The Jesus myth Part I

[dastardly stem]

Bret, I can only count three, numbers one, five and six. I suppose you could try and force a few more but the fits are not good. I thought your earlier comment about somebody writing fanciful things about somebody not making the somebody themselves a fancy was a spot on comment.

I'm confused. YOu don't think for instance, the circumstances of his conception are unusual? Or that Jesus' father, Joseph was not said to be of a Davidic line? Or that Jesus was said to be the son of God? Or that he prescribes laws? Or that was said to be a king? Or that we know nothing of his childhood? Or that he died on a hill? or his body turns up missing?

I don't really understand how it's not as if he meets many of the criteria.

[Manetho]

If there were a Jesus who lived in the early first century who upset many people, even authorities for his out of this world teaching, we'd have to see something to show that is the case. If we assume there was a preaching Jesus who did not preach as the later gospels suggested but preached something of a Christian sort, gained a following, and that teaching continued with Peter then Paul, we'd have to see good evidence of that, I'd think. But we have nothing. We have nothing from Peter, and nothing from anyone before Paul. It's certainly possible there was a Jesus and everything that could be verifying evidence of him got destroyed. But that is simply an assumption. Just like it's an assumption to say there was likely a real Jesus and Peter then Paul carried out his teachings after he died.

Yet again, you're demonstrating that you have unrealistic expectations for what kind of records we should have of the ancient world. We lack contemporary accounts of the lives of countless ancient people who were far more important in their own times than Jesus was in his. Most of our understanding of the history of the Roman Republic, for example, is dependent on the work of a handful of historians who described it as it was nearing or had already passed its end. Jersey Girl brought up the point that Jesus's disciples may not have been literate; they certainly didn't come from the kind of background that literate people usually came from in the ancient world. If none of them were literate, you certainly wouldn't expect them to have written about him! Instead we have texts by a highly literate person who knew some of the disciples personally (Paul) and accounts of Jesus's life written beginning in the 70s AD, when Jesus was beginning to disappear from living memory. It makes perfect sense that that would be the case.

On top of that, the preservation of texts from the ancient world is extremely poor, so it wouldn't be surprising if early texts about Jesus had disappeared. Papyrus rots, unless it happens to end up in extremely dry circumstances (hence the Dead Sea Scrolls and the cache of unorthodox Christian texts from Nag Hammadi). Some huge number (a majority, if I remember correctly) of the Greek and Roman literary texts that exist today are only known via medieval copies. We only have as much evidence of Jesus as we do because of Christians' ceaseless efforts to copy what texts they had. It's easy for modern people to forget how much work that copying entailed, but if you want a reminder, try copying an entire gospel with pen and paper. As far as I'm aware, there is one very early Christian text that many scholars believe existed but then became lost: the "Q source" that Matthew and Luke seem to be partly based upon. For whatever reason, it didn't circulate in the Christian community the way the other New Testament texts did, and thus didn't end up being preserved in the New Testament. If anything was written about Jesus in his own time from a non-Christian perspective, it would never have been preserved that way, so it's no surprise that nothing of the kind survived to the present.

[Kishkumen]

Jesus, or Joshua, was a common enough name in the early first century, it is so likely there was a jew named Jesus who lived and died and no one recorded anything about him, its silly not to accept that there was a Jesus (indeed we have many stories of other Jesus', one such was talked about by Josephus being Jesus ben Ananias. Some have taken him to be our Jesus, or the person so mythologized, without much success). And it's possible that Mark, when he added to the story, as far as we can tell, the notion that there really was a Jesus person who lived, thought he could apply it to any Jesus who someone else had heard of, fine. But I don't know what that gets us in terms of the question did Jesus live? Did someone live in the early first century? Yes. Of course. Did one of those who so lived, get named Joshua? Sure. But if there's agreement suggesting the stories told about Jesus are myth, for the most part--like he likely didn't heal a blind man by spitting on him, nor raise Lazarus from the dead, nor was born of a virgin, nor was resurrected, nor taught many odd parables. Then I'm not sure what would be the point of saying Jesus lived. I think minimally we'd have to see that there was a Jew named Jesus, who taught a revolutionizing form of religion amongst early Jews and gained a following, causing quite a stir. We'd need something to show that Paul, for instance, the earliest Christian writer, had someone other than a cosmic Jesus in mind. He doesn't speak of Jesus' teachings at all. He doesn't mention a life of Jesus. He doesn't say he knows anyone who knew a Jesus. All he knows is by revelation. On Paul, with perhaps some disputed odd and ambiguous passages, we have no Jesus having lived on earth. And we have no record of anyone like a Jesus before Paul. Not from Christian sources nor from non-Christian sources. It's really as if there was a religion that developed sometime, approximately in the early first century, wherein people believed in a cosmic Jesus, much like people believed in the many previous cosmic gods before, even dying and rising ones, and then quite soon after that period, someone, likely not named Mark, started the story that this cosmic character was at one time really a person on earth. That process had happened many times before.

