Why The Gospels Are Myth

[directionless]

Maybe this is a bit off-topic, but after learning about the Markan sandwiches and more elaborate features of the Gospel of Mark, I began to wonder if scholars could partially reconstruct the original text of Mark before scribal errors and edits - sort of like error correcting code.

[Sextus]

 

 

No, but if we had a series of documents that talked about Merlin, Thor, Hercules and Perseus as having lived a few decades earlier, including one that mentions meeting the brother of any of these figures, and references to any of them as historical men, putting them in a clear historical context, then historians definitely would.  Spot the difference.

 

 

We have a series of documents?  I thought it was just two, that they are highly suspect as altered after the fact, and the Roman Empire spent centuries exterminating sects, burning books, manufacturing evidence and rewriting everything to make Christianity into whatever suited their needs.

 

Maybe you should come up with stronger evidence before mocking those who are unconvinced.

 

 

We have a series of documents in the New Testament.  They depict Jesus as having lived just decades earlier and one of them is by a guy who mentions meeting his friend and his brother.  Then we have Josephus and Tacitus.  Even if we ignore Ant. XVIII.3.4 on account of its obvious tampering, there's still Ant. XX.9.1 and Annals XV.44.  If we had anything like that for Merlin, Thor, Hercules or Perseus, historians would be looking for the historical figures behind the myths.  In fact, they would be concluding it's most likely there were such men.  But we don't have that for them.  See the difference now?

 

Not the case. 

 

 

Whatever.  If you chose not to bother reading where I make my case your dismissal of it carries zero weight.

[Brother Jeff]

 

Sextus, I spend a few hours yesterday evening reading the exchanges between you and David Fitzgerald. I came away more impressed with what you had to say, and I agree that there probably was a historical Jesus behind the mythical stories we find in the Gospels. But I don't think much can be known about the real historical Jesus now, if such a person did actually live. I am curious though, have you seen the video by Dr. Carrier that I posted to start this glorious topic? I do not agree with your low opinion of Dr. Carrier. I found this particular video very well done and very educational. 

 

I currently own "The Jesus Puzzle" by Earl Doherty and Fitzgerald's book "Nailed". Nailed was by far the easier read and I was initially impressed by it, but you have given me a lot to think about, so thank you for that. For me, this issue is fun to think about but ultimately doesn't matter. If Jesus lived in history, he is long dead now, and the fact that Christianity isn't true is actually easy to prove, whether a historical Jesus lived or not. So, interesting as it is to think about, what does it really matter?

 

 

I have seen the video and I find it the usual skewed and tendentious stuff we always get from Carrier.  Yes, some mythic figures were euhemerised and given "historical" exploits later.  But at the same time, other historical figures were said to have achieved apotheosis and so became mythic figures.  The question then becomes - which was Jesus?  Carrier doesn't even bother to answer that question.  When he can give me an example of a euhemerised mythic figure for whom there is similar evidence of the kind we have for Jesus that talk abou them in a recent historical context (ie just decades earlier) and makes matter of fact references to meeting their relatives and friends, then I'll be impressed.  Until then, he's preaching to the choir with a contrived thesis that doesn't stack up.

 

 

You seem to have quite a negative bias going against Dr. Carrier that I definitely do not share. It's been a while since I watched this video, but I recall Dr. Carrier doing a masterful job of demonstrating how the gospels were constructed and why they are myth rather than history. Skewed and tendentious? Not one bit. Not even very controversial, if at all. The knowledge Dr. Carrier shares in this video would be difficult for Christians, or anyone else for that matter, to refute. I think you are so biased against Carrier that you can't see the good in anything he does or has to say, and that's too bad, because while he may get some things wrong (and who doesn't? We are all human and all fallible and we all have to make judgments and decisions and base our beliefs on the best info we have available at any given time...), but he does have a lot that is valuable to say, and I respect him as a prominent and generally very reasonable voice in the atheist community.

[mymistake]

 

 

 

No, but if we had a series of documents that talked about Merlin, Thor, Hercules and Perseus as having lived a few decades earlier, including one that mentions meeting the brother of any of these figures, and references to any of them as historical men, putting them in a clear historical context, then historians definitely would.  Spot the difference.

 

 

We have a series of documents?  I thought it was just two, that they are highly suspect as altered after the fact, and the Roman Empire spent centuries exterminating sects, burning books, manufacturing evidence and rewriting everything to make Christianity into whatever suited their needs.

 

Maybe you should come up with stronger evidence before mocking those who are unconvinced.

 

 

We have a series of documents in the New Testament.  They depict Jesus as having lived just decades earlier and one of them is by a guy who mentions meeting his friend and his brother.  Then we have Josephus and Tacitus.  Even if we ignore Ant. XVIII.3.4 on account of its obvious tampering, there's still Ant. XX.9.1 and Annals XV.44.  If we had anything like that for Merlin, Thor, Hercules or Perseus, historians would be looking for the historical figures behind the myths.  In fact, they would be concluding it's most likely there were such men.  But we don't have that for them.  See the difference now?

 

Not the case. 

 

 

Whatever.  If you chose not to bother reading where I make my case your dismissal of it carries zero weight.

 

 

I do not have an agenda in your long term debate with the other gentlemen.  My complaint was with your writing style, not your case, and what I said does cover the part I read.  I'm sorry if that is not the response you were looking for but you did go fishing for responses.  You do yourself a disservice by padding your blog with so much negativity in the beginning.  It will turn some readers off.  But you are free to continue blogging however you wish.

