The Jesus Myth Part III

[Analytics]

Since the last Jesus Myth thread, I listened to the audio book How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.

Perhaps I missed some key points, but I was left with a bit of whiplash with the idea of the disciples of an apocalyptic preacher having the charisma, creativity, and drive to completely reinvent Jesus' message and turn it into a successful religion. You'd expect with 99.99% of preachers such as Jesus, the movement dies when they die, and the other 00.01% of the time the religion the preacher started will perpetuate on its own. But what are the odds that the disciple of the preacher would successfully form a new religion? It's like Peter is the Dave Grohl of religion.

Here is where I'm still stuck. If you look at the timeline of the gospels, you see an earthly Jesus in Mark (A.D. 70), with a more divine Jesus appearing in Matthew and Luke (A.D. 80), followed by a full-on divine Jesus in John (A.D. 90). I can see an evolution of a religion happening along those lines.

My problem with it though, comes back to Paul. If Jesus being God in the flesh was something that didn't make it into the gospels until John in A.D. 90, how come Paul believed that back in A.D. 50? And if the Christians believed Jesus was God in the flesh in A.D. 50, why did Mark, Matthew, and Luke get traction with a different message before John, and why did the gospel story seem to evolve over 20 years from Mark to John? I realize Christianity wasn't a unified homogenous thing, but this timeline still troubles me.

I keep coming back to the idea that yes, the gospels were based on the life of an actual apocalyptical preacher, but Paul's religion was a mystic Ascension of Isaiah type of religion that existed independently of Jesus of Nazareth. The original main church wasn't something that Peter invented after Jesus died. Rather, it was a mystic religion. When Mark, Q, and whomever wrote the original gospels about the real-world apocalyptical preacher who was also had the common name Jesus, Paul's sect--the mystic Christians--really liked it and adopted the story. Over the next few decades, the story of Jesus of Nazareth was reworked until it better fit the divine Jesus that the mythicist sect always believed, and the rest is history.

That's what happens in the movie in my mind, at least. Feel free to disabuse me of this improbable narrative.

[dastardly stem]

Since the last Jesus Myth thread, I listened to the audio book How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.

Perhaps I missed some key points, but I was left with a bit of whiplash with the idea of the disciples of an apocalyptic preacher having the charisma, creativity, and drive to completely reinvent Jesus' message and turn it into a successful religion. You'd expect with 99.99% of preachers such as Jesus, the movement dies when they die, and the other 00.01% of the time the religion the preacher started will perpetuate on its own. But what are the odds that the disciple of the preacher would successfully form a new religion? It's like Peter is the Dave Grohl of religion.

Lol...like it--Dave Grohl of religion. When Paul mentions Peter he's almost dismissive. SOme say Paul is suggesting Peter has nothing new to add to what Paul's preaching (as if they are in line with each other on Jesus' gospel), others think Paul is suggesting Peter was not very interesting, or doesn't really add much or even understand much of what the gospel is or should be. But we have nothing from Peter. Nada and zilch. It appears Paul is saying the gospel was preached by Peter, but what we hear is Paul's gospel, broken and spread out in various letters he wrote to earlier converts. And Paul never preaches Jesus' messages. Never claims he knows what Peter taught or that he saw Peter as someone who knew a mortal Jesus.

What do we think Peter said or taught? That, to me, seems like a guess. If there were a Jesus who Peter followed, what Peter taught could have been a world different then what we get in Paul, the gospels and later writings. It feels like a stretch to think Peter preached a gospel different then a guy he knew and yet claimed it was from the guy he knew. But what did Peter preach? We assume Peter's teachings were similar to Paul's? I don't know, sounds like a lot of guesswork to me.

Video starting about the 12 minute mark (conversation with Dr Carrier and Dr MacDonald):

(summarized)

If we consider all the epistles, acts and gospels, we have or have fragments of, or know by name...its about a 10 to 1 ration of made up to what's determined to good for the canon....so...this shows that making stuff up is the normal mode of operation..even within orthodox Christianity.

Back to you, A:

Here is where I'm still stuck. If you look at the timeline of the gospels, you see an earthly Jesus in Mark (A.D. 70), with a more divine Jesus appearing in Matthew and Luke (A.D. 80), followed by a full-on divine Jesus in John (A.D. 90). I can see an evolution of a religion happening along those lines.

