Ehrman takes some time to review one of Carrier’s objections of his book.
Carrier had originally made the point that there was a penis-nosed statue in the Vatican museum, while Ehrman said that there was no such thing. Ehrman responded by saying that he had said “There is no penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock in the Vatican”, not that there was no statue at all. Ehrman even seems to suggest that he thinks Carrier says the statue is of Peter, even though he says “It does not have the name “Peter” on it (Murdock never claimed it did; that it represents him is only an interpretation), but it apparently exists (or did exist) exactly as she describes.” So it seems that on a literal interpretation of what Ehrman said (which should be granted) they are both correct: The statue does (or did) exist, and the idea that it is of Peter is simply an interpretation and not fact.
So what do I think this point levels out to? Ehrman should have been more clear, and Carrier should have been more literal in his reading.
I went through all of Murdock’s references, and was interested by what I found. The original claim can be traced to basically two sources from 200-300 years ago, none of the sources cited makes the same claim she does, virtually all of the sources disagree on various points, and the only modern scholarly sources she quotes as referring to it, actually treat the ‘Vatican’ story cautiously as hearsay. I have left more information at Bart Ehrman’s blog.
http://ehrmanblog.org/acharya-s-richard-carrier-and-a-cocky-peter-or-a-cock-and-bull-story/
The fact is that there is no penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock either in the Vatican or anywhere else. Additionally, the only penis-nosed statue to which Murdock does refer isn’t of Peter, and isn’t in the Vatican; it’s in the Gabinetto Segreto of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples.[1] She was wrong on both counts.
_________________
[1] Panzanelli & Scholosser, ‘Ephemeral bodies: wax sculpture and the human figure’ (2008), refers explicitly to the ‘notorious “Vatican Bronze”‘ (p. 121), and the image shown is the very image cited by Murdock (p. 122), yet when we turn to the page on which the statue is described we find the image which Murdock claims is hidden in the ‘Vatican Treasury’ is in fact, ‘a phallic monument in the Gabinetto Segreto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, supposedly recovered at Pompeii/Herculaneum’ (p. 122). Not only is there no reference to Peter, but we discover that the the image is not hidden in the ‘Vatican Treasury’, but is in the Gabinetto Segreto in Naples, the discreetly hidden collection of sexual and erotic artifacts found in Pompeii.
This is even more interesting since Pompeii was only excavated in the late 18th century, so 17th century sources such as ‘Romanum Museum’ (1692), couldn’t possible be referring to the same artifact. So all those later works relying on the 17th sources as evidence for this artifact are wrong, and all those later works relying on 18th and 19th century sources claiming this is kept in the Vatican are also wrong. Naturally any sources claiming this has anything whatever to do with Peter, are also wrong; of course, despite all Murdock’s sources, she didn’t provide any which made such a connection.