[Sextus]

 

 

You seem to have quite a negative bias going against Dr. Carrier that I definitely do not share. It's been a while since I watched this video, but I recall Dr. Carrier doing a masterful job of demonstrating how the gospels were constructed and why they are myth rather than history. Skewed and tendentious? Not one bit. Not even very controversial, if at all. The knowledge Dr. Carrier shares in this video would be difficult for Christians, or anyone else for that matter, to refute. I think you are so biased against Carrier that you can't see the good in anything he does or has to say, and that's too bad, because while he may get some things wrong (and who doesn't? We are all human and all fallible and we all have to make judgments and decisions and base our beliefs on the best info we have available at any given time...), but he does have a lot that is valuable to say, and I respect him as a prominent and generally very reasonable voice in the atheist community.

 

 

I have a low opinion of Carrier and can give good reasons for that.  That the gospels can't be taken at face value is not exactly contentious, though apparently it's news to many people wh haven't studied this stuff.l  But where he gets tendentious is when he makes the leap from "can't be read as documentary journalism" to "they are wholly myth".  There are lots of points between those two extremes that Carrier doesn't bother to deal with.  A scholar would do so - even in a presentation like this (or at least they would try to).  But Carrier is a polemicist, so he skips straight to the conclusion he wants the audience to draw without letting them in on the fact that most scholars draw a range of other opinions.

 

This is a large part of my issue with him.  He plays up the fact he has a doctorate in history and the whole "trust me, I'm a historian" schtick.  But most of the time he's little more than a preacher.

 

But the phrase you seem to have objected to - "skewed and tendentious" - was referring to his argument that because we have examples of euhemerism, Jesus belongs to that category.  It's skewed and tendentious because he not only doesn't answer the question "Is the Jesus tradition an example of euhemerism or apotheosis?" but he doesn't even bother to ask it.

 

Of course, most of his audience isn't familiar enough with the material to notice him pulling these sleights of hand.  And most of them just want to agree with his conclusion anyway, so they don't care.  That's what I mean by him preaching to the choir.  My issue with him is that he's like an atheist Ken Ham - lots of rhetoric and dazzle to reassure those who want to believe, but it's largely smoke and mirrors.

[Sextus]

 

 you are free to continue blogging however you wish.

 

 

Gosh, thanks.  I'm also free to ignore the opinion of someone who refused to even read the post he dismissed.  I wish I could do that with things written by people I think I disagree with - it would save a lot of time.

[mymistake]

 

 

 you are free to continue blogging however you wish.

 

 

Gosh, thanks.  I'm also free to ignore the opinion of someone who refused to even read the post he dismissed.  I wish I could do that with things written by people I think I disagree with - it would save a lot of time.

 

 

 

Again, I did not say your argument in the linked post was wrong.  What I said was wading through all the negativity makes me want to stop reading.  I said I never found your argument because there was paragraph after paragraph of extra stuff that does not add to your argument.

 

Yes you are free to ignore my critique.  But I am amused at how your try to mischaracterize my critique as well as myself.  I don't have an agenda in that debate.  I never read the book you were critiquing.  I'm not looking for an excuse to dismiss you.  I didn't skim to try to find ammo to use against you.  Instead I tried to read the blog entry and then I gave you feedback all because you asked.

[mymistake]

That the gospels can't be taken at face value is not exactly contentious, though apparently it's news to many people wh haven't studied this stuff.l  But where he gets tendentious is when he makes the leap from "can't be read as documentary journalism" to "they are wholly myth".  There are lots of points between those two extremes . . . 

 

Is there any part of the gospels that are non-fiction?  The only thing I can think of it the author of Luke's botched attempt at giving his story an historical setting.  Well the Gospel of John points out that Christianity and Judaism do go their separate ways plus the gospels are always careful to include the big "prediction" that happened in 70 AD.

 

What are these points between those two extremes?

[Brother Jeff]

 

 

 

You seem to have quite a negative bias going against Dr. Carrier that I definitely do not share. It's been a while since I watched this video, but I recall Dr. Carrier doing a masterful job of demonstrating how the gospels were constructed and why they are myth rather than history. Skewed and tendentious? Not one bit. Not even very controversial, if at all. The knowledge Dr. Carrier shares in this video would be difficult for Christians, or anyone else for that matter, to refute. I think you are so biased against Carrier that you can't see the good in anything he does or has to say, and that's too bad, because while he may get some things wrong (and who doesn't? We are all human and all fallible and we all have to make judgments and decisions and base our beliefs on the best info we have available at any given time...), but he does have a lot that is valuable to say, and I respect him as a prominent and generally very reasonable voice in the atheist community.

 

 

I have a low opinion of Carrier and can give good reasons for that.  That the gospels can't be taken at face value is not exactly contentious, though apparently it's news to many people wh haven't studied this stuff.l  But where he gets tendentious is when he makes the leap from "can't be read as documentary journalism" to "they are wholly myth".  There are lots of points between those two extremes that Carrier doesn't bother to deal with.  A scholar would do so - even in a presentation like this (or at least they would try to).  But Carrier is a polemicist, so he skips straight to the conclusion he wants the audience to draw without letting them in on the fact that most scholars draw a range of other opinions.

 

This is a large part of my issue with him.  He plays up the fact he has a doctorate in history and the whole "trust me, I'm a historian" schtick.  But most of the time he's little more than a preacher.

 

But the phrase you seem to have objected to - "skewed and tendentious" - was referring to his argument that because we have examples of euhemerism, Jesus belongs to that category.  It's skewed and tendentious because he not only doesn't answer the question "Is the Jesus tradition an example of euhemerism or apotheosis?" but he doesn't even bother to ask it.

 

Of course, most of his audience isn't familiar enough with the material to notice him pulling these sleights of hand.  And most of them just want to agree with his conclusion anyway, so they don't care.  That's what I mean by him preaching to the choir.  My issue with him is that he's like an atheist Ken Ham - lots of rhetoric and dazzle to reassure those who want to believe, but it's largely smoke and mirrors.

