Ehrman; The Arms Dealer

 In an effort to present mythicism as something respectable to more popular scholars,

Carrier is far more charitable than I would have been.

For example,
Ehrman has straw manned mythicism in several ways.
One of those ways is:

Bart claims
mythicists claim
the mundane claims (about Jesus) in bibles
should be utterly dismissed ... just because the magical claims in bibles aren't credible.

Carrier has been quick and consistent to say:
he actually finds many of the mundane claims about (ordinary mortal) Jesus to be plausible.
 (along with that) An ordinary human Jesus is plausible.

In other words, as a mythicist, Carrier does NOT toss out muggle-Jesus with the magical bathwater.
He grants plausibility to various mundane claims
without arguing that the magic claims sink the mundane claims.

Although, I'd argue that:
The mundane claims DO sink beneath the waters of credibility,
by virtue of being:
* inseparable from the debunked magical claims,
and
* coming from a people who were especially non-credible,
*for a purpose which is inherently dishonest and incentivizes further dishonesty,  
and
* via a preservation-mechanism which is dramatically unreliable. 
---

Consider: 

* Every version of the story differs from the others, except the parts they copied from a common written rumor-source. 

* All of those stories are, by their very fantastical nature, non-credible.

* All of them were based only on local, oral, religious rumors
about a local 'growing legend',

* which developed over decades before anyone ever wrote down what they heard (aka:
the Telephone game; a game which reveals people's common inability to preserve even the most mundane elements of rumors). 

Further, 

* ALL of it is presented as part of a religion which (by the time we hear of it) has been utterly debunked.

* Each version of the rumor is:
presented as
part of a "message" which is (in-and-of-itself; all versions) a bizarre Mafia-eque protection racket.

*The larger narrative has been designed specifically to appeal to (and foster) the most self-destructive and mutually-destructive traits of humanity; 
effectively weaponizing humans against each other, and against themselves. 

*Participation offers nearly instant localized power and privilege for predators.

*The stories advocate for child abuse, domestic abuse, slavery, and other forms of violent injustice.

Further, 

*It is all part of a larger narrative concocted during the iron age (an age of great ignorance), 

* in a part of the world
which was less morally and intellectually developed than some other parts of the world.

* It developed from a common trope.

*It was poorly crafted
to satisfy poor understandings
of an older fictional religion.

From there,...

* Those rumors spread by people selling and buying the con.

* The people spreading that bullshit initially, and then the people attempting to validate those stories later, ...
were accepting it uncritically.

*Also, many of the somewhat-early figures touted as 'vouching' for the legends ... were actually not.

* Merely being a re-teller came with a temptingly abuse-able amount of social power, to speak/breathe one's own voice onto the echo being credited as the voice of a "God";
-which is, of course, all it ever really was.

* There are ZERO contemporary sources
and
ZERO post-contemporary independent sources
for ANYTHING said about "Jesus" (not even for any of the mundane claims).

* Even the most mundane claims about the essential characters in the "gospel" stories are employed as necessary narrative anchors/tethers to our mundane reality
(thus: a reason; a motive and opportunity for people to invent the mundane claims).

* The oldest known versions of the legendary figure were not specifically about a physical person with a physical ministry (those were, instead, (at best) curiously ambiguous about this).
------------

Ehrman's professionally attenuated compromise
between fundamentalism and mythicism
is
not
reasonable.

Not a single, specific bit of mundane minutia about "Jesus" in those stories
is *probable*.

Even if we grant that there "probably was" a real person functioning as core and catalyst for the subsequent evolving lore, ...
there is still nothing specific we can say we "know" about him.

--
More importantly, 
consider:

We could justify saying we "know" some things about Saint Nicholas.
And yet, despite knowing some things about him, ...
are we NOT all mythicists about Santa Clause?

We do "know" some things about Vlad the Impaler.
And yet, despite knowing some things about him,
are we NOT all mythicists about Dracula?

We do "know" some things about the two women in the poly relationship of the man who created the Wonder Woman character.
With that, we could list a few things about Wonder Woman based on mundane and true facts about real women.
And yet,
are we NOT all mythicists about Wonder Woman?

Much of the confusion Ehrman causes
is by intentionally failing to have a different thing to CALL the hypothetical non-magical source character.

Unlike with Nicholas and Santa,
Vlad and Dracula,
Professor Marston's poly-women vs Wonder Woman,
etc..

both the alleged source character and the Magic Man of Christian fundamentalism ...
are called "Jesus".

This excuses from Ehrman from making a crucial distinction, in the sound bites that he literally market$ to fundamentalists; while playing both sides of the fence.

 He says "Jesus really existed", when he should (instead) be saying "Muggle-Jesus might have existed, but Divine-Magic-Jesus (with reasonable certainty) did not exist".

ETHICS 
require that Ehrman have a different thing to call Muggle-Jesus 
than he called Magic-Jesus. 

 However, he doesn't want to lose the con$umer-ba$e of religious fundamentalist's and moderates. 

 They're buying his intentionally uncareful sound-bites; so they can repackage those as part of their continuing "outreach". 

 Bart has actually bragged about this, on his FB blog, where he talks about being approached by Christian-fundamentalists, to write book material about "Jesus" existing. 

He pretends not to know why they seek those endorsements. 

He pretends not to realize what they're going to do with it.

Bart Ehrman is an arms dealer
fitting you with Weapons in the form of words.

And he doesn't really care which side wins,
as long as the room keeps singing (and fighting). 
That's just the business he's in.

This ain't a debate scene.

It's a Goddamned arm's race. 

His Christian, Conservative, Fundamentalist consumer branch 
is literally part of a global cult trying to bring about a literal end of the world, as a (self)fulfilling interpretation of biblical prophecy. 

For that, they need more power.
For that, they need more members.
For that, they need effective marketing.
For that, they need Bart Ehrman. 

Ehrman knows this.
I've brought it to his attention.
He doesn't care. 

--
And yet, 
regardless of what he should be saying, ...

EVERYONE who either outright rejects, or remains ~skeptically unconvinced~ about Magic Jesus
is a Mythicist; of one stripe or another.

Ehrman became a mythicist
when he deconstructed from Christianity.

Ehrman is a mythicist.
-Period.

He is simply not in the same more specific category of mythicists as Carrier.

However, it doesn't serve his professional interests to market himself as such.

So he draws a bold but illusory line between himself and mythicists;
a line which he thickens with strawmen.

This gambit is made easier by refusing to peer-review the properly submitted materials from scholars on the other side of that "line".

Carrier is correct to keep pointing this out.
Ehrman isn't qualified to address Carrier's work,
until he actually (and fully) reads that work.

Meanwhile, Ehrman passes off the mundane elements
(of the religious rumors)
as things we can "know" about "Jesus".
 But we don't really "know" those things. 

We can-and-should admit there ARE plausible pieces, of a plausible Muggle-Jesus. 

We can build various Jesus-constructs with various plausible pieces.

And then we can study those, to see how they might fit into the larger scheme of things.

Whichever fits best, could be argued as the best available theoretical Jesus-construct.

But we can't convert the minutia of those non-credible rumors
into facts.