Skeptical response to Bart Ehrman's book in the historical Jesus

[Cerebrum123]

If you've got a serious case of false dichotomy going on. If Christianity isn't true, that doesn't mean God doesn't exist.

I should have qualified that better. Based on everything I have studied, it's either atheism, Christianity, or some form of deism, which I see as functionally indistinguishable from atheism.

That's more of the false dichotomy.

Does the qualification help?

You could ask the "why does God care" question about sending Christ. Who can fathom God's reasoning?

In this scenario you can ask "Why?", but you can't really deny that He does care. In the other, if He doesn't care enough to help us avoid hell, then why would He care if we obeyed Him or not? Oh, and the answer seems to be that we are made in God's image, so we have inherent worth as such. It's the same reason the Bible gives for murder being wrong.

Piling non-sequiturs on top of false dichotomies isn't a good idea.

I can see the false dichotomy, and I have qualified that. Having done that, a God who doesn't care(ie deism), is little different from a God who doesn't exist, functionally speaking anyway.

As I said in my first response to you, that you and Paul claim thus doesn't make it so.

You said that you didn't know where Christians took the "wrong turn". I was pointing out the most blatant NT example of this thought process.

You're proving my point. There doesn't have to be a salvific goal, nor would one be expected.

You acted as if there was no reward/punishment mindset in the OT regarding obeying God. This is clearly not the case. There is even expectation of salvation, as early as Genesis it is prophesied.

Genesis 3:14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

Abraham was given the promise that all nations would be blessed through his offspring.

Genesis 22:17-19
New International Version (NIV)
17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring[a] all nations on earth will be blessed,[b] because you have obeyed me.”

Even in Isaiah you have a look into the future of God's Kingdom.

Isaiah 11:1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

David expected to see the son he had through Bathsheba

2 Samuel 12:21 His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”

22 He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ 23 But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

That must be it.

This sounds a lot snarkier than it was intended. It's kind of a cheap shot on your part to imply that my knowledge is faulty somehow as opposed to allowing that I could form a different conclusion with the same set of information. I could turn it around and say that you've forgotten or are looking in the wrong places. Intended or not, it comes across as a reason to dismiss conclusions without actually engaging the reasoning behind them.

Perhaps mine sounded worse than intended as well. Usually when it comes to something in the Bible, especially the OT, there are many people who expect things to be explicitly spelled out for them. That wasn't always the case, and in fact, I'm pretty sure that they left out a lot of information they were sure their audience would have taken for granted back then. There are also a lot you can miss out on, or even forget. I know it happens to me too.

Your explanation is definitely possible. I see people come to different opinions on stuff, even with the same information. It's usually more obvious on something like a publicized court case, but, I still see it happen.

ETA: I have to take a little bit of a break from this, but I still welcome a response. With certain medical stuff lately, I have to do more walking, and some other stuff. Hasn't exactly been the greatest week.

ETA2: Except for coming across wrong, I felt it was still a decent discussion.

[shunyadragon]

Ehrman does not see Jesus as leading any kind of violent rebellion against Rome.

I did not say violent rebellion. In Rome's view he was advocating rebellion against Rome by claiming to be 'King of the Jews,' and the standard punishment is to be crucified.

[Palaeogrammatos]

...There is even expectation of salvation, as early as Genesis it is prophesied.

Genesis 3:14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

This is an oft badly misread passage from scripture. Since you are using this to illustrate the promise of salvation, I will ask you to point directly to the place in the cited text that explicitly indicates this. By the way, the word (mis)translated as both "crush" and "strike" is the SAME word. There is nothing on the face of the passage that warrants a change in the translation: "He will bruise your head and you will bruise his heel." In other words: snakes bite people. People step on snakes. It's all pretty pedestrian.

Even in Isaiah you have a look into the future of God's Kingdom.

Isaiah 11:1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

I'm not sure what is altogether exceptional about this passage. It is an apocalyptic prophecy, and like all such similar sorts of literature this "worldview" culminates in a future, glorious, cosmic hope for the dispersed, then occupied nation of Israel. "God's kingdom" here is nothing like the conventional Christian idea of heaven. This is a hopeful longing for a real world nationally conceived restoration.

