The Christ Myth Theory: Hoax Or Plausible Theory?

[Kristin]

Believing the Bible and the story of Jesus is a huge part of a Christian's belief system and the believer’s circular reasoning, so pondering both is a struggle for me as well. At some point over the last several years, I started thinking how often people, like myself, believe what we read or are told. Bottom line for me is no one really knows for sure. Every book or audio/video is someone else’s account about their understanding, belief, experience, thoughts, opinions etc. of their perception of what’s real or not real. Even all those history books in school can be called into question. Was I there to witness any of history? Were you? Fiction and nonfiction is passed down from one generation to the next from a place in time that does not exist anymore and it does not make sense to me to know reality for sure after so many years.

 

How long did people believe the world was flat ?

 

I’ve been told by my parents were I was born, but do I remember that moment in my reality………NO. I am taking their word for it. Almost anything can be made plausible, evidence can be fabricated. Why do we take others words as truth? I’m not even taking sides with that statement, I’m just saying I have a hard time believing anything about history or our present day for sure. What each of us experience in our lives is our reality and our truth. And even that comes with our own individual perception of all.

 

I continue to read and listen and think with an open mind and I’m trying to deal with the anger that comes from the one sided indoctrination of my childhood, but I no longer believe I will ever know truth outside of what I have seen or experienced in my own life…….and even that can be questioned

[Guest Furball]

 Was I there to witness any of history? Were you? 

 

 

No, but countless others were there. And according to scholars, outside of the bible, there was not a single thing written about jesus, not even out of hatred for the first 100 years according to bart ehrman. Considering everything the bible says jesus did, and also considering that the romans kept strict records of all that happened, considering that there were historians living in jerusalem at the time of jesus supposed existence, considering there were countless people known as scribes, and considering that the bible itself contains historical inaccuracies....that is very telling that the whole thing is a made up story. The jesus of the bible never existed. Unless of course it is all true and god willingly hid all the evidence and destroyed all the original writings on purpose.

[Mythra]

 

 Was I there to witness any of history? Were you? 

 

 

 Unless of course it is all true and god willingly hid all the evidence and destroyed all the original writings on purpose.

 

He didn't destroy them.  He turned them into dinosaur bones and buried them in the ground.  Trying to avoid overcrowding in heaven.

[Blood]

So I have been pondering the whole idea of Jesus Christ and whether or not I believe that he actually existed. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to decide right now, I think I would lean toward the side of him having existed.

 

I cannot say I have done any exhaustive research on this, but I have read several articles and I have listened to a lecture by Richard Carrier and also a podcast of Robert Price. I have to say that the more I think and ponder this Myth Theory, the more I find that I am believing its got some merit.

 

The questions that are asked in this theory, such as, "why are there no contemporary sources mentioning Jesus?" among other questions really, to me, have merit. But then I read stuff by Tim O'Neill and other individuals and they easily dismiss these questions as hogwash and that most historians don't even have any reason to think that Jesus didn't exist. I once read that since so many people subscribe to the Christian faith that to dissent to the majority regarding his existence is to somewhat commit "professional sabotage".  

 

I have read several articles and blog posts regarding the mentioning of Josephus and the other historians(Tacitus, Seutonius among others) whose mentions of Jesus are contested. Is there any type of legitimate scholarly consensus that verifies their being legit or forgeries.

 

So, I would like to discuss this a bit if anyone is interested. What do you think about this Theory? Do you have any good evidence or do you have any questions that are tough for the "existers" to explain? I would love to hear them. I would like to have a better understanding of this whole thing if possible.

Thanks

 

First of all, there were no "historians" in the ancient world in the modern sense of the word. What Josephus, Suetonius, et al. wrote was pseudo-history, much of it nation-building or empire-building propaganda. Josephus wrote an utterly white-washed pseudo-history of the first Jewish-Roman War; comparable to a black man writing a "history" of the US Civil War that blamed blacks and abolitionists for the war and saying God was on the side of the South. 