My problem with it though, comes back to Paul. If Jesus being God in the flesh was something that didn't make it into the gospels until John in A.D. 90, how come Paul believed that back in A.D. 50? And if the Christians believed Jesus was God in the flesh in A.D. 50, why did Mark, Matthew, and Luke get traction with a different message before John, and why did the gospel story seem to evolve over 20 years from Mark to John? I realize Christianity wasn't a unified homogenous thing, but this timeline still troubles me.

Well obviously Paul thought Jesus was divine but so did Mark. Just because the story of Jesus made him sound grander in Matthew, Luke and then John, oddly progressively, doesn't mean Mark didn't see him as divine. And it's not like it was all settled by John anyway. Also, it appears Luke played off of Josephus from his work in 93 A.D. So Luke likely came later. And John after that. Either way, an attempt make the myth sound more fantastic doesn't suggest there was no myth, at least to me.

I keep coming back to the idea that yes, the gospels were based on the life of an actual apocalyptical preacher, but Paul's religion was a mystic Ascension of Isaiah type of religion that existed independently of Jesus of Nazareth. The original main church wasn't something that Peter invented after Jesus died. Rather, it was a mystic religion. When Mark, Q, and whomever wrote the original gospels about the real-world apocalyptical preacher who was also had the common name Jesus, Paul's sect--the mystic Christians--really liked it and adopted the story. Over the next few decades, the story of Jesus of Nazareth was reworked until it better fit the divine Jesus that the mythicist sect always believed, and the rest is history.

That's what happens in the movie in my mind, at least. Feel free to disabuse me of this improbable narrative.

I don't know you're very far off at all. Sounds pretty reasonable. Its just, in my mind, we're guessing at Peter's thoughts. We're guessing at a Q existence that led to Mark and all that guessing makes me uncomfortable. We're guessing Jesus was a real-world preacher. Its tough because before Paul, we got nothing and after him we have a plethora of information most of which is considered made up stuff. It was normal to make it up, apparently. How does that give us any confidence there was a Jesus?

Mythicism remains tough too, because if it was so scattered, so made up, how does that suggest there was an effort to follow a mythic pattern?

[PseudoPaul]

Since the last Jesus Myth thread, I listened to the audio book How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.

Perhaps I missed some key points, but I was left with a bit of whiplash with the idea of the disciples of an apocalyptic preacher having the charisma, creativity, and drive to completely reinvent Jesus' message and turn it into a successful religion. You'd expect with 99.99% of preachers such as Jesus, the movement dies when they die, and the other 00.01% of the time the religion the preacher started will perpetuate on its own. But what are the odds that the disciple of the preacher would successfully form a new religion? It's like Peter is the Dave Grohl of religion.

Here is where I'm still stuck. If you look at the timeline of the gospels, you see an earthly Jesus in Mark (A.D. 70), with a more divine Jesus appearing in Matthew and Luke (A.D. 80), followed by a full-on divine Jesus in John (A.D. 90). I can see an evolution of a religion happening along those lines.

My problem with it though, comes back to Paul. If Jesus being God in the flesh was something that didn't make it into the gospels until John in A.D. 90, how come Paul believed that back in A.D. 50? And if the Christians believed Jesus was God in the flesh in A.D. 50, why did Mark, Matthew, and Luke get traction with a different message before John, and why did the gospel story seem to evolve over 20 years from Mark to John? I realize Christianity wasn't a unified homogenous thing, but this timeline still troubles me.

I keep coming back to the idea that yes, the gospels were based on the life of an actual apocalyptical preacher, but Paul's religion was a mystic Ascension of Isaiah type of religion that existed independently of Jesus of Nazareth. The original main church wasn't something that Peter invented after Jesus died. Rather, it was a mystic religion. When Mark, Q, and whomever wrote the original gospels about the real-world apocalyptical preacher who was also had the common name Jesus, Paul's sect--the mystic Christians--really liked it and adopted the story. Over the next few decades, the story of Jesus of Nazareth was reworked until it better fit the divine Jesus that the mythicist sect always believed, and the rest is history.

That's what happens in the movie in my mind, at least. Feel free to disabuse me of this improbable narrative.

Paul's Christology is relatively high for being so early, but it's still quite low compared to orthodox Christianity. Paul thought Jesus was an angel who incarnated into a human being, and then was rewarded by God after his death with Godhood. He wasn't "God incarnate" for Paul in the sense that Jesus was God when he was on earth.

