The Gaming Den

Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt" is an excellent non-fiction book and I highly recommend it to everyone.

This is relevant to my interests. But what sets it apart from the myriad of earlier books on the same topic?

Schleiermacher wrote:This is relevant to my interests. But what sets it apart from the myriad of earlier books on the same topic?

Mostly that he does competent scholarship instead of picking a just so story he likes and then twisting facts to that theory.

Longes wrote:Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt" is an excellent non-fiction book and I highly recommend it to everyone.

One of the books I read was "The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel. It was at the behest of my mother, who is afraid for my poor damned atheist soul. The book is written by a guy who set out to disprove the existence of Jesus Christ and became converted, which sounds like bullshit to me. This book was obviously working backward from a predetermined conclusion.

So the central thesis of the book is that the Bible makes claims about Jesus Christ, if historical evidence proves that he existed then the rest of it must be true as well. Kind of like how Abraham Lincoln existed in history, so that must mean he hunted vampires as well. I have no idea if Jesus Christ really existed or not; I don't really have a horse in that race. I just know this was a pretty piss poor book about the subject of Christianity; I thought CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters made a much better case because it tried to be philosophical instead of scientific.

I've never read any atheist writers like Dawkins or Hitchens. I just plain don't buy the god story myself. I don't feel the need to argue my point with people because I don't actually give a wet turd what other people choose to believe. But this book was just so lazy and fallacious that it made me viscerally angry.

Unlike Dawkins or Hitchens, Carrier is an actual historian and his book is specifically about considering evidence for and against historicity of Jesus rather than engaging morality of religion or anything like that. TL;DR: would be that Paul and other early christians show no knowledge of earthly Jesus, treating him as a celestial being instead. Jesus himself follows established character tropes of jewish folklore and is meant to be new Moses. Later christians (the ones who wrote gospels) start creating historical accounts of Jesus, but are contradictory, show signs of being literary invention, and generally provide at best equal evidence for both theory of historical Jesus and theory of mythical Jesus.

Longes wrote:Unlike Dawkins or Hitchens, Carrier is an actual historian and his book is specifically about considering evidence for and against historicity of Jesus rather than engaging morality of religion or anything like that. TL;DR: would be that Paul and other early christians show no knowledge of earthly Jesus, treating him as a celestial being instead. Jesus himself follows established character tropes of jewish folklore and is meant to be new Moses. Later christians (the ones who wrote gospels) start creating historical accounts of Jesus, but are contradictory, show signs of being literary invention, and generally provide at best equal evidence for both theory of historical Jesus and theory of mythical Jesus.

Speaking of literary invention, if you were to examine the Bible as a story where humanity is the protagonist, doesn't it resemble the monomythical heroes journey as described by Campbell?

The bible is awesome from a literary view. People like to 'reimagine' the stories with the protagonist being a lot more heroic than they actually were. Everyone can picture Moses forcefully declaring, "Let my people go!". But that never happened. He probably stuttered.

KJB Exodus 4:10 wrote: And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.

It doesn't have the same visual impact if Moses is asking Aaron to give Pharaoh the message on his behalf.

But taken as a whole, that's kind of the recurring theme. God ends up picking the people that are obviously the worst possible choice and helping them to succeed (because if they could have succeeded without him how does that prove his assistance)?

There are a lot of 'David versus Goliath' stories and people forget that David isn't supposed to win without the power of god.

As far as the Hero's Journey, yes, I think it's very apt. Jonah getting eaten by a whale was a very good example of 'refusal'.

Here's a link to the elements of the journey

deaddmwalking wrote:The bible is awesome from a literary view. People like to 'reimagine' the stories with the protagonist being a lot more heroic than they actually were. Everyone can picture Moses forcefully declaring, "Let my people go!". But that never happened. He probably stuttered.

I don't know what you mean by this, but to be clear, Moses probably didn't stutter, because he probably didn't exist.

"L-let my people go, Pharaoh-senpai! Baka! I-it's not like I like you or anything..."

Kaelik wrote:

deaddmwalking wrote:The bible is awesome from a literary view. People like to 'reimagine' the stories with the protagonist being a lot more heroic than they actually were. Everyone can picture Moses forcefully declaring, "Let my people go!". But that never happened. He probably stuttered.

I don't know what you mean by this, but to be clear, Moses probably didn't stutter, because he probably didn't exist.

I mean as described in the bible he has some form of speech impediment. A stutter is a relatively common speech impediment that would likely be included in a character description. Whether approached as historical fact or a fictional story, the bible character is much less Charleton Heston and more Ken Pile (A Fish Called Wanda .

