PZ Myers and “Jesus Agnosticism”

PZ Myers and “Jesus Agnosticism”

New Atheist blogger and biologist, PZ Myers is an honest guy. He admits he finds the issue of the historicity of Jesus baffling and knows this is largely because he has no training in history. As a result, he declares himself to be “agnostic” about the existence of Jesus, but what does “Jesus agnosticism” actually mean? Not all “Jesus agnostics” are taking Myers’ modest and circumspect approach and some just seem to be trying to avoid Mythicism’s critical flaws.         

The Good

A couple of weeks ago Myers, as a non-historian, did something very sensible. Given his interest in the question of the existence of a historical Jesus and his own lack of training in history, he asked a historian about how we can assess something like the historicity of Jesus. So he posted a video of his conversation with Eddie Marcus, who did a fairly sound job of explaining how the historical method works, how it is similar to (as well as different from) the scientific method and how and why scholars use the historical method to conclude that a historical Jesus most likely existed.

It is admirable that Myers was, as a non-historian, open to listening to someone trained in the historical method and to seek to actually understand how it applies to Jesus as a likely historical figure. Unlike other analogous non-historian New Atheists of his ilk – e.g. Jerry Coyne – he is humble enough to realise that this question is well out of his field of expertise and to respect the fact that almost all of those who have studied it accept that a historical Jesus most likely existed and try to understand why. This is greatly to his credit.

Unfortunately, many of his blog followers did not display the same sensible humility and the comments on Myers video quickly descended into a welter of Mythicist babble. One brave free thinker, “weylguy”, sneered “I stopped watching the video around the 3:00 mark, when the ‘historian’ claimed that the New Testament is “wonderful evidence.'” If “weylguy” had bothered to listen a few seconds more, he would have heard Marcus explain that the gospels are great evidence for what the communities of believers they were written for believed about Jesus, not they they were necessarily evidence about the historical figure of Jesus. But people like “weylguy” are typical of those who have an irrational, emotional commitment to Jesus Mythicism and so only listen to counter arguments to find a reason to dismiss them, however idiotic. He was also not the only one to try to dismiss Marcus on the grounds that he was not a specialist in first century history, despite the fact Marcus readily noted this at the beginning of his conversation. He was talking mainly about the topic under discussion – the way the historical method works – and as someone with a degree in history from Cambridge, he is more than qualified to explain something as basic as that. That said, judging from his comments, he also has a sufficient grasp of the mainstream, non-Christian views of the New Testament texts and the historicity of Jesus to give a decent assessment of those topics – certainly solid enough to satisfy any reasonable person, as opposed to sneering online Mythicists and mealy-mouthed nitpickers.

I joined the discussion briefly, until a couple of the more tedious usual suspects showed up and it clearly became a waste of my time. Myers himself said very little, though he has since articulated his own thoughts in a second post and they are an interesting insight into what a reasonable and open-minded non-specialist thinks on this subject:

I’m agnostic on the subject of the historicity of Jesus, in that I can be whipsawed back and forth depending on who I listened to last. What I was interested in was a much more general topic. What are the criteria a professional historian would use to assess the status of a named figure from the past, when lacking any direct documentation from that person’s life? How do you separate legend from human being? There’s no denying that there is a remarkable mass of unbelievable legend wrapped around this Jesus guy, but if you peel away the myths bit by bit, will there be any vestige of a person left? Or, alternatively, there is not enough solid information to make a distinction, but is the most parsimonious, reasonable explanation is that there was a man, around whom the myths accreted?

(“Still baffled over the historicity of Jesus stuff“)

These are fair questions and worth exploring. When he says he is “agnostic” on the question, I assume he is using the word in its colloquial sense of “on the fence, not committed one way or the other” or just “reserving judgement”. This is because no-one can actually “know” if Jesus existed or not, given that historical analysis of pre-modern evidence simply cannot arrive at definitive answers and can only make structured, evidence-based but subjective assessments of what is most likely. So when Myers goes on to declare “[a]s I said at the beginning of the video, I DON’T KNOW”, he is not alone. No-one “knows”, though some are better equipped with both the training and background knowledge to make an informed assessment of likelihood. Unlike many of the commenters on his posts, Myers is sensible enough to realise that he does not have that equipment and so wise enough to know it would be best to reserve judgement as a result.

He goes on to explain why he finds two arguments against the likely historicity of Jesus uncompelling. As he says, the fact that the later stories about Jesus contain supernatural and therefore obviously unhistorical episodes and elements does not necessarily mean the stories are wholesale fictions and no Jesus existed. As he says:

I think George Washington probably did lie now and then, and that some claim he never told a lie, which is unlikely, does not imply that Washington didn’t exist.

Similarly, and in more close analogy to the Jesus stories, ancient texts are full of supernatural claims about people we are fairly certain existed. Augustus was claimed to have a miraculous conception, Caesar was said to have ascended into heaven and Vespasian was reported to have cured the lame and blind – these are just the kind of things said and widely believed about great men and women in the pre-modern world. The fact that they could be said and believed about historical figures shows they are not good indicators of whether a person such stories were told about did or did not exist: they were told about both historical and mythical figures. This is why a bumbling and confused article on this question by the philosopher Stephen Law simply shows that, like biologists, philosophers really should leave the analysis of ancient history to historians (see “Evidence, Miracles and the Existence of Jesus”, Faith and Philosophy, 2011, Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011, pp.129-151 – a piece of woefully wrongheaded analysis that I may have to address in more detail in a future article here).

Myers goes on to dismiss the persistent but invalid claim that we “should” have contemporary accounts of Jesus if he existed. Unlike many online Mythicists, he understands that the fragmentary nature of ancient sources on anything or anyone makes this claim ridiculous – as he says “we’re lucky that we even have third person accounts from decades after his death of this hypothetical individual”. I have discussed the problems with this weak Mythicist argument in detail elsewhere – see “Jesus Mythicism 3 – ‘No Contemporary References to Jesus'”.

The Bad

So far so good. But then Myers demonstrates that he really does still have a lot still to learn about historical analysis by repeating two of the weaker lines of argument against the consensus position on the historicity of Jesus. First, he dismisses the significance of that scholarly consensus on these grounds:

Here’s one from the historical Jesus side that I also don’t find persuasive: that it is the consensus of historians that he existed. Unfortunately, there is a strong alternative explanation for that, in that most of these historians are imbedded in a culture that insists as a matter of dogma that Jesus was real. This is a deep bias. You can tell me that most historians agree, but then I have to ask, what percentage of those historians are Christian?

Leaving aside the fact that when people note the consensus of scholars they are not actually making an argument, just noting a pertinent fact, this is a standard Mythicist line. The claim is that the consensus is only because the scholars are either Christians or somehow so hopelessly in thrall to Christian biases that they simply cannot entertain the idea that Jesus did not exist. Now, obviously in New Testament Studies there are inevitably going to be a large number of Christians and these Christian scholars, liberal or conservative, are most likely going to be highly inclined to accept that a historical Jesus existed. But even if we completely ignore the Christians and only focus on the non-Christians in the field, we find the consensus remains. If we look at relevant non-Christian scholars, both current and recent, we find people like Maurice Casey, Zeba Crook, James Crossley, Bart Ehrman, Paula Fredriksen, Robert Funk, Jeffrey Gibson, Michael Goulder, Amy Jill Levine, Gerd Ludemann, Jack Miles, Christina Petterson, Alan Segal and Geza Vermes. None of these people accept or accepted Mythicism.

And to pretend that these scholars are simply too unimaginative or too timid to examine and accept the idea that there was no Jesus at all is completely ridiculous. These are some of the leading proponents of conceptions about Jesus and the origins of Christianity that are so much at odds with orthodox Christian ideas that conservative Christian apologists write whole books warning their faithful to beware of their supposedly wild and radical theories. Darrell L. Bock’s Dethroning Jesus (2010) and  J. Ed Komoszewski and M. James Sawyer’s Reinventing Jesus (2006) are just two in a sub-genre of evangelical apologetics that tries to put mainstream, non-Christian academic interpretations of Jesus in the same category as Mythicism and The Da Vinci Code to discredit them as dangerously radical and unscholarly. So if these leading non-Christian scholars are so shackled to the Christian idea of a historical Jesus because of the vast influence on them of Christian culture, it is very strange that this highly Christian influence is so narrowly focused and selective. Why is it only on the question of Jesus’ existence that this supposedly pervasive Christian orthodoxy has such influence on these non-Christian scholars, but not any other ideas? How is it that this supposed Christian control only works on the historicity of Jesus, but somehow fails completely on topics such as the rejection of Jesus as a Jewish apocalypticist, or the promotion of the Farrer Thesis over the Two Source Hypothesis or conservative views on the dates and authorship of the gospels or any of the dozens of other issues on which the scholarship is sharply divided between non-Christians and orthodox Christian scholars? Why can and do these scholars present Jesus as a Jewish preacher, a charismatic hasid or a Cynic-style sage – all ideas substantially at odds with Christian orthodoxy – yet baulk at the idea that he did not exist? How is a conception of Jesus as being nothing like the Jesus of faith because he was one or a combination of the things just listed significantly different to one who is nothing like the Jesus of faith because he did not exist? It makes no sense that this supposedly powerful cultural bias would only affect non-Christian scholars on historicity and not across a much wider range of disputed topics.

