The Jesus Myth Part III

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Just a small aside, is there any sort of pagan root or baseline to JC being born during the winter solstice, and JtB being born during the summer solstice? It seems way too coincidental to not be by designed to reflect … something.

- Doc

[Manetho]

Just a small aside, is there any sort of pagan root or baseline to JC being born during the winter solstice, and JtB being born during the summer solstice? It seems way to coincidental to not be by designed to reflect … something.

- Doc

Here is a good summary of how December 25 came to be Jesus's birth date. It seems to be less connected with pagan festivals than with a preexisting Christian tradition that placed Jesus' conception on the same date as the crucifixion, which was guessed to be March 25.

[Kishkumen]

Hi Kishkumen. You are too kind and I appreciate the thought if recognizing my contributions pale in comparison to the more weighty and far more informed efforts you and others have gifted us over the various threads on the topic.

You are the one who is too kind, honor. You have a very keen mind and excellent writing skills. The board is enriched by your participation and would me much, much poorer without it.

[dastardly stem]

Very appreciative of the most recent effort to engage the topic. I also realize nobody's mind is getting changed, since for the most part when people are convinced of something they are convinced and, for the most part, counter ideas or arguments are easily dismissed. I realize for instance, many are taking it as very settled and upsetting the traditions is a bad thing. But for me, I like to push the normative narratives a bit, at least, also acknowledging there is plenty of room to go if we so choose to move forward.

Mark is the first in the history books to describe the life of Jesus. Yet, Mark is giving us a mythologized account. From that, I get, people assume there was someone other than Mark's Jesus who really lived. The problem here is the claim that Jesus really lived is found in myth. That is all. Mark's claim that Jesus lived is what needs to be verified and yet many treat Mark's claim as the evidence that Jesus lived, I see. The logic runs a circular course on such a position.

On history how where do we learn that Jesus lived?

Why starting in Mark's gospel of his life, of course.

How do we verify that Jesus lived, given that Mark's gospel is a mythologized account?

We squint at Mark's gospel real hard and look for clues that maybe he lived.

So the evidence that Jesus lived is found in the claim that a magical god-man lived? How do we verify the claims of Mark?

We assume it was based off of oral traditions passed to Mark because someone believed in something called christianity before Mark. Paul tells us that.


I'm still seeing a real lack of reason when it comes to the arguments for historicity.

Analytics:

I think there is some real evidence Jesus was historical. Around A.D. 70, Mark wrote a detailed account of his life, and put it in a very specific setting only 40 years earlier. The book has specific details that seem really unlikely to be included in a made-up book (e.g. why would a mythological Jesus be from Nazareth of all places? Why would they depict him as being baptized by John the Baptist?)

An interesting point about the writings about Jesus...they are often inserting elements of previous prophecy. Matthew's gospel spells out he added reason for the myth adding Nazareth, Matt 2:23:

And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

It is obvious in nearly every respect that the story about Jesus is myth. This element about Nazareth was made to fulfill prophecy. Interestingly so was the detail about Jesus being born in Bethlehem.

Matt 2:

And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judæa: for thus it is written by the prophet,

That is clearly myth-making. That is the opposite of evidence for historicity.

Analytics:

We also know that ten years later, Luke sat down and wrote his gospel, with the following introduction: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Wow...that's a lot. So Luke wouldn't have been 10 years later. And on top of that Steve Mason argues, recently, that Luke relies on Josephus' Antiquities which is said to have come out in 93 A.D. As I understand it, many are now taking that to suggest Luke was probably early second century. That could be 30-50 years after Mark. Not 10. And yet, since we're talking ancient history a few years hardly seems like much at all. But myth can be developed and passed around in a very short time. In a year. In a month. 10 years? It could easily develop. What's passed to this Luke? A mythologized version of a Jesus? I don't know how we can take that as a claim to history. It seems more a claim to myth. The myth was passed down, since, at least, Mark--a generation or two earlier. Mark Goodacre describes it as after Mark's story was written and perhaps to some extent passed around to those who could read, Matthew saw it and copied it, while adding more mythical elements. Decades later, perhaps, Luke sees both accounts and thinks, "I can do better". He follows the story, adds elements from Josephus and perhaps others and voila! we have good evidence for Jesus' life? I don't find that very reasonable.