The growth of Christianity isn't all that fast. But one of the keys to its success might have been the doctrine of hell - which ironically never made it into the Bible.

[dastardly stem]

Paul is adamantly and repetitively saying he did not hear the gospel from anyone. No one preached it to him. Its not like he was walking around and heard a CHristian on the corner on a box telling them to believe Jesus and repent. Nah...he's adamant he didn't get that. He's preaching his own message, apparently.

12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The closest thing he hints at in connecting his beliefs with someone else before him, a couple of times, is in mentioning Peter. Peter is said to have seen, as Paul did in vision, Jesus, this magical god-figure appearing in Paul's psyche. But Paul is not necessarily saying Peter lived along side Jesus--or walked around with him. Or that Jesus preached and Peter took notes or carried on his message. No. He's saying just as Paul visioned Jesus so did Peter. That's basically it. Then he also makes note that Peter adds nothing to his preaching.

After Paul, Mark, or whoever wrote Mark, tells a story about Jesus getting baptized by John the baptist then preaching parables, raising people from the dead, with his magical god-powers, spitting on blind people to heal them, casting out devils, and getting betrayed by his followers. But you see, we're just guessing Mark heard any of this from anyone else. We're assuming things like, "well they had the story buzzing in everyone's ears since Jesus lived, and there must have been some source like Q that preserved Jesus' teachings so Mark could get them right...or something". But again, that's just guesswork, it seems. It's the best we got. Matthew copies Mark and adds some for dramatic effect. Luke pretties it up even more, by incorporating some late Josephus historic material, and then John, written after knowledge of these others, takes another dramatic shift and voila! Jesus is God incarnate, one with God and all of that. no one seems concerned about telling a true historic account, with perhaps an exception of Paul where he really wants people to believe his story.

While these things got written, and obviously since Matt was aware of Mark, something got a bit disseminated, at least, while most followers were believing who knows what exactly. I mean there was diversity of thought and most couldn't read. They believed everything from Jesus really lived to Jesus was a god who was sacrificed at the hands of demons in the sky. Sure hundreds of years later that which came to be known as Christianity, threw out all the writings they didn't like and called them lesser and kept the things they wanted to like, in order to support their burgeoning beliefs, but that wasn't the scenario when Paul, and the gospels were written. They were freewheeling back then.

Their greek speaking education taught them that myth making was the way to write, if you were going to write. That's what writing was. I mean good. It sure makes Luke's story sound good. But I can't imagine that gives good reason to think Jesus really lived. Or if he lived, he was anything like the gospels or Paul make him to be. If he wasn't, then that's as good as mythicism as anything. When we ask, did Jesus live, we aren't just asking did some guy named Joshua live in the early first century. No. Of course someone lived. We're asking if the Jesus we hear about really lived. We can assume, I guess, Paul, then Mark and others had some actual human in mind when they wrote stuff down. But we don't know that. And since what they did write down was magical god stuff, we can easily surmise they mythologized someone whether that someone really lived or not.

It's really a distinction without a difference to think Jesus was a preacher who wasn't at all like what Paul and Mark made him out to be. If there was no god who was born of a virgin, lived, walked, talked, condemned a tree, rose up a mythical Lazarus, and rose from the dead, then Jesus didn't really live, did he? If there was a Jesus who started it all, and taught something, we'd only guess at what he did teach. We can approximate to what was likely taught by a preacher wanting to upset the balance. That seems to be why people are so happy to accept Schweitzer's apocalyptic prophet guess. Since there were many such prophets, then all we're doing is saying it's possible and if possible, then probable, and if probable then most likely. That's just not how reason should work. Its as if we're giving the lack of evidence a pass because we can't possibly know.

PseudoPaul:

The growth of Christianity isn't all that fast. But one of the keys to its success might have been the doctrine of hell - which ironically never made it into the Bible.

So recently I read Woke Racism by John McWhorter (excellent book...highly recommended). Years back, he called out anti-racism, that which is extolled by Ibrahim Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates or that other white lady, as a religion. Since his call out, it appears that movement has solidified itself as a new religion. With today, perhaps, many millions of followers. A religion that popped up and in a short time has exploded to the degree that'd embarrass early Christianity. (Such an explosion surely proves it's true!) Whatever the case, in the same manner, this religion has varied things said and thought, while its progenitors (much like christianity, pulled from various sources of it's day) publish it's gospel, values and teachings. Yet, any given follower, if asked about Critical Race Theory, or much about its values, respond with a dogmatic and perhaps rote line or sets of lines using words like privilege, systemic and the like hoping to find opportunity to pounce, with self-righteous religious indignation, on anyone who dare speak in ways not allowed by its hallowed rulebook (or books as they case may be).