This idea makes even less sense when we look at Jewish scholars and find, again, that the consensus on the historicity of Jesus holds among them as well. Given that modern Judaism has it origins, like Christianity, in the first century AD, this is a period which is the subject of intense historical focus by modern Jewish scholars. If there is a group of scholars which is not only unlikely to deeply influenced by Christian biases but actually likely to react against them for cultural and historical reasons, it would be Jewish scholars of the Second Temple Period. If Mythicism had any genuine persuasive weight, we should find it widely or even just significantly accepted by these learned specialists in the very period and religious culture out of which Christianity arose. Yet I know of zero Jewish scholars of this period who accept Mythicism. None. Amy Jill and Marc Zvi Brettler’s The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford, 2017) lists no less than 50 editors and contributors: all Jewish, all prominent scholars and some of them among the leading figures in the field of Second Temple and Post-Revolt Jewish Studies of recent years. Not one of them is a Mythicist. Far from being influenced by Christian biases and ideas, it is the work of Jewish scholars over the last 70 years that has had a profound and quite revolutionary effect on New Testament Studies, with even the more conservative Christian scholars having to strive to accommodate the often uncomfortable but unavoidable fact that, properly examined, the NT material and the Jesus it describes fits very neatly with our increasing understanding of Jewish beliefs in this period.

So Myers does not seem to understand the field well enough to grasp why this argument is nonsense. The consensus is not because of some imaginary Christian control of the field. On the contrary, most of the last century of NT Studies has been a rearguard action by more conservative Christian scholars against an increasing and strengthening conception of Jesus as a Jewish man of his time and other views of early Christianity which do not fit Christian orthodoxy at all. In that context, if Mythicism actually had some real argumentative power it would have been embraced by at least a sizeable number of non-Christian scholars. It simply has not. This is not because of any non-existent overwhelming Christian dominance on the issue, but simply because it is a bad idea that has to be propped up by ad hoc arguments and contrived suppositions. Other non-Christian ideas about the origins of Christianity have gone from strength to strength in this period, with conservative Christian scholars constantly battling against that tide. Mythicism, on the other hand, has failed dismally.

Myers makes the odd claim that “the atheist historians are split” on the issue. Again, he does not seem to be well-versed enough on the views of actual non-Christian scholars, otherwise he would know they are not “split” at all. The consensus among them is as solid as it is among scholars generally. Despite some typical hysteria on the subject by people like the ubiquitous Dr. Richard Carrier PhD (who is an Ivy League graduate with a doctorate, in case you were unaware), there is no more of a “split” among scholars who are non-Christians than there is some “split” among scientists on evolution, as claimed in tellingly similar shrill tones by Creationists. When Bart Ehrman made a passing comment in a guest lecture that there are “a couple of scholars who’ve argued [Jesus] didn’t exist”, Carrier waxed greatly wrathful and poured forth several thousand words of rebuttal which triumphantly concluded the actual number was … eight. Just eight. And that was after padding this number with at least four or five who are not actually Mythicists but simply think the thesis should be given closer attention. Given the thousands of non-Christian scholars in relevant fields, this is an uttterly pathetic total and clearly not evidence of some kind of “split” on the issue. Mythicism is as much on the far fringes of scholarship as it has always been and for the same reason – it is just not very convincing to qualified non-Christian scholars with good grasp of the relevant material.

Myers’ second argument against the consensus position is not much better than his first:

Another one that induces a mild cringe is the parsimony argument — let’s apply Occam’s Razor! Then the simplest hypothesis is that there was one man who got the whole religion rolling. I can sort of agree, except we might differ on who that man was. Was it a Jesus? Or was it that wandering evangelist Paul? Or was it the mystery man who wrote the first of the gospels?

The only thing inducing a mild cringe here is Myers’ misunderstanding of how the Principle of Parsimony is applied in the analysis of history. No-one says that Jesus most likely existed because “the simplest hypothesis is that there was one man who got the whole religion rolling”. That is not necessarily even the simplest hypothesis. The way parsimony works here is, when confronted by a range of possible explanations of why our source evidence is the way it is, a historian usually accepts the one that best accounts for the most evidence with the least number of suppositions and ad hoc arguments. This is not some iron scientific law, but as an interpretative tool, it is a handy (if inevitably subjective) guide for analysis.

To illustrate this, let us look at the two alternatives to a single historical Jesus as the founder of the sect that became Christianity that Myers suggests. “Was it Paul?”, he asks. Well, no, because that does not fit the evidence at all. Paul himself makes it clear that the Jesus Sect existed before he joined it, so clearly he cannot be its founder or point of origin. In Galatians 1 he defends himself against the claim that he was some kind of subordinate apostle whose more radical ideas the Galatians could ignore. In a defence that is not entirely consistent or very convincing, Paul denies that he got his teaching from others in Jerusalem who he calls “those who were already apostles before me” (Galatians 1:17). So clearly the sect existed before he joined it. Similarly, he refers in several places to how he persecuted the Jesus Sect before joining it himself. He says of himself that “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9), he says he had previously been “violently persecuting the church of God and … trying to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13) and he talks about how his zeal as a devout Jew had previously made him “a persecutor of the church” (Philippians 3:6). None of these references makes any sense if Paul was somehow the point of origin of the sect he is referring to here. There are obscure Mythicist variants, mainly of the self-published amateur variety, which try to argue that the ἐκκλησία (assembly, church) Paul refers to here was not the Jesus Sect but some other Jewish group, but this makes no sense in context and is based on exactly the kind of contrived supposition that falls to Occam’s Razor.

So what about the other idea Myers suggests – that Christianity was founded by “the mystery man who wrote the first of the gospels”? This does not work either. To begin with, only a couple of scholars argue that the Gospel of Mark predates the seven epistles that all scholars agree were written by Paul. The latter seem on internal evidence to date to the 50s AD. Most scholars date gMark to sometime soon after 70 AD, but even the few who argue for an earlier date do not tend to go earlier than the mid-60s AD. Two exceptions to this are the late Maurice Casey and James Crossley, who both interpret references to the defiling of the Temple in Mark 13 to be to the threat by Caligula to raise a statue to himself there in 41 AD and not to the Romans’ desecration and then destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, though most scholars find this unconvincing. But there is still good evidence that the writer of gMark was drawing on earlier traditions, not creating the stories himself. Indeed, Maurice Casey is the one who has made a strong case that the author of gMark used earlier written sources in Aramaic, given that there are several puzzling elements in that gospel that make sense if the author had misunderstood key words in Aramaic when using an earlier Aramaic source and translating parts of it into Greek (see Casey Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching, Clark, 2010). Then there is the fact that most scholars agree there are parts of gMatt and gLuke which are independent of gMark and possibly predate it and a substantial number also see gJohn as independent of all three of the earlier gospels. So if Myers’ reference to “the mystery man who wrote the first of the gospels” refers to the writer of gMark, the idea that the whole story of Jesus began with him does not stand up to close scrutiny on several fronts and certainly does not account for the evidence we have in any parsimonious way.

When scholars note that the origin of Christianity as a sect focused on a historical Jewish preacher is more parsimonious than alternatives, they are saying it fits the evidence we have better than the kinds of alternatives Myers suggests and also does not require the kinds of fundamental suppositions and contrived ad hoc arguments that all forms of Mythicism depend upon. As I noted in my comments on Myers original post on the ontology of an ancient figure’s historicity, all of our early sources that refer to the origins of Christianity attribute it to this historical figure Jesus. Obviously the Jewish and Roman sources differ from the Christian ones in what they say or imply about him and the Christian sources also differ from each other on that as well. But all of them make an earthly, historical Jesus the point of origin for the sect. This does not in itself mean this therefore is what necessarily happened, but it does mean there is a very strong prima facie case that it is. And it means that any Mythicist alternative faces a steep uphill battle if it wants to present a credible and convincing alternative.

The way all of the variants of Mythicism try to do this is to posit that there was an earlier form of Christianity that did not have its origin with an historical Jesus and believed in a purely mythic, allegorical or celestial Jesus and then this belief gave rise to “historicised” stories about him as an earthly, historical figure, despite him having never existed. The problem with this is that we have no overt text or reference to any such earlier form of Christianity. None. Mythicists try hard to read this idea into some texts and references we do have – arguing for example that Paul believed in a purely celestial Jesus or claiming the Ascension of Isaiah never refers to Jesus coming to earth (despite the fact it actually does). But these readings assume the existence of this non-historical Jesus proto-Christianity and are too uncertain to be taken as actual evidence it existed. The problem is that the whole of Mythicism, in all of its forms, is based on a fundamental supposition – that a non-historical Jesus form of early Christianity existed – which has no sound evidential foundation. And Occam’s Razor makes short work of this kind of idea.

This is how the Principle of Parsimony applies to the question. It is not merely that, as Myers seems to think, the idea of a single person as the point of origin is “simple” therefore it is most likely. It is that the sources all say that there was a historical preacher as the point of origin of the sect and all of the alternative explanations for how this could be is based on a weak foundational supposition which can, in turn, only be sustained by contorted readings of the texts which are also propped up by still more suppositions. When Mythicism gets to the point where Carrier is forced to sustain his reading of Paul as believing in a purely non-human, wholly celestial Jesus by claiming the reference to Jesus as a descendant of King David in Romans 1:3 actually refers to some supposed belief in a “cosmic sperm bank” in the sky in which God kept some of David’s actual semen and used it to “manufacture” the heavenly Jesus – an utterly bizarre idea found nowhere in any text or anywhere outside Carrier’s highly fertile imagination – Occam’s Razor becomes a ripping chainsaw. But Mythicism has to go to these ridiculous and contorted lengths to sustain itself once we get down to the details in the sources, because otherwise it collapses like a house of cards. It simply does not work as a parsimonious reading of the evidence, which is why it mainly appeals to immature online apostates who not only do not have a good grasp of the evidence but also simply do not care about history – they just want a big rhetorical stick with which to hit Christianity.