This makes it clear that by A.D. 70, there was a large community of people who believed Jesus was historical, that there was great interest in his life, and that there were accounts that purported to be from actual eyewitnesses of these events. In other words, it's hard to conceive of how this could have been written and received the traction that it did if the people alive then did not think Jesus was historical. So if the Christians of A.D. 70 believed he was historical, is it conceivable that he wasn't? To me that is a stretch.

This doesn't make that clear at all. From the time of Mark to Luke, certainly, its possible the Church grew. But this hardly suggests by the time Mark is writing anyone else, besides Mark, thinks Jesus is historical--and the author of Mark, too, might have thought his account was simply a myth. Mark could have written his account and it lay hidden for a couple years up until Matthew got his hands on it. Or Mark could have written it, without any other believer thinking Jesus was historical and yet the novelty of the idea could have easily swayed other believers. There is way too much guesswork, it seems to me, for historicity.

ANalytics:

On the other hand, it is easy to trace Christianity back to the early apostles--to the indisputably historical Paul, Peter, and James. To me, the real question isn't whether Jesus of Nazareth is historical. The real question is this: when referring to Christ Jesus, was Paul specifically referring to the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, or was he referring to a demigod who was crucified and resurrected in a spirit realm vis-à-vis Ascension of Isaiah? We know that the religion Paul preached is not the same religion Jesus of Nazareth preached. And we know that according to Paul, you became an apostle by having a vision of Jesus. Clearly, the implication is that the other apostles were apostles for having visions that were qualitatively the same as Paul's. So what does any of this have to do with a guy from Nazareth?

There's a good question in there for sure. If we grant a Jesus lived, it's apparent Paul would have already been preaching, widely, a very different message than what the assumed Jesus preached. But of course, that's assuming there was a Jesus. If there was no previous Jesus then Paul's preaching makes much more sense. People would buy Paul's teaching because on their minds, there was no man Jesus, but a cosmic god who was crucified and resurrected in the spirit realm.

That's where I'm at. The gospels paint a picture of a preacher named Jesus of Nazareth, who morphed from being a son-of-man preacher in Mark to the Word Himself in John, over the years 70 to 90. But Paul's entire ministry took place before Mark was even written, and is about a mystic religion that seems to have nothing to do with an apocalyptic preacher from Nazareth and nothing to do with the son of man. That's why my own theory makes so much sense--the evolution of Christianity we see from 70 to 90 in the gospels is an attempt to harmonize the story of Jesus the preacher with Paul's preexisting Christianity--a sect of Judaism that predated Jesus of Nazareth. To me, that's most easy to believe.

It's not a bad theory, other than it doesn't seem to take seriously the data we have. Mark's gospel comes after the destruction of Jerusalem. After, many might suggest, many previous followers of Paul had died off. And yet, even with Mark, we don't have one movement of Christianity. And we may not be talking about much more than a few handfuls of people, relative to the whole kingdom. And as you suggest there were other stories to tell, like the Ascension of Isaiah suggests. And yet in all of this, there is no evidence of a preacher from Nazareth. There appears a claim of a magical divine Jesus in Mark. And that's it.

The competing idea is harder for me to swallow. Reconstructing the evolution of ideas, how do we go from Jesus-->Peter-->Paul-->Mark-->Matthew-->Luke-->John? The evolution of the ideas in the book don't line up with the chronology--Paul should have been written after John, not before Mark. That's why I think the Jesus of Nazareth/Son of Man history in the gospels merged with the already existing Christ-Jesus-savior religion of Paul. They are two different faith traditions with two different origins.

Sure. that works. But that doesn't evidence a historical Jesus at all.

