The First Analogy: Of Birds and Foul PlayCarrier compares a teaching of Musonius to one of Jesus’, both of which reference the eating habits of birds. The Musonius teaching, as Carrier explains, addresses the Roman practice of “exposure, i.e. killing or sending into slavery children a family cannot support.” Musonius’ response to this practice is to condemn it, using birds as an example. He asks whether birds, “put away food and store it up.” They don’t, “yet they rear their young and find sustenance for all that are born to them.” Therefore, people, who are more intelligent animals, should do at least as much for their young.
The Jesus teaching is found in Matthew 6:25-34.[2] Carrier cites only v. 26, and later complains that the analogy “seems snatched out of context and is not clear in its meaning.” Readers who begin at vs. 25 and read through 34 will not find these same faults. And readers of any text really should avoid this common error of discussing portions in isolation for their contexts.
Carrier makes a poor comparison of these two teachings. Rufus was addressing the practical and moral question of whether parents were obligated to care for their babies. If birds can do it, he argues, so can people. Jesus was addressing the human tendency to be anxious about basic life necessities. If God takes care of birds, He will take care of His children, who are of far more value to Him. Furthermore, the prominence of the word “anxious” here is important. It is possible to care about having enough to eat and clothes to wear without having anxiety over it. And the overall lesson of His entire teaching here is to put worry aside and to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.” Carrier’s charge that this teaching, “appears incomplete or the logic of the analogy unclear—one immediately notes that humans starve if they do not reap or sow,” is foul play indeed. The meaning is quite clear: Do not be anxious about eating or wearing. Reap and sow, but first seek after Me.
The only thing these two teachings have in common is that they use birds to illustrate a point. Carrier dabbles at determining which teaching borrowed from the other as he strains to suggest that Christian teachings borrowed from or developed out of Stoic philosophy or “indeed of philosophy in general.” He refers to the phrase, “birds who do not sow or reap,” and wonders, simply because the idea is also in Musonius, “whether this was a popular idiom, or if the Gospels were infected by the sayings of other men, placing them in the mouth of Jesus.” But Musonius does not even use the idiom. He writes, “do they put away food and store it up?”—there is no mention of sowing here, and there certainly isn’t a turn of phrase duplicated among different speakers. The question of whether the Gospels “were infected by the sayings of other men, placing them in the mouth of Jesus” is not even hinted at by this reference in Musonius.
Finally, nowhere does Jesus tell people they don’t have to work for food. Carrier writes, “Christians associate the analogy with a guarantee that ‘God will take care of you’ (a claim we know from long experience to be false—he who does not work, does not eat).” The relevant Christian belief is that the ability and opportunity to work (to then eat), are provided by God. (And it is entirely amusing that Carrier would use, “he who does not work, does not eat” as though it stood opposed to a Christian belief. Is he aware that this statement about working and eating is from 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat”?)
The second analogy: Of Wayward Eyes and not Seeing the Point
Carrier writes, “Indeed, in contrast with Jesus who called even those who think of adultery to cut out their eyes (Matthew 5:27-30 [but read on to verse 32![3]], Mark 9:43-9), Musonius said ‘freedom of speech means not suppressing whatever one chances to think.”
Obviously, Jesus did not intend for this particular instruction to be taken literally (and I presume that Carrier understands this as well). If He had, nearly all obedient Christian men would be walking around with mutilated eye sockets and long, white canes. It’s clear that Jesus was speaking with hyperbole in verse 30. After all, how, literally, could a right hand cause one to stumble?
The stumbling is figurative, a metaphor picturing the failure to walk well with the Lord, which is a picture of living obediently to His commands. And the solution to taking the cause of one’s stumble out of one’s life is figurative as well. Better to lose the source of a particular sin than lose one’s whole self in the devouring trap that sin can become.[4]
This is, at least, just one common interpretation of the passage. I have read and heard a few others that find additional meanings in it. What is certain is that Jesus was not addressing the issue of free speech. Carrier’s comparison of Musonius’ comments on the matter to Jesus’ teaching on adultery, lust and related body parts is a very bad analogy. Is Jesus an enemy of free speech for teaching that people should not fantasize scenarios that He deems immoral? If Musonius had taught that one who “chances to think” of something immoral like, say, torturing a child should not suppress that thought, but should do the opposite of suppressing it in order to foster “freedom of speech,” then Carrier would not have written an essay heralding him as a great teacher. Yet only a comment like this would be comparable to this particular teaching of Jesus, as Jesus was addressing only thoughts that He deemed immoral.
Conclusion
It would have been possible for Richard Carrier to extol the virtues of Musonius Rufus and his teachings without rigging up poor analogies to the teachings of Jesus. But it is Carrier’s stated intention to suggest that Musonius is a superior to Jesus as a speaker and moralist. Why Carrier would go to such lengths of poor scholarship as he makes this comparison, I cannot be sure. But the lack of a good comparison between the two undermines Carrier’s thesis.
Endnotes
[1] In this same essay, Carrier also misrepresents the person of Jesus. I offer a correction of this portrayal in <<The Real Jesus: a Brief Portrait.>>
[2] “For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, as to what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, as to what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life’s span? And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is throw into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? Do not be anxious then, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘With what shall we clothe ourselves?’ For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” Matthew 6:25-34. (All translations are from the NASB.)
[3] This is the teaching Carrier references: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30). And these are the verses Carrier omits: “And it was said, ‘Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce,’ but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (v 31-32).
[4] Even more specific to the context of Jesus’ entire sermon, we find these verses immediately precede His teaching on divorce. Jesus was addressing the practice of men who were themselves adulterers, and who would divorce their wives, leaving them to bear the assumed shame of adultery. God had addressed this evil in the Mosaic covenant of law by requiring such men to give their wives a certificate of divorce. (See Deuteronomy 24:1-4). In establishing the new covenant, Jesus teaches here that certificate or not, the only time a person can rightly divorce is when the spouse is guilty of adultery. The whole eye-arm-cutting-off thing can be read not only as a general (and wise!) instruction to protect oneself from the source of sin, but also as specific instruction to adulterers who were wronging their wives. (Let it not be lost on Carrier, who claims that Musonius “had far more to say for the benefit for women than Jesus ever did” that Jesus’ reform of marriage practices, if kept, was a giant leap forward for the women of His time.)
