The Jesus myth Part I

[dastardly stem]

Hah! Look at that. I forgot the "y" in myth in the title. I'd fix it, but can't see how. So, I'll leave it.

Anyway, thanks for weighing in, all ya all. I have a hill to climb if I'm going to find a way to convince anyone. And I'll take that seriously, even though I don't really need to. I mean it's not as if there's a huge gulf between saying Jesus was myth and he never lived and Jesus was myth and did live. But we can have fun.

So first off, I'm going to identify a number of statements by "heavyweights" and their claims which I think overstate the historicity of Jesus claim.

All of these quotations are taken from Jesus from Outer Space 2020, pgs. 82-103. They are partial in order to provide a discussion board level summary. For a full exposition see the book.

On Socrates:

"It must be admitted that there are few characters of antiquity about whom we possess so much indubitably historical information, of whom we have so many authentic discourses" as we have for Jesus, whereas, "The position is much less favorable, for instance, in the case of Socrates."

-Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 7

Socrates was a renowned wise man, a spark that eventually launched philosophy as the discipline we know. He was executed in Athens, Greece, in 399 B.C. for challenging the status quo. He then became the most famous sage in the ancient world. But that makes sense. Because we know the names of numerous eyewitnesses who wrote books about him. Including at least sixteen of his disciples. We know of not even one such book ever having been written about Jesus. In some cases we eve know the titles of these books about Socrates, and a number of paraphrases and quotations from them actually survive in other sources. In fact, two them we actually have. And they were written within a few years of his death, not nearly half a century or more later (as the Gospels were for Jesus), much less in a foreign land and language. So already this is vastly more than we have for Jesus. The two eyewitnesses? Socrates' own disciples Plato and Xenophon, who together wrote several books about him.

WE thus have more not only for multiple eyewitness accounts of Socrates within years of his death, we even have a relatively hostile eyewitness account, from an outside party who wasn't a fanatical follower. The Athenian playwright Aristophanes wrote a comedy gently mocking Socrates and his school and students. That play, The Clouds, we still have. Not only did Aristophanes know Socrates personally and base his comedy on direct knowledge of him and his school, but as later historians record (based on eyewitness sources from the time), Socrates even sat in the audience of its first production. If only we had such a priceless source for Jesus! But alas, we do not. There are no neutral or third party records of Jesus at all. We only have late material written by his fanatical and glorifying believers, which is the most biased source one can ever be saddled with. ...what little mention made it into non-Christian historians was simply just repeating what these late, fanatical Christ sources said--or was even outright forged by fanatical Christians!...

And that's not even all we have. We have many contemporaries attesting to the historical existence of Socrates. We have none for Jesus--other than as a celestial being. And several historians of Socrates, starting at least a century later, gathered material from these contemporaries and witnesses to compose histories and biographies of the man. Including Idomeneus, who wrote On the Followers of Socrates, fragments of which survive. In fact, the surviving attestations and quotations of Socrates and his witnesses and contemporaries fill four volumes of the Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae assembled by Gabriele Giannantoni in 1990. This is so much more than we have for Jesus it boggles the mind why anyone would think we have more for Jesus than for Socrates!

On Julius Caeser:

The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caeser.

--F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable ? (1960)

Julius Caeser Washington

For Julius Caeser

..we have one of the best eyewitness sources anyone can have of someone's existence: we have the very writings of Julius Caeser himself! Caeser wrote about several of his wars, including on his role in the Roman civil war. And we have copies of those books today.
Jesus, meanwhile, wrote nothing. We have contemporary accounts of Caeser by people who knew him personally, in many surviving letters written by Cicero and Pompey. No such sources exist for Jesus. Many contemporaries who knew Caesar personally wrote about him, including people whose books survive for us to read today, such as the poets, Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus:; those of whose writing fragments survive, such as the historian Livey; and many others whose books we know existed. Among mere contemporaries, we have writing by the geographer Strabo and the biographer Nicolaus of Damascus and, of course, by many historians soon after his death, from Velleius Paterculus onward, who consulted those earlier writings and more. No such sources exist for Jesus.