Honor:

First beat is actually a pause or silence. That being, his life prior to becoming of note is unknown and not recorded by the author of Mark. This is a point for historicity. It's what one would expect of a normal person rather than an invented god figure whose birth and childhood would typically be part of the mythology. See the Rank-Raglan metric for examples. And subsequent retellings in Matthew and Luke, plus the even more imaginative tellings in the apocrypha.

If we throw out the developing mythologizing after Mark, then sure, Jesus had no birth or childhood. That does not take away this fact: Mark's gospel is a mythologized creation of a magical divine character. That is the initial claim of Jesus historicity. That some take that and suggest it is good evidence for a mortal Jesus doesn't really fit.

If we were to take Mark's account alone and say it shows Jesus didn't fit the previously assumed narrative of a dying and rising hero gods all because of one element is missing, then we aren't being very serious in our evaluation, it seems to me. When we talk about other characters in history who were mythologized and think they really lived, there are plenty of other reasons to think they lived. Like Alexander the Great. Highly mythologized. But, its not as if all we have are mythologized accounts of him. On the flip side, though, that's all we have for Jesus. And yet, people are intent to suggest, their assumption that Jesus really wasn't anything like that which is ever said about him (a magical divine characrer), but was something else because we can assume that is the case. That's just not reasonable as I see it.

Honor:

The bass line/Context. The ruling religious bodies among the Jews at this time period were elites supporting Roman rule but with varied views about Jewish law. The ruling religious priestly class of the time had been a sore subject for most the lifetimes of the people in this period going back to the end of the Hasmonean dynasty around 35 BCE. Jewish nationalism, tied to a mythologized view of the success of the Maccabean revolts against Greek and Hellenized culture/religion, was burning just under the surface for the common Jewish people who compared this glorified past and Jewish orthodoxy to the coarse reality of their time of Herodian oversight under Roman rule. Folks like John the Baptist placed themselves in stark opposition to these corrupted ruling elites who left Judah to perish under the heel of Rome. John ends up being executed for being so outspoken about Herod Antipas marrying his brother's wife after he divorced his wife the daughter of King Aretas of Nabataea, who in turn attacked and defeated Herod in 36 CE because his daughter escaped Herod and went to her father for aid. The attack on Herod by Aretas IV Philopatris is a historical event, and the loss of lands to him confirmed to many that the religious leadership of the Jews were corrupted and failing the people.

Jesus: Mark tells us Jesus was aligned with John the Baptist. From this we can derive he was someone who had negative views of the Jewish religious elite. He preached in the region called Galilee, gaining popularity and the attention of the religious leadership who sent representatives from Jerusalem to debate and engage him. He apparently proved to be a match for his opponents in these public encounters, and over time gained a following. He seems to have picked up a reputation for being a healer. He also appears to have directly lived in a way that contrasted with the Jewish elite, declaring their religious expressions to be vanity while engaging in acts he taught to be truly aligned with God's will. Sometime around a year into his engaging in public life, he traveled to Jerusalem for Passover and took his opposition to the corruption of the Jewish religion by the elites to them, including engaging in an assault on the practice of money-lending in the temple. This level of affront could not be ignored and he was executed by crucifixion. This suggests that his preaching included anti-Roman sentiments of sufficient concern it warranted his execution.

That's in the Gospels and is both informed by and is comfortably situated within the history of the time period.

If someone was going to write up a myth, a couple generations late, and yet that someone wanted to make it appears at least plausible that the myth really happened, then of course that someone is going to add details about a real historical person or legend. John the Baptist is a perfect fit for the myth. For the very reasons you mention here: "John the Baptist placed themselves in stark opposition to these corrupted ruling elites who left Judah to perish under the heel of Rome. John ends up being executed for being so outspoken..."

Remember Mark is writing his mythologized version of Jesus after the destruction. After stories are created based on the history. This simply does not, in any way, as I see it, evidence a real Jesus. It speaks simply to Mark writing into his account a story about a known historic figure who, likewise, was said to preach the type of thing Mark wanted a mythologized character to preach. Again on this, we're using the claim (Mark) as the evidence for the claim. It grows circular on such a position.

