Richard Carrier, responding to your 5 points at 3/22 12:24. On 1 and 4 I agree with your statements strictly construed however they somewhat miss the point that I was in mode of informal discussion not formal proof. It would be as if you were to raise a topic with some interesting points still under consideration and someone blasts you because it is not formally proven, therefore should not be voiced. The same applies in part to your point 5, in which your entire point is an eloquent argument in agreement with me that Sossianus or whoever was Lactantius's source cannot be considered hard evidence ("could be mistaken" as I put it), given the uncertainties you rightly name (and expressed better), though I do not agree that it therefore logically follows that it is not of interest or improper to mention. As for 2 and 3:
2 -- You missed my point, which is the main reason I did not respond to this one earlier. You argue eloquently that Josephus wrote post-70 which is what I know and said and never said otherwise, therefore your argument establishing that point is both correct and immaterial to the actual point. The actual point is the dating not of Josephus but of Paul's letters. You agree with 100% of mainstream scholarship that those letters (referring, with you, to the genuine letters) were written 50s CE, not one decade earlier or one decade later. The problem is, nothing in Paul's letters with the exception of the claim of an Aretas IV allusion at 2 Cor 11 establishes a pre-70 date directly at any point in those letters, nor have you cited any. You cite an indirect argument from silence, a lack of unambiguous backward allusion to events of 70 in Paul's letters. On Aretas IV, I have submitted an article to a peer-reviewed journal removing the Aretas IV argument for date of Paul's letters by establishing (per argument of my journal submission) from Nabataean evidence that there was another Nabataean king between Malichus II and Rabbel II, ca. 69-70 CE, who may have been named Aretas, the leading candidate for the name, thereby raising another first-century CE possibility for the Aretas referent at 2 Cor 11. All of the argument for the existence of the additional Nabataean king at ca. 69-70 CE whose most plausible name candidate was Aretas, is established independently of 2 Cor 11. There is no reason anyone, whether yourself or any other, should accept that until and if it is vetted through peer review and published (and even then only if the argument holds up to further critical reading and review), but for purposes of this discussion I ask you to assess (if responding to me) how secure you believe the argument for the 50s dating of Paul's letters stands minus the 2 Cor 11 Aretas argument. Does your 50s dating of Paul's letters stand without need of 2 Cor 11, in other words--given that that is the only hard-date argument internal to the letters for a pre-70 date of letter-writing activity of Paul. (Thomas Thompson at Copenhagen has stated for the record that he finds my submitted article proposing a 69-70 CE Aretas V "an entirely convincing hypothesis that should be published".) Again, no reason for you to accept that at this point, not asking you to, but am asking, as a thought experiment, for you to segregate out 2 Cor 11 from your argument-structure for the 50s CE date and assess whether your conclusion on that stands unaffected if 2 Cor 11 were to be removed.
Concerning the argument from silence, that argument may not be as secure as you assume. Who can forget John A.T. Robinson's argument that ALL New Testament writings including the Gospels and Acts are pre-70 because there is no unambiguous backward allusion to 70 in ANY New Testament writing. The same fallacy which applied in the case of John A.T. Robinson's argument with respect to his argument for pre-70 Luke-Acts is paralleled with respect to pre-70 dating of Paul's letter-writing. (Admittedly, the 2nd CE legendary book of Acts retrospectively implies that Paul's letter-writing activity was pre-70, as do the legends of Paul executed by Nero, but those are impeachable on grounds I do not think need to be argued here with you [and there is no space to do so anyway].)
As brought out by Paul George in "Jesus of the Books" (2018): "The humiliation and defeat of the Jews [of 70] is a past event in Paul's writings. Four years after the end of the Great War in 1918, Pope Pius XI issued his first encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio. In this work of about 11,500 words the Great War is mentioned 14 times. Nine years later the same term gets only one mention in his much longer Quadragesimo Anno. Both encyclicals deal with similar themes. Using the writings of the Pope as a guide and noting the indirect references to the War in Paul, we can reasonably speculate that he was writing about 10 years after the event.”