David expected to see the son he had through Bathsheba

2 Samuel 12:21 His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”

22 He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ 23 But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

But in accordance with the ancient Jewish and early Israelite concept of the afterlife, this expectation was not to see him in heaven, but rather in Sheol: the realm of the dead; the domain of the shades.

[NormATive]

1 Corinthians 15:13-15
New International Version (NIV)
13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

If Jesus was not real, and did not really rise from the dead then Christianity is completely in vain, and useless.[/QUOTE]

You can't really be that stupid can you?

[Doug Shaver]

We have NO stories of Jesus between his "increasingly" miraculous birth and the beginning of his public ministry. What writer would do that?

Yes, I have. It's wonderful poetry.

It is wonderfully poetic, but it is prose. And it is attributed to a man named Almustafa, who is talking to several people who have come to bid him farewell because he is leaving them after having lived in their city for several years. The narrative includes no mention of Almustafa's birth, no mention of anything about his life before coming to their city, and no mention of why he is leaving.

I meant, what writer of fiction would go to the trouble of creating a character like Jesus and give us virtually no biographical information?

On the assumption (for the sake of discussion) that Mark created Jesus, how does Gibran's creation of Almustafa differ from Mark's in terms of omitted biographical detail?

What does it matter if he existed in reality or not?

Many people are very interested in the subject, and I happen to be one of them. I didn't start this thread. I just joined in.

If he did not exist, I think there is much to learn from the fact that for almost 2,000 years, there has been a nearly unanimous consensus in the Western world that he did exist, even among people who have been quite hostile to the religion that he, or his presumed disciples, allegedly founded.

The philosophy that bears his name is just as real.

This discussion is not about the credibility of any teaching attributed to him.

[Doug Shaver]

I would agree that the evidence for Jesus' existence is not strong, but I would also suggest that it is better than the case for the invention of an entirely mythical Christ

You have a lot of company. At the moment, practically the entire academic world agrees.

and furthermore, the plausibility of the existence of Jesus is entirely unremarkable.

It is, prima facie. The problems arise on secunda facie.

there is no precedent from which to conclude that they were intended as anything but "historical."

What would that precedent look like, if there were one?

but it strains credulity to imagine that they were intended as works of fiction.

Why? What did other works of Greco-Roman fiction have that the gospels don't have? Or, what do the gospels have that is missing from other fiction written during that time in that part of the world?

Furthermore, there are enough semiticisms throughout the gospels to indicate that these were written by Jews; there is enough literary and generic overlap with Second Temple Jewish literature to confirm that these were produced within a Palestinian Jewish context.

I'm not qualified to agree or disagree, but I know there are qualified people who do disagree.

As mentioned in another post, Richard Carrier is currently leading the mythicist charge, and his argument was very thoroughly debunked by Thom Stark here, here, and here.

I'll read the links later and maybe post a critique. But I have read lots and lots of attempts to debunk Carrier and have yet to find a cogent argument in any of them.

Carrier depends upon one of the Dead Sea Scrolls texts, 11Q13, in an attempt to illustrate this concept from within a Second Temple Jewish milieu.

If that text were the only evidence Carrier had to work with, then his argument would probably be in very serious trouble.

This is much more historically and socially palatable than the idea of a fictional figure at the heart of some quasi-Jewish mystery religion erupting from within Palestine.

I don't judge theories by their palatability, historical or social.

[robrecht]

I did not say violent rebellion. In Rome's view he was advocating rebellion against Rome by claiming to be 'King of the Jews,' and the standard punishment is to be crucified.

Good, that's what I was trying to clarify. In what sense do you (or Ehrman, if you prefer) think Jesus was advocating rebellion against Rome? Or do you think this is lost to history and we can only recover what Rome, ie, Pilate or the local Judean sanhedrin probably thought?

[Palaeogrammatos]

Good, that's what I was trying to clarify. In what sense do you (or Ehrman, if you prefer) think Jesus was advocating rebellion against Rome? Or do you think this is lost to history and we can only recover what Rome, ie, Pilate or the local Judean sanhedrin probably thought?

