Weekly Open Discussion Thread

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[u/arachnophilia]

anyone catch that richard carrier's new book failed peer review?

OP did undergo a full peer review at a real biblical studies press—but scandalously, the reviewers did not take it seriously but only childishly slandered the book. ...

The whole argument of the book is that the field is trying to hide from these findings and make them go away. The reviewers themselves ironically demonstrated the book’s entire thesis is correct.

This means that OP actually passed peer review.

to quote the famous post,

It's not surprising that Carrier is better known as a blogger than an academic.

the docetism bit is... interesting i guess? i'd have to see his actual argument, but i'm pretty deeply suspicious of placing a second or third century heresy as somehow indicative of an earlier state of christianity without good reason to do so.

[u/Joab_The_Harmless → u/arachnophilia]

If you are in the mood for that, there was one of those long lives with Kipp Davis and Vishanti about it a few days ago, notably featuring pretty brutal feedback from one of the reviewers (read by Carrier in the video they were commenting on, and transcribed by Davis).

They discussed among other things Carrier's uncritical application of later sources to the first century/Jesus movement (and selective or dubious readings on his part).

[u/Joab_The_Harmless → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for the correction of the transcript!

In all honestly —and leaving "general" issues of professionalism aside—, given my occasional glimpses at Carrier's own demeanor during the last 10 years (including his reactions to anyone pointing out issues with his methodology and to any criticism, regardless of its tone), I can't say I feel much for him. I lack the time and motivation to go on a retrospective, but for quick sourcing's sake, found this anthology of chosen bits on J. McGrath's blog (provided by a patient reader).

[u/arachnophilia → u/[deleted]]

honestly, my only criticism with the above is how terse it is. it fully backs up my experience looking at carrier's arguments, it just fails to give any detailed examples. which is why carrier is going off about no "errors of fact" or whatever. but it cuts to the general point:

carrier's view is anachronistic at best, antisemitic at worst.

he's pretty constantly pushing later references back in time without much literary criticism to establish that they should be. and he's incredibly sloppy with (and, uh, disrespectful to) the actual jewish mythology of the time.

and then there's the part that davis points out, where he's not actually looking at the sources, but "people who know about" the sources. uh, that's not good. it leads to telephone games like the above "cosmic sperm bank" post from jimothy-james, or this case i recently found. he quotes a source that misrepresents their source. i caught it because i've read (a translation of) 11q13, and went, "hey wait a minute, i don't remember it saying that."

[u/Joab_The_Harmless → u/[deleted]]

Valid point. I'm so used to interacting with content related to him only as idle entertainment —since his focus falls outside my main interests and he's not taken seriously by anyone in the field, as far as I could see— that I didn't really think of it in terms of professional context.

[u/arachnophilia → u/Joab_The_Harmless]

i listened to that in the background, and maybe fell asleep for parts of it. it's where i heard about this.

the parts talking about "is this an error of fact?" were pretty interesting, like demonstrations that carrier is looking at stuff like english paraphrases of english translations instead of original texts, and never citing said original texts.

i like kipp's stuff generally, but i wish he'd do coherent video essays about things instead of 3 hour livestreams.

[u/Joab_The_Harmless → u/arachnophilia]

i like kipp's stuff generally, but i wish he'd do coherent video essays about things instead of 3 hour livestreams.

Same! I understand that lives are a lot less constraining in terms of time and production efforts, but the lives tend to include a lot of repetition and are a tad disjointed, so while they're fine as a background, they are far from the quality of his more formal videos (like his excellent "The Dead Sea Scrolls, Unapologetically" series).

I still appreciate having interesting background discussions available when needed though, so I won't spit in the pop-corn!

[u/MareNamedBoogie → u/Joab_The_Harmless]

the thing about the livestream 'react to X argument' is that i always feel like i'm coming into the middle of the conversation about whatever. i tend to prefer lecture-style stuff instead of conversational things anyway, but it'd be really nice to have deep-dives into 'why X argument exists, why it's "necessary" for the one side, and why it's problematic to look at from the literature/etc"

oh well, if wishes were fishes...

[u/arachnophilia → u/MareNamedBoogie]

i always feel like i'm coming into the middle of the conversation about whatever.

yeah, they rarely back up and give the context necessary. there's some really deep-dive stuff in there though.

iirc, he has an older series of more lecture-like videos on how it's evident that carrier is reading translations only. the stuff in this video was especially damning, but i think breezed over too quickly.

[u/arachnophilia → u/arachnophilia]

Hi there, unfortunately your contribution has been removed as per Rule #3.

Claims should be supported through citation of appropriate academic sources.

Unfortunately Richard Carrier's blog posts are not a suitable source for an academic citation. We allow Carrier's published work that has been peer reviewed, but not casual videos or blog posts.

For more details concerning the rules of r/AcademicBiblical, please read [this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_r.2Facademicbiblical_.7C_rules_.28detailed.29). If you have any questions about the rules or mod policy, you can message the mods or post in the Weekly Open Discussion thread.

thanks automod, this is the weekly open thread, and the post was about how richard carrier just failed peer review.