If there were a Jesus who lived in the early first century who upset many people, even authorities for his out of this world teaching, we'd have to see something to show that is the case. If we assume there was a preaching Jesus who did not preach as the later gospels suggested but preached something of a Christian sort, gained a following, and that teaching continued with Peter then Paul, we'd have to see good evidence of that, I'd think. But we have nothing. We have nothing from Peter, and nothing from anyone before Paul. It's certainly possible there was a Jesus and everything that could be verifying evidence of him got destroyed. But that is simply an assumption. Just like it's an assumption to say there was likely a real Jesus and Peter then Paul carried out his teachings after he died.

I think it presents a tough question and a tough problem to deal with. But I think the data ends up in favor of the mythicist Jesus. But, granted, there's a long way to go to even get good consideration of that hypothesis. And we'll see. And I'd love to be shown how the position doesn't make the most sense, or where the arguments fail or are wrong.

LOL!!!

stem, this is all just special pleading to invalidate Christianity on ideological grounds. I hope you can see that. Once one drops the need to poke a stick in the eye of Christianity, then this masturbatory mental exercise becomes a lot less interesting. The existence of Jesus as a historical figure is simply a part of the historical landscape of Roman imperialism playing out in a provincial context. Jesus is like other people who led opposition to the Roman empire in the persons of local, indigenous authorities who benefited from their association with Rome. His existence as someone other than a cosmic Christ is as mundane a fact as Nero's existence as something other than Mithras, which Tiridates, king of Armenia, declared Nero to be. All it takes is a solid familiarity with the historical facts of the first century CE Roman empire and all of this starts to look not only pointless but wrongheaded.

I don't think this is a tough call at all. It is salutary to correct surfeit Christian enthusiasm regarding the strength of their historical case, and that's about it. Beyond that and it gets very close to conspiracy theory territory.

But, yes, if you are saying that Jesus' rising from the dead is probably borrowed from the apotheosis of other figures, say, such as Julius Caesar, then knock yourself out. Carrier sure did, and he didn't move the ball further forward than it was already set by others without Bayesian analysis.

[dastardly stem]

Yet again, you're demonstrating that you have unrealistic expectations for what kind of records we should have of the ancient world.

That may be to some extent or another. But the point is without good evidence we have a ton of assumptions to make and build upon. And that's not a good look in demonstrating the historicity of Jesus.

We lack contemporary accounts of the lives of countless ancient people who were far more important in their own times than Jesus was in his.

yes. If there was a Jesus he was a virtual nobody, some may say. Lacking contemporary accounts is one thing, and a big thing if we really want to demonstrate the historicity of someone. But, that is not the only thing. And as it turns out Jesus fails on all other counts as well.

Most of our understanding of the history of the Roman Republic, for example, is dependent on the work of a handful of historians who described it as it was nearing or had already passed its end. Jersey Girl brought up the point that Jesus's disciples may not have been literate; they certainly didn't come from the kind of background that literate people usually came from in the ancient world.

That's fine, but then we struggle to establish his historicity as a result. That'd be the point.

If none of them were literate, you certainly wouldn't expect them to have written about him!

If none of them were literate and yet they made noise as some sort of religious movement, it could still be that others made note of their existence and Jesus' life. But we don't see that. You may be right....we can't expect to see good evidence. But that is not an argument for his historicity. THat is simply an explanation for why we don't see good evidence.

