Did Jesus Even Exist? Dr. Richard Carrier

[Geezer]

 

[Joshpantera]

This is a good video outlining the stronger points of Jesus mythicism. I'll be linking several people to it. The intro is important to understanding the likelihood of this being the case. 

[mymistake]

I don't often watch videos that are over 15 minutes long but I did for this one and enjoyed every minute of it.  Thanks.

[Blood]

If the Christ was mythical, why does Carrier still cling to the orthodox view that Christianity was founded in the 30s CE? There's no need for that timeline if there was no "historic Jesus."

[Geezer]

56 minutes ago, Blood said:

If the Christ was mythical, why does Carrier still cling to the orthodox view that Christianity was founded in the 30s CE? There's no need for that timeline if there was no "historic Jesus."

 

I feel certain if you contact him he would answer your question. 

[Geezer]

A thought. Ancient cultures routinely invented mythical Gods & religions. Why would Christianity be any different? Why would Christianity need a real Jesus?  Paul's writing are accepted as the first written record of Jesus, but Paul's Jesus was a Celestial Spiritual Jesus. Paul apparently knew nothing about an earthly Jesus or his story. 

 

Nothing in in the gospel story indicates Jesus came to start a new religion. Paul is generally credited as the founder of Christianity, not Jesus. Christianity is the religion of Paul about Jesus. Judaism is the religion of Jesus.

 

The Gospel story wasn't written until sometime after 70 CE. The gospel story is about someone who lived many decades prior to the events being written about. I don't see why a real Jesus was necessary in order to create a new religion. And if the gospel story is a myth, which seems likely, a real Jesus would not be necessary. A fictional Jesus would work just as well, or so it seems to me. 

 

 

[Joshpantera]

A nice illustrative map of Carrier's most up to date argument would be nice. In the form of a timeline according to this specific mythicist theory. Reaching back especially to the Osirian cults and pagan examples of a linear evolution from revelatory  origins to exoteric literal and historicized versions of original esoteric versions. Then walk the time line up to the christian era showing the same data of esoteric to exoteric evoltuion. 

[Blood]

6 hours ago, Geezer said:

A thought. Ancient cultures routinely invented mythical Gods & religions. Why would Christianity be any different? Why would Christianity need a real Jesus?  Paul's writing are accepted as the first written record of Jesus, but Paul's Jesus was a Celestial Spiritual Jesus. Paul apparently knew nothing about an earthly Jesus or his story. 

 

Nothing in in the gospel story indicates Jesus came to start a new religion. Paul is generally credited as the founder of Christianity, not Jesus. Christianity is the religion of Paul about Jesus. Judaism is the religion of Jesus.

 

The Gospel story wasn't written until sometime after 70 CE. The gospel story is about someone who lived many decades prior to the events being written about. I don't see why a real Jesus was necessary in order to create a new religion. And if the gospel story is a myth, which seems likely, a real Jesus would not be necessary. A fictional Jesus would work just as well, or so it seems to me. 

 

 

 

Christian theologians pioneered the idea that all other deities were "myths," thereby creating the completely false impression that theirs was non-mythical. What had been the other religions' greatest strength (the antiquity of the deity and the tradition) suddenly became its greatest weakness, because they had no contemporary texts or evidence going back to the time of the deity. It never occurred to anybody that they needed such things until the Christians came along, claiming that they did have contemporary texts from "eyewitnesses" supporting their religious tendencies. They didn't tell anybody that they wrote the texts 5 minutes before, and that they lied about the eyewitnesses. So why did people fall for such an obvious hoax? My guess is that Christianity's hijack of Judaism and its scriptures helped give it an aura of respectability and antiquity that fooled people and lulled them into suspending disbelief, and after a few hundred years it actually was starting to become antique itself. 

 

I don't think Jesus or Paul started Christianity. It was anonymous people who found safety in secrecy and anonymity. Their names were deliberately not preserved. 

