The Jesus Myth Part III

[dastardly stem]

At the risk of confusing things, I'm going to restate the rhetorical point I made earlier.

If there were a Jesus (whether that was actually his name or if it was a name assigned to him to fit the myth, we'll likely never know) who walked around and taught something in the early first century, it is likely the mythologized accounts of his life do not represent him or his life. That is if there were a Jesus he likely wasn't born of a virgin, he likely did not heal the sick, raise the dead, tell a tree to die (and it did), multiply fishes and bread, he likely didn't resurrect. Its even likely that the teachings later put into his mouth never escaped his lips. The point then is its a distinction without a difference to say there was some guy who lived whom Paul and others made up stories about, none of which are true, and saying there never really was a Jesus who lived. And yet, many are wanting to die on the hill of saying, well, he did live.

As I pointed out Ehrman has claimed he's 99% certain Jesus lived. He builds a terribly weak case, if you ask me. But at this point, it's just a number thrown out there. He doesn't have any reasoning behind it (at least not that he's presented with actually probabilities to consider), nor any analysis we can inspect. But that's the thing. If there were a Jesus who lived, there has to be some probable chance that he lived or not. History often is not a yes or no proposition. It's more often a probably or probably not on any given proposition. We need a solid consistent way to define the probability. And if we're going to be serious about any given proposition, we have to figure out a way to break down what the probability is. We can sneeringly dismiss Richard Carrier's arguments if we want. It's a fairly safe thing to do. For plenty of reasons many have taken a disliking to him. But doing so doesn't really give much reason to think Jesus lived. It seems to amount to, "I don't like the guy and I don't want to think that Jesus didn't live and most scholars just assume he lived, so it's safe to do".

If there were a Jesus who was he? And if whatever he was was nothing like the Jesus we hear about, then what exactly do we mean when we defend the notion that there really was a Jesus? I don't even know...and defending that position grows weaker and weaker when we consider the evidence and the arguments, as I see it. They are that hollow. If Paul's Jesus never walked the earth, then Paul and others conceived of the character he/they created. The adamant claim of Paul is he got the teachings from no one. He's claiming not one other person told him there was a Jesus who lived supremely in the heavens, reigning along with his dad. But we can safely surmise others believed it, or something along the lines of what Paul taught. he says so. He's writing to them. He's correcting them. He's condemning them and he's encouraging them.

In 1 Cor 15 Paul claims Cephas (Peter), James, other apostles, whom he doesn't seem to know and never names, and 500 other people (many of which, he says, still lived among them) saw the resurrected Jesus as did he. We know Paul saw Jesus in a vision. If he likens everyone else's sightings to his, we can surmise others likely claimed, they too, had a vision of Jesus. And as Joseph Smith's teachings suggest visions are dreams and dreams are visions. Stories that came out long after Paul suggest Peter actually walked around with a mortal Jesus. And, apparently, those later stories are meant to explain why Peter was seen, in Paul's day, as a leader of the Church. What if Peter never walked around on earth with Jesus? What if Peter, whom Paul knew, was another Paul? Preaching a Jesus whom he had a vision of? Preaching the words he received via revelation? Nothing more than that? I don't see, in Paul's letters, a claim that Peter lived along side Jesus. I don't see Paul saying he was Jesus' contemporary. We assume, when reading Paul, that the gospel writers' story of Peter having lived along side Jesus are true. But a couple of things. The gospel writers don't know Peter nor Paul. They come after these men, apparently, are gone. Even if there were an oral tradition that told the story of a mortal Jesus, inspiring Peter to continue his teaching we have no way of confirming it. And there is no evidence for the claim. Its guesswork, thought of as a possibility if we assume Jesus lived.

If Jesus lived, then it's likely there were other sources from which Mark drew from so he got the sayings of Jesus. If Jesus lived, then everything was passed orally to the ripe ears of Mark.