Instead we have texts by a highly literate person who knew some of the disciples personally (Paul)

Paul doesn't use the term disciple. And his accounts hardly verify Jesus lived.

and accounts of Jesus's life written beginning in the 70s AD,

By fanatical believers, written as magical tales of a character long gone. That's not the same as source material written about someone who actually lived.

when Jesus was beginning to disappear from living memory. It makes perfect sense that that would be the case.

No. Not perfect sense.

On top of that, the preservation of texts from the ancient world is extremely poor, so it wouldn't be surprising if early texts about Jesus had disappeared.

We know that many disappeared.

Papyrus rots, unless it happens to end up in extremely dry circumstances (hence the Dead Sea Scrolls and the cache of unorthodox Christian texts from Nag Hammadi). Some huge number (a majority, if I remember correctly) of the Greek and Roman literary texts that exist today are only known via medieval copies. We only have as much evidence of Jesus as we do because of Christians' ceaseless efforts to copy what texts they had.

More than that. They also, apparently destroyed or changed texts that didn't favor their beliefs, or the story they wished told. That's a pretty sad situation too, if we want to reconstruct the history.

It's easy for modern people to forget how much work that copying entailed, but if you want a reminder, try copying an entire gospel with pen and paper. As far as I'm aware, there is one very early Christian text that many scholars believe existed but then became lost: the "Q source" that Matthew and Luke seem to be partly based upon.

Agreed. Its tough. The only reasoning to suggest a Q source is to assume there might have been. There's no good reason, as far as I've seen, to think there actually was a Q.

For whatever reason, it didn't circulate in the Christian community the way the other New Testament texts did, and thus didn't end up being preserved in the New Testament.

Pure speculation of course. There is no evidence of a Q source at all.

If anything was written about Jesus in his own time from a non-Christian perspective, it would never have been preserved that way, so it's no surprise that nothing of the kind survived to the present.

Ok. So there's no good evidence. I don't think that argues for his historicity. That simply suggests if we assume he lived then it's possible to explain there is a lack of evidence for him having lived. I mean fine, but that's not addressing the data.

[dastardly stem]

LOL!!!

stem, this is all just special pleading to invalidate Christianity on ideological grounds.

I will disagree with this. Its simply an explanation without all the data points to consider. I'm happy to consider anything unfavorable to the view.

I hope you can see that. Once one drops the need to poke a stick in the eye of Christianity, then this masturbatory mental exercise becomes a lot less interesting.

I disagree. History can be rich with interesting material. If Jesus was, like many before him, a mythologized character who was later given a life on earth, that is interesting and worth talking about, aside from Christianity. Indeed, in time, I'd be so prophetic as to say, Christianity will likely feel forced to adopt this view, or at least some of Christianity. That's not to attack Christianity. It's to evaluate the reality of the situation, as I see it. I mean people do the same with Adam and Eve and the flood and everything else that has essentially been shown to be mythologized aspects of the religions. I do, however, think the apologetic ventures into suggesting things like, the Resurrection of Jesus has good evidence on history, are playing a very intellectually dubious game.

The existence of Jesus as a historical figure is simply a part of the historical landscape of Roman imperialism playing out in a provincial context. Jesus is like other people who led opposition to the Roman empire in the persons of local, indigenous authorities who benefited from their association with Rome.

Sure. I mean possible. But we have to have reason to show this.

His existence as someone other than a cosmic Christ is as mundane a fact as Nero's existence as something other than Mithras, which Tiridates, king of Armenia, declared Nero to be. All it takes is a solid familiarity with the historical facts of the first century CE Roman empire and all of this starts to look not only pointless but wrongheaded.

All, happy to consider.

I don't think this is a tough call at all. It is salutary to correct surfeit Christian enthusiasm regarding the strength of their historical case, and that's about it. Beyond that and it gets very close to conspiracy theory territory.

No. There's no conspiracy theory involved.