Very relevant here is Etienne Nodet, "On the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple", in A. Giambrone, ed., Rethinking the Jewish War. Archaeology, Society, Traditions, Leuven, Peeters, 2020, 236-248; and Anthony Giambrone, "Temple Arsons and Murder of the Prophets: Early Christian Responses to Jews an the Jewish Revolt(s)", in Giambrone, Rethinking the Jewish War, 249-275. The key point of the articles of Nodet and Giambrone is that the notion of a final and permanent destruction of the temple cult came about, not as usually supposed, by and following the destruction of 70, but rather by the actions of Hadrian of ca. 130. Before that time, between 70 and 130, there are hints that there was operation of the temple cult at Jerusalem with expectation that a building would be rebuilt. In this context the lack of mention in Paul's letters of a permanent destruction of the temple cult is an argument in favor of Paul's letters being pre-Hadrian but not pre-70. Both Nodet and Giambrone criticize modern scholarly and ancient post-Hadrian conflation of the effects of 70 (Titus) and 130 (Hadrian) in the worlds of texts and memory from the second century CE forward.
3 -- on the dating of the era of the apostles in Papias 1-2 generations before Papias as circular argument, while I follow your point partway, there is this: Papias claimed he knew the daughter of one of them, a daughter of Philip, one of Papias's claimed sources. That seems to be a non-circular claim of a date for the apostles one or two generations prior to Papias, depending on the age of that daughter. Nothing in Papias distinguishes the father of Philip's daughter from the apostle by that name in Papias's list of seven names. That there was an originally single figure artificially become and presented as a doublet of two Philips in Acts is argued convincingly by Christopher Matthews, Philip Apostle and Evangelist: Configurations of a Tradition, 2002, Brill.
Belatedly thank you for your time in commenting, referring to content not tone :-)
Richard Carrier, responding to your 5 points at 3/22 12:24. On 1 and 4 I agree with your statements strictly construed however they somewhat miss the point that I was in mode of informal discussion not formal proof. It would be as if you were to raise a topic with some interesting points still under consideration and someone blasts you because it is not formally proven, therefore should not be voiced. The same applies in part to your point 5, in which your entire point is an eloquent argument in agreement with me that Sossianus or whoever was Lactantius's source cannot be considered hard evidence ("could be mistaken" as I put it), given the uncertainties you rightly name (and expressed better), though I do not agree that it therefore logically follows that it is not of interest or improper to mention. As for 2 and 3:
2 -- You missed my point, which is the main reason I did not respond to this one earlier. You argue eloquently that Josephus wrote post-70 which is what I know and said and never said otherwise, therefore your argument establishing that point is both correct and immaterial to the actual point. The actual point is the dating not of Josephus but of Paul's letters. You agree with 100% of mainstream scholarship that those letters (referring, with you, to the genuine letters) were written 50s CE, not one decade earlier or one decade later. The problem is, nothing in Paul's letters with the exception of the claim of an Aretas IV allusion at 2 Cor 11 establishes a pre-70 date directly at any point in those letters, nor have you cited any. You cite an indirect argument from silence, a lack of unambiguous backward allusion to events of 70 in Paul's letters. On Aretas IV, I have submitted an article to a peer-reviewed journal removing the Aretas IV argument for date of Paul's letters by establishing (per argument of my journal submission) from Nabataean evidence that there was another Nabataean king between Malichus II and Rabbel II, ca. 69-70 CE, who may have been named Aretas, the leading candidate for the name, thereby raising another first-century CE possibility for the Aretas referent at 2 Cor 11. All of the argument for the existence of the additional Nabataean king at ca. 69-70 CE whose most plausible name candidate was Aretas, is established independently of 2 Cor 11. There is no reason anyone, whether yourself or any other, should accept that until and if it is vetted through peer review and published (and even then only if the argument holds up to further critical reading and review), but for purposes of this discussion I ask you to assess (if responding to me) how secure you believe the argument for the 50s dating of Paul's letters stands minus the 2 Cor 11 Aretas argument. Does your 50s dating of Paul's letters stand without need of 2 Cor 11, in other words--given that that is the only hard-date argument internal to the letters for a pre-70 date of letter-writing activity of Paul. (Thomas Thompson at Copenhagen has stated for the record that he finds my submitted article proposing a 69-70 CE Aretas V "an entirely convincing hypothesis that should be published".) Again, no reason for you to accept that at this point, not asking you to, but am asking, as a thought experiment, for you to segregate out 2 Cor 11 from your argument-structure for the 50s CE date and assess whether your conclusion on that stands unaffected if 2 Cor 11 were to be removed.
