James wrote a very interesting post on Carrier’s response to Thom Stark. I thought he made some useful points which need to be addressed (and I did send along a link to Carrier, so hopefully when he is caught up he will respond), but one in statement in James’ post struck me as peculiar.
“I can only assume that he considers it self-evident that the term translated “cut off” in Daniel 9:26 can only mean “killed,” which suggests he may unwittingly be reading it through the lens of later Christian interpreters.”
This comment surprised me; I’ve been doing a great deal of research on 11Q13 for a paper I am in the process of writing for publication and in all the authoritative works I’ve read, the phrase ‘cut-off’ is generally accepted to mean ‘killed’. The author(s) of Dan. 9 used the phrase to explain that Onias III was the messiah, who did die, so in this context it definitely does mean ‘killed’ and there certain was a tradition of linking Melchizedek with a dying messiah between the point of 11Q13’s composition and the Nag Hammadi version as the Gnostics certainly interpreted ‘cut off’ to mean ‘killed’ when they wrote their version of 11Q13 in Melchizedek (who they link with Jesus). So while it doesn’t eo ipso mean ‘killed’, in the interpretation of this phrase from Daniel 9, in 11Q13, in the ongoing messianic beliefs from the Roman period to Late Antiquity, it probably does mean ‘killed’–with a higher probability than any other meaning, and enough probability that it is unlikely that its interpreters used it to mean something else.
I would also like to point out something about this argument:
But I would point out that Christians did not merely expect a Messiah who would die. They believed that the Messiah had died. And that surely has relevance to whether or not there was a historical Jesus. Perhaps others expected such a figure. Christians believed – and we have no evidence that their contemporaries disputed this point – that the figure had in fact appeared and had died.
The problem with this is that we have written accounts (clearly fictional) of earthquakes, the sun going dark, the dead rising from the graves, and these were written down and never once disputed by any contemporary. This is the problem with this criterion. Belief, as strong as it is, does not determine historical certainty.
In other words, just because Christians believed their messiah lived and died does not mean it definitely occurred. And simply because no contemporary disputed it does not ipso facto imply that it did happen. Certainly, it might have happened. But when wholly fabricated world-effecting events like earthquakes or the sun going out can exist without any recorded disputation, then certainly a fabricated individual could have gone completely undisputed as well. I just don’t believe that this is a valid argument to make, when clearly more extraordinary events go completely undisputed by contemporaries; the plights of a peasant Jew in Galilee seem insignificant to dispute when one considers the scope of the sun going out. And this is a point Carrier makes in his Proving History that James should really consider reading (though I understand his hesitation–reading about method can be rather dull).
But I do thank James for his otherwise interesting and insightful post.