I expect that shunyadragon will answer differently, but I for one am not satisfied with his presentation of Jesus's movement and Rome's response. I'm not convinced that the real problem was specifically that Jesus claimed the Jewish throne. For Rome, it would have been enough that Jesus proclaimed the imminent end of the Roman empire and the establishment of a divine, global kingdom that coincided with the restoration of Israel. Jesus' message is consistent with an apocalyptic worldview that appeared from the outside-in to be a radical and dangerous form of nationalism. Jesus was in reality probably a very minor political threat, but Rome dealt with him as they did with all such quibbles. The severity of the response was in no small part exacerbated by the fact that he was so visible in Jerusalem during passover.

So, my answer to your question is that Jesus was probably not advocating "rebellion" against Rome so much as he was threatening the peace at a most inopportune time by implication of his apocalyptic expectations. We can see this by way of a careful read of the historical sources at our disposal, and to the best of our ability in our imperfect efforts to reconstruct a plausible, realistic scenario that accounts for all the evidence. This means that we take what the gospels say seriously, but within a context that understands that the intersection between "history", "religion", and "literature" in the ancient world is much more fluid than it is by modern standards. So then, we have examples from history of similar movements to Jesus's; we have examples of similar rhetoric and teaching as his; we have examples of similar sorts of literature to the gospels; we have examples of similar sorts of Roman responses to local Jewish apocalyptically motivated uprisings. We can use these to reconstruct an imperfect picture, but one that likely fairly represents the contours of what actually happened.

[robrecht]

I expect that shunyadragon will answer differently, but I for one am not satisfied with his presentation of Jesus's movement and Rome's response. I'm not convinced that the real problem was specifically that Jesus claimed the Jewish throne. For Rome, it would have been enough that Jesus proclaimed the imminent end of the Roman empire and the establishment of a divine, global kingdom that coincided with the restoration of Israel. Jesus' message is consistent with an apocalyptic worldview that appeared from the outside-in to be a radical and dangerous form of nationalism. Jesus was in reality probably a very minor political threat, but Rome dealt with him as they did with all such quibbles. The severity of the response was in no small part exacerbated by the fact that he was so visible in Jerusalem during passover.

So, my answer to your question is that Jesus was probably not advocating "rebellion" against Rome so much as he was threatening the peace at a most inopportune time by implication of his apocalyptic expectations. We can see this by way of a careful read of the historical sources at our disposal, and to the best of our ability in our imperfect efforts to reconstruct a plausible, realistic scenario that accounts for all the evidence. This means that we take what the gospels say seriously, but within a context that understands that the intersection between "history", "religion", and "literature" in the ancient world is much more fluid than it is by modern standards. So then, we have examples from history of similar movements to Jesus's; we have examples of similar rhetoric and teaching as his; we have examples of similar sorts of literature to the gospels; we have examples of similar sorts of Roman responses to local Jewish apocalyptically motivated uprisings. We can use these to reconstruct an imperfect picture, but one that likely fairly represents the contours of what actually happened.

Thanks for your response. As I understand Ehrman (again I've only read a little of his stuff), he thinks Jesus and his followers must have (in the sense of most probably) thought of him(self) as the (a?) messiah in order for his followers to make this claim despite the execution and even aside from the resurrection appearances. Do you have a more plausible explanation or just think it is just not possible to know with any degree of even plausibility or probability?

[Palaeogrammatos]

Thanks for your response. As I understand Ehrman (again I've only read a little of his stuff), he thinks Jesus and his followers must have (in the sense of most probably) thought of him(self) as the (a?) messiah in order for his followers to make this claim despite the execution and even aside from the resurrection appearances. Do you have a more plausible explanation or just think it is just not possible to know with any degree of even plausibility or probability?

I think that Ehrman's explanation is fine, but also that the idea of "messiah" in Second Temple Judaism is probably not very easily understood. As a result of the Christian interpretation of Old Testament messianic passages, the term is commonly misunderstood to be interchangeable with "god", which is just simply not the case. I would agree that the most popular concept of messianism at the time probably held that this figure would be the next king of Judah (Israel?). However, there is evidence from the second and first cent. BCE to suggest that the term had a much broader and varied meaning that also did not necessarily require that this figure was a king. Some texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls possibly indicate two or more contemporary "messiahs", and still others regularly use the term synonymously with "prophet".