Additionally, we have accounts of Caeser by not just eyewitnesses and contemporaries and subsequent historians but also a close friend and follower, Sallut--not only in Sallust's surviving Catiline War , but also in surviving fragments of Sallust's Histories, his own account of Roman history, including the affairs of Caeser. We also have....fragments...by his own adopted son Augustus Caeser...also...physical inscriptions...by Augustus mentioning...Julius...we have inscriptions written and erected by Julius Caeser himself. And...countless coins...statues. Not a single one of these amazing proofs exist for Jesus.

On Tiberius Caeser:

It would be easier, frankly, to believe that Tiberius Caeser, Jesus' contemporary, was a figment of the imagination than to believe that there never was such a person as Jesus.

--N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), Preface

Of course many historians of the age, using and citing earlier sources including inscriptions and state documents, wrote about Tiberius in ways and details wholly unlike any historian ever wrote about Jesus. This includes Josephus (who began writing about Tiberius within 40 years of his death) and Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius (within eighty years). That's already better than we have for Jesus, about whom no historian wrote for several centuries...

There are also many eyewitnesses and contemporaries...including...many we still have full writings from that mention Tiberius...men like Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Younger, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Cornelius, Strabo, Scribonius Largus, Philo of Alexandria, Phaedrus, Horace, Ovid, and Columella...Livy, Aufidius Bassus, Apollonides, Servilius Nonianus, Deculo, Seneca the Elder...including public inscriptions..state documents...actual memoirs wirtten by Tiberius. This vast array of evidence just smokes anything we have for Jesus

See also: https://celsus.blog/2012/10/14/ten-reas ... ce-slogan/

On Alexander the Great:

The sources for Jesus are better...than those that deal with Alexander [the Great]."

--E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (1993), p.3

Alexander is literally the most famous man in the whole of antiquity. Alexander conquered lands on three continents....he literally changed the map...that's precisely why a statement like Sanders is so absurd.

i think you get the picture on that. It's not even worth considering. As if each case isn't laughable this one is by far the most.

On Pontius Pilate:

Not even....the most powerful and important figure of his day, Pontius Pilate" is "mentioned in any Romans sources of his day."

{quote]Philo of Alexandria...a contemporary...wrote an entire book about Pontius Pilate....Philo also discusses...Pontius in another book...not long after Pontius committed suicide in the reign of Caligula....So much for Pilate not being mentioned in any Roman resources of his day.[/quote]

On Caligula:

Jesus is as well established as a figure of history as is, say, the emperor Caligula, his near-contemporary.

--N.T. Wright, Text Message to Inspiring Philosophy (April 2018)

On Hannibal:

[We can even employ] the rhetorical strategies of the Jesus Mythologists to 'prove' that Hannibal never existed.

--James Hannam, Is Jesus Christ a Myth? Part 4" (2010)

On Spartacus:

Almost everything we know about Spartacus is based on the writings of two people writing a couple of decades either side of the two hundredth anniversary of Spartacus' death," and yet, "Despite this paucity of evidence, which is such that his historical existence has to be recognized as a damn sight less well attested than that of Christ, I've yet to her even one ancient historian ever claim that Spartacus didn't exist."

--Gregory Daly, "Even if He wasn't God, He was Certainly a Man", The Thirsty Gargoyle (Janurary 2006)_

I might have to get back to filling in the evidence evaluations for each of the last in the list. Thought I"d put it out there anyway.

Showing that these historical figures are better attested to than Jesus doesn't show that Jesus didn't live. What it demonstrates is that there is a push to suggest, without demonstration, that Jesus really did exist. And perhaps expected since the largest religion in the world accepts Jesus must have lived.

I'll get back to more, but had some time to throw this clumsily in there.

[Res Ipsa]

There are, as you have quoted, many exaggerations about the quantity and quality of evidence that exist with respect to Jesus. The problem, as I see it, is figuring out what evidence we should expect to find if Jesus were based on an actual person. Given what the gospels tell us and the historical setting, not much. He didn’t conquer three continents or write any books or teach a cadre of educated folks who themselves wrote books. I only know enough to know that I’m unqualified to judge that, given my lack of education in Roman and Jewish history. I have to defer to historians.