“Jesus Agnosticism”?

As already noted, when Myers says he is “agnostic on the subject of the historicity of Jesus”, he seems to be primarily saying he is reserving judgement or, at most, is in two minds on the subject. He notes candidly that he “can be whipsawed back and forth depending on who I listened to last”. This is a reasonably common situation for someone who does not know enough about a subject to be able to genuinely assess it in an informed way and settle on an informed and considered opinion. I can think of several topics on, say, economics or sociology where I can read an argument one side of an issue and find it persuasive and then read an argument for the opposite idea and find it equally convincing. Given that I never experience this on subjects I have studied carefully and have good knowledge of, I usually interpret this reaction as a sign that I need to read a lot more before I can come to a personal opinion on that issue.

This seems to be where Myers is on the historicity of Jesus, and it would be good if more atheists were similarly circumspect. I regularly come across people who are strident champions of Mythicism who, when I explore how much reading they have done on the source material and its context and on the scholarship around the historical Jesus, are simply parroting Mythicist talking points because they find them emotionally appealing. Last year one of these people assured me in an online discussion that he had examined the issue carefully from both sides and decided that Mythicism was the best position. I asked him what scholars he had read to arrive at this opinion and he replied “Richard Carrier, Robert Price, David Fitzgerald and ‘Acharya S'”. I pointed out that these were all Mythicists and two of them were not scholars at all and then asked what mainstream critical scholars who were not Mythicists he had read in this supposedly balanced and objective analysis. He dodged the question several times because, clearly, the answer was “none”.

So Myers’ reservation of judgement is a very sensible alternative to jumping to an uninformed opinion or – worse – a supposedly “objective” opinion formed by reading the fringe theorists from just one side (and here, again, we find Myers’ fellow biologist New Atheist blogger Jerry Coyne, who plumps wholeheartedly for Mythicism on the basis of no wide reading at all).

But there are others who claim to be “Jesus agnostics” who do not seem to fall into the same sensibly circumspect category as Myers. In his desperate wrangling of a mere eight qualified Mythicist scholars (well, kind of) noted above, Dr Richard Carrier (PhD), the Ivy League doctorate holder and publisher of a peer reviewed book (in case you were not aware), included Dr Raphael Lataster, who recently graduated from the University of Sydney with a doctorate in Religious Studies. Lataster assures us in several of his mainly self-published works that he is not actually a Mythicist but is, in fact, a “Jesus agnostic”. But his so-called “agnosticism” is very different to Myers’ cautious circumspection.

Lataster is, like many prominent Mythicists and Historical Jesus sceptics, a former fundamentalist Christian. As recently as 2006 the very same Raphael Lataster was not only a “non-denominational Christian”, but also circulated a free e-book arguing that the New Testament had originally been written in Aramaic. It seems even then the erstwhile Christian Lataster had a penchant for fringe ideas argued at length and with immense self-assurance. Now that Lataster is an atheist, he has carefully scrubbed all references to his former ideas from the books and articles sections of his blog and is somewhat sensitive when reminded that he once argued for Christian apologism with the same vehemence and cocky confidence he now uses for his newfound scepticism. Youthful enthusiasm can be awkward.

But Lataster has indeed embraced atheism and putting aside his former qualification in Pharmacy, done a Masters Degree in Religious Studies and then a Doctorate in the same field, writing a thesis entitled “God’s Intellectual Battles: New Atheists, New Theologians, Philosophical Arguments and Public Engagement” (2017) on the arguments for the existence of God by apologists like William Lane Craig and Richard Swinburne. His Masters thesis formed the basis for his self-published book, There Was No Jesus, There Is No God (2013) and he has since self-published Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists (2015). This last book was written “with assistance from independent historian Richard Carrier”, includes a foreword by Carrier and has been favourably reviewed by Carrier’s friend and acolyte David Fitzgerald, who confidently declares it “doesn’t just inform and invigorate the debate – arguably, it settles it.”

Given the rather categorical statements in his titles (“Jesus did not exist” and “there was no Jesus” do not leave much wriggle room), it is curious that Lataster claims to be a “Jesus agnostic”. But he explains what he means in an introductory section of his second book:

I am not a mythicist per se. I do not assert that Jesus did not exist. I am a historical Jesus agnostic. That is, I am unconvinced by the case for the historical Jesus, and find several reasons to be doubtful. To compare these terms to those often used when discussing God’s existence, the ‘historicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘theist’ and the ‘mythicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘strong atheist’. The oft-forgotten ‘Historical Jesus agnostic’ is the equivalent of, well, the ‘God agnostic’

That may seem neat, but on closer inspection things get somewhat less clear. Lataster goes on to group “the ardent mythicists and the less certain ‘agnostics’ under the broader term “ahistoricists”. But for someone who is apparently a “less certain agnostic”, Lataster comes across as … well, strangely certain.

Raphael Lataster

Those who do not want to read a 442 page book to get a grasp of Lataster’s arguments can instead read a more succinct summary of his position in his article “The Fourth Quest: A Critical Analysis of the Recent Literature on Jesus’ (a)Historicity” (Literature & Aesthetics 24, 1, June 2014). Incidentally, Literature & Aesthetics is an open source online journal published by the University of Sydney, whose editorial team consists of, Lataster’s thesis supervisor, Carole Cusack, one Alexandra Guzman and … Lataster himself. I suppose that is one way to get your stuff published.

As the title of his paper suggests, he sets out to undertake a “critical analysis” of those who have recently tackled the question of Jesus’ historicity. His analysis focuses on four case studies: two “historicists”, Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey, one so-called “agnostic”, namely himself, and one “mythicist”, the inevitable Richard Carrier. While this sounds a noble and objective endeavour, it does not take long to see where Lataster’s sympathies lie.

To begin with, the “defences of [Jesus’] historicity” he analyses are nothing like Carrier’s book or even his own in their intentions, style or method. Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (2012) is one of his works written to be accessible to a popular audience. Like all his popular works, Ehrman assumes little to no background knowledge on the part of his reader and presents a general overview of why almost all scholars find Mythicism unconvincing. It is not and was never intended to be a fully detailed, deeply scholarly defence of the historicity of Jesus, let alone a comprehensive debunking of all Mythicist arguments. In fact, it was originally written as an e-book and only later did Ehrman’s publishers decide to produce it in a print format. It is fairly clear from comments by Ehrman during its writing that he did not consider Mythicism worthy of much more than this kind of general treatment for a lay audience of interested but uncommitted bystanders.

Casey’s Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (2014) is also not meant as some comprehensive defence of Jesus’ historicity and is, even more than Ehrman’s, a rather irritated swipe at Mythicism as a fringe, substantially amateur and amateurish and largely online phenomenon by a scholar who clearly holds the whole thing in distinctly low regard. Casey was never someone to worry much about offending people and this book, his last, was written not long before his death in May 2014. It certainly reads like a slightly gleeful project by an old scholar who knew that he would soon be well beyond the reach of criticism by his outraged targets. This means that it is even less intended to be a sober and objective analysis and is clearly something of an indulgence. Ehrman is gentlemanly, even if it is clear he does not consider Mythicism to be even close to good scholarship. Casey is openly and delightedly scornful, particularly of the pomposity of many online amateurs; though he was kind enough to give me some praise, noting “once in a while a blog turns up written by someone previously unknown, making a number of important points” and calling my critical review of Mythicist David Fitzgerald’s self-published book Nailed “a fine and incisive review” (Casey, p. 26).

Lataster contrasts these two popular overview responses to Mythicism to Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (2014) and his own Master’s thesis, which  formed the basis for his There Was No Jesus, There Is No God (2013). Like most fringe theorists, Carrier and Lataster are striving mightily to make their ideas as respectable as possible. Lataster’s book is more aimed at a general audience than Carrier’s and has a rather more informal style (often irritatingly so), but he also works to make it as scholarly as he can, with full footnotes and other apparatus. He even puts the word “scholarly” in his ponderous subtitle – “A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific, Historical, and Philosophical Evidence and Arguments for Monotheism” – just in case anyone was unclear. Carrier’s work, of course, was meant to be Mythicism’s great new opus and was supposed to land in the field of Historical Jesus Studies like a mighty bombshell. It turned out to be a fizzing damp squib, but Carrier certainly put great effort into giving his book all the right scholarly trappings and academic equipment; complete with a 42 page bibliography and the standard three indices for scriptural references, authors and subjects.

This means Lataster is hardly comparing apples to apples in his “critical analysis” and while his conclusion that Ehrman and Casey’s books “seemed polemical, were occasionally vulgar, and often resorted to cavilling” may have at least a small degree of truth (especially with regard to Casey), it is hardly surprising that their popular overviews are going to be more overtly polemical than Lataster’s or Carrier’s more formal efforts.

That aside, the “criticism” element of Lataster’s “critical analysis” is distinctly lopsided. Beginning with Ehrman’s popular book, Lataster seems obsessed with the idea that Ehrman’s argument depends on “hypothetical sources”, referring repeatedly to this as some kind of flaw in Ehrman’s argument on pp. 4, 5, 6 (twice) and 7 (three times). This is in reference to Ehrman’s acceptance of the majority position on the inter-relationships between gMark, gMatt and gLuke: the Two Source Hypothesis, which posits, on the basis of careful analysis, that the writers of gMatt and gLuke used gMark and at least one other, now lost common source or sources – called Q – when composing their gospels. He also summarises the reasons that the material unique to gMatt and gLuke – called M and L respectively – is likely to be at least in part derived from still other lost sources, possibly written or maybe oral. All this is standard, basic stuff, and while Ehrman notes that not all scholars agree with the Two Source Hypothesis (p. 79), it is by far the most widely accepted position on the synoptic gospels’ relationships.

