebutting opponents, and 1 Tim. 2:11-15, which is more likely Paul saying women cannot domineer men. (Carrier ought to know this, as Miller addressed these canards age ago; as it is this tells us how dismal his grasp is on the present state of scholarship.)
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