If for example, we had what purported to be a complete record of executions ordered by Pilate for the appropriate time period, and there was no entry that corresponded to the gospel accounts, that would, in my opinion, be evidence that there was no real guy Jesus. But, given the description of who Jesus was and how he lived, is there a record of set of records we should expect to find him in? If not, the absence of contemporaneous, corroborating evidence doesn’t really tell us anything.

[drumdude]

The gospels were written about 40-70 years after Jesus’ death.

Most ancient historical figures were written down 300-500 years after their deaths.

I think you can reasonably conclude there was a preacher named Jesus. Otherwise you have to assume the more improbable hypothesis that the Jesus character came out of complete imagination. If the Jews were going to imagine themselves a messiah, it would have looked like David.

But you can also reasonably dismiss most of the details about him in the gospels. For a start, the culture at the time did not value objective history in the same way we do today.

[Res Ipsa]

I am hyper skeptical of arguments of the form “Jews at the time of Christ would have…” Other than historians who have studied this time period, I don’t think anyone is qualified to make that kind of judgment. Also, the fact is that a whole lot of Jews accepted a messiah that wasn’t like David. Whether based on a real person or or not, they accepted a radical new interpretation of their scriptures. in my opinion, that fact completely undercut that form of argument.

[Philo Sofee]

The gospels were written about 40-70 years after Jesus’ death.

Most ancient historical figures were written down 300-500 years after their deaths.

I think you can reasonably conclude there was a preacher named Jesus. Otherwise you have to assume the more improbable hypothesis that the Jesus character came out of complete imagination. If the Jews were going to imagine themselves a messiah, it would have looked like David.

But you can also reasonably dismiss most of the details about him in the gospels. For a start, the culture at the time did not value objective history in the same way we do today.

And again, just to give it context largely in agreement with this, history is not the best gauge for authenticity. It IS some of the greatest, most interesting literature, for the reason that it is mimicking the greatest, most interesting literature, the Greek epics. This is simply not to denigrate the Gospels, but to magnify them. They simply ARE fantastically fascinating literature with many lessons for us even right now today.

Jesus being a historical person is not nearly as interesting as how this all was crafted together to give us such amazing reading and interesting learning. Because one KEY is to read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey right along with the Gospels. And Vergil's Aeneid, as well as Euripides Bacchae. These, as well as the Jewish materials, most especially that of the Elisha/Elijah cycle in the Old Testament, for which the plot of Jesus' life is based upon. The New Testament is therefore based upon the greatest of the Greek epics, and the ancient Hebrew epic. It is this magnificent greatness that makes Jesus worth reading about because it is an updating, an upgrading, a deliberate re-contexting with tremendous meaning for every reader who approaches it in a manner more accurately than mere dry history, which bores more than instructs.

[drumdude]

I am hyper skeptical of arguments of the form “Jews at the time of Christ would have…” Other than historians who have studied this time period, I don’t think anyone is qualified to make that kind of judgment. Also, the fact is that a whole lot of Jews accepted a messiah that wasn’t like David. Whether based on a real person or or not, they accepted a radical new interpretation of their scriptures. in my opinion, that fact completely undercut that form of argument.

I’m using what I believe is Bart Ehrman’s argument here, who is a historian who has studied this time period. I highly recommend his YouTube lectures on the historical Jesus which are wonderful and available for free.

[Res Ipsa]

I am hyper skeptical of arguments of the form “Jews at the time of Christ would have…” Other than historians who have studied this time period, I don’t think anyone is qualified to make that kind of judgment. Also, the fact is that a whole lot of Jews accepted a messiah that wasn’t like David. Whether based on a real person or or not, they accepted a radical new interpretation of their scriptures. in my opinion, that fact completely undercut that form of argument.

I’m using what I believe is Bart Ehrman’s argument here, who is a historian who has studied this time period. I highly recommend his YouTube lectures on the historical Jesus which are wonderful and available for free.

Yeah. I’ve seen similar forms of argument used generally by New Testament scholars. But I’ve never seen anyone defend it against some pretty obvious flaws. The first is that it assumes that people never accept new ideas or new variations on old ideas. But that’s not how people and societies work. They don’t always continue to do the same thing they’ve done in the past.