So, all that to say that yes, I would agree that Jesus most likely understood himself—and was understood by his followers to be a messiah. But further, that this did not necessarily imply that he was staking a claim to the throne. Furthermore, it is also possible that he did not necessarily view himself as a "messiah", but did envision his own work as the inauguration point of the messianic age. There are many of his sayings (predominantly from Luke, I believe) which seemingly to suggest that he viewed himself as the "forerunner"—the new Elijah or the eschatological prophet. In the end, it's a complicated picture.

*EDIT* FYI: Why 𝔐 Isa 45:15?

[robrecht]

I think that Ehrman's explanation is fine, but also that the idea of "messiah" in Second Temple Judaism is probably not very easily understood. As a result of the Christian interpretation of Old Testament messianic passages, the term is commonly misunderstood to be interchangeable with "god", which is just simply not the case. I would agree that the most popular concept of messianism at the time probably held that this figure would be the next king of Judah (Israel?). However, there is evidence from the second and first cent. BCE to suggest that the term had a much broader and varied meaning that also did not necessarily require that this figure was a king. Some texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls possibly indicate two or more contemporary "messiahs", and still others regularly use the term synonymously with "prophet".

So, all that to say that yes, I would agree that Jesus most likely understood himself—and was understood by his followers to be a messiah. But further, that this did not necessarily imply that he was staking a claim to the throne. Furthermore, it is also possible that he did not necessarily view himself as a "messiah", but did envision his own work as the inauguration point of the messianic age. There are many of his sayings (predominantly from Luke, I believe) which seemingly to suggest that he viewed himself as the "forerunner"—the new Elijah or the eschatological prophet. In the end, it's a complicated picture.

*EDIT* FYI: Why 𝔐 Isa 45:15?

I agree. There are lots of plausible scenarios. I think Ehrman has an overly optimistic view of independent attestation, for which he does not assume the burden of proof. As a popularist, he doesn't need to, but his his historical methodology is essentially the same as Meier's, and he also has little interest in the prior questions of indirect or direct dependence upon sources and authorial creativity. I think God is pretty well hidden, but finds us in unexpected ways.

[NormATive]

It is wonderfully poetic, but it is prose. And it is attributed to a man named Almustafa, who is talking to several people who have come to bid him farewell because he is leaving them after having lived in their city for several years. The narrative includes no mention of Almustafa's birth, no mention of anything about his life before coming to their city, and no mention of why he is leaving.

Yes, now that you jogged my memory; I do remember it was sort of structured like Job where there were questions and answers. But, you are right. No details of his birth or family - just a recitation of his philosophy of life. I particularly liked the section on Death. How we must come to embrace it as a releasing of our selves and "melt into the sun" or some such. It's been QUITE a while since I read that (high school!).

On the assumption (for the sake of discussion) that Mark created Jesus, how does Gibran's creation of Almustafa differ from Mark's in terms of omitted biographical detail?

Gibran paints a complete picture of what Almustafa thinks and feels about every aspect of life. With Mark's Jesus, we get little snippets of sayings and parables. You really don't get much of a picture of what made Jesus "tick." Hell, I don't even think we can attribute half of what he supposedly said to the "real" Jesus.

If he did not exist, I think there is much to learn from the fact that for almost 2,000 years, there has been a nearly unanimous consensus in the Western world that he did exist, even among people who have been quite hostile to the religion that he, or his presumed disciples, allegedly founded.

As a writer, I wish I could create a character that emblematic!

NORM

[Doug Shaver]

how does Gibran's creation of Almustafa differ from Mark's in terms of omitted biographical detail?

Gibran paints a complete picture of what Almustafa thinks and feels about every aspect of life. With Mark's Jesus, we get little snippets of sayings and parables.