Honor:

From this we could speculate on why he became the Christ following his execution. The claim he was resurrected would be an attack on some of his religious political foes who denied it. Claiming resurrection, though, is a bit of a tell in that it was at the center of some religious debate of the time. Its somewhat like the Book of Mormon seeming to be very interested in the religious controversies of the frontier west in the mid-1820's. The teachings of the imminent arrival of the Son of Man to redeem Israel and usher in God's kingdom on earth had to be reframed to account for the death of Jesus at the hands of the Romans and through the influence of his political foes he claimed were corrupt in the sight of God. According to Tacitus, what he called Christianity - the religion present in Rome in 69 CE, was suppressed and put down early on but then flared up. The religious belief that Romans and the corrupt Jewish elite would be defeated by God's chosen champion would be a dangerous idea that needed dealt with by the authorities. But in this period. If we place Jesus as being within a couple of years of John being executed (36-38 CE) then this suggests Paul was very early on first involved in suppressing this very Jewish, very anti-Roman sentiment before having his conversion event that resulted in a romanized reimagining of the message of Jesus...and his became one of many offshoots springing up all around at the time. The Gospels appear to be codified at and after the Jewish War sees the Romans go full heel in the story, and the appeal of Christianity apparently increased even as the Jews were viewed about as badly as possible. It's no wonder the Gospel of John turns the story of anti-Jewish sentiment into the prime narrative thread, with the Romans becoming practically innocent which again makes historical sense when viewed in the timeline of the evolution of the narrative. The various stories of the life of Jesus were codified, organized, edited and concatenated into the Gospels and the rest, as they say, is, well, it's something.

We can certainly imagine how a real person Jesus came to be mythologized. I grant that. It's all quite possible. The problem is, of course, there is little evidence to back that up. no evidence, in fact, to suggest Jesus was a preacher other than that found in Mark...and his is but a mythologized account.

The point isn't to assert there was definitely a historical Jesus, 100%, Bruce Dale eat my stats! It's that the probability of there being a historical figure at the heart of the narrative, and one whose life has something valuable to learn when looked into beyond that of Sunday School Jesus or what the mythical dismissals omit is higher than either of those two apparently bitterly entangled alternatives. Is Ehrman doing damage by placing that probability at 99%? Yeah, that's silly. But if Bruce Dale, er, Carrier actually engaged with the historical Jesus rather than giving lip service to the term before focusing entirely on Sunday School Jesus, I've yet to see it. I know, he SAYS he is concerned only with a historical Jesus and no one worth debating with believes in the mythical Jesus. But he then isolates the discussion into positions that exclude actually engaging with history in favor of engaging religion.

I'm on board with this. And am certainly happy you made some clarification on the probability. I can't see a good reason at all to think it's more probable that Jesus lived. if so, I'd love to see a case made. I certainly haven't seen a serious effort to make the case outside of someone assuming there was a Jesus and imagining, since its possible, it's probable. That's just not how reason should work.

kishkumen:

I say it is hard to buck the overwhelming trends of the majority of ancient literature of the period by inserting wholly mythological characters into seemingly historical narratives, down to the detail of who the Roman governor and emperor was at the time. That is what you are expecting ancient historians to believe. It is something like asking people to accept ancient Hebrew Christians in the fourth century BCE in Mesoamerica.

The only way we can determine if someone was historical and then had a myth built up around them is corroborating evidence from non-mythologized sources. We can't take an obvious mythologized account, it seems to me, and treat what it claims about someone having lived, as evidence for that someone. Mark's gospel details the life of a magical divine character, and the later gospels follow suit. No one, of course, is saying its not possible there was a Jesus who lived. The problem is the claim hasn't been verified. We can guess. We can assume. But that can't settle the matter.

Kishkumen:

I am saying he is not the lone exception in that he is not a wholly fictional, mythological character. He is not the exception because, like most figures of his period who were written about in that period, he gets a similarly rhetorical and mythicizing treatment.

And nothing else. So we can't use the mythologized treatment as evidence that he actually lived, unless we have other reason to think he lived. SOme way there is other reason.