[mymistake]

1 hour ago, Blood said:

 

Christian theologians pioneered the idea that all other deities were "myths," thereby creating the completely false impression that theirs was non-mythical. What had been the other religions' greatest strength (the antiquity of the deity and the tradition) suddenly became its greatest weakness, because they had no contemporary texts or evidence going back to the time of the deity. It never occurred to anybody that they needed such things until the Christians came along, claiming that they did have contemporary texts from "eyewitnesses" supporting their religious tendencies. They didn't tell anybody that they wrote the texts 5 minutes before, and that they lied about the eyewitnesses. So why did people fall for such an obvious hoax? My guess is that Christianity's hijack of Judaism and its scriptures helped give it an aura of respectability and antiquity that fooled people and lulled them into suspending disbelief, and after a few hundred years it actually was starting to become antique itself. 

 

I don't think Jesus or Paul started Christianity. It was anonymous people who found safety in secrecy and anonymity. Their names were deliberately not preserved. 

 

 

Exactly.  I think early Christianity was just some kooks on the fringe of society but then once the Roman-Jewish wars happened Christianity was in the right place under the right conditions to really take off.  Once the temple was destroyed people were looking for new religious answers.

[Geezer]

55 minutes ago, Blood said:

 

Christian theologians pioneered the idea that all other deities were "myths," thereby creating the completely false impression that theirs was non-mythical. What had been the other religions' greatest strength (the antiquity of the deity and the tradition) suddenly became its greatest weakness, because they had no contemporary texts or evidence going back to the time of the deity. It never occurred to anybody that they needed such things until the Christians came along, claiming that they did have contemporary texts from "eyewitnesses" supporting their religious tendencies. They didn't tell anybody that they wrote the texts 5 minutes before, and that they lied about the eyewitnesses. So why did people fall for such an obvious hoax? My guess is that Christianity's hijack of Judaism and its scriptures helped give it an aura of respectability and antiquity that fooled people and lulled them into suspending disbelief, and after a few hundred years it actually was starting to become antique itself. 

 

I don't think Jesus or Paul started Christianity. It was anonymous people who found safety in secrecy and anonymity. Their names were deliberately not preserved. 

,

I've read scholars, I respect, that make the case that Marcion & Simon Magus were the actual authors of Paul's epistles & the architects of a religion that became known as Christianity. The Marcionite Churches were more numerous & Marcionite theology was more popular than orthodox Christianity for quite awhile.

 

Robert Price & Hermann Detering make a strong case, IMO, for Paul being just a literary character too. 

[Joshpantera]

I'm also curious about why Carrier toes the line for a 30's CE date for christianity. It looks like nothing other than for the sake of not arguing that point and just going with the accepted timeline. But from my reading, and time with Murdock, I tend to think that the roots go back to before the common era and then extend into it. Picking up velocity in the middle to late 2nd century. She researched the trade guilds and brotherhood networks of the near east and found a lot of relevant information that was included in "Christ in Egypt." This would go back into the Philo period when it was early and still obscure. 

 

Both early SDA's and Jehovah's Witness have belief's about Jesus being the Arch Angel Michael. The SDA's have since tunned that out, but it was there in the early church. I never paid too much attention to it, but after having watched the video I'm curious as to where they came up with the notion that Jesus was Michael, or more importantly, an Angel. That really ties in with what Carrier has uncovered. They must have picked up on something alluding to Jesus being an Angel. I wasn't really taught that growing up, so I'm not sure. But ex SDA pastors often point that out as a heretical factor about SDAism which was watered down later. 

[mymistake]

I would love to use a different timeline but I don't know how.  What is the alternative to 30's CE and how do we establish that timeline since so many opposing sects' religious documents were destroyed?

[Blood]

The real question is, why should we privilege the New Testament's timeline? We've established that the authors of these bizarre texts were not historians. They had, however, read quasi-historians like Josephus, so they were aware of such concepts as historical chronology, actual people like Pontius Pilate, etc. 

 

Carrier believes (I think) that the authors placed the fictional Jesus in the 30s due to a "prophetic" calculation based on the Book of Daniel's "70 Weeks" Prophecy. So they just invented a number and wrote a fictional story about a fictional god-man living during the time that they imagined a fictional, anonymous author supposedly predicted. Then they went to Josephus and filled in a little local color to make it sound plausible, to themselves and their intended audience (whomever they were). Nothing at all was based on "eyewitnesses" or "oral history."

 

I think this is a good theory; however, the problem with it is that nothing in the New Testament actually cites the "70 Weeks" prophecy. Church theologians like Justin Martyr do. You would think that the gospel writers would cite such a "prophecy" if they actually were inspired by it.  