 

 

I was a very devout fundamentalist Christian for 15 years of my life (ages 19-34), and I have been an atheist since 2000. I study religion frequently, but I will be the first to admit that there is a lot that I don't know, and I am out to learn from hopefully reliable and unbiased sources. If that includes you, then fantastic! For that reason, I avoid Christian sources like the plague. I don't expect to learn anything that is accurate from a Christian source. I don't share your disdain for Dr. Carrier, but I did learn a lot from reading your responses to David Fitzgerald. It's always great to learn new things and grow. I am by no means a biblical scholar and I know almost nothing about Josephus other than what I have read about the two times he mentions Jesus in his writings, and that includes what you had to say on the matter. I happen to own copies of Josephus's works that I intend to actually read someday, but I bought them last year while I was on vacation in Texas (I live in Alaska), and that's where they still are. They are very cool to own copies that date from the 1800's. 

 

I think we will have to agree to disagree about the content of this particular video. I'm impressed with it and don't find it skewed or biased at all. But that said, I understand your point of view, though I don't share your low opinion of Dr. Carrier. Most people are not biblical scholars, and the fact that the gospels can't be taken at face value is huge news to any fundamentalist Christian believer. To them, the gospels are historically accurate accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That's what they have been told and it's what they firmly believe. Hell, it's what I believed for 15 years of my life. When I opened up the gospels to read them, I believed that I was reading real history about a real person who happened to be the Jewish Messiah and God in the flesh. It took a lot of time and thought and research to go from "it's the historically accurate Word of God" to "it's mostly if not entirely myth". That's the power of education! And I think Dr. Carrier, at least in this video, has some valuable information to share that is valid. 

[directionless]

Sextus, while I was reading your blog I was disappointed that you didn't give an opinion of a book somebody suggested in one of these threads:

"The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark" by Dennis R. MacDonald.

 

Any opinions on that book? (I haven't read it, but it sounds a bit fishy to me.)

[Sextus]

 

Again, I did not say your argument in the linked post was wrong.  What I said was wading through all the negativity makes me want to stop reading.  I said I never found your argument because there was paragraph after paragraph of extra stuff that does not add to your argument.

 

Amd, as I said, you might need to wade through "paragraph after paragraph" of things that don't interest you if you step into the middle of a debate that had been going for several years.  That happens.  Thanks for you advice on style and tone.  If you ever find yourself responding to someone who responds to a critique of their argument by calling you a "douche", a "blog gadfly", "the Perez Hilton of atheism", "Bill O’Reillyesque", "a Fox News pundit", "His Shrillness", "his assholedom","chicken-shit" etc, feel free to respond with infinite niceness.  Ditto for someone else who spends years falsely smearing you as "a proven liar" whenever your name is mentioned.  Personally, I don't feel the need to be nice in response to people like that.

[Sextus]

 

Is there any part of the gospels that are non-fiction?  The only thing I can think of it the author of Luke's botched attempt at giving his story an historical setting.  Well the Gospel of John points out that Christianity and Judaism do go their separate ways plus the gospels are always careful to include the big "prediction" that happened in 70 AD.

 

What are these points between those two extremes?

 

 

Looking for "non-fiction" in ancient works of polemics is not going to end up being very fruitful.  I'm not even sure what this question even means. 

 

As for things about Jesus that we can discern from the gospels which are highly likely to be historical, they are, in my opinion, few.  But they would include:

 

1.  He existed

2.  He was from Nazareth (and was probably born there)

3.  He was baptised by John and this was the turning point in his life

4.  He preached the coming apocalyptic cleansing of the earth and the kingship of Yahweh

5.  He was crucified by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem in the 30s AD

 

Other than that, everything else is either supernatural embroidery or, at best, a maybe.

[Sextus]

 

I was a very devout fundamentalist Christian for 15 years of my life (ages 19-34), and I have been an atheist since 2000. I study religion frequently, but I will be the first to admit that there is a lot that I don't know, and I am out to learn from hopefully reliable and unbiased sources. If that includes you, then fantastic! For that reason, I avoid Christian sources like the plague. I don't expect to learn anything that is accurate from a Christian source. I don't share your disdain for Dr. Carrier, but I did learn a lot from reading your responses to David Fitzgerald. It's always great to learn new things and grow. I am by no means a biblical scholar and I know almost nothing about Josephus other than what I have read about the two times he mentions Jesus in his writings, and that includes what you had to say on the matter. I happen to own copies of Josephus's works that I intend to actually read someday, but I bought them last year while I was on vacation in Texas (I live in Alaska), and that's where they still are. They are very cool to own copies that date from the 1800's. 

 

I think we will have to agree to disagree about the content of this particular video. I'm impressed with it and don't find it skewed or biased at all. But that said, I understand your point of view, though I don't share your low opinion of Dr. Carrier. Most people are not biblical scholars, and the fact that the gospels can't be taken at face value is huge news to any fundamentalist Christian believer. To them, the gospels are historically accurate accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That's what they have been told and it's what they firmly believe. Hell, it's what I believed for 15 years of my life. When I opened up the gospels to read them, I believed that I was reading real history about a real person who happened to be the Jewish Messiah and God in the flesh. It took a lot of time and thought and research to go from "it's the historically accurate Word of God" to "it's mostly if not entirely myth". That's the power of education! And I think Dr. Carrier, at least in this video, has some valuable information to share that is valid. 

 

 

That's an interesting story and one many could relate to.  I certainly didn't have a fundamentalist upbringing, but I was raised in a Christian tradition and believed most of it until I started researching the origin of Christianity in my late teens.  With all due respect, you emphasise that you don't have much of a background in this stuff.  Yet at the same time you don't think Carrier is biased and don't understand my low regard for his position.  So, how would you know if his arguments were flawed or not?  You've just said you don't have the background to judge.  Well, sorry, but I do. 

