Talk:Francesco Carotta

"Beyond any reasonable doubt"? That sounds POV to me.Bjones 20:06, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, maybe it is POV, but if you read the book, which is online on Carotta's homepage you will see that it is justified to say this. Anyway I removed "beyond any reasonable doubt". Populares 00:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Needless to say, it's quite the bombshell. I appreciate the work you've done, but I still want to let a few other editors review this before removing the tag.Bjones 03:52, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

What is the evidence that he is a linguist and phiolosopher? i know he says he is, but does he have any degrees? Any university appointments? Publications in peer-reviewed journals? This seems like self-promotion to me. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• • I object to his being listed as a "biblical scholar." Are we defining "Biblical Scholars" not as professionals with advanced degrees in New Testament or Hebrew Bible history and textual criticism but "anyone who wrote a book on a biblical topic"? If he's a philosopher and linguist, list him in those categories, not "Biblical Scholar." Considering some of the other names on the list, this fellow doesn't belong at all...

J. Murphy-O'Connor

O'Connor's remark is not admissable for two reasons.

(1) O'Connor's criticism is superficial and biased.

• (a) He doesn't mention the book in the bibliography and doesn't deliver any proof to back up his criticism; it's therefore biased and unscientific.
• (b) This has to be viewed in conjunction with the fact that author User:Dougweller has taken O'Connor's remark out of context: O'Connor actually begins the short passage quoted in this article with the following sentence: "Greatly exaggerated conclusions have been drawn from coincidences"; but nowhere does O'Connor explain what the "conclusions" are, why they are "exaggerated", why they are even "greatly exaggerated", what the basis for Carotta's "conclusions" is, and why Carotta's basis is supposed to be mere "coincidences". Therefore this latest addition falls under WP:Libel—"all contributors should recognize that it is their responsibility to ensure that material posted on Wikipedia is not defamatory"—and conflicts with WP:Biographies of living persons (Criticism & praise), in that no WP-material should be based on sources that are biased, taking sides, and are not neutral.
• (c) Furthermore the WP guidelines clearly state that authors "must not give a disproportionate amount of space to particular viewpoints", especially to minority viewpoints. Since this article doesn't mention the numerous positive reviews of Carotta's book by scholars and journalists, this article would then itself be biased and not neutral — and possibly defamatory.
• (d) It is not clear why a priest and theologian such as O'Connor would be a representative critic and a reliable secondary source. In fact Carotta is not a theologian. The main fields of classical sciences used in his book are philology/linguistic analysis, archaeology, history and anthropology. Philologians like Fotis Kavoukopoulos, archaeologists like Erika Simon, historians like Luciano Canfora or anthropologians like Francisco Rodriguez Pascual have supported or endorsed Carotta's work or have even expanded on it.
  

Conclusion: If at all, Murphy O'Connor's ubershort passage should be quoted in a separate paragraph in the article as a prime example of the Biased and unscientific reception of Carotta's work.

(2) O'Connor has obviously not read the book, because none of what he writes about Carotta is factually correct.

• (a) Carotta does not write that Christ and Caesar have the same initials. This was actually written by Victor Hugo.
• (b) Carotta does not simply write that the crossing of the Rubicon and Jordan are a parallel, because nowhere in the Bible and the Caesar sources are the Rubicon and the Jordan actually mentioned by name at first, only as a border or "the river". The philological examination however shows that the Jordan is paralleled by the river Aternus, which Caesar also crossed. Rubicon/Jordan are surely a parallel in the overall dramatic structure of both narratives, but scientifically they are not.
• (c) O'Connor alleges that Carotta maintains that "someone thought it worthwhile to invent a figure called Jesus Christ". On the contrary, Carotta does not maintain that the figure of Jesus Christ was invented, but that it is the product of a diegetic transposition, a rewriting and cultural displacement process. Carotta actually maintains that (i) Jesus is a historical figure, and that the relevant historical person behind him was C. Iulius Caesar, and that (ii) Jesus Christ as the god of Christianity is a mutation of the god Divus Iulius.
• (d) Carotta does not iterate mimetic standpoints, in that Jesus' life is supposed to have been "modeled" on the life of Caesar. On the contrary, according to Carotta, Jesus' life is the life of Caesar—after a diegetic transposition.
• (e) O'Connor falsely claims that Carotta delivers no explanations, when all of his book is about just that: delivering explanations for the countless parallels.
• (f) O'Connor also writes that Carotta supposedly "carefully" avoids "any explanation" of why there are four gospels. In fact, Carotta deals with this issue extensively, laying out the possible transmission history and showing that GMark is a gospel with an Antonian tendency, overlayed by the later synoptics (Matthew/Luke) with sondergut from sources dealing with Octavian, and that GJohn (like most of the Epistles) is a gospel with strict Augustan sources and tendencies.
• (g) It is furthermore striking that O'Connor—in his book about Paul—does not even mention Carotta's conclusion, namely that the historical Paul (mentioned in Acts II) is in fact Flavius Josephus. It could be assumed that O'Connor wanted to avoid mentioning the many parallels in both people's vita.

For the above-mentioned reasons, the paragraph about O'Connor's "criticism" has been deleted. In the future, contributors to this article like User:Dougweller—who is after all an administrator here at WP—should avoid infringing on WP rules and guidelines. —85.179.141.31 (talk) 14:45, 21 March 2009 (UTC)