(I'm guessing someone if not a few people will not like me saying this.)

Why the Jesus myth grew may be an interesting question, but that it grew and meant something to so many, especially in the centuries after it started (also suggesting by the time it meant anything to them it was completely different from what it was when it started), doesn't at all suggest it had to have had a person who thought he was divine at it's beginning. It simply needed dogma, innovation, angst, and some interesting narratives. That's certainly what it got. That's certainly what we're seeing now.

[honorentheos]

Saw this thread pop up a couple of days ago and wondered if stem had moved at all. Nope. Turned out he retrenched.

Manetho laid out a simple but direct argument against Carrier categorizing Jesus (the historical Jesus) as a Rank Raglan Divine King. I read Manetho's point being the figures Carrier placed up against Jesus also fell outside of the period of written history for their peoples or were acknowledged to have never been living humans with a modern contention of their historicity. Yet stem asked Manetho why he didn't agree with Carrier which I found odd. Manetho's point seemed pretty clear. It may also need to be pointed out that both Otto Rank and Baron Raglan were essentially engaging western mythology as a tradition. That's a bit awkward as the competing traditions seeking to raise, say Moses into Platonic ideal by folks like Philo were contemporaneous to folks like the author of Matthew seeking to elevate Jesus into messianic saviour foretold in Hebrew scripture. If these traditions of hype-men elevating their preferred figures are in competition with one another as well as those of Greek and Roman tradition, then naturally certain themes appear where each subsequent figure would be one-upping others in a class. Yet neither the two above nor Carrier compared Jesus to his counterparts in the religious traditions of the world such as Confucious, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao Tse, or others - all of whom have had their historicity questioned by skeptics but are similarly considered historical figures at their root by scholars.

Raglan's list is as follows:

Oedipus (21 or 22 points)
Theseus (20 points)
Romulus (18 points)
Heracles (17 points)
Perseus (18 points)
Jason (15 points)
Bellerophon (16 points)
Pelops (13 points)
Dionysos (19 points)
Apollo (11 points)
Zeus (15 points)
Joseph (12 points)
Moses (20 points)
Elijah (9 points)
Watu Gunung (18 points)
Nyikang (14 points)
Sigurd (11 points)
Llew Llawgyffes (17 points)
King Arthur (19 points)
Robin Hood (13 points)
Alexander the Great (7 points)

Carrier argued in his book that actual historic figures can't score higher than an 11-12 as I recall, yet many critics of the system showed figures such as Tzar Nicholas II score quite high, well above the threshold Carrier argued for, while Carrier also noted Jesus scores differently depending on which gospel one follows. He chooses to use Matthew to get the highest score at the expense of Mark which seems dishonest for someone wishing to tackle the question of the historical Jesus rather than the divine Jesus.

And, frankly, that seems to still be where stem is at.

When we ask, did Jesus live, we aren't just asking did some guy named Joshua live in the early first century. No. Of course someone lived. We're asking if the Jesus we hear about really lived. We can assume, I guess, Paul, then Mark and others had some actual human in mind when they wrote stuff down. But we don't know that. And since what they did write down was magical god stuff, we can easily surmise they mythologized someone whether that someone really lived or not.

It's really a distinction without a difference to think Jesus was a preacher who wasn't at all like what Paul and Mark made him out to be. If there was no god who was born of a virgin, lived, walked, talked, condemned a tree, rose up a mythical Lazarus, and rose from the dead, then Jesus didn't really live, did he? If there was a Jesus who started it all, and taught something, we'd only guess at what he did teach.

And that's what we see with Carrier's use of Rank-Raglan. Carrier, it should also be noted, modified the criteria from Raglan to even better align with the Jesus myths, which serve to bump up the score of the mythical Jesus when using a mythical figure ranking system.

Carrier isn't serious about the questions around the historical Jesus, and apparently that is contagious.