 

It seems like the ideas he presents are appealing to you, so you find him credible as a result.  That's understandable, but not very firmly based.  When I didn't have much of a background in this stuff, I came across some theories about Jesus that I found appealing and therefore convincing as well.  I reread them years later, once I had a degree, a lot more research and some training in critical analysis under my belt, and was embarassed that I'd once take such junk theories seriously.  Unless you have a good understanding of the material and the wide range of scholarly views on it, you are going to find it difficult to assess who is credible and who simply has a slick patter.

 

Carrier knows his stuff.  He also knows how to spin it.  My problem with him is that he spends a lot of time spinning it and pretending that he's presenting objective analysis rather than something driven by an agenda.

[Sextus]

Sextus, while I was reading your blog I was disappointed that you didn't give an opinion of a book somebody suggested in one of these threads:

"The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark" by Dennis R. MacDonald.

 

Any opinions on that book? (I haven't read it, but it sounds a bit fishy to me.)

 

The problem with MacDonald's thesis is that it depends far too much on a large number of rather fleeting similarities, many of which are pretty strained.  Sometimes co-incidence is just that - co-incidence.  Whenever anyone brings up MacDonald's thesis in the context of a discussion about Jesus' historicity (MacDonald himself accepts a historical Jesus existed, by the way) I refer to the Coen Brothers.  They wrote the screenplay for what was to become O Brother, Where Art Thou and showed it to a few people for comment.  Several of the readers said how much they loved the way the story parallels Homer's Odyssey and noted the many "referenes" to Homer that they found so clever and subtle.  Problem was, the Coens hadn't made any references to Homer and hadn't thought for a minute that they were paralleling the Odyssey.  But once they read the script with this in mind, suddenly they could see parallels all over the place.  They liked this so much that they added a few things to the script (they changed George Clooney's character to "Ulysses" for example) to emphasise the idea still further and made it a key part of the film.

 

I'd go into detail about why I find MacDonald's thesis dubious, but this review pretty much sums it up:

 

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2000/2000-09-16.html

[Joshpantera]

Hi O'Neil, I'd like to zero in on the evidence part of your blogs and forget the rest of the hammer grinding between you and Fitzgerald. You caught him screwing up, I'm embarrassed to see him trying to speak on behalf of Mythicism after I saw him in action. 

 

You wrote: 

 

Given the amount of study I've done on the subject, I'm naturally well aware of this - but he does love those weasely little parenthetical insinuations.  The point is that this simply doesn't matter.   How much of the passage is or isn't authentic is entirely beside the point: if any of it is an authentic mention of Jesus by Josephus, the Mythicist goose is well and truly cooked.  And the fact remains that the consensus of scholarship by experts Jewish, Christian, atheist, agnostic or Calathumpian is that Josephus did mention Jesus here.

 

That's odd. There's no slam dunk against Mythicism if the TF is only partially interpolated. And if Fitzgerald's whole argument folds over partial authenticity then he's a complete idiot for framing it that way. 

 

From what I understand the argument goes to the tune of 1) Josephus was not a contemporary witness to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth and 2) whether or not the TF is partially or wholly interpolated it only represents evidence that by the time Josephus was writing, a Jesus tradition existed for Josephus to write about well after the supposed life time. 

 

And he's crossed off the list as credible or certainty based evidence that would be needed to really settle the issue.  

 

The apologists as well as secular scholars who base their views on putting all the cards on non-contemporary source material (such as you did with Tacitus also) then go into depth about why they think non-contemporary source material is acceptable by comparing other historical figures who likewise don't have contemporary source evidence, but often times will actually turn out to have contemporary source material after all. I've seen that a lot. 

 

And then the whole thing boils down to whether or not we can say with certainty that a non-contemporary source can settle the issue. Since history itself is uncertain, basically, and as Doherty points out, we can't really settle on certainty for any of the historical figures including Jesus because ultimately you just don't get that kind of certainty from an uncertain social science.

 

Uncertain History = uncertainty.  

 

That's really the depth of the argument. It finally reaches a dead end. Unless we take a time machine and scour the first 5 or 6 decades of the 1st century around the places mentioned with camera's rolling we aren't going to know what exactly really happened, or didn't happen. We may favor this or that opinion, the consensus or an alternative view. 

 

As for me, I've decided to take the Mythicist position as default until such time as credible evidence that can solve the issue arises. 

 

Do you offer that sort of convincing evidence O'Neil? 

 

[Sextus]

Hi O'Neil, I'd like to zero in on the evidence part of your blogs and forget the rest of the hammer grinding between you and Fitzgerald. You caught him screwing up, I'm embarrassed to see him trying to speak on behalf of Mythicism after I saw him in action. 

 

You wrote: 

 

Given the amount of study I've done on the subject, I'm naturally well aware of this - but he does love those weasely little parenthetical insinuations.  The point is that this simply doesn't matter.   How much of the passage is or isn't authentic is entirely beside the point: if any of it is an authentic mention of Jesus by Josephus, the Mythicist goose is well and truly cooked.  And the fact remains that the consensus of scholarship by experts Jewish, Christian, atheist, agnostic or Calathumpian is that Josephus did mention Jesus here.

 

That's odd. There's no slam dunk against Mythicism if the TF is only partially interpolated. And if Fitzgerald's whole argument folds over partial authenticity then he's a complete idiot for framing it that way. 

 

From what I understand the argument goes to the tune of 1) Josephus was not a contemporary witness to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth and 2) whether or not the TF is partially or wholly interpolated it only represents evidence that by the time Josephus was writing, a Jesus tradition existed for Josephus to write about well after the supposed life time. 

 

And he's crossed off the list as credible or certainty based evidence that would be needed to really settle the issue.  