 

So this is a very basic error people like Tim O'Neill make. They act as though Josephus was some kind of modern peer-reviewed professional historian teaching at a secular university. Nonsense. Even the "best" ancient histories, such as Herodotus, are full of guesswork, lies, and myths. 

 

Second of all, Biblical writing does not even rise to the level of ancient history. It doesn't claim to. It's speculative theology with some pseudo-historical elements mixed in. 

 

Another very basic problem is that today's ancient historians don't typically study religion, and religious studies professors are not required to have degrees in ancient history or know much of anything besides the Bible. The two areas don't interact much on a professional level. This leaves the Biblical studies people believing that they are studying "history" when, in reality, they're studying speculative theology. 

 

The non-gospel sections of the New Testament and much other early Christian writing is wholly unconcerned with a "historic" Jesus walking around in Galilee. They are mostly concerned with "an angel of the Lord" whom people are supposed to worship as a god. It's all pretty mystical sounding and little different from any other Hellenistic mystery religion.

 

Did Jesus exist? It's a fascinating problem. To deny it sounds insane at first, but the more you study Christianity, and the incredible effort made to keep it propped up and plausible-sounding, the more you realize how much the entire edifice is built on sand. It would not be shocking that some ancient mystics conceived of the god "Jesus" from visions and reading the Greek Bible for "hidden prophecies."

[Blood]

I don't think the Christ Myth theories deserve to be called "hoaxes", or are entirely implausible, but I think Carrier's arguments are flawed and as far as I know he is the most vocal and recent advocate of a myth theory. I can't find all of the mathematical critiques I've read of On the Historicity of Jesus but here's one in two parts:

 

https://legiononomamoi.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/dr-richard-carriers-hypotheses-on-the-historicity-of-jesus/

https://legiononomamoi.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/carriers-historiography-why-we-may-have-reason-to-doubt-its-utilitity/

 

The in-a-nutshell criticism is that Carrier's use of a Bayesian framework doesn't really have any other effect except to codify highly subjective opinions in a more formal way. He then mistakes the formality of the presentation for an argument, when really the conclusions that come out of the model depend entirely on the subjectively determined prior probabilities put into it.

 

Essentially, given the vagueness of our understanding of what constitutes reasonable evidence of either historicity or mythicization in general, the mathematical model doesn't really add any rigor to the process.

 

As far as legitimate consensus among historians, to the best of my knowledge a majority believes in some historical Jesus, who of course probably bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels. Bart Ehrman wrote a book arguing for this, for example. I think the truth is that it's not really possible to reach conclusions with iron-clad certainty here. Many historians accept the idea of some historical Jesus because they think that, given the way they normally approach such historical questions, there is enough evidence to think it more likely than not that there was. That shouldn't be mistaken for an argument that the gospels are true in some theological sense. There are also reasonable arguments in favor of mythicism, even if Carrier doesn't "prove" that it's the more likely conclusion the way he wants to.

 

The crux of the problem (pun intended) is that historians don't actually study or write about Jesus. The people who do are properly called theologians and they go into seminary college usually with a very heavy bias believing that the Bible is mostly or entirely accurate "oral histories" of real events rather than mythology, because their understanding of "mythology" is a Christian one to begin with. In order to pass the class, you must accept (or at least not seriously challenge) this core assumption. An overly skeptical student will drop out or change degrees in the second year, but very few students would be confident enough in their skepticism to challenge their professors' assumptions. 

 

Then, to compound the problem, on the rare occasions that historians do write about Jesus, they are forced to rely upon the research and commentaries of theologians. The historian Michael Grant made this mistake in his book on Jesus. 

 

The basic error: the New Testament is not "history" writing, which should be obvious to everyone by now. It's religious propaganda imagining what happened in the past. 

[♦ ficino ♦]

 

 

 

 

 

What Historians and Scholars believe, or don't believe, doesn't change the probability. Only the evidence affects the probability.

 

"Most scholars think Jesus existed"

 

 

Yes, that is very true.  However I have no skills in ancient languages.  It's not a small thing to buck against expert consensus.