Manetho:

In other words, whereas miracle-working figures seem to have previously been ignored or looked down upon by those in a position to write about them, miracle-working, and the eastern deities that were often connected with it, became legitimized enough that by the end of the first century, the emperor himself could use them both to bolster his authority. Thereafter, miracle-workers started to show up more often in the written record, usually in Greek texts from the eastern half of the empire.

that's interesting stuff, Manetho. I appreciate you bringing it. I agree Jesus could be found belonging to many reference classes. So many, in fact, it'd be impossible to run evaluations on all of them. The issue here is, how well does this all fit? What criterion might we outline? And, in the end, what does this result in? If Jesus fits better in the dying and rising god mytheme then why should we ignore it and consider a new one? I think heavy evaluations could help answer some of these questions and perhaps they are worth considering. Thanks again.

In the end, this is how I see it, since we're stuck on the outside of the case presented dealing with tiny snips on the periphery. Jesus was a historical person is a claim that carries a burden of proof. Even if Carrier's argument for mythicism comes up short, which of course, no one here has attempted to engage, but has dismissed by addressing a few items from the periphery, we still have a burden that few have taken up. Treating Mark as an account of a dispassionate historian is squinting really hard to confirm the bias of "there must have been a real man". Its apologetic-like, if you ask me.

I'll end here with the conjunction fallacy. Is it more reasonable to assume Jesus, the mythologized character we find in any writing describing him, was myth or was a real person? The two options under consideration:

1. There was a mythologized character Jesus.

2. There as a mythologized character Jesus, who also, we must assume, have been a real historical person not necessarily resembling anything found in his mythology.

From Steven Pinker Rationality:

The conjunction fallacy was first illustrated by Tversky and Kahneman with an example that has become famous as “the Linda problem”:50

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Please indicate the probability of each of these statements:
Linda is a teacher in elementary school.
Linda is active in the feminist movement.
Linda is a psychiatric social worker. Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is an insurance salesperson.
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

Respondents judged that it was likelier that Linda was a feminist bank teller than that she was a bank teller: once again, the probability of A and B was judged to be higher than the probability of A alone. The dated vignette, with its baby-boomer “Linda,” backhanded compliment “bright,” passé protests, and declining occupation, betrays its early-1980s vintage. But as any psychology instructor knows, the effect is easily replicable, and today, highly intelligent Amanda who marches for Black Lives Matter is still deemed likelier to be a feminist registered nurse than a registered nurse.

The Linda problem engages our intuitions in a particularly compelling way. Unlike the selection task, where people make errors when the problem is abstract (“If P then Q”) and get it right when it is couched in certain real-life scenarios, here everyone agrees with the abstract law “prob(A and B) ≤ prob(A)” but are upended when it is made concrete. The biologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould spoke for many when he commented, “I know that the [conjunctive] statement is least probable, yet a little homunculus in my head continues to jump up and down, shouting at me—‘but she can’t just be a bank teller; read the description.’ ”51

That little homunculus can be exploited by skilled persuaders. A or with little to work with but a corpse washed up on a beach may spin a yarn on how her husband might, hypothetically, have smothered her and dumped the body so he could marry his mistress and start a business with the insurance money. The defense attorney could tell a competing shaggy-dog story in which she could, in theory, have been the victim of a late-night purse-snatching that went horribly awry. Each conjectural detail should make the scenario less likely, according to the laws of probability, yet each can make it more compelling. As Pooh-Bah says in The Mikado, it’s all “merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”52

The conjunction rule is a basic law of mathematical probability, and you don’t need to think in numbers to understand it. This made Tversky and Kahneman pessimistic about people’s intuitive sense of probability, which they argued is driven by representative stereotypes and available memories rather than on a systematic reckoning of possibilities. They rejected the idea that “inside every incoherent person there is a coherent one trying to get out.”53prosecu

Quoted a little more than I needed to. But, it works to the point. Good book, highly recommended, by the way.

Peace, my good people. So happy when someone's willing to talk.