If you start with Rank's categories, for example, and avoid the mythological aspects of the life of Jesus as proclaimed in the later gospels, choosing instead to focus on the gospel of Mark, we might get this:

Child of distinguished parents? No. Matthew and Luke try to tie him to King David, but Mark in chapter 6 has the people questioning Jesus' miracles on the grounds he's a nobody.
Father is a king? No. Matthew and Luke try to tie him to King David, but Mark starts with John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus.
Difficulty in conception? No. No mention at all.
Prophecy warning against birth/ No mention at all.
Hero surrendered to the water in a box? No.
Saved by animals or lowly people? No.
Suckled by female animal or humble woman? No.
Hero grows up? Yes. Jesus is an adult in the gospel of Mark.
Hero finds distinguished parents/ No. Mark's gospel doesn't declare Jesus to be the son of God, nor of any divine king. Mark speaks of Jesus in a context that is very much of the time.
Hero takes revenge on the father? Uh, no.
Acknowledged by people? Yes. By the end of Mark's gospel the people are, "overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Achieves rank and honors? No. He's executed.

The author of the Gospel of Matthew clearly inserted many "yes" answers and explanations into the above. Paralleling Moses, for example, who was being elevated in the philosophical works of Philo at the time as well.

This argument demonstrates the progression of the myth-making around Jesus. So if it's so central to Carrier and he not only misused it but manipulated it, would that demonstrate sufficiently to those who choose him over historical, scholarly consensus that he may be a dubious source on the subject?

[honorentheos]

Since the last Jesus Myth thread, I listened to the audio book How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.

Perhaps I missed some key points, but I was left with a bit of whiplash with the idea of the disciples of an apocalyptic preacher having the charisma, creativity, and drive to completely reinvent Jesus' message and turn it into a successful religion. You'd expect with 99.99% of preachers such as Jesus, the movement dies when they die, and the other 00.01% of the time the religion the preacher started will perpetuate on its own. But what are the odds that the disciple of the preacher would successfully form a new religion? It's like Peter is the Dave Grohl of religion.

Here is where I'm still stuck. If you look at the timeline of the gospels, you see an earthly Jesus in Mark (A.D. 70), with a more divine Jesus appearing in Matthew and Luke (A.D. 80), followed by a full-on divine Jesus in John (A.D. 90). I can see an evolution of a religion happening along those lines.

My problem with it though, comes back to Paul. If Jesus being God in the flesh was something that didn't make it into the gospels until John in A.D. 90, how come Paul believed that back in A.D. 50? And if the Christians believed Jesus was God in the flesh in A.D. 50, why did Mark, Matthew, and Luke get traction with a different message before John, and why did the gospel story seem to evolve over 20 years from Mark to John? I realize Christianity wasn't a unified homogenous thing, but this timeline still troubles me.

I keep coming back to the idea that yes, the gospels were based on the life of an actual apocalyptical preacher, but Paul's religion was a mystic Ascension of Isaiah type of religion that existed independently of Jesus of Nazareth. The original main church wasn't something that Peter invented after Jesus died. Rather, it was a mystic religion. When Mark, Q, and whomever wrote the original gospels about the real-world apocalyptical preacher who was also had the common name Jesus, Paul's sect--the mystic Christians--really liked it and adopted the story. Over the next few decades, the story of Jesus of Nazareth was reworked until it better fit the divine Jesus that the mythicist sect always believed, and the rest is history.

That's what happens in the movie in my mind, at least. Feel free to disabuse me of this improbable narrative.

I believe we discussed historical context in the previous iterations of this thread as well.

Keep in mind that the original group around Jesus was Jewish just before the Jewish Wars. During this period, Paul as a Roman citizen spent more than 14 years spreading his own version of the fledgling faith with no contact with the Jerusalem apostles. At the time of Nero when this was occurring, it's generally believed most Christians among the Romans were a sect of Judaism. Tacitus describes them as being guilty of "hatred against mankind". Nero blamed this group for setting fire to Rome. Christianity had spread to Rome itself within three decades of the crucifixion.

Tacitus also says something interesting, that Christianity was suppressed but then flared up:

The originator of the name, Christ, was executed as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius; and though repressed, this destructive superstition erupted again, not only through Judea, which was the origin of this evil, but also through the city of Rome, to which all that is horrible and shameful floods together and is celebrated.