But, yes, if you are saying that Jesus' rising from the dead is probably borrowed from the apotheosis of other figures, say, such as Julius Caesar, then knock yourself out. Carrier sure did, and he didn't move the ball further forward than it was already set by others without Bayesian analysis.

Ok. I'm really interested in determine whether the case for mythicism can be adequately dealt with. If so, I'm all for being wrong. I certainly haven't the mettle to mess with the scholars, but that isn't going to stop me from trying to reason this out. I mean for fun if for nothing else.

Anyway, thanks for your comments. I think I'll get back to the explanation I plan to offer. I welcome ideas and criticisms. No offense to anyone. I know I'm not going to do it complete justice. But I'm game enough to try and put it out there for examination, as meager as such may seem to some.

[Res Ipsa]

The trouble I’m having with the ranking is that it doesn’t seem to focus on the right question. Wouldn’t we want to know the percentage of historical figures with high scores on the scale that represent real people? Maybe it’s addressed in the books.

But there weren't any historical figures who ranked on the scale above 50%. Even though we know some real people were mythologized after they died, I think Kish mentioned Alexander, for instance, he didn't make the top of the list.

The point of the list and the ranking is to help set a data point on a prior probability consideration. It's not meant to suggest the elements define a mythical person. It could be a real historic person could have made the list. It just so happens no confirmed cases of that had ever happened.

Yeah, sorry Stem. I'm not articulating my point well at all. And it's unfair of me to demand an explanation of the methodology when I'm sure it's in accessible books or papers. I'm just going to put a pin in this issue until I get a chance to do some reading.

[dastardly stem]

Yeah, sorry Stem. I'm not articulating my point well at all. And it's unfair of me to demand an explanation of the methodology when I'm sure it's in accessible books or papers. I'm just going to put a pin in this issue until I get a chance to do some reading.

Thanks Res Ipsa. I appreciate that. I do plan to lay out more here, and hopefully that will address some concerns more than me trying to get to them one at a time. I think my posts come off as far more combative when I disagree then I intend. Wife calls me a contrarian, stolen from friends who called me that long before she and I met. So...well, I'll use that as an excuse.

[huckelberry]

From ancient stories there is a trend developed for defining a 'divine king' hero. Carrier calls this the Rank-Raglan hero-type. It is defined by these elements:

1. The hero's mother is a virgin.
2. His father is a king or the heir of a king.
3. The circumstances of his conception are unusual.
4. He is reputed to be the son of a god.
5. An attempt is made to kill him when he is a baby.
6. To escape which he is spirited away from those trying Old Testament kill him.
7. He is reared in a foreign country by one or more foster parents.
8. We are told nothing of his childhood.
9. On reaching manhood he returns to his future kingdom.
10. He is crowned, hailed or becomes king.
11. He reigns uneventfully (i.e., without wars or national catastrophe)
12. He prescribes laws.
13. He then loses favor with the gods or his subjects.
14. He is driven from the throne or city.
15. He meets with a mysterious death.
16. He dies atop a hill or high place.
17. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
18. His body turns up missing.
19. Yet he still has one or more holy sepulchres (in fact or fiction)
20. Before taking a throne or a wife, he battles and defeats a great adversary (such as a king, giant, dragon, or wild beast)
21. His parents are related to each other.
22. He marries a queen or princess related to his predecessor.

I could review this list again. For some of these there is room for different takes depending upon how high the desire to find matches is.
1 yes
2 there is no public acknowledged way he is royal. He is an ordinary guy whose neighbors know him andtreat him as ordinary..
3no , i find no stories about his conception, no swan golden shower or whatever.
4 no where in his life is he reputed to be the son of god.
5 yes the Herod story.
6 yes to Egypt, no marvelous "spirited"
7 not particularly foster
8 sort of, we are told little.
9 no he grew up in Israel and was never king of Israel except as a Roman joke.
10 no
11 clearly no, there is no reign.
12 he never has political power to prescribe any laws. He preaches addressing peopled conscious.
13 no
14 no , there was no throne no city . he was an itinerant preacher.
15no ,his death is simple and clear.
16 no , he dies at a place called the skull. I suppose that might be higher by a bit than someplace else but it is no outstanding high place.
17 no connection, he had no children and no throne to succeed to.
18 yes, I can add this one to the yes side.
19 I do not know how to relate to this, centuries later people made guesses.
20 no , no throne no battle .
21 not that I know about.
22 obviously no.