Concerning the argument from silence, that argument may not be as secure as you assume. Who can forget John A.T. Robinson's argument that ALL New Testament writings including the Gospels and Acts are pre-70 because there is no unambiguous backward allusion to 70 in ANY New Testament writing. The same fallacy which applied in the case of John A.T. Robinson's argument with respect to his argument for pre-70 Luke-Acts is paralleled with respect to pre-70 dating of Paul's letter-writing. (Admittedly, the 2nd CE legendary book of Acts retrospectively implies that Paul's letter-writing activity was pre-70, as do the legends of Paul executed by Nero, but those are impeachable on grounds I do not think need to be argued here with you [and there is no space to do so anyway].)
As brought out by Paul George in "Jesus of the Books" (2018): "The humiliation and defeat of the Jews [of 70] is a past event in Paul's writings. Four years after the end of the Great War in 1918, Pope Pius XI issued his first encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio. In this work of about 11,500 words the Great War is mentioned 14 times. Nine years later the same term gets only one mention in his much longer Quadragesimo Anno. Both encyclicals deal with similar themes. Using the writings of the Pope as a guide and noting the indirect references to the War in Paul, we can reasonably speculate that he was writing about 10 years after the event.”
Very relevant here is Etienne Nodet, "On the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple", in A. Giambrone, ed., Rethinking the Jewish War. Archaeology, Society, Traditions, Leuven, Peeters, 2020, 236-248; and Anthony Giambrone, "Temple Arsons and Murder of the Prophets: Early Christian Responses to Jews an the Jewish Revolt(s)", in Giambrone, Rethinking the Jewish War, 249-275. The key point of the articles of Nodet and Giambrone is that the notion of a final and permanent destruction of the temple cult came about, not as usually supposed, by and following the destruction of 70, but rather by the actions of Hadrian of ca. 130. Before that time, between 70 and 130, there are hints that there was operation of the temple cult at Jerusalem with expectation that a building would be rebuilt. In this context the lack of mention in Paul's letters of a permanent destruction of the temple cult is an argument in favor of Paul's letters being pre-Hadrian but not pre-70. Both Nodet and Giambrone criticize modern scholarly and ancient post-Hadrian conflation of the effects of 70 (Titus) and 130 (Hadrian) in the worlds of texts and memory from the second century CE forward.
3 -- on the dating of the era of the apostles in Papias 1-2 generations before Papias as circular argument, while I follow your point partway, there is this: Papias claimed he knew the daughter of one of them, a daughter of Philip, one of Papias's claimed sources. That seems to be a non-circular claim of a date for the apostles one or two generations prior to Papias, depending on the age of that daughter. Nothing in Papias distinguishes the father of Philip's daughter from the apostle by that name in Papias's list of seven names. That there was an originally single figure artificially become and presented as a doublet of two Philips in Acts is argued convincingly by Christopher Matthews, Philip Apostle and Evangelist: Configurations of a Tradition, 2002, Brill.
Belatedly thank you for your time in commenting, referring to content not tone :-)