Its just as likely that Jesus didn't live if stories and sayings were passed on to Mark. On this possibility they were simply stories and sayings appreciated or adored by Christians and/or others. It's also just as likely that no such stories and sayings were passed to Mark at all, through a Jesus tradition. A possible issue we might have there is if Mark's gospel was read by someone other than himself that other or those others might have objected to Mark creating a life story for Jesus without good evidence. Then again, if they too were fanatical believers, like Mark, then they might rather embrace the life story he created, rather than object, even if they hadn't heard of it at that point. I see this, too, as a wash.

Possible doesn't grow to plausible simply because we can imagine it. Plausible doesn't become anything near certain simply because we want it to be. Since historicity is possible and making up a Jesus is possible, we have to be sincere and cautious in our claims. This was 2,000 years ago. We can't be all that certain (thus the absurdity of Ehrman's claim) about much of anything. The paucity of evidence for Jesus having lived is no reason to suggest the possibility that he lived should be turned into probable. And yet, we see many jumping from possible, right over probable to certain (99%). And by many I don't mean many believers or nothing, but many scholars.

Ah well...someone lived in the early first century. Sure. ..someone named Joshua lived too. And it could be that another someone started telling stories about this Joshua, saying things like, "he was born of a virgin"...."he healed the sick"...."he raised the dead". And its possible this Joshua did nothing near what was said about him. We have no way of knowing. We make a few assumptions, but it never gets us very close to certain. But it's possible. But we can't just say, it's possible, therefore probable, therefore certain. Because it's just as possible that someone made up that these stories and made up the person who never lived.

[dastardly stem]

Stem, I think you are avoiding the question. People do not persecute others randomly or just because they are a bit different.

Persecutors, at times, persecute for seemingly no reason at all. History demonstrates that people persecute people of other religions and people of their own.

They persecute because they see a threat.In your long Carrier quote he mentions there being 10 to 30 variant Jewish groups at the time. Which ones of those were being persecuted and why? At the time there was apocalyptic speculation. Why would involving an angel who was killed as a sacrifice in the lower heavens be politically threatening?

Here's Paul's mention: "For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."

What do we think of when we hear him say he persecuted the Church of God? He could have been saying something as simple as I taught something that disagreed with the Christian believers, for all we know.

[honorentheos]

The question certainly is not whether the Sunday School Jesus lived. No one thinks that's the case except for fundamentalists and apologists. This feels like a pretty clear misunderstanding of the whole argument. The question under consideration is is minimal mysticism or minimal history a better explanation of the data...

...The reason why Jesus fits in the evaluation is because all of these like-figures rank high on obvious sounding similarities--was he born of a virgin, did he die and rise, was he personal savior? I mean it's too bad, perhaps, that he fits so well, but that he does, only adds to credence in my mind...

...I have no idea what you mean by this. Was the average person represented as the Son of God, or Lord? Are you saying since Mark doesn't hold the high Chirstology of John, or even Matthew that means he just looks very common? I don't see that at all. As I said to Huckelberry, Mark Goodacre describes it as Matthew liking Mark and attempting to improve it--make it more Jewish, make it fit the idea of myth all the more. I don't see why that should mean Matthew myth shouldn't count. In a very real way, we should take the whole of the myth written by the various stories into account...

The first thread on the topic included a fairly extensive attempt to review the question using typical methods for putting a probability to the truth-value of an event or claim from antiquity. We were fortunate to have people with extensive backgrounds in related fields engage and go over methods and evidence for why the existence of a historical Jesus is more probable than the Jesus myth being invented from whole cloth. This carried over into the second thread and the argument presented that it seems more likely there was a historical person at the center of the myth-making rather than the Jesus involved being entirely an invention. It clearly isn't going anywhere, and for all appearances it seems you still don't present a clear definition of a historical person that isn't essentially Sunday School Jesus that would meet your demands.

At the risk of confusing things, I'm going to restate the rhetorical point I made earlier.

If there were a Jesus (whether that was actually his name or if it was a name assigned to him to fit the myth, we'll likely never know) who walked around and taught something in the early first century, it is likely the mythologized accounts of his life do not represent him or his life. That is if there were a Jesus he likely wasn't born of a virgin, he likely did not heal the sick, raise the dead, tell a tree to die (and it did), multiply fishes and bread, he likely didn't resurrect. Its even likely that the teachings later put into his mouth never escaped his lips. The point then is its a distinction without a difference to say there was some guy who lived whom Paul and others made up stories about, none of which are true, and saying there never really was a Jesus who lived. And yet, many are wanting to die on the hill of saying, well, he did live.