 

I think Christianity had it's seedlings when the Hebrew Bible began to be translated into the common Greek. But we don't know when that happened either. We only have "legends." Legends are not history. 

 

Why should we expect to know when, why, and how a religion began to assume a distinct identity? How many religions of the ancient world can be documented this way? 

[mymistake]

30 minutes ago, Blood said:

 Why should we expect to know when, why, and how a religion began to assume a distinct identity? How many religions of the ancient world can be documented this way? 

 

Okay, only very modern religions like Mormonism could be pined down like that.  Could we even guess the century on Christianity's origin?

[Blood]

16 minutes ago, TrueScotsman said:

Paul was before Josephus, what is your position on the 6 verified Pauline Epistles dated in the 50s and 60s CE?

 

Verified by whom, and how?

[Blood]

11 minutes ago, mymistake said:

 

Could we even guess the century on Christianity's origin?

 

No. In my opinion, the social phenomenon later known as "Christianity" had the potential to begin evolving when non-Jews began being exposed to the Septuagint. This could have been as early as the third century BCE. 

[Blood]

Just now, TrueScotsman said:

So you also contest universally all Pauline Epistles?  I'm referring to the stance of the vast majority of Biblical scholars, secular or otherwise.  On what basis do you assert those Epistles were not written by Paul?

 

I was just asking who "verified" them, and what process do they use to reach such a conclusion? 

[Blood]

9 minutes ago, TrueScotsman said:

I'm sorry this is fairly common knowledge for those familiar with the debate over Pauline authenticity, its a mixture of external and internal evidence which is readily available if you care to check, but the 6 Pauline Epistles I refer to are generally undisputed by scholars except for a small school of thought that suggests that they were written by the Marcionite Church which I don't take too seriously.  

 

There is zero external evidence that a man named "Paul" wrote the epistles in the New Testament. There is no extra-biblical attestation for Paul. All that theologians (whom you call "Bible scholars") have is that six or seven of them share a common vocabulary, rhetoric, and theology. Then they make the great leap from there that these are "authentic" while the rest are not. It's just an opinion, not based on any external evidence. 

 

Did Paul exist? it's a valid question which we debated before on this forum. Paul could have existed and not written any letters -- but had later acolytes or students write letters in his name. The same thing happened to Plato. it's not that unusual or conjectural. 

[mymistake]

3 hours ago, Blood said:

 

There is zero external evidence that a man named "Paul" wrote the epistles in the New Testament. There is no extra-biblical attestation for Paul. All that theologians (whom you call "Bible scholars") have is that six or seven of them share a common vocabulary, rhetoric, and theology. Then they make the great leap from there that these are "authentic" while the rest are not. It's just an opinion, not based on any external evidence. 

 

Did Paul exist? it's a valid question which we debated before on this forum. Paul could have existed and not written any letters -- but had later acolytes or students write letters in his name. The same thing happened to Plato. it's not that unusual or conjectural. 

 

 

I'm guilty of using the phrase "authentic Pauline" but in my mind it means they are known to come from the same source but the rest of the letters written in Paul's name are confirmed forgeries.  But that source for authentic Pauline could have been almost anything.  It could have been one crazy guy with a background in other religions.  It could have been a committee trying to break into Christianity.  Like you said it could have been students of a guy calling himself Paul.  Maybe we shouldn't use that phrase if Christians take it to be evidence that Christianity is true.

[Blood]

I'm not dismissing them. I'm correctly stating what they are: theologians. They study theology for a living. Some of them are scholars, but to call the majority of them "scholars" without any qualifying statements presents an incomplete picture. Some of them may be skeptics or even atheists, but they still study theology for a living. You and I have had this debate on this forum before. 

 

To answer your other points:

1. The letters attempt to portray a person involved with the early church writing letters. So do the letters of John, Peter, and Jude, but these are deemed unauthentic by a large number of Bible scholars with little effort or consternation. So we have a pattern in the New Testament of people forging letters under another person's name. Whether John, Peter, and Jude actually existed as historical persons is a separate issue. 

2. There are no major anachronisms in the letters of John, Peter, and Jude, either, but that doesn't prevent them from being forged. 

3. So what? That could only mean the the same person wrote them all. 

4. I'm not so sure about this claim (does Justin Martyr cite Paul?), but it wouldn't matter. I'm not claiming "the real Paul" was a contemporary of the apostolic fathers.