 

The apologists as well as secular scholars who base their views on putting all the cards on non-contemporary source material (such as you did with Tacitus also) then go into depth about why they think non-contemporary source material is acceptable by comparing other historical figures who likewise don't have contemporary source evidence, but often times will actually turn out to have contemporary source material after all. I've seen that a lot. 

 

And then the whole thing boils down to whether or not we can say with certainty that a non-contemporary source can settle the issue. Since history itself is uncertain, basically, and as Doherty points out, we can't really settle on certainty for any of the historical figures including Jesus because ultimately you just don't get that kind of certainty from an uncertain social science.

 

Uncertain History = uncertainty.  

 

That's really the depth of the argument. It finally reaches a dead end. Unless we take a time machine and scour the first 5 or 6 decades of the 1st century around the places mentioned with camera's rolling we aren't going to know what exactly really happened, or didn't happen. We may favor this or that opinion, the consensus or an alternative view. 

 

As for me, I've decided to take the Mythicist position as default until such time as credible evidence that can solve the issue arises. 

 

Do you offer that sort of convincing evidence O'Neil? 

 

 

You can call me Tim - where I come from, addressing people by their surname only is seen as kind of aggressive.  (And my surname is O'Neill, not "O'Neil" anyway)

 

The partial authenticity of the TF is not a "slam dunk", but it means that even if all we had was that reference (and we have more) we have about as much evidence for a historical Jesus as we have for pretty much any other early first century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant.  This means we have about as much evidnce for Jesus as we could expect to have for such a figure.  If this is somehow insufficient, then this not only means that all the other such figues are also (somehow) mythical as well but also that everyone in the ancient world for whom we have no contemporary attestation immediately becomes non-existent as well.  Given that this covers about 90%+ of everyone in the ancient world, this is obviously absurd.

 

That means it simply doesn't make sense to say "if we don't have a contemporary attestation, all we have is evidence there was a 'tradition' this person once existed". The most likely explanation for a later writer to refer to a figure as a recent historical person is that this is exactly what they were.  So we can't just dismiss everyone for whom we don't have contemporary attestation - we need to have some reason to suspect this person was not historical.  And in Jesus' case, we don't.  We have no trace of any alternative origins for the Jesus stories.  We have no references in the extensive early Christian condemnations of "heresies" that indicates an early Christian sect that believed in a purely allegorical/celestial/mythic version of Jesus.  We have no opponents of Christianity casting any doubt on his existence.  But we do have other things that do indicate his historicity - a reference to his brother in Ant. XX.91. and a reference to the same brother as someone that Paul met in Galatians 1:19, for example. 

 

So while an original, unredacted TF is not a "slam dunk", it is the same level of evidence we have for other such figures, as much evidence as we would expect for someone like Jesus and the equivalent to the evidence we have for the bulk of people in the ancient world.  Taken with the other evidence we have that indicates historicity, this makes the conclusion that he did the most parsimonious conclusion.

 

You say that these other people who are said to have non-contemporary evidence "often  times will actually turn out to have contemporary source material after all".  Okay then - try this: find me contemporary sources for any other early first century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant.  Good luck.  In fact, you could open pretty much any page of Josephus or most other ancient historical work and pick a name at random and in most cases (give or take the odd emperor or king) you'll find that (i) that is the only reference to that person anywhere in the whole corpus of ancient literature and (ii) it's a non-contemporary reference.

 

This is just the nature of ancient source material.  And it also means that this idea that "uncertain history = uncertainty" doesn't work.  Our source material means that almost ALL ancient history is "uncertain history".  As I often say to people in these discussions, if you want certainty (let alone "proof") stick to maths or physics.  Ancient history in particular and pre-modern history doesn't work on that basis.  It's a matter of using highly fragmentary, often ambiguous and usually non-contemporary source materials as evidence and trying to make a determination of likelihood.  Most people who declare that the evidence for Jesus is not "certain" enough for them don't seem to realise that it's about typical for any such ancient figure.  This is the nature of the discipline.

[mymistake]

 

 

Again, I did not say your argument in the linked post was wrong.  What I said was wading through all the negativity makes me want to stop reading.  I said I never found your argument because there was paragraph after paragraph of extra stuff that does not add to your argument.

 

Amd, as I said, you might need to wade through "paragraph after paragraph" of things that don't interest you if you step into the middle of a debate that had been going for several years.  That happens.  Thanks for you advice on style and tone.  If you ever find yourself responding to someone who responds to a critique of their argument by calling you a "douche", a "blog gadfly", "the Perez Hilton of atheism", "Bill O’Reillyesque", "a Fox News pundit", "His Shrillness", "his assholedom","chicken-shit" etc, feel free to respond with infinite niceness.  Ditto for someone else who spends years falsely smearing you as "a proven liar" whenever your name is mentioned.  Personally, I don't feel the need to be nice in response to people like that.

 

 

 

Actually that is rather common behavior in our TOT section.  No offense was intended.  If I had known you were the author of that blog I would have not been so blunt.  You are human and you have some bad blood with this other guy.  I can understand that.  It is unfortunate but it happens.  I'm not taking sides in your arguments with him.  Thank you for taking the time to explain some of your idea for those who wanted to hear a shorter version.

[Blood]

 

 

 

 

The half brother with cosmic powers who flies, walks on water and atones for the sins of the entire world.

 

 

Well, it's certainly possible that James made up this whole story and that he is the origin of the whole shebang.  But millions of things are merely possible - history is about looking at the evidence and trying to determine what is likely.  Anyone can make up a "just so" story and say "well, maybe this happened".  That doesnt' get us very far.  So, where is the evidence that indicates that this is what happened and that this is the most parsimonious read of the evidence?

 

 

 

Do historians look for the real Merlin, the real Thor or the real Hercules?  Who was the historical Perseus?