Second, the premise of the argument is disproved by the fact that Jews invented and accepted a messiah that wasn’t like David. Whether they mythologized a real person or not, any claim that Jews would only invent a messiah like David is disproven by what actually happened.

It seems to be an accepted argument within the field of New Testament studies despite being pretty fallacious on its face. Which is one of the reasons I’m leery of New Testament Scholars as opposed to historians.

[Philo Sofee]

Brian C. Muraresku "The Immortality Key" has demonstrated in incredible detail that the Christian milieu was a continuation of the ancient Greek mystery religions milieu, and from the literature viewpoint, which I have found in large part quite convincing, is based on the Greek epics as well. We are getting more and more confident and comfortable with the idea that the sources for the Gospel writers were not only Jewish, but ancient Greek materials as well. Truly nothing is left out, and nothing, not even Jesus, is original or uniquely Jewish. He never was meant to be either. Somehow we have been lulled to sleep with the bias that Jesus has to have been unique or one of a kind. New evidence is demonstrating how misguided this assumption has been, and how many centuries of understanding we have lost because it has been accepted. We are in a new day now, and a rather exciting one actually.
One very excellent new scholarly analysis has been that of M. David Litwa, Iesus Deus, the Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, Fortress Press, 2014. It does not denigrate, or downsize Jesus to show he fits comfortably right in with the ancient religious views of antiquity which has existed for many, many centuries from many other ancient countries and religions. That is his original context, from which Christian fundamentalism has torn him out from. He is now being more properly situated back into it, and it makes the Bible even a more interesting and important book to read these days. It is a very exciting time for Bible studies actually.

[drumdude]

I’m using what I believe is Bart Ehrman’s argument here, who is a historian who has studied this time period. I highly recommend his YouTube lectures on the historical Jesus which are wonderful and available for free.

Yeah. I’ve seen similar forms of argument used generally by New Testament scholars. But I’ve never seen anyone defend it against some pretty obvious flaws. The first is that it assumes that people never accept new ideas or new variations on old ideas. But that’s not how people and societies work. They don’t always continue to do the same thing they’ve done in the past.

Second, the premise of the argument is disproved by the fact that Jews invented and accepted a messiah that wasn’t like David. Whether they mythologized a real person or not, any claim that Jews would only invent a messiah like David is disproven by what actually happened.

It seems to be an accepted argument within the field of New Testament studies despite being pretty fallacious on its face. Which is one of the reasons I’m leery of New Testament Scholars as opposed to historians.

You typically see ideas swirling around in society, which come to fruition through a single or a few individuals. It's possible a group of Jewish people got together to concoct a story, to invent a completely new conception of God... but it's more likely that there was a real person at the center of that story that served as its basis.

The historical perspective of the New Testament is that over time as the gospels were written, Jesus slowly morphed from human teacher -> God. In your argument, they would have simply started by creating Jesus the Man-God from the beginning, since there was no actual man to start with. I think that is a much more complicated explanation to explain what happened.

I don't follow the premise of the argument being disproved by what actually happened. If Jesus was just a man, who made all sorts of promises which didn't come true, then his followers would need to begin to construct a story for WHY the promises he made didn't happen. Why their leader died and wasn't victorious. Those ideas would have been prompted by the death of the actual person, not invented by them from nothing.

[Physics Guy]

No doubt Christian apologists have exaggerated the evidence for Jesus in comparison to other figures. They may have more wiggle room than Carrier allows them, however. The “quality” of sources can mean a lot of things; one may well be able to point to some respect in which the evidence for figure X is somehow worse than it is for Jesus.

If it’s naïve to just accept a traditional consensus, furthermore, it’s a lot more naïve to take everything Carrier says at face value. There are a number of historical sources about Socrates, for example, but they present quite inconsistent pictures of him. The challenge of reconstructing a historical Socrates from them was considered an outstanding problem for centuries. It seems by now to have been abandoned as hopeless. If Carrier treated Socrates the way he treats Jesus, he’d call him a myth, too.