Yeah. Clearly confused. Sunday School Jesus didn't exist, but there better be a magic non-Sunday School Jesus behind the stories or the whole thing was made up. What? The process by which a person becomes mythologized and deified has been described ad nauseum in these threads but can't penetrate the discussion? You aren't getting what Carrier has to say or you'd know why all the historians who side on a historical Jesus being more probable than not are just mindless sheep rather than critical, rational thinkers?

It was getting old long before, now it's old and tired.

Normal people in antiquity didn't have their childhoods recorded because there aren't any prophesies or reasons for people to do so. He didn't warrant remark until adulthood once he began what we refer to as his ministry. And of course, later authors who did view him as remarkable filled in those details as they mythologized him.

That's a working hypothesis, sure. He was a real person who was euhemerized. It could be...I just question that's the best explanation of the data. As an example, if he were a real teacher and preacher, Paul, for instance, would have treated him as someone who taught people and had something worth saying and repeating. THat's not what Paul did.

That's silly. Paul speaks of interacting with James, the brother of Jesus, as someone Paul dismisses as getting the gospel wrong. What Paul did with Jesus the myth was leverage it for his own aggrandizement. Paul had a little to do with the Jerusalem saints as possible. Paul rewrote Christianity, no doubt about it. And doing that is a pretty good indicator he had no respect for the source material that didn't serve his purposes. Paul taught what made sense to him. He didn't claim to have lived with Jesus and apparently seems to have interacted with Christianity as a hostile Jew first, then as an Romanizer of concepts within it. If you're Paul, Jesus the person isn't useful. Paul was the popularizer, the reinventor, the aggrandizer, the Maven through whom Christian ideas became more palatable to non-Jews. He tells us that almost constantly in his writings. Take the guy at his word.

And no, you are simply dead wrong. His evaluation is clearly and solely an attempt to address the question of was there a historical Jesus, not the mythologized Sunday school version, but was the mythologized account put on someone who actually lived.

Carrier:
Minimal historicity is not asking whether the mythologized version of Jesus existed. But whether the simplest, barest of bones, version of Jesus is exist?

Sounds reasonable. But then...

But what is the alternative? Many expert defenders of historicity agree no evidence outside the Bible is useful. Because it all ultimately just comes from late Christian reporting, which ultimately just goes back to the content of the Gospels. I detail this in Chapters 7 and 8 of OHJ, but I consider it too obviously a dead end for historicity to even produce a charitable case from. Any scholar who hasn’t accepted this by now just needs to get over it and move on. Because it’s all a dead end, from Josephus to Thallus and Tacitus. We are left with the Gospels (including Acts) and the Epistles (including Revelation). Acts is too dependent on the Gospels to get us anywhere. Nothing in Acts about a historical Jesus is really different from anything already declared in the Gospels, so Acts adds nothing new. So if the Gospels cannot get us to Jesus, neither can Acts. Likewise Revelation, which is patently fabricated.

Ah. Sunday School Jesus or bust.

Oh, that can't be. Carrier laid out postulates based on "General Probability" not just the argument from the gospels, right?

Argument from General Probability
Historicity defenders also rely on arguments from prior probability: arguments about the likelihood of Christianity originating with or without a historical Jesus based on background evidence alone.

The standard “best case” for historicity from prior probability looks something like this:

P07. Jews would never invent a messiah because they needed their messiah to be a real historical conqueror.
P08. If they would never invent a man for that, then there must have been an actual man for it.
P09. Therefore, only a real candidate for a historical conqueror could have stirred up a belief that he was the messiah.
P10. A real candidate for a historical conqueror can only be a real historical man.
C03. Therefore, there must have been a real historical Jesus
Uh, that's not the case for a historical Jesus, nor does it align with the arguments for the process of mythologizing evident in the text. Three threads in and this...? A careful...hell, a casual reader of this thread alone would have already seen multiple points of discussion and evidence that fall far outside of this line but also speak to the false limits it creates.