I'm not sure that addresses my question. Your claim was that the gospels' omission of biographical detail is evidence for their not being works of fiction. But there is even less biographical detail in The Prophet. Indeed, there is essentially none at all.

[Palaeogrammatos]

What would that precedent look like, if there were one?


Why? What did other works of Greco-Roman fiction have that the gospels don't have? Or, what do the gospels have that is missing from other fiction written during that time in that part of the world?

Simply because I don't believe we have such a precedent in the first place, I'm not sure there is an easy answer to your first question. The way to address these issues is to point out, first, that the secondary sources all treat the gospels as history. On the face of it that seems like a lousy argument, except that when one compares the situation to the larger body of ancient literature in the Greco Roman world, the reception of the gospels as history would seem to suggest that they were intended to be history, and that they were thus also likely based on actual events of some sort.

Furthermore, and more importantly, since the gospels are Hellenistic Jewish works, they ought to be compared to other Hellenistic Jewish works, and to my knowledge, there was not much of a market for Jewish fiction in the first cent. Of course there were fictions written, and fictional characters invented, such as Daniel and Esther, but these figures were then incorporated into the Jewish historical narrative (Actually, in the case of Daniel, he may very well have been an actual person—there are "Daniels" mentioned in Ezekiel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles). In other words, it would be difficult if not impossible to demonstrate an intent on the part of the author for his work to be received as fiction in this climate. Especially so for Jesus, since he doesn't do or say much of anything all that remarkable to distinguish him from many other "historical" accounts written in the period and featuring actual people. The burden of proof I would suggest is squarely on the claimant who believes this literature to be completely fabricated to demonstrate why this should be the case. A straightforward reading against their cultural background would indicate that they are not.

I'm not qualified to agree or disagree, but I know there are qualified people who do disagree.

Disagree with what exactly? The presence of semiticisms in the Gospels or the Jewish origins of the Gospels? Both of these facts are almost universally embraced within scholarship today, and the already extremely robust consensus seems only to be growing. I would need to hear an effective counter-argument that hasn't already been widely debunked.

I'll read the links later and maybe post a critique. But I have read lots and lots of attempts to debunk Carrier and have yet to find a cogent argument in any of them.


If that text were the only evidence Carrier had to work with, then his argument would probably be in very serious trouble.

It is not the only one, but it is certainly the one text that Carrier forwards as the best evidence to make his argument. I will post a critique I have written in response to Carrier from another forum below. After having read some of his work, I have to say that I am not overly impressed by his exegetical skills. He may very well be a qualified classicist, but he does not leave any doubt about his incompetence with regards to Second Temple Jewish history, culture, and literature.

[Palaeogrammatos]

Background: Carrier’s hypothesis is that the Christian gospels were constructed around the idea of a dying rising cosmic figure, based on common notions that ferment in fertility religions from the period. He depends heavily upon a heavily christologised interpretation of Daniel 9, as well as the fragmentary 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and contends that this idea about a cosmic dying god figure had some currency within at least one sect in Second Temple Judaism. My response to him is recorded below.

I have read Carrier’s treatment of 11QMelchizedek, and am underwhelmed.

Extremely. Underwhelmed.

To summarise his unnecessarily wordy discussion, Carrier is basically arguing from 11QMelch to support his idea that there was a dying-rising cosmic messiah figure in Jewish religion that predates Christianity. He believes that the allusion (or citation?) of Dan 9:25–26 in a text that speaks about the Last Days clearly points to an expectation that the exalted divine being figure I noted in my citation is being compared to the only explicit reference to a “messiah” here in Daniel. The text in Daniel reads:

You must know and understand: From the issuance of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the [time of the] anointed leader is seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it will be rebuilt, square and moat, but in a time of distress. And after those sixty-two weeks, the anointed one will disappear and vanish. The army of a leader who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary, but its end will come through a flood. Desolation is decreed until the end of war. (JPS)

Carrier basically infers that the anointed leader who “disappears and vanishes” (or who “is cut off an is no more”) is the divine being from the preceding lines who will vanquish the enemies of Israel and pronounce justice on the Day of Atonement in the Last Days. Carrier believes that 11QMelch can only be understood if this god-like figure dies as an atonement for sin, and then rises again to vanquish his enemies.