[dastardly stem]

Just a small aside, is there any sort of pagan root or baseline to JC being born during the winter solstice, and JtB being born during the summer solstice? It seems way to coincidental to not be by designed to reflect … something.

- Doc

I hven't really looked into this. but since I've spent a good deal of time on Carrier, I found this:

Overall, Shea’s point on this is correct: there isn’t any secure evidence for a December 25th birth festival for any god before the official Imperial creation of one in 274 A.D. We also can’t establish any celebration of the birth of Jesus existed before then either. We only know December 25th did not officially become a birthday for Jesus until almost a hundred years later, in the mid-4th century. And that that had long been widely regarded as the Winter Solstice, the date the sun stopped dying and lived again. As Pliny the Elder had already reported way back in the first century (in Natural History 18.59):

Immediately after the Winter Solstice the days begin to increase…and after [the Summer Solstice] they continue to decrease inversely to the nights until the Winter Solstice. … All these seasons, too, commence at the eighth degree of the signs of the Zodiac. The winter solstice begins at the eighth degree of Capricorn, the eighth day before the calends of January…and it is rarely that these days do not respectively give some indication of a change in the weather.

As Shea himself notes “eight days before the kalends of January” is December 25. So already that date was central to the Roman calendar and astrology, and everyone believed it was the day of the restoration of the sun, when it begins to wax again after months of waning. Long before any Christians started trying to sell that as the date Jesus was born. And this was likely the reason Aurelian put the Roman state holiday of the Birth of the Invincible Sun on that date in 274 AD. It was not borrowed from Christianity as Shea seems to imply. That would have been absurd.

But Shea is right there was likely another reason to select that date for the birth of Jesus: the astronomical fact that the Winter Solstice is nine months after the Vernal Equinox when (roughly) legend implausibly imagined Jesus killed. Nine months is of course a standard pregnancy duration—if you are willing to fudge a few days or weeks here and there. And there were (as Shea notes) some Jewish superstitions that prophets always died the same day they were conceived—thus getting us to nine months before their birthdays. Not the logic of a historian. But when you don’t have data, Christians always just made stuff up. Usually based on superstitious nonsense like this. And when this also lines up with the birthday of suns and sun-gods, its attractiveness would be all the greater.

Of course the Gospels don’t even agree on the day Jesus died. The Synoptics put it either on 11 April AD 27 or 23 April AD 34; John places it either on 7 April AD 30 or 3 April AD 33 (see the calculations in Finegan, 2.II.B.3). None of which really work out to exactly nine months before December 25. So why was that specific day chosen? Well, guess what. The ancient Christians mistakenly located the death of Jesus to exactly the Vernal Equinox on Roman calendars: March 25 (e.g. Tertullian, Against the Jews 8; like the Winter Solstice, which actually occurs the 21st of December, the VE actually occurs the 20th of March, but the “observed” day for both then was the 25th). And March 25 to December 25 is exactly nine months, if you count each month as exactly 30 days (rather than according to the then-Julian calendar, which adds five days into that span to force 12 months to equal 1 solar year). Thus illustrating how they were using superstitious math, not historical records, to place these dates. And “conveniently” landing on key astronomical dates.

https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/14861

[Manetho]

Treating Mark as an account of a dispassionate historian is squinting really hard to confirm the bias of "there must have been a real man".

No one here is treating Mark as a dispassionate historian. The Gospel of Mark is obvious. What we are saying, over and over and over, is that it is too specifically rooted in a specific and recent place and time to fit the patterns we see in other purely mythical figures from the Roman world. At some points in the discussion, you seem to understand our point (such as here), but at other times you write silly mischaracterizations like this one.

[dastardly stem]

Treating Mark as an account of a dispassionate historian is squinting really hard to confirm the bias of "there must have been a real man".

No one here is treating Mark as a dispassionate historian. The Gospel of Mark is obvious. What we are saying, over and over and over, is that it is too specifically rooted in a specific and recent place and time to fit the patterns we see in other purely mythical figures from the Roman world. At some points in the discussion, you seem to understand our point (such as here), but at other times you write silly mischaracterizations like this one.