Strangely, Lataster places repeated emphasis on the idea that these sources may not have existed at all, noting “the existence of such hypothetical (i.e. currently not – if ever – existing) sources is disputed”. This is true, but the dissent is largely because conservative Christian scholars also dislike the idea of these lost sources for their own ideological and theological reasons – thus the minority position that tries to dispense with Q etc. That aside, these “hypothetical” sources are not something conjured out of thin air, and are based on careful analysis of overlapping elements in the gospels in question. This is a perfectly sound methodology used by textual analysts all the time and so-called “hypothetical sources” are accepted in historical analysis as a matter of course. To take just one example, the key work of the late medieval fencing master Sigmund Ringeck does not survive, but it can be reconstructed via later glosses on it. In fact, nine separate but inter-related works can be used to posit no less than three lost works which are, to use Lataster’s favourite word “hypothetical”.

The Ringeck source and manuscript stemma

But it seems Lataster’s primary problem with these “hypothetical sources” lies in the fact that because they are not accessible, their “reliability” cannot be assessed, arguing “Ehrman does not give reasons for why these sources should be trusted”. This seems to misunderstand Ehrman’s point. Noting the likely existence of lost sources that predate gLuke and gMatt and possibly gMark, as well as possible other earlier sources behind gJohn as well, Ehrman argues:

We cannot think of the early Christian Gospels as going back to a solitary source that ‘invented’ the idea that there was a man Jesus. The view that Jesus existed is found in multiple independent sources that must have been circulating throughout various regions of the Roman Empire in the decades before the Gospels that survive were produced. 

(Ehrman, p. 82)

But Lataster is having none of this:

These alleged sources could be works of fiction (midrashic parables perhaps). Religions stemming from obvious fictions are not unheard of.
None of this seems to interest this Biblical historian, perhaps due to the sheer number of non-existent sources.

(Lataster, p. 6)

Well, yes. As Ehrman notes, in addition to gMark there is the Q material, the M material and the L material – all three of which could in turn include multiple earlier sources. Then there is evidence of perhaps two passion sources and at least two sayings sources. Luke 1:1-4 refers his reader to the fact that “many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us”, and the writer would hardly have used the word “many” (πολλοὶ) if at least some of the earlier sources scholars posit were not already known to his audience. He states that his intention is to “write an orderly account for you …. so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed”. The whole premise of this statement is that there were “many” other sources about Jesus already in circulation and the authors wanted to, at least in part, reorganise and combine them.

So Ehrman’s argument that there were these “many” sources that pre-date any of the surviving gospels because they emerged independently from an earlier period of purely oral traditions about Jesus makes solid sense – Ehrman explores this in more detail in his more recent book Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior (2016). Of course, it is not therefore definite that these multiple early sources mean there was a human being as the various traditions’ origin point, but that is far more likely than Lataster’s rather vague hand flapping about possible “works of fiction”. That weak “maybe” is undercut by the fact that by the time we get to our extant gospels their writers seem to be struggling to get some elements of the stories they have inherited to fit their conceptions of who and what Jesus was; a sign they are shoehorning historical elements about a human into evolving theological ideas about him and finding some parts of their sources awkward to deal with.

Lataster concludes his critique of Ehrman by declaring:

Nowhere in Ehrman’s case, already suspect due to his reliance on non-extant sources, was the reliability of the existing sources substantially scrutinised.

(Lataster, p. 9)

Again, this is wrongheaded. Ehrman is not required to demonstrate any “reliability” on any issue other than one – that there was a Jesus. And he does make that case by noting there were multiple independent sources and these most likely emerged from a period of oral traditions about Jesus, as well as his argument about the reference to Jesus’ brother James in Galatians 1:19 (see my article “Jesus Mythicism 2: ‘James the Brother of the Lord'”). Lataster also uses strangely loaded language about Ehrman, constantly saying Ehrman “admits” things with the implication that these elements somehow undercut his argument. Ehrman certainly acknowledges things that pretty much all critical scholars accept, such as the fact that there are no contemporary references to Jesus or that the gospels are clearly biased. By painting these as “admissions”, Lataster tries to imply that by noting these fairly unremarkable things Ehrman is conceding weaknesses in his own case and even claims that by doing so his position “could be mistaken as a case for Jesus agnosticism” (p. 4), though why Ehrman should hold that position because of these things is not explained.

Lataster’s analysis of Casey’s book spends some time on its distinctly curmudgeonly tone, with much prissiness about “ad hominems” and “vulgarity” – these people dislike it when others do not take them as seriously as they take themselves. And, again, Lataster complains of the reference to “hypothetical sources”; this time Casey’s arguments for likely lost Aramaic source material lying behind parts of gMark. Not everyone finds Casey convincing on this (I do, as it happens), but the point Lataster makes is, again, about “reliability”:

Casey places great importance on hypothetical sources, and partly argues for them on the basis of mistakes caused by the poor translating skills of the Gospel authors. From this, an oddity of historicist argumentation is illuminated: sources that do not exist are claimed to be reliable, while the sources that scholars actually have access to are acknowledged as being filled with errors.

(Lataster, p. 12)

This is a strange argument. What Casey actually does is note that several oddities in gMark can be explained if the writer misunderstood some key Aramaic words or phrases in a now lost source or sources and so mistranslated them. But somehow Lataster manages to leap acrobatically from that to claims that these posited lost sources are “reliable”. Again, the argument derived from these multiple sources makes no claim to any “reliability” of the sources on any point but one: they imply multiple independent traditions best explained by various oral accounts about a single human being.

Lataster then turns to his own work, though thankfully he is modest enough to note that he is unable to review his own work and so just provides a summary. It essentially boils down to some reasons to at least conceive that a historical Jesus may not have existed. Most are valid, though few are as compelling as he seems to think. This is unremarkable stuff – only the most conservative Christian apologists dismiss the very idea of the non-existence of Jesus as wholly invalid. There is, of course, a large gulf between merely “valid” and actually “likely” and it is that very gap that historical analysis strives to bridge, by making an assessment of which “valid” idea is the argument to the best explanation and so the most likely. Interestingly, he notes a couple of generally favourable reviews of his There Was No Jesus, There Is No God, including one by Carole Cusack, his supervisor, in Literature & Aesthetics, the e-journal edited by … Lataster and Cusack, which is all extremely cosy.

But when he turns to Carrier, the tone of his article transforms completely. Indeed, Lataster must have worn out a Thesaurus of superlatives when penning this section:

Exhaustive ….  has the potential to genuinely shake up the research field ….  painstakingly outlines his approach to the sources and his method ….  effectively opens with meticulous explanations of the hypotheses ….  Carrier … masterfully outlines crucial “elements” of background knowledge supporting this position that are so forceful that the sceptically-inclined may already become persuaded …  In methodical fashion, Carrier then examines the residual evidence …. 

(Lataster, pp. 23-24 ff)

And so it goes on. And on. And on. So gushing is his praise of Carrier and so seemingly impressed is he by his arguments that the contrast between this section and the ones on Ehrman and Casey raise an obvious question – why the hell is Lataster an “agnostic”? He seems pretty much convinced, and even states “Carrier concludes that ‘He did not exist’ [and] though I have no great desire to deny some form of historical Jesus, I am inclined to agree” (p. 25). As already noted, his “agnosticism” boils down to not much more than some reasons it could be that no historical Jesus existed and his endorsement of Carrier’s argument is so ringing – almost gushing, in fact – that it is hard to see why he does not simply say he is a Mythicist and be done with it.

The answer seems to lie in a rather muddled conception of certainty in historical analysis. As already noted in relation to Myers’ rather different form of “agnosticism” on the question, historical analysis of pre-modern evidence simply cannot arrive at definitive answers and can only make structured, evidence-based but subjective assessments of what is most likely. Carrier has done that and decided it is most likely Jesus did not exist. I and, more importantly, most of the expert scholars have also done it and decided he most likely did exist. Why Lataster does not seem able to bring himself to make this kind of assessment, which is fundamental to all historical analysis, is a mystery. Perhaps his former fundamentalist background has something to do with it. Who knows.

With some others who adopt this “Jesus agnosticism” position, however, it feels it is more of a slippery rhetorical gambit than something genuine. There certainly are many who have drunk deeply from the Doherty-Carrier Kool Aid and argue vigorously for the baroque clusters of suppositions, supposed interpolations and conspiracy theories required to sustain Mythicism; complete with supposed ur-Christianities that vanish without trace, unjustified trimmings of received texts and bizarre conjectures about  a Pauline belief in a “cosmic sperm bank” in the sky filled with ancient Israelite semen. There are others, however, who constantly boost and bolster many elements of Mythicism, but when backed into a corner over the silly castles in the air that it requires for an explanation of how Christianity arose without a historical Jesus, scuttle and hide behind this “Jesus agnosticism” position and declare loftily that they “are not a Mythicist” and so do not have to support all of the Mythicists’ contrived fantasies. So they get the best of both worlds – they can play the arch, chin-stroking contrarian without having to stump up anything in the way of an alternative hypothesis. Some have been playing this slick little game for years.

I prefer PZ Myers’ approach. Either do your homework thoroughly, understand the material, its context and how it can be interpreted and then take your position either way. Or admit, as Myers does, that you do not know enough to make a call and wisely leave the discussion to others. Anything else is inadequate at best and pathetically weaselly at worst.