Regardless of whether he existed or not, the source material makes a big deal out of the fact he was not a good speaker. Perhaps oddly, people seem to have a problem with that. I'm not aware of anu adaptions of the Exodus story that include that characterization.

Just read John dies at the end, by David Wong. I liked it alot, mostly sort of humorous horror that had me laughing out loud a few times. But there were also a few really well done scenes that brought home a sort of serious Lovecraftian vibe, like this scene of a whole room that was a beautiful giant painting...but that kept getting more and more disturbing the longer you looked at it and saw more details...

I discovered the Travel Guide to Molvania.

It's terrible, but I laughed until I wheezed at some part of this.

phlapjackage wrote:Just read John dies at the end, by David Wong. I liked it alot, mostly sort of humorous horror that had me laughing out loud a few times. But there were also a few really well done scenes that brought home a sort of serious Lovecraftian vibe, like this scene of a whole room that was a beautiful giant painting...but that kept getting more and more disturbing the longer you looked at it and saw more details...

Yeah, that book's gotta be among my favorites. It's a very unique take on comedy horror in which the comedy part somehow doesn't cheapen the horror part, and I really can't think of anything else quite like it. And the horror itself is some pretty goddamn evocative Lovecraftian shit.

DSMatticus wrote:

phlapjackage wrote:Just read John dies at the end, by David Wong. I liked it alot, mostly sort of humorous horror that had me laughing out loud a few times. But there were also a few really well done scenes that brought home a sort of serious Lovecraftian vibe, like this scene of a whole room that was a beautiful giant painting...but that kept getting more and more disturbing the longer you looked at it and saw more details...

Yeah, that book's gotta be among my favorites. It's a very unique take on comedy horror in which the comedy part somehow doesn't cheapen the horror part, and I really can't think of anything else quite like it. And the horror itself is some pretty goddamn evocative Lovecraftian shit.

Exactly, the humor is really well done. It almost sorta does 4th wall breaking too, there's a ton of some sort of "nods to the reader". And yet, it never feels overdone, any of it. I never rolled my eyes and went, "wtf, really?" And the John character, maybe it helped that I knew a friend-of-a-friend (who was also called John) who seemed to act pretty similar to the John character. I kept reading and nodding, saying to myself, "Yep, he would do that".

Have you read the sequel, This book is full of spiders? Just powered through it yesterday, I liked it but not nearly as much as the first one. It's maybe...can I say this, a smarter book. Maybe I need a few days to digest to really appreciate it.

I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as John dies at the end and the twist ending was incredibly ass-pullish.

deaddmwalking wrote:There are a lot of 'David versus Goliath' stories and people forget that David isn't supposed to win without the power of god.

When you take into account that:
- Slings were extremely precise and dangerous weapons, they probably had longer range than the bows of that period.
- The rocks in the place were the battle took place are extremely dense.
- Goliath was a giant, and from what he says he seems to be having a bad eyesight, which might indicate that he was suffering from acromegaly, which means he was probably more vulnerable to shots in the head than the average.

You realize that David vs Goliath is closer to Indiana Jones shooting the impressive guy with the sword than to the underdog winning the fight unexpectedly.

Trivia, if you check the original text, it can be read that David actually hits Goliath's kneecap and not his head.

Which would explain why Goliath next falls forward, instead of falling on his back, as you would expect from being hit on the head from the front.

It wouldn't have been an insta-kill, but then the next part of the story is David chopping off Goliath's head, which shouldn't have been too hard if Goliath was too busy crawling on the floor with a broken leg.

Either way, David was not a seasoned adventurer, he was some sheperd militia, and Goliath the enemy champion that nobody else dared to take on. And probably wearing an helmet.

Blade wrote: - The rocks in the place were the battle took place are extremely dense.
- Goliath was a giant, and from what he says he seems to be having a bad eyesight, which might indicate that he was suffering from acromegaly, which means he was probably more vulnerable to shots in the head than the average.

You realize that David vs Goliath is closer to Indiana Jones shooting the impressive guy with the sword than to the underdog winning the fight unexpectedly.

This sounds like bullshit to me, but I don't have enough Biblical-scholar-ability to dispute it

There's a lot of modern scholars who did lots of work trying to find mundane explanations for the bible's events.