 

Jesus is not a mortal who led a political movement, governed a region or commanded an army.  Jesus battled against demons.  Jesus commanded the forces of nature.  Jesus defied the laws of physics.  Jesus could reverse death itself.  The burden of proof falls on those who claim that Jesus was real.  If your argument was that Jesus was a crazy homeless man then you have to explain why in the stories he appears as a cosmic superhero but really isn't.  Crazy homeless people usually don't wind up at the protagonist in mythology.

 

 

It's amusing how casually people assert that an illiterate, apocalyptic doom merchant could, at the same time, be so efficient, charismatic, and organized as to inspire a movement that would reach as far away as Rome within just 15 years of his death. Like so much else about "the life of Jesus," this phenomenon has absolutely no historical precedent. Of course, it's possible it happened, but the historian is interested in what's probable, or as Mr. O'Neill puts it, "likely." None of the other doom merchants wandering around the ancient world attracted more than curiosity or persecution, or at the most, a brief movement that fizzled out when they died or disappeared. There is absolutely no reason to think "Jesus, Son of Mary" would be any different. 

[Blood]

 

 

 

And why exactly do we have to assume a Jewish context for early Christianity? We do not need actual Persians/Zoroastrians in Rome to explain the rise of the Roman cultus of Mithras. All we need for that is the archetype of an ancient and exotic soteriological figure from the East, and some holy texts in Greek or Latin that purport to be "translations" of the ancient mysteries of said figure. Done. 

 

A supposedly "Jewish" context for Christianity is only assumed if you take the New Testament literally. Why should I? 

 

We conclude (not "assume") a Jewish context for the origins of Christianity because that's precisely where all the evidence points.  The earliest Christian texts we have, the Pauline material, are written by a Jew explaining Jesus in the context of Jewish ideas to non-Jews.  Then we have the gospels, which depict Jesus as a Jew and as the Messiah (a purely Jewish concept) and as preaching a Jewish eschatological message about the coming "kingdom" of the Jewish God to Jews.  Then we have Josephus and Tacitus both tracing the origin of the cult to Judea and a Jewish preacher.  It takes a lot of work to ignore all that and pretend that Christianity didn't arise out of a Jewish sect.  That's why, if you notice, that even Carrier doesn't go off on that particular wild goose chase.  And no, none of the above requires you to take the New Testament "literally".  It just requires you to look at the evidence objectively and with sufficient common sense.

 

 

Yes, and Franz Cumont led scholars on a wild goose chase for 75 years with his conclusion that the Roman Mithras cult was started by actual Persians in Rome. After all, Mithras was a Persian savior figure, who came out of a Persian religion, so how in the world could it be otherwise? That was where "all the evidence" pointed. It was only when ancient history scholars actually started questioning Cumont's conclusions that progress was made. Nowadays, not a single ancient history scholar follows the "conclusions" that their earlier predecessors were so sure of just a couple of generations ago. 

 

And mind you, that was in ancient history, a somewhat serious, somewhat objective discipline -- not theology, where "Christian studies" is held. Christian studies is not history. It is basically an apologetic enterprise led by theologians who have a strong emotional need for their religious texts and figures to be historical. If you don't think a heavy confirmation bias smothers everything in Biblical studies, I have a bridge to sell you. 

 

It takes a lot of work to ignore the fact that the Pauline epistles were written after 70; that the gospels AND Acts (the two supposedly main sources for the "historical Jesus") are written by Gentiles, not Jews; that the Gentile author of the Petrine Epistles tells the reader quite explicitly that "Jewish myths" did not inspire them; that no texts exist at all in Hebrew; that Origen is unaware of the "evidence" from the Testimonium Flavianum; that there are no Jewish bishops or elders in the church at all after 70 (were there any before then?); that there is no historical precedent whatever for Jews making an actual man "the Son of God;" and so on. 

 

 

The reason that Cumont led the field of Mithraic studies down that erroneous path was precisely because, given the very scanty nature of our evidence for anything about the Roman cult of Mithras, he started with an assumption.  But we have (relatively) extensive textual evidence about the early Jesus cult and so the idea that it arose out of a Jewish sect is not an assumption - it's right there in the evidence.  This is why it will take some significant work to (i) explain all that evidence and (ii) then come up with an alternative reading that is more parsimonious.

 

If you're up for doing that here, I can only say that I await your detailed argument with great anticipation.

 

Some of the statements in your final paragraph don't exactly fill me with hope about the coherence of that argument.  It's a "fact that the Pauline epistles were written after 70"?  That's quite a claim on its own.  If it's a "fact" then it's very odd that the consensus of even highly sceptical scholars puts them 20 years before that.  Given that we have no idea who exactly wrote the gospels and Acts, your second claim is also remarkable.  Several of those texts are likely to have been written by Gentiles.  Others could easily have been written by Jews.  We simply don't know, so your categorical statement here is pretty brave.  But even if it were true, the traditions they are recording contain sufficient elements to support the idea of a Jewish origin of the sect nonetheless - that Gentiles joined it doesn't affect that.  In fact, that same material, especially Acts and some of the Pauline material, indicates a rather bitter dispute about how Gentiles could be accomodated within a Jewish sect, which would be odd if it was never a Jewish sect in the first place.  Exactly what you're referring to regarding "the Petrine epistles" I have no idea - do you have a specific citation?  I can't see why Origen would know of the TF in its current form or in what context he'd be citing it in its pre-redacted form, so again - what?  The lack of Jewish "bishops or elders" is not much of a mystery given that our sources are from the form of Christianity that drifted from its Jewish roots in the wake of the disruption of the Jewish War, though you will need to explain the variant sects such as the Ebionites who traced their origins to the earliest Jewish church or the constant battle against "heretics" who were "Judaisers".  And the long process of transforming a Jewish Messiah into "God the Son" took centuries and left a trail in the evidence a mile wide.  Bart Ehrman's latest book traces this progession very well.