 

Maybe I don't understand the myth theory.  It's obvious to me that many first century men were named Jesus.  Doesn't it all depend on if one of these real men inspired the Christ story?  If the story was instead inspired by other religions then Christ was a myth even if we can't prove that was the case.  But with Jesus (or rather Joshua/Yeshua) being such a common name it would have been normal from most religions to have a Jesus among their clergy.

 

It all depends on how you think Christianity got started. 

 

If you think there was a Jesus of Nazareth, but the majority of the gospel accounts were later made up after Jesus died, that's considered a historicist.

 

academic historicists don't even need the "of Nazareth" part. Some people think there was a real dude but he was from Capernaum or somewhere else in Galilee.

 

There is a lot of slippage when we talk about "Jesus." That name can refer to the character depicted in, say, the Gospel of Mark, or it can refer merely to a supposed wandering preacher who was killed by the Romans and about whom we can agree on very little else.  Academic historicists do NOT try to prove that the bulk of the stuff attributed to the Jesus character in Mark is historical, though lots of scholars with confessional commitments want some percentage of the gospel stories to be historical. The minimalist historicist, as Mythra said, just thinks the data are best explained on the hypothesis that a real preacher dude gave rise to the stories.

 

I think it's confusing to talk about "the Jesus of the Bible" as existing or not, because of the problem of identifying that character. We wind up going around in circles, because ALL the biblical accounts are propaganda pieces embedded in a tissue of propaganda. I think it's more useful to ask whether this or that detail in the gospels and Acts is likely to be legend/fabrication or not. [Adding: not every part of a propaganda piece need be fabricated. But the whole piece is spun to push an interpretation, so there is no nugget of fact that is not colored by the rhetorical spin of the propagandist.]

 

On the other hand, it seems of little practical consequence to me to try to establish that there probably existed some real preacher dude named Jesus who got snuffed by Rome, and leave it at that. This minimal position does very little work except to try to explain the rise of Christianity on the thesis that it began in a group's reaction to the life of a real man.  This minimal position doesn't do much of anything to authenticate any particular saying ascribed to that supposed real man, or any action done by him except vague stuff like "he probably preached a messianic kingdom."

 

So I wind up moving on to other problems to work on.

[Mythra]

 

I think it's confusing to talk about "the Jesus of the Bible" as existing or not, because of the problem of identifying that character. We wind up going around in circles, because ALL the biblical accounts are propaganda pieces embedded in a tissue of propaganda. I think it's more useful to ask whether this or that detail in the gospels and Acts is likely to be legend/fabrication or not. [Adding: not every part of a propaganda piece need be fabricated. But the whole piece is spun to push an interpretation, so there is no nugget of fact that is not colored by the rhetorical spin of the propagandist.]

 

 

This was really well worded, Ficino.  And I couldn't agree more.  And I think we both know a definitive answer can never be reached.

 

One thing I wanted to ask you about.  Something that seemed to be one of the guiding principles of the Jesus Seminar.  And something I think is questionable.

The Criterion of Embarrassment.  

 

For those who haven't heard of it, the Jesus Seminar consisted of about 150 academics and, even some lay people, who got together over about a 20 year period and tried to sort out, and arrive at a consensus, of what minimal events and sayings of jesus might be considered historical.  It was widely criticized by different groups, for a variety of reasons.  

 

One of their criteria they used was called the criterion of embarrassment.  Which means, the more embarrassing an event is to the writer or to the faith, the more likely it is to be true.

 

And so, one of the things they say must have actually happened was the crucifixion of Jesus. Because it was such a shameful thing and degrading thing.

 

But I follow the teaching of Price (and others) that this does not necessarily work in this case.  Because it has many precedents in what Price calls "mythical hero archetype".   It makes for a great story.  The hero, who is an underdog, is wrongly or unjustly accused of something,  gets beat up, physically hurt, people laugh at him, spit on him, mock him.  And in Jesus' case, kill him.  End of story. 

 

But wait - there's more!   The hero rises from the ashes and in the end is victorious.