His reading has prompted me to consult his curriculum vitae, and as I suspected, Carrier does not have any formal training in Hebrew, nor ANY Semitic language for that matter. Furthermore, while he includes Greek papyrology and palaeography among his specialisations, I suspect based on this latest offering that his experience with ancient manuscripts is likely not transferable to the material features and reconstruction of ancient Hebrew parchment.

In short: first, the fact that the messiah who is “cut off and is no more” is missing from the text is indeed extremely problematic. Carrier insists that the readers and interpreters of this passage would have known the overall context of this passage as it stands in Dan 9:25–26, but precisely presumes so without a shred of evidence.

Here is an English translation of how the actual fragmentary remains of these lines appears:

... inasmuch as Scripture sa[ ] beautiful

upon the mountains are the fee[ ] the messeng[ ] who [ ]nounces peace, who brings [ ] news, [ ]ion, who [ ]ys to Zion, ‘Your [ ]vine being [ ]

This scripture’s interpretation: “the mountains” [ ] the prophet[ ] they w[ ] proph[ ] to all I[ ]

And “the messenger” is the anointed of the Spir[ ] of whom Dan[ ] spoke, [ ]

good news, who announ[ ] is the one of whom it is wri[ ]en, [ ]

to comfo[ ] ...

Those gaps that you see in the brackets are actual missing parts of the parchment. Dead Sea Scrolls scholars are fairly adept at reconstructing the lacunae with relative confidence, but this does help to underscore what is really problematic about this text—like MOST texts from the DSS. In the estimation of Qumran scholars, there is simply not enough left here to claim many specifics about its shape or function. The point being that there is much conjecture involved in identifying the figures mentioned in this text. Moreover, there is an equal amount of conjecture about the specific scriptures that are cited. In the present instance, the entire citation from Daniel is completely missing, although scholars reasonably assume it was either Dan 9:25 or 9:26, which are the only places in which Daniel explicitly mentions the “messiah”. There is not nearly enough room to reconstruct BOTH Dan 9:25–26, and Carrier believes that it doesn’t matter which of these texts was mentioned, given his opinion that the readers would have been intimately familiar with the precise contents of the entire original prophecy, and they would have always read these things contextually, and would have concluded that these verses were conjoined and with reference to the same figure.

In actual fact, the writers of the Qumran scrolls were consistently quite arbitrary in their employment of scripture. Single words were frequently ripped from their immediate context and reapplied into whole new situations that would totally contradict the original sense of the text. The text in 11QMelchizedek frg. 2 is precisely on this point, in which in the lines immediately preceding the fragmentary reference to Daniel, the following interpretation is offered for Isa 52:7:

This scripture’s interpretation: “the mountains” [are] the prophet[s,] they w[ho were sent to proclaim God’s truth and to] proph[esy] to all I[srael.] And “the messenger” is the Anointed of the Spir[it,] of whom Dan[iel] spoke...

The author of this text is drawing symbolic meanings from a variety of other texts for the point of identifying what is likely a VARIETY of eschatological figures, but not with ANY discernible concern for the natural sense of his base texts. We actually have no idea about what the author found significant about the text in Daniel beyond the fact that it (seems to) employ the word “messiah”. With little more to go on, it is a massive overstatement to claim that the “death” (literally the “cutting off”) of the “anointed leader” was the significant point here. A more likely proposal is that the author was more interested in the timetable (the period of seventy weeks) relative to the “anointed by the spirit” (whoever that was). But even further to the point, most commentators are in agreement that the anointed leader in Dan 9:25 is NOT the same figure as mentioned in the following verse. Such is the problem with apocalyptic language and imagery: in many instances, it is not straightforward what is meant even from one sentence to the next by the authors.