 

 

Are you seriously trying to make the case that Biblical studies is somehow not based on assumptions? A whole ark full of them? Surely not. 

 

Your insinuation that "extensive textual evidence = veracity" is completely unfounded. Yes, we have tons of Christian texts, almost all of which are indistinguishable from 1001 Arabian Nights. Yes, some of these texts have the appearance of seeming "historical." So does most of the Old Testament. "Historical seeming" is not the same thing as historical. Everyone knows this, yet they are all-too-happy to suspend judgement when it comes to the Bible and especially the New Testament. No, these must be true somehow. They must be! Western culture's reputation is at stake here!

 

It took centuries to transform a Jewish Messiah into the Son of God? That doesn't bode very well for your theory that the Pauline epistles are just 20 years after the death of the Jewish Messiah, since they explicitly refer to Jesus as the Son of God in several places (Romans 1:4, Galatians 2:20, Galatians 4:4, Galatians 4:6 off the top of my head, and of course in many other places the NT refers to Jesus as "the Son of God"). 

[Blood]

Sextus, while I was reading your blog I was disappointed that you didn't give an opinion of a book somebody suggested in one of these threads:

"The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark" by Dennis R. MacDonald.

 

Any opinions on that book? (I haven't read it, but it sounds a bit fishy to me.)

 

It's excellent, but it should be read in the context of MacDonald's other works in a similar vein, such as "Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and The Acts of Andrew." I would recommend those first before "The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark."

 

See, one of the impossible-to-kill myths surrounding early Christianity is that these "evangelists" were somehow hermetically sealed off all from all "pagan" influences, at least at some mythical "early" period. They were as pure as snow as they faithfully did their translations of Aramaic "oral history" to Koine (not thinking the Son of God's sacred words were worth preserving in his native tongue). Then, later, some Greek intellectuals got involved, like Clement of Alexandria, and pure Christianity lost its virginity to worldly men. This is freeze-dried, toxic grade apologetics bullshit of a most offensive odor. The New Testament texts were written by Greek intellectuals. True, they were eccentric and didn't fit the stereotype, but they were well-read and somewhat educated men who were quite aware of Homer and the other great literary figures of the ancient world. Christianity was an urban, intellectual, Greek-speaking movement from the start (whenever that was). The Gnostic branches were more into Middle Platonism than the Catholic branches, but Plato wasn't unknown to the Catholics, either. These were not simple "evangelists" stranded in the middle of nowhere in Galilee writing simple stories about "the life of Jesus." 

[Sextus]

It's amusing how casually people assert that an illiterate, apocalyptic doom merchant could, at the same time, be so efficient, charismatic, and organized as to inspire a movement that would reach as far away as Rome within just 15 years of his death.

I can't see how Jesus would need to be "efficient" or "organised" enough to do this, especially since he doesn't seem to have had any such aim. The synoptics even preserve a tradition of him rejecting the idea of his message being apropriate for anyone other than "the lost sheep of Israel" - an element that was a bit awkward later when the sect that grew out of his following was expanding to include Gentiles. He only needed to be "charismatic" enough to gather a small following that was convinced enough about his status as the Jewish Messiah to surive his execution. Others did the rest after his death.

 

This argument from incredulity is a bit like someone expressing similar difficulty believing that a 24 year old con man from Palmyra, New York, could write a book that within a mere 14 years later had a following of tens of thousands, despite it being considered heretical at the time. Ever heard of Mormonism? It's quite prominent today. It's also very weird that a version of this argument from incredulity is used by Christian apologists to make the case that Christianity is true. After all, how else could such a remarkable thing happen unless Jesus really was God etc etc? The numnber of times the arguments of the Mythicists/Jesus hypersceptics and those of evangelical apologists mirror each other is quite amazing.

 

Like so much else about "the life of Jesus," this phenomenon has absolutely no historical precedent.

Really? There is no precedent for a small following of a single inconsequential man could become a mass movement and major religion in a few decades? Pardon? You mean Joseph Smith is myth? So is Muhammed? Bahá'u'lláh? How many more precendents would you like?

 

 

None of the other doom merchants wandering around the ancient world attracted more than curiosity or persecution, or at the most, a brief movement that fizzled out when they died or disappeared. There is absolutely no reason to think "Jesus, Son of Mary" would be any different.

Then you will need to explain why we have references to disciples of John the Baptist still being around after his execution and baptising people in far off Greece long after his death. The modern Mandean faith traces its origin to him and to his followers to this day. So, you were saying?

[Blood]

It's an argument from historical precedent, an argument that "historic Jesus" acolytes are happy to avail themselves of when they think it suits their case. 

 

You misunderstand the word "precedent" in this context. It means prior to Jesus's time. So your examples of Muhammed, et al. are not relevant to my argument. 

 

The Mandean faith claims its origins go back to the "historical John the Baptist." That is quite a different thing than actually tracing their origins to that time or that man, which, as far as I know, absolutely no evidence exists to back up. 

[mymistake]

 

I can't see how Jesus would need to be "efficient" or "organised" enough to do this, especially since he doesn't seem to have had any such aim. The synoptics even preserve a tradition of him rejecting the idea of his message being apropriate for anyone other than "the lost sheep of Israel" - an element that was a bit awkward later when the sect that grew out of his following was expanding to include Gentiles. He only needed to be "charismatic" enough to gather a small following that was convinced enough about his status as the Jewish Messiah to surive his execution. Others did the rest after his death.

 

This argument from incredulity is a bit like someone expressing similar difficulty believing that a 24 year old con man from Palmyra, New York, could write a book that within a mere 14 years later had a following of tens of thousands, despite it being considered heretical at the time. Ever heard of Mormonism? It's quite prominent today. It's also very weird that a version of this argument from incredulity is used by Christian apologists to make the case that Christianity is true. After all, how else could such a remarkable thing happen unless Jesus really was God etc etc? The numnber of times the arguments of the Mythicists/Jesus hypersceptics and those of evangelical apologists mirror each other is quite amazing.