Addendum

PZ Myers has written a short response to my comments and criticisms above, and it is good-natured and reasonable stuff – see “Uh-oh. I get the Tim O’Neill treatment”.  He begins “I’m not going to disagree with his major points”, but unfortunately he goes on to show he is still not grasping how the Principle of Parsimony works in historical analysis.

First, he notes that the “structured, evidence-based but subjective assessments of what is most likely” that make up historical analysis are also essentially what evolutionary biologists like him are doing. I am certainly no biologist, but it does seem to me that there is a strong analogy between how a historian works and how an evolutionary biologist, a palaeontologist or, in many cases, a geologist proceeds – all are interpreting potentially ambiguous evidence from the past after all.

So far so good. But then he objects to my summary of why it is more parsimonious to accept a historical Jesus over any form of Mythicism, given that the latter is riddled with suppositions, by veering into an analogy with evolutionary biology which really does not work:

When we try to identify the last common ancestor of all tetrapods, for instance, we don’t have any doubt that such a thing existed, but the “thing” is not a single individual (it ain’t Tiktaalik!), but a population, or a group of populations, or even a few loosely interbreeding species, and we’re averse to holding up a fossil and declaring, “here is the mother of all four-legged vertebrates!”, because we know it’s not true.

So I look at the Middle East of a few thousand years ago (or even today), and I see a fermenting chaos that is throwing up preachers and prophets all over the place, and to point to one guy and say he’s the one seems to avoid the bigger question of what was going on in that particular environment. Wouldn’t it be better to acknowledge the cross-fertilization and interbreeding of ideas that had to have been going on? This Jesus fellow is just one focus, and given how little we know about him, not even a particularly interesting focus.

This is not actually analogous to what the evidence indicates in the case of the origins of Christianity. Yes, there were “preachers and prophets all over the place”, and the fact that the “apocalyptic preacher Jesus” of the earliest sources seems to fit what we know about them very well and that these elements get downplayed, adjusted and removed until we get the “divine Saviour Jesus” of the later sources indicates that he was one of these “preachers and prophets”. But there are elements in the source material that do indicate memories of an individual.

Paul’s letters are written approximately 20 years after Jesus’ time. That is the distance between now and the events of 1998. That is certainly enough time for legends to grow up around someone, especially in a sect of devout Jews in a world that saw the supernatural as completely natural and normal. But to pretend it is enough time to forget whether someone had been one person or several is clearly absurd. Writing to the Jesus Sect community in Corinth, Paul makes reference to Peter and James and Jesus’ other brothers and followers. And in his letter to the community in Galatia he mentions having met Peter, Jesus’ brother James and his other disciple John at some point in the mid-30s AD. He is referring to people who knew Jesus personally, including to Jesus’ siblings. This is nothing like the analogy Myers makes – this is clear evidence of a known individual made by someone who was writing at the same distance in time as we are from the Kosovo War, the Backstreet Boys and There’s Something about Mary.

Myers then says:

Writing that Christianity was produced by a committee, or the complicated interplay of a gang of scholars living in one little town, isn’t as compelling a story as saying it was this one enlightened individual.

Leaving aside the fact that I do not think the likely apocalyptic teaching of the historical Jesus was particularly “enlightened”, the problem is not that these strange alternatives he mentions are not “compelling”, but rather that there is simply no evidence at all they are what happened. What “committee”? Which “gang of scholars”? What “little town”? Again, these weird alternatives are pure supposition and Occam’s Razor makes short work of all of them, especially given the evidence there was an individual noted earlier.

Oddly, after all of the above, Myers then says:

But all right, I can accept that historians have reached a practical consensus based on available evidence that there was a guy named Jesus who triggered a major religious movement 2000 years ago, and that denying his existence is a pointless exercise in pedantry that is often misused by lazy denialists. 

Which would be fine, except then we get this:

If the time machine goes back, and the time travelers flounder about, unable to identify which of the multitude of preachers is “the one”, that similarly is not going to change the mind of anyone about the truth of Christianity. It’s a kind of peculiarly bad pattern of argument that doesn’t resolve anything that matters at all.

But given that we most likely could identify “which of the multitude of preachers is ‘the one'” – the most parsimonious read of the evidence indicates he was the one from Nazareth, the friend of Cephas-Peter and the brother of James, who was crucified by Pontius Pilatus – the only “bad pattern of argument” here is that of Myers. Again, because he does not know the evidence well enough, he keeps resorting to ways to distance himself from the likelihood of a single historical Jesus that are not parsimonious.

His new comments seem a lot like a reaction I often see from people inclined toward Mythicism once they start to realise it is flawed. I often have these people declare that it is “most likely there was no one historical Jesus, but rather he was an amalgam of many preachers from the time”. Now this is certainly possible, but “most likely”? For many years now I have asked these people what evidence they have which indicates that this mere possibility is somehow “most likely” and ask them to show this is “most likely” given the references by Paul to people who knew and were related to Jesus noted above. And every single time I am met with … silence.

This “multiple preachers”/”amalgam” Jesus idea is not actually a coherent assessment of the evidence. It is in fact simply a psychological gambit, aimed at putting some more conceptual distance between the realisation that Mythicism is a problematic cluster of suppositions and the, to some, uncomfortable realisation that there most likely was a historical Jesus. I find it is resorted to mainly by people whose grasp of how different that historical Jesus was to the Jesus of Christianity is rudimentary to non-existent and so do not understand that accepting a likely historical Jesus is nothing remotely close to accepting the existence of the divine figure called “Jesus Christ”. This is why there is a real need for easily accessible online material on what actual non-Christian scholars agree about that historical preacher, Yeshua bar Yosef of Nazaret, so many atheists can get over their association of “historical Jesus” with the “Jesus Christ” of their local holy rollin’  preacher man or Catholic bishop.

(For a detailed critique of the “Amalgam Jesus” gambit, see “Jesus Mythicism 4: Jesus as an Amalgam of Many Figures”).

Just last week I was contacted by someone who thanked me for the small contribution I had made to helping people understand this difference. He noted that he had been a devout Christian in part because when he looked online for alternative explanations for the origins of Christianity he mainly found New Atheists peddling Mythicism. When he examined Mythicism, saw how academically marginal it was, how it was presented by fringe scholars and nobodies and how implausible it seemed on close inspection, he felt satisfied that a version of the traditional Christian story of Jesus made more sense.

But since he came across my stuff and then did some more reading of the work of non-Christian scholars I and others refer to, he found a far more scholarly and much more convincing alternative thesis – one that was not propped up by suppositions and fantasies. As a result, he is now well on the way to becoming an unbeliever and wrote to thank me for helping him to that point.

So Myers’ conclusion that this stuff is “irrelevant” and “is not going to change the mind of anyone about the truth of Christianity” is dead wrong. Personally,  I am not very interested in actively deconverting Christians, though I always help any who are genuinely interested in exploring this stuff. But I have long maintained that Mythicism is a dead end. It is a self-indulgent conceptual rabbit hole and it really is time more atheists realised that and actually bothered to educate themselves in the mainstream non-Christian scholarship on how Christianity began, because Mythicism is just giving fundies a free pass.

P.S. I would suggest you avoid reading the comments from the Mythicist true believers on Myers’ articles – most of them are so dumb they will make you lose the will to live.

156 thoughts on “PZ Myers and “Jesus Agnosticism”

    1. If there is a historical preacher, we can identify his historical preaching. The thing is, we can’t. Further, if there is anything this historical figure did, it was suffer the passion. But we can’t tell when this crucifixion occurred, why it occurred. As it is, we have no less than three sets of judges, the Sanhedrin/high priest, Herod Antipas and Pilate. This rather strongly suggests that the people writing the history didn’t know the facts. It is in short the Sunday School version to insist that there was a real Jesus who was crucified. Your thesis of a real person with a real preaching has zero evidence. People have been looking for centuries for the real teachings of the Christ, and failed.

      As to scholarly consensus, the presumption that M and L are from oral tradition can only be assessed in comparison to the alternative hypothesis that gMark and gLuke, like gJohn just made up their original material. If you aren’t doing that, you’re not taking a reasonable (aka scientific) approach at all. Even in gMark, the thesis that gMark mistranslated Aramaic has to be compared to to the alternative hypothesis that gMark was using Aramaic phrases for verisimilitude, like any creative writer.

      As to the general idea that hypothetical sects that vanish are an absurdity? The wealth of information that survives about the Therapeutae, the Essenes and the Marcionites are an ironic commentary!

      I have no idea what it can really mean to say there was a historic preacher whose preaching can’t be identified, whose death may or may not have occurred but certainly did not occur as told to us is the real founder of Christianity. That is intrinsically a dubious thesis, anyhow. Your rage at people who disagree is unwarranted, therefore unseeemly.

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      1. “The thing is, we can’t.”

        Wrong. The earlier material attributes a consistent emphasis in his teaching to the coming of an apocalyptic “kingship of God” and the idea that it was coming very soon. We also see this in Paul’s seven letters. Then, as elements of the predictions about this apocalypse didn’t eventuate, we see aspects of this teaching being toned down in gLuke. Then it disappears almost completely in gJohn and is replaced with teachings seen nowhere in the earlier material which emphasises Jesus himself as a Saviour figure and as (in some sense) God. So the clear pattern is that his teaching was the standard Jewish apocalypticism of the time which got modified as the Jesus Sect drifted further from its Jewish roots.

        ” But we can’t tell when this crucifixion occurred, why it occurred. “

        Bollocks. All the sources indicate that Pilate was involved and most of them mention Caiaphas. That gives a clear window of 30-33 AD. And whatever else was going on – crucifixion was a Roman execution reserved for bandits, runaway slaves and sedition against the emperor. So it’s pretty clear why Jesus was crucified. The Romans took a dim view of claims to be, in any sense, the Messiah.