So something happened around Judea that tampered down the original Jesus cult, but at least Paul was spreading a version of this around the empire which, as tensions in Judea increased, had grown to have a population of said Christians in Rome itself. It's around this time that Peter and Paul are legendarily executed followed by the Jewish Revolts. And it's in this context as the Jewish rebellions are put down that we attribute the codified written accounts of Jesus' life that we have being codified following decades of oral tradition. Of course, the ones we have today are also the ones that aligned well enough with later Catholic beliefs and canonization, too. I noted in the previous thread that there are some who argue that Paul was Romanizing the religion, defanging it to make it compatible with Roman society by shifting the gaze away from the arrival of the Son of Man and imminent destruction of the Romans/Babylon the Great to remove its boot from off the throat of the Jewish people. The evolution of the religion is even seen in the stories of Paul where he tells his followers of disputing with James, the brother of Jesus who was decidedly the leader of the Jesus-cult following his execution. Paul's positions included removing food prohibitions and circumcision as examples of Jewish law that wouldn't have been palatable to others in the Empire. He clearly had an agenda that diverged from that of the original Jewish group, and a direction that made him the Connector in the Malcomb Gladwell sense of the word. He himself tells us he is willing to say just about anything to sell his message, and the author of Acts gives us an example where Paul contrasts his God and Jesus with the Greek deities and claiming the difference is Jesus was real, and importantly, raised him from the dead.

God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, “For we are also His offspring.”

Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:24–31).

[dastardly stem]

Thanks for commenting, honor. Just to be clear, it sounds like you are relying on the criticisms of Christian apologist David Wallace? it sounded like Manetho too was using him, but wasn't sure. You seem more clearly using him. Fi so, that's great. I wonder if you could supply some links to consider?

Saw this thread pop up a couple of days ago and wondered if stem had moved at all. Nope. Turned out he retrenched.

Manetho laid out a simple but direct argument against Carrier categorizing Jesus (the historical Jesus) as a Rank Raglan Divine King. I read Manetho's point being the figures Carrier placed up against Jesus also fell outside of the period of written history for their peoples or were acknowledged to have never been living humans with a modern contention of their historicity. Yet stem asked Manetho why he didn't agree with Carrier which I found odd. Manetho's point seemed pretty clear. It may also need to be pointed out that both Otto Rank and Baron Raglan were essentially engaging western mythology as a tradition. That's a bit awkward as the competing traditions seeking to raise, say Moses into Platonic ideal by folks like Philo were contemporaneous to folks like the author of Matthew seeking to elevate Jesus into messianic saviour foretold in Hebrew scripture. If these traditions of hype-men elevating their preferred figures are in competition with one another as well as those of Greek and Roman tradition, then naturally certain themes appear where each subsequent figure would be one-upping others in a class. Yet neither the two above nor Carrier compared Jesus to his counterparts in the religious traditions of the world such as Confucious, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao Tse, or others - all of whom have had their historicity questioned by skeptics but are similarly considered historical figures at their root by scholars.

Raglan's list is as follows:

Oedipus (21 or 22 points)
Theseus (20 points)
Romulus (18 points)
Heracles (17 points)
Perseus (18 points)
Jason (15 points)
Bellerophon (16 points)
Pelops (13 points)
Dionysos (19 points)
Apollo (11 points)
Zeus (15 points)
Joseph (12 points)
Moses (20 points)
Elijah (9 points)
Watu Gunung (18 points)
Nyikang (14 points)
Sigurd (11 points)
Llew Llawgyffes (17 points)
King Arthur (19 points)
Robin Hood (13 points)
Alexander the Great (7 points)

Carrier argued in his book that actual historic figures can't score higher than an 11-12 as I recall, yet many critics of the system showed figures such as Tzar Nicholas II score quite high, well above the threshold Carrier argued for, while Carrier also noted Jesus scores differently depending on which gospel one follows. He chooses to use Matthew to get the highest score at the expense of Mark which seems dishonest for someone wishing to tackle the question of the historical Jesus rather than the divine Jesus.

This does sound like Wallace. Tzar Nicholas II isn't an ancient mythologized figure. He's far more modern. That's why he doesn't make the list. These amount to odd sounding critiques to me. But as I asked Manetho:

If one does not like the Rank-Ranglan class, what is the correct reference class? You see we can argue all day long about whether the RR class is the correct one, I suppose, but at the end of the day, what will it matter if the prior still comes out at 1 in 3 chance? So what class and what criterion do we use.