I didn't mischaracterize anyone. I didn't suggest anyone is treating Mark as a dispassionate historian here. I said doing so is not helpful. Treating Mark as a historian in any sense is also problematic, and yet some have been doing that.

[Kishkumen]

Very appreciative of the most recent effort to engage the topic. I also realize nobody's mind is getting changed, since for the most part when people are convinced of something they are convinced and, for the most part, counter ideas or arguments are easily dismissed. I realize for instance, many are taking it as very settled and upsetting the traditions is a bad thing. But for me, I like to push the normative narratives a bit, at least, also acknowledging there is plenty of room to go if we so choose to move forward.

I hope you don't think you are alone in "push[ing] the normative narratives a bit" because most of us landed on the board by the very same process. We pushed the "normative narratives" a bit. Moreover, some of us were probably considering and reading about mythicism before you discovered it. I was a fan of Robert M. Price for quite some time, and he is considered pretty fringe in mainstream New Testament scholarship. Even if you don't believe that I "push the normative narratives a bit," surely you would agree that Analytics has shown plenty of capacity to do so, and indeed has done so.

The thing is, what you call moving forward is not necessarily always moving to the conclusions you like. I have certainly moved forward in the way I see Paul and the stories about angels incarnating as human beings. I have learned quite a bit about that. This has not convinced me that there was never a historical Jesus, but maybe embracing that conclusion too hastily would not be "moving forward" but backward.

Mark is the first in the history books to describe the life of Jesus. Yet, Mark is giving us a mythologized account. From that, I get, people assume there was someone other than Mark's Jesus who really lived. The problem here is the claim that Jesus really lived is found in myth. That is all. Mark's claim that Jesus lived is what needs to be verified and yet many treat Mark's claim as the evidence that Jesus lived, I see. The logic runs a circular course on such a position.

In antiquity it is very often the case that the first author you see telling a story was not the first author to tell the story. The author is usually telling his or her version of a story that others have told before. Many times the earlier tellers are oral tellers, not writers. It is almost certainly the case that "Mark" was not the first person to tell the Jesus story. He provides us our first extant written account. You really need to factor in these variables when you comment on why it is that scholars believe there was a Jesus who actually lived. Couple this with the fact that "Mark" wrote only four decades after Jesus died, and now a reasonable historian allows for a higher probability that there were living people who remembered Jesus in "Mark's" day.

These things really must be factored into the statistical likelihood of Jesus' actual earthly existence, as well as your estimation of the reasonableness of the people you disagree with. Not a few of these people are trained ancient historians with real PhDs and peer-reviewed books and articles under their belt. That does not make them right, of course, but you could try a little harder to recognize that your stubborn interlocutors actually have real reasons to be stubborn. We have been around the block a few times, dude.

[Kishkumen]

Treating Mark as a historian in any sense is also problematic, and yet some have been doing that.

What does it mean to you to be a historian in the ancient world, and to what extent should texts that are not history, technically speaking, be dismissed as being of no historical value whatsoever? When Cicero writes epistles that contain historical data, do we reflexively dismiss the data because the letters are "not history"?

[Res Ipsa]

I don't think the Linda problem applies here at all. It only appears to, stem, because of the way you chose to word the two hypotheses.

If we're going to evaluate evidence, I think we have to compare:

1. If the story of Jesus is that of a mythologized real person, what should we expect the evidence to look like?

2. If the story of Jesus is that of a mythical figure that never existed, what should we expect the evidence to look like?

I'm not a historian, so I have to defer to folks like Kish who know what the evidence looks like for category 1. If I'm understanding what he's saying about the evidence, what we find looks much more like 1 than 2. For example, if Jesus were in category 2, we would not expect to find details in the story that tie him to a specific place and time.

Kish is probably as good a shot as I'll ever get as far as what the evidence should look like in either case. The only axe he seems to have to grind is a defense of doing history right, which is a perfectly acceptable axe in this case. I've always found this issue interesting, although of no real importance, but I find myself persuaded that the odds favor a real guy Jesus.