        “Even in gMark, the thesis that gMark mistranslated Aramaic has to be compared to to the alternative hypothesis that gMark was using Aramaic phrases for verisimilitude, like any creative writer.”

        There are other elements in gMark which indicates an Aramaic source, not just the Aramaic phrases. Go read Casey.

        “I have no idea what it can really mean to say there was a historic preacher whose preaching can’t be identified, whose death may or may not have occurred but certainly did not occur as told to us is the real founder of Christianity. “

        See above. The only people who resist the idea of Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher are the ones who don’t like this idea because it makes him just another nobody who was wrong. Everyone else is pretty clear that this is precisely what he was.

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        1. “The only people who resist the idea of Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher are the ones who don’t like this idea because it makes him just another nobody who was wrong. ”
          Thanks for the blog above, its well worth a read. I will however point out that Jesus being an apocalyptic preacher focusing on the Kingdom of God, doesn’t make him another nobody. What Christianity, and those assessing claims of Christianity, have to realise is that its the reality (or otherwise) of the resurrection upon which the standing of Jesus rises or falls. What he taught, how he lived, and the influence he had is one historical question. His resurrection is another.
          As a Christian I don’t get why people want to reject the historical nature of the first question. Without a resurrection he can be either ignored, written off as a nobody, or admired for his moral approach and stance. I don’t see that as controversial and am not sure why people respond with visceral rejection to it.
          What is controversial is the effect of the claims to the resurrection, if true. That I can see as putting people off, inviting derision, and being historically implausible (or even daft).

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          1. ” I will however point out that Jesus being an apocalyptic preacher focusing on the Kingdom of God, doesn’t make him another nobody”

            No, but Jesus predicting that this apocalyptic event will happen in the lifetimes of those listening to him (Mark (:1, 13:30) and before the high priest at his trial dies (Mark 14:62) does. Jesus is consistently depicted as believing the apocalypse will come very soon – definitely within years if not sooner. But by the time gLuke is written these predictions have become awkward (because he was wrong), so this part of the earlier tradition gets toned down and adjusted. So now the “kingdom” is somehow “among/with you” (Luke 17:20) and the high priest pronouncement gets a tweak as well (Luke 17:20). By the time we get to gJohn almost all of this apocalyptic stuff disappears completely and his message becomes about himself as a saviour and (in some sense) as God.

            Ever since nineteenth century scholars recognised all this, people who find it uncomfortable have been scrambling to account for Jesus being wrong so they can maintain his status as someone special and not just another failed prophet. Conservative Christians do it theologically by reading the gLuke and gJohn stuff into the more awkward gMark and gMatt material to temper them via eisegesis. The Jesus Seminar tried to do it historically by arguing, rather unconvincingly, that the apocalyptic elements are a later accretion (despite them being found more in the early material and less in the later), and so were layered over their “real” Jesus who was a hippy sage fighting for social justice (much like … the members of the Jesus Seminar). But the fact is that these elements indicate pretty clearly that Jesus was a failed prophet and basically a nobody. The rest is … well, history (i.e. a series of historical accidents).

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          2. Thanks for your reply Tim. I agree with large sections of it. Yes, Jesus preached about a coming apocalypse, yes, this was seen as coming shortly. Yes, this became a problem as time passed and you rightly point to changes in gLuke. We also see similar issues in communities Paul is talking to, such as in the letter to the Thessalonians, where they are wrestling with the issues of people dying and they weren’t expecting that to happen before things changed (Apocalypse? Return of Jesus? Other end? Thier expectation isn’t completely clear).
            And you’re right that when this element was recognised that it was seen as problematic, and attempts were made to write it off, see it as non-important, or explain it away. Your mention of the Jesus seminar made me laugh, as that was a particularly odd way (voting by colours???) to try and steer thinking.
            However, I don’t think its particularly difficult to unpick historically. The primary referrent to Jesus concern is the fall of the temple. “Not one stone will remain” and the parable of “The house” (a common nickname for the temple) built on sand that was washed away etc. NT Wright does a good job of showing quite how much of Jesus teaching and activity is against the temple system and warning of its being overthrown (metaphorically and literally). The secondary referrent is to longer term picture. This is a lot more obtuse and shrouded. But its rather harsh to say its all about the secondary referrent, and he off beam. Actually, he nailed it. No one expected (the Spanish inquisition or) the Roman devastation. They were hoping for a Maccabean-like win against the odds. Ooooops. Part of the ostracism of Christianity from Judaism was their treasonous running away from Jerusalem (taking Jesus as his word) and being proven right.
            Some argue that the writers insert the destruction of the temple into Jesus wider waffling. However, the long list of teaching and actions against the temple system means you have to remover a hell of lot to get to an “original” long term apocalyptic vision. That does too much violence to the text.
            So, in short, its not a hard shout to say Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching predominantly spoke against the temple (and was shown to be right in that) and a much more obscure long picture. On that … … … time will tell. Personally, I just get on with being a Christian now, and suggest that making our world better now (working for justice, relieving poverty, telling pompous clerics of all persuasions that they’re prats, etc.) might potentially help the future.

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          3. “The primary referrent to Jesus concern is the fall of the temple. “Not one stone will remain” and the parable of “The house” (a common nickname for the temple) built on sand that was washed away etc. NT Wright does a good job of showing quite how much of Jesus teaching and activity is against the temple system and warning of its being overthrown (metaphorically and literally). “

            While there is no doubt there is good evidence his teaching included criticism of the Temple system, the idea that his reported sayings about “this generation” etc. as being about the fall of the Temple is just more of that apologetic eisegesis I mentioned. The “Little Apocalypse” of Mark 13 does indeed put some emphasis on the destruction of the Temple, but Jesus is presented as saying this would be a sign that the apocalypse was very close, not that this was the apocalypse he was referring to. He says that this would happen first and that the coming of the Son of Man etc. would follow soon afterwards:

            “And if the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he has cut short those days. …. “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” (Mark 13:20-27)

            “So, in short, its not a hard shout to say Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching predominantly spoke against the temple (and was shown to be right in that) and a much more obscure long picture.”

            Sorry, but I think it is very hard to say “Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching predominantly spoke against the temple”. All of his parables in the synoptics, all of his teachings and all of his miracles are about the coming of the kingship of God. The Temple doesn’t get an explicit mention until his mini-apocalypse in Jerusalem, and even there his prediction of its destruction is only part of a wider teaching about the coming cataclysm and judgement.

          4. “Sorry, but I think it is very hard to say “Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching predominantly spoke against the temple”.” Allow me to correct what I wrote. Jesus wider teaching had a huge amount to say about the temple system, and his apocalyptic took this up so that it was predominantly against the temple system (their world as they knew it and their connection to their God), and the temple in particular.
            At this point, I’ll just pull back a bit and point out that arguing about apocalyptic language is like arguing about political cartoons. Both genres use colourful imagery, exaggeration and warped metaphor. I’m currently based in the UK and so point you to Steve Bell’s work in the Guardian. He has iconography that regular readers get, and uses exaggerated caricature and dark imagery to get his points across. However, any attempt to see this literally would be stupid. Similarly for the apocalyptic sections of the Old Testament, Jesus’ teaching and Revelation. It has particular, and peculiar, iconography as well as caricature and exaggerate imagery. So trying to nail this down as historically “right” or “wrong” is an inexact science, to say the least.
            That being said, I would point out that a significantly large section of Jesus teaching is against the religious practise of his day, against the religious leaders and how they were making things difficult for people, and against the temple system. In this there came a particular focus that this would all stop. The parable of the house (nickname for the temple) built on sand is one example of how we might miss this message. The fig tree being cursed and dying is another. We see his actions of turning over the money changers as “cleansing” the temple. However, what he was doing wasn’t cleansing it. He was stopping it. His actions would have stopped its pattern of worship (note Mark gives the particular detail that he stopped them carrying incense which would mean the acts of worship would have been stopped). This would have been understood as a prophetic action, saying that the temple system and practise would be stopped. Of note too is the accusation against Jesus in his trial is that “57 Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’” This was clearly significant to the hearers. The pattern is that this was a dominant there.
            His whole teaching included large and significant sections against the religious and temple system. His use of apocalyptic mirrors this. For them, the destruction of the temple would be the end of their world. Being cast out from Jerusalem (well, the few remaining live ones), was earth shattering. That is his primary referent. From that starting point there develops a long term picture that is opaque and not well clarified. Of this “the son of man coming in a cloud” is particularly opaque. Where is he “coming”. Jesus is quoting Daniel and there the image is the one like Son of Man is coming to God in heaven, not a picture of someone coming back to earth. To say this second meaning was intended with clarity is pushing the limit a bit, considering the Daniel passage.
            As I say, like political cartoons, apocalyptic genre is classically unclear and opaque. So we start with what is clear and work to what isn’t. Its clear Jesus spoke against the religious system and the temple system. This finds a focus on the destruction of the temple. So far, so good. He was right. His community got their butts out of Jerusalem whilst others hung around, hoping for a Maccabean type miraculous overthrow of the pagans (Ooops. The didn’t happen). To this point Jesus was right. The long term picture is a lot more opaque and more than one group has lost their way insisting that their interpretation is right. My argument isn’t that my interpretation of his long term apocalyptic is right, rather I’m arguing that its unclear. What we can see (the fall of the religious system and the temple in particular) was right and a dominant part of his apocalyptic. It happened in that generation, and it was the end of their world. Luke talks about Jesus’ ascension on a cloud, so is he here saying that this was the fulfilment of the “Son of Man coming (to heaven) on a cloud”? Who knows. It would make sense to Luke and his readers. Neither of us can say with certainty what Jesus meant in his long term picture, and so to say he was right or wrong on that is off beam.
            I’m happy to say, that in this murkiness, what we can see actually he got pretty right. Good for him (and for the small bunch of his disciples that scarpered from Jerusalem).