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. Ah, Sun Tzu. All right.

[Kishkumen]

Fundamentalist Christians: "The finger pointing at the moon is the moon damn it!

Mythicists: "There is no finger damn it!"

[dastardly stem]

THanks, honor, for your comments. Sounds like you aren't very interested in this, so it's nice of you to continue. We'll get a few snippets of something interesting out of it...or I will.

At the risk of confusing things, I'm going to restate the rhetorical point I made earlier.

If there were a Jesus (whether that was actually his name or if it was a name assigned to him to fit the myth, we'll likely never know) who walked around and taught something in the early first century, it is likely the mythologized accounts of his life do not represent him or his life. That is if there were a Jesus he likely wasn't born of a virgin, he likely did not heal the sick, raise the dead, tell a tree to die (and it did), multiply fishes and bread, he likely didn't resurrect. Its even likely that the teachings later put into his mouth never escaped his lips. The point then is its a distinction without a difference to say there was some guy who lived whom Paul and others made up stories about, none of which are true, and saying there never really was a Jesus who lived. And yet, many are wanting to die on the hill of saying, well, he did live.

Yeah. Clearly confused. Sunday School Jesus didn't exist, but there better be a magic non-Sunday School Jesus behind the stories or the whole thing was made up. What? The process by which a person becomes mythologized and deified has been described ad nauseum in these threads but can't penetrate the discussion? You aren't getting what Carrier has to say or you'd know why all the historians who side on a historical Jesus being more probable than not are just mindless sheep rather than critical, rational thinkers?

It appears you think I said the opposite of what I said. To put it clearly (hopefully) my rhetorical point was suggesting there is very little difference (a distinction without a difference, in effect) between saying there was a historical person Jesus who later was mythologized, perhaps even to the point of being unrecognizable to that historical person, and saying there was a myth developed and there is likely no historical person at the bottom of it. My apologies for the confusion.

That's silly. Paul speaks of interacting with James, the brother of Jesus, as someone Paul dismisses as getting the gospel wrong. What Paul did with Jesus the myth was leverage it for his own aggrandizement. Paul had a little to do with the Jerusalem saints as possible. Paul rewrote Christianity, no doubt about it. And doing that is a pretty good indicator he had no respect for the source material that didn't serve his purposes. Paul taught what made sense to him. He didn't claim to have lived with Jesus and apparently seems to have interacted with Christianity as a hostile Jew first, then as an Romanizer of concepts within it. If you're Paul, Jesus the person isn't useful. Paul was the popularizer, the reinventor, the aggrandizer, the Maven through whom Christian ideas became more palatable to non-Jews. He tells us that almost constantly in his writings. Take the guy at his word.

THis all feels like a bit of a stretch. I'm sure you're aware Paul's passing comment about James being the Lord's brother is seen as good evidence for historicity on Carrier's evaluation. I'd suggest there is plenty of reason, as has been previously discussed, to think it's not necessarily a comment on biological relation, so surely Paul's hand-waving dismissal of him doesn't really lend credence to a real Jesus. Even fake people have siblings, as it turns out.

Carrier:
Minimal historicity is not asking whether the mythologized version of Jesus existed. But whether the simplest, barest of bones, version of Jesus is exist?
[/color]
Sounds reasonable. But then...

But what is the alternative? Many expert defenders of historicity agree no evidence outside the Bible is useful. Because it all ultimately just comes from late Christian reporting, which ultimately just goes back to the content of the Gospels. I detail this in Chapters 7 and 8 of OHJ, but I consider it too obviously a dead end for historicity to even produce a charitable case from. Any scholar who hasn’t accepted this by now just needs to get over it and move on. Because it’s all a dead end, from Josephus to Thallus and Tacitus. We are left with the Gospels (including Acts) and the Epistles (including Revelation). Acts is too dependent on the Gospels to get us anywhere. Nothing in Acts about a historical Jesus is really different from anything already declared in the Gospels, so Acts adds nothing new. So if the Gospels cannot get us to Jesus, neither can Acts. Likewise Revelation, which is patently fabricated.