So with review I found another yes and two sort of.

[Res Ipsa]

Yeah, sorry Stem. I'm not articulating my point well at all. And it's unfair of me to demand an explanation of the methodology when I'm sure it's in accessible books or papers. I'm just going to put a pin in this issue until I get a chance to do some reading.

Thanks Res Ipsa. I appreciate that. I do plan to lay out more here, and hopefully that will address some concerns more than me trying to get to them one at a time. I think my posts come off as far more combative when I disagree then I intend. Wife calls me a contrarian, stolen from friends who called me that long before she and I met. So...well, I'll use that as an excuse.

You and I have similar styles when arguing a point, so I don't mind combativeness at all. I am enjoying discussing the details of Carrier's books, which have been on my to read list forever but which I just haven't got to yet.

[dastardly stem]

I really need to keep moving on because, again, this is in consideration of the prior probability.

Huckelberry, I don't know how to take this. If anyone read the list with skepticism, then no one is going to be on the list. But, I"m happy to respond to your points for now.

I could review this list again. For some of these there is room for different takes depending upon how high the desire to find matches is.
1 yes
2 there is no public acknowledged way he is royal. He is an ordinary guy whose neighbors know him andtreat him as ordinary..

Why does the criteria get added to it that he must be publicly acknowledged to be from royal descent? We can see this in two ways. Joseph is said to have lineage from king David, thus royal descent, or his real daddy (God above) is as royal as humans can get, I'd say. I'm not sure why anyone should take this as a "if we can cynically say it doesn't match perfectly then we can deny that it is check mark, per meeting the criteria". That would never work.

3no , i find no stories about his conception, no swan golden shower or whatever.

His conception is said to have involved God. That's not unusual?

4 no where in his life is he reputed to be the son of god.

Where, in his life, is anything really ever said about him? That he was said to be the son of God is indisputable.

5 yes the Herod story.
6 yes to Egypt, no marvelous "spirited"
7 not particularly foster

I don't understand this comment. Foster means bring up a child that is not biologically yours. Was it said that Joseph was his actual biological father?

8 sort of, we are told little.
9 no he grew up in Israel and was never king of Israel except as a Roman joke.

What is his kingdom? You seem to be saying since it was said that they mocked him as king of the Jews at his death that the stories about him did not really say he was king of the jews. I mean what was the joke? That he wasn't really king of anything. If nothing else he was crowned king in heaven, no?

10 no

So he's not the king?

11 clearly no, there is no reign.

That's fine. I think you're taking this too literally. And are cynically trying to get Jesus off the list for some reason.

12 he never has political power to prescribe any laws. He preaches addressing peopled conscious.

There's no "political" caveat here. Of course he is said to have prescribed laws.

13 no

What do you mean? Where did his thousands of supporters go? Are you saying them going silent, or switching sides (?) is gaining favor?

14 no , there was no throne no city . he was an itinerant preacher.

That was the picture of his triumphal return to Jerusalem. many call it his triumphal return and it is celebrated as Palm Sunday.

15no ,his death is simple and clear.

Mysterious would suggest there are questionable aspects of it. How'd it happen on Passover, for starters? That seems like a later embellishment to make it appear he defeats the jewish law of sacrifice. Why was one said to be let go? It is all mysterious, it seems to me.

16 no , he dies at a place called the skull. I suppose that might be higher by a bit than someplace else but it is no outstanding high place.

Again, adding a caveat not required. The hill must not be outstandingly high.

17 no connection, he had no children and no throne to succeed to.

Re-read the criteria. If he had no children, then that is a meet.

18 yes, I can add this one to the yes side.

Fewf!.

19 I do not know how to relate to this, centuries later people made guesses.

WEll alright.

20 no , no throne no battle .

Of course he defeated Satan.

21 not that I know about.
22 obviously no.

He isn't said to meet these two.

So with review I found another yes and two sort of.

Well, ok. Thanks for your consideration.