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          5. “Jesus wider teaching had a huge amount to say about the temple system”

            Jesus’ reported teaching (keep in mind all reported speech in ancient texts is largely made up, but reflects what the writer thinks the speaker would have said) has some things to say about the Temple system. Your claim that it has a “huge amount” to say about this is overstating things quite a bit – your “examples” are actually pretty much all of the reported teaching on the Temple system per se, which is why you try to widen things via broader terms like “the religious practise of his day”. So yes, his reported teaching does include the elements you highlight which are about the Temple system. But it also includes the many (much more) examples about the Pharisees and the scribes – who were much closer to home for a Galilean, and so far more of a focus in the reported teaching tradition.

            Of course a reforming Jew in his period who was noting the coming apocalypse would be saying that the Temple system was corrupt – there’s a reason we call his religious tradition and context “Second Temple Judaism”. But you’re straining to make the destruction of the Temple the focus of his apocalypticism and that does not square with the evidence. Leaving aside the fact that most of his reported apocalyptic teaching has a broader focus, even when we get to the part that clearly is focused on the destruction of the Temple – the “Little Apocalypse” in Mark 13 – this is a (major) precursor to the main event. It is not the event itself. So the apologist argument that his “this generation” references were to the destruction of the Temple fail.

            That is not what he is depicted talking about in gMark and gLuke (or what Paul and his audience were clearly expecting). Thus the fiddling with his predictions in gLuke and the removal of them in gJohn. He was wrong, and Christian analysis of the gospels has been a rear-guard action trying to deal with that awkward fact ever since scholars realised it.

        2. I think Richard Bauckham has presented quite a stong case for thinking Mark’s Gospel is primarily the memoires and teaching of Peter, which Mark recorded. But as Peter most likely spoke in Aramaic, Mark translated his memoires and teaching into Greek.

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          1. I don’t think Bauckham has presented a strong case for anything much at all. Nothing in gMark indicates any direct first hand “memories” and several elements in it indicate precisely the opposite. For someone supposedly working from an eye-witness account, for example, the writer of gMark is very confused about the relevant geography. And Casey’s arguments make it very likely that the author was working from a written Aramaic source. not old Peter’s recollections. gMark is most likely at at least one literary remove from any actual eye-witness testimony, if not more.

      2. “As to the general idea that hypothetical sects that vanish are an absurdity? The wealth of information that survives about the Therapeutae, the Essenes and the Marcionites are an ironic commentary!”
        Tim didn’t say “vanish”, he said “vanish without a trace”. And we have a lot of information on those sects, as you said. We have nothing on the celestial Jesus Christianity of the Doherty-Carrier thesis – no Nag Hammadi or Dead Sea library, no patristic polemics, not even a mention by some other writer – so we may assume it didn’t exist until evidence surfaces.

  1. Great article, Tim. Fair, honest assessment of Myers’ Jesus “agnosticism.”

    I remain troubled and irked by the fact that many atheists embrace mythicism with little thought or study. It’s an easy way to dismiss Christianity with a mere wave of the hand. No Jesus, No Christianity. Just stupid sheeple. *sigh*

    I rarely comment here. I just wanted to wave my hand and say thanks for your thoughtful work on Christian/Biblical history, and your willingness to hold atheists accountable when their rhetoric and preaching stray from the facts.

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    1. Thanks Bruce. That Mythicism is for many atheists a lazy way to debunk Christianity is pretty clear to me after over 15 years of encountering such people online. That’s not the case for the contrarians like Lataster and Carrier, obviously – you can say many things about Carrier but no-one who has laboured to produce a thumping clunker like On the Historicity of Jesus can be said to be lazy. But for many of the more casual Mythicist enthusiasts, the appeal seems to be largely rhetorical and emotional rather than rational – they just want to be able to pull the rug out from under Christianity’s key premise, with little regard for how feasible Mythicism actually as as an explanation of Christian origins.

      For those who are not familiar with Bruce Gerencer’s own work, he is a former Evangelical pastor who has since become an atheist and humanist and his blog, The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencer, is an interesting running critique of American evangelical Christian culture and politics.

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      1. “they just want to be able to pull the rug out from under Christianity’s key premise”
        And delude themselves, because the real rug is of course Jesus’ divinity. They have a hard time to find the right tree to bark against.

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      2. I agree mytherism is lazy and stupid however I would rather live in a country of Jesus Mythers than evangelical Christians ( I live in the US) so more and more mythers don’t annoy me much now days.

        With the exception of mytherism mythers tend to be reasonable intelligent people. You cannot say that one bit about the evangelicals.

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          1. Reasonable and intelligent how? Price is a Trump-supporting far-right crank. I read a post on his blog once and wondered how anyone takes him seriously. (Indeed the worst advert for mythicism is that several of its proponents are awful people.)

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          2. When you can find me mythers fighting for theocracy, opposing universal healthcare, kissing up to Trump and a huge etc I will consider them to be just as bad as the evangelicals. Till then I consider them to be far better than the evangelicals.

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          3. That’s a rather odd thing to say, Kris, since it’s just been pointed out to you that Robert Price is a Trump-supporting far-right crank. He is even, in practice if not in his own mind, a supporter of theocracy, since the Trump regime appears to be enthusiastically supported by all the significant American Christian theocrats.

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    2. I think it’s because it offers the temptation of the ultimate debunking, of a silver bullet to 2,000 years of whatever it is Christianity’s blamed for: it’s far juicier than any tangled conspiracy theory that Christianity was deliberately created in the 4th century out of some existing Jewish preachers, or that the Catholics covered up reincarnation or a Magdalene fling

      so they end up pouring their hopes and resources into the route that promises the biggest payoff, regardless of level of evidence

      a good friend (honestly) asked me if I “believed” in Christianity and I cautioned him that I couldn’t answer unless I knew what exactly he meant by that, because most all of the time people have given me very very bad reasons for saying they don’t believe—basically everything Tim’s been covering since History vs. The da Vinci Code

  2. I have a hard time understanding the motivations of the mythicists. What precisely hinges on Jesus existing or not? I suppose it’s to discredit Christianity somehow? But to me it sounds like, if only I were to show that the guy who put up the Hollywood sign on that hill didn’t exist, then Hollywood would not exist either and you’ve actually never seen a Hollywood movie in your life. The vehemence of the mythicists just seems off.

    1. “I have a hard time understanding”
      Like ToN I’ve noticed that “many prominent Mythicists and Historical Jesus sceptics are former …. Christians” (I’ve met several non-fundamentalist ones). So I also suspect it’s an emotional thing – a kind of revenge. I’d say. Apparently it’s a comfort for an apostate if everything he/she used to believe is a lie and not just the religious stuff. As I’ve never been a christian and as far as I know it has never been systematically researched I’m merely speculating.

      1. I’ve noticed that many ex-fundamentalist Evangelicals drop the affiliation but keep the mindset they were raised with: the Catholic Church is still the dark antichrist squatting on humanity’s chest, a Cartesian demon that’s stolen away 2,000 years of true history

        I often have students who’re flabbergasted that creationism didn’t start in the Vatican–surely something so retrograde, so BIBLICAL had to have been imposed from above

        so it’s little surprise that the New Atheists sound so much like Jack Chick and even draw on the same sources; as late as 1980 it was Ted Kennedy being seen by the secularist groups of the day as the threat to the 1st Amendment (and not the Evangelicals behind both Carter and Reagan)

    2. When I first heard of Mythicism, I thought it was a case of hyper-debunking. Then for a while I thought there might be something to it. Now, I’m back to my first opinion.

      Considerations of soundness aside, it does seem to me that Mythicism is a poor polemical strategy: The Mythicist arguments seem at best rather esoterically technical, far more so than the arguments that the earth is billions of years old. Given that there are lots of Christians who manage to deny the latter, there would be lots more that would find it easy to dismiss the arguments for the former.

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    3. Pyrovenesis If it helps, mythicists aren’t some monolyth.
      Roughly speaking the breakdown is probably like this

      1.) The overly impressed: this is probably the largest group consisting of those who never questioned Jesus historical existence and either read an article or heard an argument and they confuse a different way of looking at things with insight. This is the group you probably hear from most who have never bothered to learn anything about the field and just run headlong through Carrier et al.
      3.) This group is much smaller
      although they have elements of the first. Let’s call them the refuters, ppl who have come to believe their faith was a lie and want to pass along the pain. Also, in this group are those atheists who think this is the best way to attack Christians. This group is just as reckless as the first.
      Lastly, an even smaller group who may know their stuff, but just haven’t thought it through. Im sort of in this group. Having been a fan of Ehrman’s for some time before DJE. I eagerly bought and started reading it, but thought, as many mythicists do, that Ehrman didn’t have anything. That’s the sort of part because I was never a mythicist. I had already read some of Ehrmans work and figured I missed sommething
      So I went back and re read. What most, if not all mythicists, miss is the standard of evidence which is not at all like that of the hard
      sciences.

      1. If you udnerstand that the issue Mythicists have with Ehrman’s book is that they just don’t get the standards of evidence and how the principle of parsismony works in historical analysis, why do you count yourself in the third group?

        1. > why do you count yourself in the third group?

          yep, it takes me four hours to watch 60 minutes! And 2 years to reply!

          I said I was “sort of” in this group. As in not really knowing their stuff and thinking it through (as instanced by my initial reaction to DJE)

          I must have been high writing that. I do not consider myself a mythicist, but maybe not as well informed as I should be.