 

It's a compelling story.  It works well in the gospels.  And in the movie series "Rocky". Or "Cinderella Man".  Or about a hundred other hollywood hits.

 

If the Jesus story just ended with Jesus' crucifixion, Christianity could never have gotten off the ground.

 

And we'd be worshipping Apollonius instead.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hey Mythra, I think that any reader who accepts that the gospels are what I've been calling propaganda is hard pressed to apply the Criterion of Embarrassment.

 

But first - are we justified in calling the gospels propaganda?

 

I would say, John claims to be that very thing, and Luke virtually does so. 

John 21:31 "But these have been recorded to help you believe tht Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that through this faith you may have life in his name" (NAB - Catholic Bible)

Luke 1:3-4 " ... I have decided to set in it in writing for you, Theophilus, so that Your Excellency may see how reliable the instruction was that you received."

 

I'm not going to argue further now that the gospels are rightly classed as a type of propaganda.

 

As to the CoE and the other so-called Criteria of Authenticity, we've discussed them on here during the interval of your absence, Mythra, Your Excellency, but I forget what thread.

 

A strong case has been made in recent years that all the Criteria fail because they all wind up in circularity. So the Jesus Seminar results, that this piece in the gospels is prob. historical and that piece isn't, falls apart.  Here's a blog post by Philip J. Long on the problem:

 

 http://readingacts.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/the-words-of-jesus-and-the-criteria-of-authenticity/

 

 

In my opinion, to withhold confidence in those criteria as they are deployed upon the gospels, in an attempt to sift out facts about Jesus, does not entail a general scepticism about recovering facts from antiquity and using them in reconstructions. It does entail skepticism about recovering facts from propaganda, when the propaganda are the only "sources" we have and are informed by the fabulous (e.g. full of weird miracles, etc.). Thucydides, for example, is a very different piece of work from the gospels, however much Thucydides may have had his own biases.

 

The Criterion of Embarrassment is expounded in a more scholarly way by Rafael Rodriguez in the collection of papers edited by Keith and Le Donne, sc. Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity. Writing on the Criterion of Embarrassment, Rodriguez points out that everything in the gospels comes from a post-crucifixion context. Rodriguez does not deny that there was a Jesus who was crucified. But he points out, "it all made sense within and served post-crucifixion theological and ideological perspectives ...  the Criterion of Embarrassment renders a historical datum embarrassing; it does not authenticate already embarrassing historical 'data'."

 

-----------------------

 

adding: parts of Rodriguez' papers, and of other ones in the Keith/LeDonne volume, are on Google books:

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=u-sRBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=Keith+Le+Donne+Jesus,+Criteria+and+the+Demise+of+Authenticity.&source=bl&ots=mzcnMVMoTT&sig=x73RxLPf2dz7HKPjixSYIUpRwU8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CF4Q6AEwCWoVChMI3LimvqqByQIVAUUmCh1IXQiK#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Mythra]

Some of what the "experts" use seems like garbage in, garbage out to me.  Just like Carrier using math equations to calculate probabilities.  It's like he assigns arbitrary guesses or approximations to ten different things, then computes an average by way of complex "theorem"  and yields a precise result.  I know I'm oversimplifying it, but that's what it seems to me.

 

Just like this from your article;  Criterion of dissimilarity:   If a saying is unlike anything found in Judaism or the early church, then it is more likely to be correct.  

 

Really?  Like palestine in the early first century had no access to hellenistic philosophies and ideas?  Like those very gospels weren't composed in greek?

I could never be a scholar. 

 

Like you said, Ficino - A strong case has been made in recent years that all the Criteria fail because they all wind up in circularity.

 

unrelated p.s.:  do you remember Heimdal who used to be here?  He left an impression on me from days gone by.

[Mythra]

To me, the apparent cynic/stoic influence in the sayings of Jesus doesn't sway the argument in either direction.  

 

If there was a Jesus who actually said those things, he could have been exposed to those ideas earlier in life, and he was smart enough to make them sound original to himself.