Ah. Sunday School Jesus or bust.

Pretty sure, you've missed his point. He's saying the opposite of Sunday School Jesus or bust. It just so happens that any evidence for a historical Jesus must be dug out of mythologized accounts. That doesn't bode well for historicity, as I see it.

Oh, that can't be. Carrier laid out postulates based on "General Probability" not just the argument from the gospels, right?

Argument from General Probability
Historicity defenders also rely on arguments from prior probability: arguments about the likelihood of Christianity originating with or without a historical Jesus based on background evidence alone.

The standard “best case” for historicity from prior probability looks something like this:

P07. Jews would never invent a messiah because they needed their messiah to be a real historical conqueror.
P08. If they would never invent a man for that, then there must have been an actual man for it.
P09. Therefore, only a real candidate for a historical conqueror could have stirred up a belief that he was the messiah.
P10. A real candidate for a historical conqueror can only be a real historical man.
C03. Therefore, there must have been a real historical Jesus
Uh, that's not the case for a historical Jesus, nor does it align with the arguments for the process of mythologizing evident in the text. Three threads in and this...? A careful...hell, a casual reader of this thread alone would have already seen multiple points of discussion and evidence that fall far outside of this line but also speak to the false limits it creates.

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. Ah, Sun Tzu. All right.

I've been asking for an argument during these discussions. He runs through a few of them in that little piece. If you can provide some premises and conclusions for something solid, I'd like to see it.

[dastardly stem]

Fundamentalist Christians: "The finger pointing at the moon is the moon damn it!

Mythicists: "There is no finger damn it!"

Non-fundie Christian historicist defenders: "Though we can't see a finger, it must be there, because...well, it must be damn it!"

Just for fun, and running down the rabbit hole a bit...I've explained I"m not completely sold on mythicism. But I do think Carrier has a good argument. And besides his argument he really has some good material to work through. That to me suggests his whole theory is worth serious consideration. In his recent interview with Mythvision, Philo offered some of his thoughts on Carrier's work. He's like [Summarizing] "love him or hate him, man, the dude has some serious material. His book is huge and dense, filled with all sorts of great things. His book on Proving History, man, I tell ya, man, that's a great book. It spells out a very credible usable method. We gotta take that seriously". I agree with that. And apologize if I summarized it poorly.

This has been interesting because I've seen every effort to dismiss anything with the mention of Carrier.

Philip Davies:

The new collection of essays Is This Not the Carpenter1 represents something of the agenda I have had in mind: surely the rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear, or even to work out what kind of historical research might be appropriate. Such a normal exercise should hardly generate controversy in most fields of ancient history, but of course New Testament studies is not a normal case and the highly emotive and dismissive language of, say, Bart Ehrman’s response to Thompson’s The Mythic Past shows (if it needed to be shown), not that the matter is beyond dispute, but that the whole idea of raising this question needs to be attacked, ad hominem, as something outrageous. This is precisely the tactic anti-minimalists tried twenty years ago: their targets were ‘amateurs’, ‘incompetent’, and could be ignored. The ‘amateurs’ are now all retired professors, while virtually everyone else in the field has become minimalist (if in most cases grudgingly and tacitly). So, as the saying goes, déjà vu all over again.

https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/dav368029

This says it well...there's this really hostile, dismissive anti-intellectual response to mythicist cases, even credible ones, like Carrier's. There's just this, "no way, we can't go there, because it's upsetting to our traditions" or something. But when you lay it out, and put it into consideration, the very minimalist basis for considering the question ought to cause at least some pause. I mean that we have only mythical accounts about Jesus should say something for starters.

[Kishkumen]

Fundamentalist Christians: "The finger pointing at the moon is the moon damn it!

Mythicists: "There is no finger damn it!"

Non-fundie Christian historicist defenders: "Though we can't see a finger, it must be there, because...well, it must be damn it!"

I am sorry, stem, but your characterization of historicist defenders [a loaded term you have inserted into the conversation spuriously] is a hilarious example of how ridiculous this whole exercise has become. Let me rephrase what you are essentially saying here:

"Though you use the evidence for the existence of a finger that people have always relied upon in these discussions, I proclaim your evidence to be invalid! You must not see a finger because I say so!"