 

 

 

In my opinion a much more likely explanation is that there were many Judism offshoots prior to St. Paul.  Then you don't have to worry about the 14 year miracle.

 

 

Really? There is no precedent for a small following of a single inconsequential man could become a mass movement and major religion in a few decades? Pardon? You mean Joseph Smith is myth? So is Muhammed? Bahá'u'lláh? How many more precendents would you like?

 

Joseph Smith was not assigned awesome cosmic powers a few decades after he died.  Supposedly the people who had known Crazy Homeless Jesus were still around when Mark was written but feeding an entire amphitheater's worth of people by multiplying food or healing people left and right didn't seem out of place?  Okay Mohammed got to fly at the end but that comes from a long traditional meme.  Elijah and Enoch got to fly too.  The powers of Jesus are greater than Merlin, Gandalf and Voldemort put together.

 

 

Then you will need to explain why we have references to disciples of John the Baptist still being around after his execution and baptising people in far off Greece long after his death.

 

It is not impossible that Crazy Homeless Jesus could have existed and had a few followers.  It just seems unlikely that Christianity would grow so powerful in such a short time.  On the other hand if it was around long before Paul's time then it had much more time to grow.

[Sextus]

Are you seriously trying to make the case that Biblical studies is somehow not based on assumptions?

I thought it was pretty clear that I was seriously noting that the idea that it is somehow based on the particular "assumption" you posited doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

 

Your insinuation that "extensive textual evidence = veracity" is completely unfounded.

What I actually argued is that there is extensive evidence that indicates a purely Jewish origin for the Jesus cult. You need to account for that evidence in a way that explains it better than the explanation that we have this evidence because that's precisely the origin of the Jesus cult - a Jewish sect around a preacher called Yeshua. I notice you haven't even bothered to try.

 

 

It took centuries to transform a Jewish Messiah into the Son of God? That doesn't bode very well for your theory that the Pauline epistles are just 20 years after the death of the Jewish Messiah, since they explicitly refer to Jesus as the Son of God in several places (Romans 1:4, Galatians 2:20, Galatians 4:4, Galatians 4:6 off the top of my head, and of course in many other places the NT refers to Jesus as "the Son of God").

If you are going to reply to my posts, I'd suggest you read more carefully. I am usually very careful with what terms and phrases I use. Here's what I actually said:

 

"And the long process of transforming a Jewish Messiah into "God the Son" took centuries and left a trail in the evidence a mile wide."

 

Note that I didn't use the phrase "Son of God", I was careful to use the phrase "God the Son". They are not the same thing. The former is a Jewish term with several meanings but which came to refer to Yahweh's annointed - the Messiah. The Messiah was not God in human form or God in any sense. "God the Son", on the other hand, was a later Christian title for the "Second Person of the Trinity" and, after centuries of wrangling, came to be seen as fully equal with God the Father. You'll find nothing like that in the Pauline material. In fact, you'll find nothing in Paul's seven epistles to has Jesus as God at all. On the contrary, he depicts the pre-existent Messiah as specifically not equal to God. The Jesus of the synoptics is also God's annointed and an exalted man, not equal to God as well. We have to get all the way to gJohn before we even get a Jesus who is in any way divine.

 

You seem to be reading the NT with Christian spectacles on - something Mythicists do a lot. Which is pretty ironic. If Jesus somehow went from celestial divine figure to historicsed divine incarnation, then it's very strange that the earliest material doesn't depict him as divine at all. And that we see a progression from him being a human prophet to exalted human Messiah to pre-existent heavenly Messiah to divine man and finally to co-equal with God. In other words, we see the deification of a man, not the historicisation of a god. Mythicism gets it exactly backwards.

[mymistake]

 

"And the long process of transforming a Jewish Messiah into "God the Son" took centuries and left a trail in the evidence a mile wide."

 

Note that I didn't use the phrase "Son of God", I was careful to use the phrase "God the Son". They are not the same thing. The former is a Jewish term with several meanings but which came to refer to Yahweh's annointed - the Messiah. The Messiah was not God in human form or God in any sense. "God the Son", on the other hand, was a later Christian title for the "Second Person of the Trinity" and, after centuries of wrangling, came to be seen as fully equal with God the Father. You'll find nothing like that in the Pauline material. In fact, you'll find nothing in Paul's seven epistles to has Jesus as God at all. On the contrary, he depicts the pre-existent Messiah as specifically not equal to God. The Jesus of the synoptics is also God's annointed and an exalted man, not equal to God as well. We have to get all the way to gJohn before we even get a Jesus who is in any way divine.

 

 

 

Fair enough.  God the Son took an act of Rome.  However the Jesus Christ (Paul) is part of the cosmic chess game.  And the Jesus of Nazareth (Mark) is more powerful than ten sorcerers.  You still have to demonstrate that a crazy, homeless brother of James can morph into Jesus Christ and Jesus of Nazareth in just a decade or two.

 

 

You seem to be reading the NT with Christian spectacles on - something Mythicists do a lot. Which is pretty ironic.

 

I notice you like to talk about people a lot.

 

 

If Jesus somehow went from celestial divine figure to historicsed divine incarnation, then it's very strange that the earliest material doesn't depict him as divine at all. And that we see a progression from him being a human prophet to exalted human Messiah to pre-existent heavenly Messiah to divine man and finally to co-equal with God. In other words, we see the deification of a man, not the historicisation of a god. Mythicism gets it exactly backwards.

 

The easiest explanation in my opinion is multiple sects.  They had different agendas and the idea of Christ evolves over time.