Beyond Marshall, others too have complained about the reference class. I mentioned that earlier. If it's a problem, I need to know why and what would be a more appropriate set of criterion. Mentioning a couple of names of a couple of people doesn't quite work. It doesn't give us a list of criterion and it doesn't lead us much of anywhere.

And, frankly, that seems to still be where stem is at.

When we ask, did Jesus live, we aren't just asking did some guy named Joshua live in the early first century. No. Of course someone lived. We're asking if the Jesus we hear about really lived. We can assume, I guess, Paul, then Mark and others had some actual human in mind when they wrote stuff down. But we don't know that. And since what they did write down was magical god stuff, we can easily surmise they mythologized someone whether that someone really lived or not.

It's really a distinction without a difference to think Jesus was a preacher who wasn't at all like what Paul and Mark made him out to be. If there was no god who was born of a virgin, lived, walked, talked, condemned a tree, rose up a mythical Lazarus, and rose from the dead, then Jesus didn't really live, did he? If there was a Jesus who started it all, and taught something, we'd only guess at what he did teach.

And that's what we see with Carrier's use of Rank-Raglan.

To be clear, what I just said there, doesn't have anything to do with Rank-Raglan.

Carrier, it should also be noted, modified the criteria from Raglan to even better align with the Jesus myths, which serve to bump up the score of the mythical Jesus when using a mythical figure ranking system.

Carrier isn't serious about the questions around the historical Jesus, and apparently that is contagious.

If you start with Rank's categories, for example, and avoid the mythological aspects of the life of Jesus as proclaimed in the later gospels, choosing instead to focus on the gospel of Mark, we might get this:

Using Mark doesn't work, because it doesn't entail his birth and resurrection. But Mark's not the end of mythologizing Jesus.

Child of distinguished parents? No. Matthew and Luke try to tie him to King David, but Mark in chapter 6 has the people questioning Jesus' miracles on the grounds he's a nobody.
Father is a king? No. Matthew and Luke try to tie him to King David, but Mark starts with John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus.
Difficulty in conception? No. No mention at all.
Prophecy warning against birth/ No mention at all.
Hero surrendered to the water in a box? No.
Saved by animals or lowly people? No.
Suckled by female animal or humble woman? No.
Hero grows up? Yes. Jesus is an adult in the gospel of Mark.
Hero finds distinguished parents/ No. Mark's gospel doesn't declare Jesus to be the son of God, nor of any divine king. Mark speaks of Jesus in a context that is very much of the time.
Hero takes revenge on the father? Uh, no.
Acknowledged by people? Yes. By the end of Mark's gospel the people are, "overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Achieves rank and honors? No. He's executed.

The author of the Gospel of Matthew clearly inserted many "yes" answers and explanations into the above. Paralleling Moses, for example, who was being elevated in the philosophical works of Philo at the time as well.

This argument demonstrates the progression of the myth-making around Jesus. So if it's so central to Carrier and he not only misused it but manipulated it, would that demonstrate sufficiently to those who choose him over historical, scholarly consensus that he may be a dubious source on the subject?

He may be, but that really has to be demonstrated, it seems to me. I don't really see what to make of this comparison to Mark. And ultimately all you're talking about is the reference class Carrier uses to arrive at his prior. What's a better alternative?

Carrier:

The basic equation is, quite simply, prior odds times evidential odds. So we have to start with the prior odds. In the case of Jesus, that means answering one simple question: in the set of all people of that era most similar to Jesus in relevant characteristics, how typically do they turn out to be historical, rather than mythical? This is a straightforward question about a frequency. You have to avoid the disingenuous or foolish error of looking at the wrong set of of people, as also the unproductive error of looking at too small a set. You need a set large enough to get some usable frequency-range from, but small enough to more accurately fit Jesus, because if you don’t do the latter you are violating a fundamental rule of epistemic logic: you cannot ignore information you have. If you know Jesus belongs to a narrower reference class, you cannot ignore that. You have to take it into account. Likewise for the former error: if you look at too narrow a class, so narrow you can extract no frequency information from it, you miss the forest for the trees, which is the same mistake—ignoring information you have.