[dastardly stem]

Non-fundie Christian historicist defenders: "Though we can't see a finger, it must be there, because...well, it must be damn it!"

I am sorry, stem, but your characterization of historicist defenders [a loaded term you have inserted into the conversation spuriously] is a hilarious example of how ridiculous this whole exercise has become. Let me rephrase what you are essentially saying here:

"Though you use the evidence for the existence of a finger that people have always relied upon in these discussions, I proclaim your evidence to be invalid! You must not see a finger because I say so!"

Lol. THanks, Kish. I got your opinion down. I seriously don't see a finger and can't for the life of me figure out why those who defend historicism, like Ehrman, think they do see a finger. I guess I'll just have to keep asking "where is it?" until some offers a solid case in pointing it out.

[Kishkumen]

Lol. THanks, Kish. I got your opinion down. I seriously don't see a finger and can't for the life of me figure out why those who defend historicism, like Ehrman, think they do see a finger. I guess I'll just have to keep asking "where is it?" until some offers a solid case in pointing it out.

Yes, if you see a finger and yet say you do not because a likeminded person has told you that it is not there when you see it, then you will hold onto this bizarre position for dear might. As we have explored many times before, ancient history is an evidence poor field of study, and yet people generally accept the existence of most individuals who are named by near-contemporary sources. And, believe me, in ancient history within half a century is near-contemporary. Somehow it is only in the case of Jesus that an allergic reaction to an insidiously awful ideology has motivated people like Carrier to reject the traditional standard of evidence and endeavor to create a new one in a bid to invalidate completely the ideology in question: imperial christianity.

The funny thing is, as you repeatedly bump up against in your exchanges with honorentheos, the Incarnation of the Christ is not the kind of thing that requires rejecting Jesus' historicity to dismiss. No, Carrier and his fellow travelers believe, rightly or wrongly, that imperial christians will hold onto the Incarnation of Christ until they can be disabused of the existence of a body for Christ to incarnate into. Hence all of the passion, money, and time that is expended on this quixotic enterprise.

[Analytics]

Lol. THanks, Kish. I got your opinion down. I seriously don't see a finger and can't for the life of me figure out why those who defend historicism, like Ehrman, think they do see a finger. I guess I'll just have to keep asking "where is it?" until some offers a solid case in pointing it out.

Yes, if you see a finger and yet say you do not because a likeminded person has told you that it is not there when you see it, then you will hold onto this bizarre position for dear might. As we have explored many times before, ancient history is an evidence poor field of study, and yet people generally accept the existence of most individuals who are named by near-contemporary sources. And, believe me, in ancient history within half a century is near-contemporary. Somehow it is only in the case of Jesus that an allergic reaction to an insidiously awful ideology has motivated people like Carrier to reject the traditional standard of evidence and endeavor to create a new one in a bid to invalidate completely the ideology in question: imperial christianity.

The funny thing is, as you repeatedly bump up against in your exchanges with honorentheos, the Incarnation of the Christ is not the kind of thing that requires rejecting Jesus' historicity to dismiss. No, Carrier and his fellow travelers believe, rightly or wrongly, that imperial christians will hold onto the Incarnation of Christ until they can be disabused of the existence of a body for Christ to incarnate into. Hence all of the passion, money, and time that is expended on this quixotic enterprise.

It's worth quoting what Carrier actually said on the point:

I have always assumed without worry that Jesus was just a guy, another merely human founder of an entirely natural religion (whatever embellishments to his cult and story may have followed). I’d be content if I were merely reassured of that fact. For the evidence, even at its best, supports no more startling conclusion. So, I have no vested interest in proving Jesus didn’t exist. It makes no difference to me if he did. I suspect he might not have, but then that’s a question that requires a rigorous and thorough examination of the evidence before it can be confidently declared. Most secular scholars agree—even when they believe Jesus existed, they do not need to believe that.

Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (p. 10). Sheffield Phoenix Press. Kindle Edition.