 

If Jesus was an invention , then the writer who made him up liked those ideas and put them into Jesus' mouth.

[mymistake]

So Christ as a myth and Christ as a real homeless crazy person are both equally unfounded?

[Mythra]

So, which one gives you more confidence that you won't spend all eternity in hell?  

[mymistake]

So, which one gives you more confidence that you won't spell all eternity in hell?  

 

 

Atheism.

[Mythra]

disclaimer:  All of my postings here are indeed peer-reviewed.  But my peers aren't much smarter than I am.

 

So, there's that.

[Storm]

I think I stated this before, and I think that Ficino and Mythra may agree, but I think it would only make logical sense that, if Jesus were true (in any case minimalist or full blown Christian Propaganda) he would be found to be true across multiple disciplines. Ancient historians, theologians, philologists, behavioralists, etc would all come to a similar conclusion. But I find the disparity between the disciplines to be a sign that the mythicists may be on to something. 

 

That being said, all of you have really helped me to see this topic in a better light. I hope this discussion continues and I certainly hope I can add to it. 

[Blood]

One basic problem with "the historic" Jesus is that the very "prophecies" adduced by the anonymous theologians writing the NT are not prophecies. They just pulled sentences randomly out of various texts and created a figure to match these non-prophecies. You have things like the crucifixion being created out of Psalm 22 and the Wisdom of Solomon -- not memory or eyewitness testimony. So it very much looks like some theologians assuming that the Christ assumed human form sometime in the recent past, and then tearing a bunch of bible quotes out context to make their imaginary savior figure seem "prophetic." 

 

Plus, no Aramaic language gospel, no trace of a Jesus movement in Galilee, etc. 

[FlowerDemon]

I'm going to make a small simple statement here. If Jesus had existed, and he really was the son of god that he claimed he was, the one and only....then i think the outside sources from the bible would be a little more obvious. There would be more evidence pointing towards Jesus' existence, which would help Christians not doubt in his existence since credible sources would exist.

 

But as it stands, there is a small amount of evidence pointing towards the existence of Jesus. i read the case for christ by Lee strobel, and i just didn't feel like it was credible evidence. other than that, i've done online research on the subject, and i have found that you have to dig really deep to read things of evidence. But for the most part, there isn't any evidence.

[Storm]

I'm going to make a small simple statement here. If Jesus had existed, and he really was the son of god that he claimed he was, the one and only....then i think the outside sources from the bible would be a little more obvious. There would be more evidence pointing towards Jesus' existence, which would help Christians not doubt in his existence since credible sources would exist.

 

But as it stands, there is a small amount of evidence pointing towards the existence of Jesus. i read the case for christ by Lee strobel, and i just didn't feel like it was credible evidence. other than that, i've done online research on the subject, and i have found that you have to dig really deep to read things of evidence. But for the most part, there isn't any evidence.

You bring up a good point, albeit indirectly. Many of the people who advocate that Jesus was a real person are Believing Christians. They are not looking at this from a neutral standpoint. They already believe that he existed. They are now simply looking for evidence to verify this. They are employing something called Motivated Reasoning. But there really isn't any evidence. There is a lot of propaganda. There is a lot of hearsay. But no evidence. Nothing concrete that I have seen, anyway. And like what has already been mentioned in this thread, there is basically no evidence to show that the man portrayed in the bible as Jesus ever existed. Being a person that existed, and being the person that the bible describes are two very different things. No one credible that I can see is saying the latter is true. Only those who are Christians.

[qadeshet]

There's a nice new article at Vridar. Neil isn't technically a Mythicist, more an agnostic about the Historical Yeshua.

 

"New atheists are bad Historians"

[Mythra]

Looks like Neil Godfrey is critiquing someone named Tim O'Neil about his blog about the new atheists being bad historians.

 

I actually agree in part with Tim O'Neil.

 

Hitchens and Dawkins are bad historians. In fact, they aren't historians at all.    Their take on Jesus misses the mark.

 

But Carrier and Doherty are historians.  