Like during the time of Moises a vulcan may've erupted somewhere in Greece and the fallout in Egypt would've lasted quite a bit of time, with Moises simply being smart enough to claim it was god's punishment for the pharaoh refusing his people to leave. Rain of frogs is something that just happens in our world, and then a bunch of dead frogs would've resulted in a quick multiplication of flies that in turn would carry a bunch of nasty diseases to Egypt's livestock and finally the humies, along big clouds of volcanic ash darkening the skies. Probably a lot more people than the pharaoh's first son died, but that death was particularly personal. The parting of the waters would've also been a simple geological event due to tectonic activity connected to the volcano's eruption.

tl;r: the bible is all about people being lucky/smart and claiming it was some old dude on the sky watching over them. So you shouldn't try to outsmart/outuck them or the old dude on the sky will smite your ass.

It's important to remember that the United Monarchy of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah has no actual historical evidence. There is no particular reason to believe it ever happened, and thus all characters from that period in the bible are probably fictional. There is no reason to believe that any stories about King David are true because there's no evidence he was a real person.

Meanwhile, Exodus is definitely false. There was no Moses, no ten plagues, no servitude in Egypt.

-Username17

Using only wikipedia as my source *ahem*, it seems that the David v Goliath story is basically a retelling of a story taken from the Iliad...

Oh oh, this is an appropriate time I guess to mention God Knows, by Joseph Heller. Solomon, in fact, was actually really dumb and actually wanted to cut the baby in half. Wonder if the book holds up now, I enjoyed it as a teenager...

Yeah, lots of people love to do the "actually the reality of the story depicted was X" for a bunch of stories that pretty didn't happen. You are literally arguing about whether Eleminster was a plucky 12 year old or a plucky 13 year old in whatever origin story book was written for him.

Which doesn't actually change the nature of the debate. As depicted in the bible meaning the same as 'in the movie' or 'as in the novel'. Whether some people believe it to be literally true or complete fiction doesn't actually impact what the book says. And even when taken as pure fiction, the stories of the bible do matter. It's worthwhile to know what the Bible says if only for the impact on culture.

I was pointing out that some of the impact on culture involves deliberately altering what the Bible says to make a better story. When you can tell your 'bible-thumper' that he's WRONG based on what the Bible says because he's only learned Exodus from watching Dreamwork's 'The Prince of Egypt', that's a good thing.

So, in any case, most Bible Stories are depicted as far more badass than they actually were (as described in the bible - not as they happened in historical fact because many/most probably didn't).

deaddmwalking wrote:Which doesn't actually change the nature of the debate. As depicted in the bible meaning the same as 'in the movie' or 'as in the novel'. Whether some people believe it to be literally true or complete fiction doesn't actually impact what the book says. And even when taken as pure fiction, the stories of the bible do matter. It's worthwhile to know what the Bible says if only for the impact on culture.

I was pointing out that some of the impact on culture involves deliberately altering what the Bible says to make a better story. When you can tell your 'bible-thumper' that he's WRONG based on what the Bible says because he's only learned Exodus from watching Dreamwork's 'The Prince of Egypt', that's a good thing.

So, in any case, most Bible Stories are depicted as far more badass than they actually were (as described in the bible - not as they happened in historical fact because many/most probably didn't).

Read this and tell my which parts are from the story as depicted by the bible, and which parts are someone thinking the bible explains an actual event?

When you take into account that:
- Slings were extremely precise and dangerous weapons, they probably had longer range than the bows of that period.
- The rocks in the place were the battle took place are extremely dense.
- Goliath was a giant, and from what he says he seems to be having a bad eyesight, which might indicate that he was suffering from acromegaly, which means he was probably more vulnerable to shots in the head than the average.

A lot of the Bible stories are simply lies - or made-up stories, if you think 'lies' is too loaded a term.

The city of Jericho, for example, was destroyed long before the period in which Exodus is supposed to have occurred in. The ancient Jews didn't sack it at all. So there's no need to speculate about earthquakes knocking the walls down, since they never fell down before a proto-Israeli army in the first place. Basically they came across the ruins, and said, "Oh yeah, we must've destroyed that place, because God is awesome and we're awesome!"

Remember: science does not provide an explanation for why duck quacks don't echo - because they do. It's necessary to establish a claim as true before finding an explanation is necessary, and most of the Bible either isn't true or cannot be established as such. Don't worry about accounting for the parting of the Red Sea until you've first established the reality of the Exodus and Moses and so forth.

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To return to the thread topic: The Ghost Pirates, by William Hope Hodgeson. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10966

It's a challenge to make it through the sea chanty and the archaic idioms and the technical terminology and the phonetic sailor dialect, but well worth the effort - it's one of the creepiest things I've ever read.