5. Not sure what the point is. 

6. The Marcionite Canon dates from the second century, i.e. decades removed from when the epistles were supposedly written.

7. This has nothing to do with whether a man named Paul wrote epistles.

8. This fact can be interpreted different ways. It could also suggest that forging letters under the name "Paul" was simply an ongoing literary project of the early church. That they  were so eager to continue to forge letters and pass them off as authentic compromises the integrity of the entire letter collection, and indeed the integrity of the entire New Testament. 

[Blood]

48 minutes ago, mymistake said:

 

 

I'm guilty of using the phrase "authentic Pauline" but in my mind it means they are known to come from the same source but the rest of the letters written in Paul's name are confirmed forgeries.  But that source for authentic Pauline could have been almost anything.  It could have been one crazy guy with a background in other religions.  It could have been a committee trying to break into Christianity.  Like you said it could have been student of a guy calling himself Paul.  Maybe we shouldn't use that phrase if Christians take it to be evidence that Christianity is true.

 

It's mostly born out of theologians' desperate need to cling to something -- anything -- in the New Testament as having authorial authority. When people within the field began to whittle away at the epistles in the 19th century, theologians started to get very nervous. They feared that once the whittlin' was finished there would be only meaningless second-century dust piled on the floor. So they closed ranks and began building a palisade around the seven epistles that had similar vocabulary and exegesis, which included major ones like Romans and Galatians. "You skeptics won't be able to whittle these away!," they declared. Pesky phrases that embarrassed them ("God's wrath has come upon the Jews at last") were explained away as later interpolations. Anyone attempting to ram the palisade was attacked as "hyper-critical" and their arguments ignored. 

[Geezer]

14 hours ago, TrueScotsman said:

So you also contest universally all Pauline Epistles?  I'm referring to the stance of the vast majority of Biblical scholars, secular or otherwise.  On what basis do you assert those Epistles were not written by Paul?

 

Dr. Robert M. Price book the Colossal Apostle answers that question, as does Dr. Hermann Deterings book The Fabricated Paul. Another thought, if Paul & his writings are fictional stories with fictional characters, as some scholars believe, then the alledged Jerusalem meeting with Peter & James the Lords brother never happened. 

 

I don't put much confidence in a consensus of scholars agreeing on anything because they are often under great pressure to tow the company line to keep the grant money flowing. Don't offend or piss off the ones that write the checks. Ehrman openly threatens scholars that believe Jesus was a mythical character, and that makes me wonder about his credibly in this issue. 

[Geezer]

1 hour ago, TrueScotsman said:

I could care less about what Ehrman does, there are many other secular scholars who also regard Paul and Jesus as historical.  And if these were written later, why is there no allusion to the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, like we find in the gospels or other Pauline pseudapigraphas?  It would be first rate revisionist history for someone writing as Paul to cast himself back in time before Christians and everyone else scattered from Jerusalem, but wrote as if that was still the central location for Christianity, which was not the case in the second century when the faith became decentralized.

 

As you have noted scholars are divided on this question. 

 

[Blood]

This confusion between theology and history has been going on since the ink was still wet on the papyrus of the Gospel of Mark. It is -- needless to say -- a confusion happily encouraged by Christian writers from then until now. But if it's historical, why isn't it taught in regular history departments? Why is it so singularly novel when a tenured historian like Michael Grant writes a biography of Jesus? Why is it so rare for theologians to actually have a degree in ancient history? One of the few that I know of in the United States in William H.C. Propp at the University of California-San Diego. One would think that a master's degree in ancient history would be a requirement in order to teach or write about the Bible as a historian. But few of them bother. They don't care about history. 

[mymistake]

2 hours ago, TrueScotsman said:

You keep jumping to Christians teaching theology as history, that no doubt is done, but I am talking about positions held by secular scholars, even Richard Carrier presented in the OP.  Which concerns the historicity of 6 Pauline Epistles, I laid out several points, none of them embracing the reality of "theology," but none of them have been addressed by you.

 

I care about history, so why won't you engage my points?  

 

 

 

The Catholic church destroyed any history source that didn't fit their agenda.  They had over a thousand years of power to hunt down any document or burn anybody who wouldn't submit.