 

Just because one or two Jesus myth theories can be easily dismissed, doesn't mean they all can.

[Storm]

Looks like Neil Godfrey is critiquing someone named Tim O'Neil about his blog about the new atheists being bad historians.

 

I actually agree in part with Tim O'Neil.

 

Hitchens and Dawkins are bad historians. In fact, they aren't historians at all.    Their take on Jesus misses the mark.

 

But Carrier and Doherty are historians.  

 

Just because one or two Jesus myth theories can be easily dismissed, doesn't mean they all can.

Tim O'Neil is a member here and an amateur historian/philologist. He is also a pompous ass. He does make some good arguments, however, I think he is also clouded in his own thoughts and he fails to see the bigger picture of the historicity of Jesus. Like all people like this, you have to sift the wheat from the chaff.

[Blood]

Looks like Neil Godfrey is critiquing someone named Tim O'Neil about his blog about the new atheists being bad historians.

 

I actually agree in part with Tim O'Neil.

 

Hitchens and Dawkins are bad historians. In fact, they aren't historians at all.    Their take on Jesus misses the mark.

 

But Carrier and Doherty are historians.  

 

Just because one or two Jesus myth theories can be easily dismissed, doesn't mean they all can.

 

Most people who study religion professionally aren't "historians" by any stretch of the imagination, either. Theologians aren't historians, but they quite often pretend that they are, by using duplicitous titles such as "New Testament Historian." They certainly think that all their holy fables have some basis in "history," but the silence from actual history professors is deafening. I suspect that at least 50% of them believe the Bible is entirely bullshit, but they dare not say so out loud. 

[Mythra]

I definitely agree with that.  A true historian is a scientist in a sense. And they follow clear protocols and rules in examining and accepting evidence as valid.

 

And all of the magical workings in the gospels don't meet those rules.  

[qadeshet]

 

Looks like Neil Godfrey is critiquing someone named Tim O'Neil about his blog about the new atheists being bad historians.

 

I actually agree in part with Tim O'Neil.

 

Hitchens and Dawkins are bad historians. In fact, they aren't historians at all.    Their take on Jesus misses the mark.

 

But Carrier and Doherty are historians.  

 

Just because one or two Jesus myth theories can be easily dismissed, doesn't mean they all can.

 

Most people who study religion professionally aren't "historians" by any stretch of the imagination, either. Theologians aren't historians, but they quite often pretend that they are, by using duplicitous titles such as "New Testament Historian." They certainly think that all their holy fables have some basis in "history," but the silence from actual history professors is deafening. I suspect that at least 50% of them believe the Bible is entirely bullshit, but they dare not say so out loud. 

 

 

 

It should be a fundamental requirement of competent and honest scholarship to correctly represent the arguments of anyone you disagree with, and rebut their actual arguments, not arguments they never made, or conveniently distorted variants of arguments they did make, or to falsely claim they didn’t make any arguments to rebut. It is a disgrace for a scholar to use falsehood like this. Worse even to do so as arguments against a book they are reviewing. Yet these aren’t the only instances. McGrath does this a lot. Why? If historicity is so evidenced as to be certain, why do arguments against it have to be misrepresented to rebut them? Is it because the actual arguments can’t be rebutted? So fake arguments have to be contrived to knock down instead? That does not make it sound like historicity is so certain to me.

Lataster, Raphael (2015-11-12). Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists (Kindle Locations 114-147). Kindle Edition.

 

Carrier on McGrath's responses to Carrier

 

As an ex Christian, I don't really care if an historical "Jesus" existed, or not. But it is an interresting question.

[Mythra]

qadeshet said:

 

As an ex Christian, I don't really care if an historical "Jesus" existed, or not. But it is an interresting question.

 

Yeah, I don't either really.  It has no bearing on whether I'm a christian or not a christian.  But I do think it's interesting.  And if Jesus never existed at all as a human being, it's - to borrow a phrase from a book - The Greatest Story Ever Sold. 

 

ps: thx for sharing those links.  I like linkys.