This then, leads me to my second problem with Carrier’s interpretation: There is absolutely nothing to suggest that all the symbols employed in this highly fragmentary text are applied to the SAME FIGURE. Carrier is guilty of “overloading” this text’s use of the Hebrew word משיח, which is transliterated “messiah”, but literally means “anointed one”. Carrier consistently errs in his treatment by insisting that this word is ALWAYS employed to a single, cosmic figure of supernatural deliverance in the Last Days. This is a novice mistake, especially when applied to the DSS, in which משיח appears to refer to a WIDE RANGE of DIFFERENT figures including the high priest in the Last Days, the eschatological Davidic King of Israel, the Old Testament prophets, and the eschatological “herald” who would announce the arrival of God's Kingdom. My understanding of this passage is that its focus is more on ensuring a distinction between the variety of important figures in the Last Days: Melchizedek is identified more closely with Daniel’s son of man in Dan 7:13–14, but this figure is NOT the same as the “messanger” who announces the Day of Salvation and the arrival of the divine being, who is NOT the same as the “anointed of the spirit” who is most likely a temple priest. This is relatively consistent with what we see elsewhere in the DSS and the expectation of an “anointed” king from the line of David who would rule, an “anointed” priest from the line of Aaron who would officiate in the cosmic temple, an “anointed” prophet who would proclaim the arrival of God’s Kingdom, all in the company of God’s angelic army.

Third, Carrier cites the separate apocalyptic discourse from Daniel 12 in an effort to draw a comparison between the “anointed leader” from Dan 9:25–26 with the Archangel Michael who would “rise” in the Last Days. In the first place, there is no clear indication from the text why we should align Michael, who is called השר הגדול, “(lit.) the great prince” with משיח נגיד, “the anointed leader (or chief)”. I suppose it is a possible equation to presume, but one does so on a total absence of corroborating evidence. Rather, the lexical differences between the terms makes such an equation unlikely: according to Köehler and Baumgartner’s Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, נגיד is properly understood as “officer in the Assyrian army next in rank to שר”. While lexicography can at times create problems with various interpretations, I would humbly suggest that the difference between the terms employed in these different discourses actually diminishes the possibility that they were ever taken with reference to the same figure in the pre-Christian era.

I was re-reading this after I posted last night, and noticed an error here in my argument. Carrier proceeds to claim that the word translated into English as “rising ... in the Septuagint is exactly the same word used of Jesus’ resurrection in Mark 9:31 and 10:34.” This is only partially accurate. According to the “Old Greek” version of the Septuagint, the Greek word here in Dan 12:1 is παρέρχομαι, which means "to pass over or through", and NOT ἀνίστημι, which appears in Mark as Carrier claims. This verb, ἀνίστημι, IS then used in Dan 12:2 to describe the RESURRECTION not of a “messiah”, but of the general population:

“Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake (ἀνίστημι = Heb. יקיצו), some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence.”

By way of the contrast here, it is abundantly clear that the Archangel in Dan 12:1 who “rises up” (most likely in judgement) is not a “resurrected” figure. What Carrier has done here, and what he consistently does throughout a lot of his writings wherever he happens to cite the Septuagint as it turns out, is that he depends on the second-century CE recension made by Theodotion. Why is this problematic? Well, set aside in this particular instance the thorny issue of how late Theodotion is, it is simply not a very good Greek translation. Any Septuagint scholar will affirm that Theodotion did not have a very good grasp of Hebrew, and in many places it appears as though he is actually constructing his translation from a Greek text, and not a Hebrew one! So here, in order to make his case Carrier depends on a late, poor translation of Daniel, and then passes this off rather matter-of-factly. Again, I must seriously doubt Carrier’s familiarity with the sources and the languages on this point. All this to establish the point: Dan 12:1 was NOT clearly applied in a Jewish context to the anointed leader (or leaders?) in Dan 9:25–26, and the Archangel in Dan 12:1 was NOT resurrected from the dead.

So, what we have here is Carrier’s utterly vapid interpretation of a text that he really does not understand, as a means to prop up his feeble theory of a messianic expectation in Second Temple Judaism that never existed. This is an absolutely critical error, since most of Carrier’s arguments from this point forward depends upon 11QMelchizedek as evidence for a Jewish belief in a dying-rising-cosmic messiah figure before the emergence of Christianity. This theory utterly fails, and renders more of the rest of Carrier’s discussion moot.