https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/19009

Either way, the idea of a personal savior god dying and rising from the dead to live again was not original to Christianity. It was, in fact, fashionable. Many cultures all around the borders of, and traveling and trading through Judea, had one. It was all the rage. It was thus not surprising in that context, that some fringe Jews decided to invent one of their own. And they may have done so deliberately, in a bid to reform what they believed was a corrupt religious system; or they have done so unconsciously, their subconscious minds “reading into” the scriptures ideas they had unthinkingly absorbed from all these foreign cultures and fads, and then “convincing” their conscious minds it was true by conjuring visions confirming their subtly-influenced intuitions. Either way, Jesus is just a late comer to the party. Yet one more dying-and-rising personal savior god. Only this time, Jewish.

https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/13890

Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).
You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/13890

It simply cannot be claimed that the Jewish authors of the idea of their own miraculously born, dying-and-rising savior, were in no way aware of nor at all influenced by the widespread instantiation of exactly that kind of savior all around them, in practically every culture they knew. That’s simply absurd. The coincidence is impossible. Which is why even ancient Christian apologists were not so foolish as to claim this—or even more absurdly, that no such dying-and-rising savior model even existed. Of course it existed. And they well knew it. They chose to blame it on the Devil. Plagiarizing the idea in advance, to try and set up a culture that would then dismiss the Jesus story as just another myth akin to the others the Devil conjured. This is a ridiculous defense, akin to claiming evolution is obviously false because the Devil “planted all the fossils.”

[Manetho]

I don't really see what to make of this comparison to Mark. And ultimately all you're talking about is the reference class Carrier uses to arrive at his prior. What's a better alternative?

How about the theios aner, a term for a miracle-working human? The validity of the category and its applicability to Jesus are much debated in academia, but that's no different from the category of "dying-and-rising gods". The book review I keep linking to is part of that long debate, and while it may not be easy to grasp the full context of that debate from reading the review, it's where my limited understanding of the debate mostly comes from. But however abstruse the debate may be, it's very relevant as a possible point of comparison for Jesus, at least as much so as the dying-and-rising god. There's even a book (which I haven't read) titled Theios Aner and the Markan Miracle Traditions. Does Carrier talk about any of that? If he doesn't, he really is being dishonest. Comparing Jesus to mythical founder figures and dying-and-rising gods while ignoring the real-life people who are also frequently compared to Jesus is bound to skew his results.

[huckelberry]

Dastardly stem, You ask which class Jesus should be considered in. I think anybody could be considered in a variety of classes. Which classes could you be considered a part of? I would expect a variety. The same with Jesus. Jewish prophet, Jewish peasant, Jewish itinerant preacher, religious fanatic, male 2000 years ago , hero , divine representative are some possibilities.

I think you may be skipping the important point Honorentheos was making. Any class could be used to make some sort of measured comparisons. The choice of class determines what is being measured. Carrier's use of Rank-Raglan measures the stories match with a mythic type. Seeing that the story in Mark measures distinctly smaller than in Matthew is a strong indication that you have in Mark a story about a real Jew and that story has added to it mythic type themes in Matthew and John increasing the Rank-Raglan score.

[Kishkumen]

How about the theios aner, a term for a miracle-working human? The validity of the category and its applicability to Jesus are much debated in academia, but that's no different from the category of "dying-and-rising gods". The book review I keep linking to is part of that long debate, and while it may not be easy to grasp the full context of that debate from reading the review, it's where my limited understanding of the debate mostly comes from. But however abstruse the debate may be, it's very relevant as a possible point of comparison for Jesus, at least as much so as the dying-and-rising god. There's even a book (which I haven't read) titled Theios Aner and the Markan Miracle Traditions. Does Carrier talk about any of that? If he doesn't, he really is being dishonest. Comparing Jesus to mythical founder figures and dying-and-rising gods while ignoring the real-life people who are also frequently compared to Jesus is bound to skew his results.

You bring up some excellent points here, Manetho. In some ways Jesus is closer to Pythagoras and Empedocles than he is to mythological heroes, and yet there is an overlap between all of these kinds of characters. The stories about Pythagoras and Empedocles performing miracles are no more or less likely to be historical than are the stories about Jesus, but, again, the historicity of these men is well established. Pythagoras, for example, is mentioned by name by his contemporary Heraclitus. I have never thought, for what I think are very good reasons, that assimilation to a mythological figure was a reliable indicator of wholesale fabrication. Greeks of the Archaic and Early Classical Periods did consciously emulate mythological figures, and they were likened to such figures by others. That suggests that the use of such assimilation or emulation to challenge historicity is problematic, or at least that it must be dealt with very carefully. These crude lists simply are not a careful methodology.