      2. “mythicists aren’t some monolyth”
        They can’t, because they don’t have a reliable method. Exactly that puts me off. It explains why JMs aren’t any more capable of reaching consensus than creatioists.
        The first time I met JM I was very sympathetic, but gradually it became clear to me (several years before I learned about this site) that their method is “anything goes as long as it confirms our predetermined conclusions” combined with utter skepticism towards the historical Jesus and zero skepticism towards their own views. That’s unforgivable for people who claim to be rational and to be committed to the scientific method (whether the topic is soft or hard – actually historical research sometimes is harder than physics). Typically no JM I’ve ever met was willing to remedy this latter problem; though I’ve managed to make it clear to some doubters (call them Jesus agnosts if you like).

        1. Hi Frank

          It’s two years later and I’m a dollar short! JMs are evidence that the mental habits of Christian apologists aren’t unique to them. I suspect a lot of ppl think atheism (as if it’s an amulet! ) makes them immune to, well… bullshit.
          There’s way too much posing, self importance and pretence of “skepticism” involved.

  3. Great piece, Tim. While I personally love your ability to talk trash and consider it one of the reasons you’re an entertaining read on top of an informative one, you appear to be handling Myer’s oscillating between historicity and mythicism with far more sympathy than your opponents usually get. I suppose you can use this an example of you being more than willing to suffer fools gladly if they’re willing to acknowledge their own ignorance the next time one of your Mythicist opponents accuses you of throwing ad hominems around.

    1. No, I’m saying Myers is being appropriately circumspect because … I really think he’s being being appropriately circumspect. Nothing more.

      1. It wasn’t my intention to imply you had any ulterior motives whatsoever; my apologies if that previous post implied otherwise.

  4. “people like “weylguy” are typical of those who have an irrational, emotional commitment to Jesus Mythicism and so only listen to counter arguments to find a reason to dismiss them, however idiotic.”
    People like (fill in your favourite creationist) are typical of those who have an irrational, emotional commitment to creationism and so only listen to counter arguments to find a reason to dismiss them, however idiotic.

    “The claim is that the consensus is only because the scholars are either Christians or somehow so hopelessly in thrall to Christian biases that they simply cannot entertain the idea that Jesus did not exist.”
    The claim is that the consensus is only because the scholars are either atheists or somehow so hopelessly in thrall to atheist biases that they simply cannot entertain the idea that Darwinism is false.

    “they just want a big rhetorical stick with which to hit Christianity.”
    They just want a big rhetorical stick with which to hit Darwinism.

    Given PM’s experience with creationists I would have expected him to notice such similarities. He doesn’t, so I have less respect for him than you.

      1. While I take Tim’s point that far too many non believers dismiss actual study and rely on a couple of articles and pretend they are experts , the comparison to evolution-deniers is not apt. You can’t compare theories backed by empirical evidence to most other fields (e.g. History or legal cases)

        1. Similar in their rhetoric and explaining-away of evidence. And are just as impervious to reason. Mythicism is to history what YEC is to science. But ok, they’re Atheism’s halocaust deniers

        2. Then analogy is not to the degree or nature of the evidence. It’s the lack of understanding of the material and the arrogance of assuming they know more than the consensus of experts that is analogous. So the analogy is completely apt thanks.

          1. A case in point: One recent commenter (Charles?) arguing about the “brother of the Lord” reference made less sense than many of the creationists I used to tangle with on talk.origins.

          2. I could provide examples of where the consensus of experts has been wrong (you know like some of science!) so that in and by itself is not disqualifying.
            I do believe that the amount and type of evidence that is being rejected does matter. Otherwise every religious person is analogous to a creationist.

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          3. “I could provide examples of where the consensus of experts has been wrong (you know like some of science!) so that in and by itself is not disqualifying.”

            Everyone knows it is not necessarily disqualifying. But most of the time the experts know better than some online nobody who’s watched a couple of YouTube videos. And even the cases when the maverick contrarians have been right and the consensus has been wrong are well known because they are so rare. Yet, like the Creationists, these twerps think they are the smart ones.

            “I do believe that the amount and type of evidence that is being rejected does matter.”

            If you don’t actually understand the evidence in the first place, no it doesn’t.

    1. I first came across mythicism when I saw (recommended by some naive then social associates of mine) that dreadful pseudo documentary “the god who wasn’t there”. As someone raised irreligious (and naturally sceptical) I could detect the clear axe the maker had to grind and I thought I’d research the claims made about the similarities between Jesus and other middle eastern dirties of the iron and bronze ages for myself.
      As I’m sure you’re all aware; I found the claims of that film to be widely off the mark. I then looked a bit more into Jesus mythicism and the “scholars” (at that time Earl Doherty and David Fitzgerald) and the consensus that they were arguing against. It became obvious to me pretty quickly that this was just some fringe crankery like holocaust denial or creationism.

      But the idea seemed to get more circulation. It popped up again as I laughed-through the jumbling mess that is “zeitgeist the movie” (to the chagrin of the new atheists associates of mine). I even became aware of a project of scholars that was even looking more into this led by some guy call Hoffman and which initially included Robert Price (!).

      The entire mythicism movement seemed to be gathering steam around 2010-11 and it wa sat this time that I noticed this name Carrier always popping up. I looked more into him and saw that (at this time ) he was just a PhD student (not yet a recognisable scholar) and that his thesis was in the science of Ancient Rome/Greece. It was some time later that I realised that he also appeared in that “god who wasn’t there” thing (which interestingly would’ve been before he even completed his first masters in philosophy). I did think to myself what would become of this guy once he finished his PhD.
      Sure enough Carrier pops-up again some time later; but his time it’s at the helm of this absurd sure train wreck called “atheism plus” where he’s not only trying to use atheism to promote politically correct values (how absurd and sure to fail was that?) but where he’s disgracefully railroading Michael Shermer for some slight suspicion of sexual harassment as well as rubbishing other profiled atheism proponents who dared to cross the line of atheism plus (eg youtuber Dr Phil Mason aka “thunderf00t”). All I took from that was that (as I expected) Carrier’s academic career had (metaphorically) combusted at the foot of the runway as the engine was being warmed up. And that he was now jumping on this bandwagon in a desperate attempt o platform himself and his crackpot ideas. I knew that this desperate preservation act would unlikely to not end in disaster (as atheism plus was such a horrendous and fools to fail idea to begin with).

      What I didn’t expect was that Carrier himself turned out to be something of a creepy wannabe womaniser himself! I discovered that after he’d not gone anywhere as a scholar (at least); he’d began cheating on his wife (who had supported him for years) at the atheism conferences he was attending and spreading his bullshit . I can guess his marriage was under considerable strain at that point, so his wife then left him (even more deplorable is that Carrier attempted to absolve responsibility by declaring that he was “polyamourous”… …without consulting his wife, of course).
      And yet despite that; Carrier was actually limited enough in his social intelligence to continue his sleazy attempted womanising amongst these ultra-PC, pro-feminism, super social justice advocating types! So they dropped him like a hot scone (to which he declared he would sue them for a million, I’ve never heard what became of that).

      So I naturally assumed that Carrier being up the creek without a paddle had inevitably eventuated. But incredibly: THERE ARE STILL IDIOTS OUT THERE WHO FALL FOR HIS BULLSHIT. So this was where I’ve decided that I might do my part to help get his clown and his divisive games to disappear.

      Of course there’s still Robert Price. But for some odd reason, despite having actual credentials, he isn’t held in the same high esteem as Carrier amongst mythicists. I can only guess that in the shallow eyes of these Mythicists he’s not seen as being as “cool” (and that is in mythicist eyes, because in my eyes Carrier is the classic nerd figure attracting wedgies and his head being flushed in toilets). But in any case; his stocks seem to have dropped since he got thoroughly out-debates on the topic by Bart Ehrman in an event organised by a bunch of idiots in Milwaukee. These same people actually organise an annual convention event called “mythcon”…

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      1. Since it’s wildly tangential, I’ll confine myself to registering my strong disagreement with your take on Atheism Plus, l’affaire Shermer, Thunderf00t, and Carrier’s particular significance for all of that. Have a day.

        I’ll add that Carrier’s lawsuit against all and sundry is ongoing, and (to me) does a better job of making him look like a fool than any of the accusations that precipitated it. Locate foot, aim, fire.

      2. Personally, I take Price even less seriously than Carrier because Price makes even more outlandish claims than Carrier does. Watch his debate with Bart Ehrman, for an example. He makes the claim that we can’t be sure if Paul really existed and speculates that all of the Pauline epistles are later forgeries. He’s also been much more supportive of Acharya S/DM Murdoch than Carrier has. Even though he has real credentials as a theologian (not a historian), he comes across as a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

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        1. You need to read is The Colossal Apostle to see the details and Price is right that the evidence for Paul is slim. Unless you are just going to take the NT as it stands, the evidence is difficult. What I like about Price is he is willing to concede the importance and reality of speculation (we don’t have a time-machine) and thus open to correction. In fact, he often says that his view of mythicism is still very much about weighing the evidence as he sees it, not a dogmatic assertion.

      3. > I even became aware of a project of scholars that was even looking more into this led by some guy call Hoffman and which initially included Robert Price (!).

        Yes, R. Joseph Hoffmann was willing to give mythicists what they claim to never get (if only someone would be fair and listen!) The Jesus Project was terminated by Hoffmann when the mythicists wanted to go off
        and form their own group of those who committed to Mythicism.
        When mythicists get what they say they never do,they don’t want it. Hoffmann became a target of mythicists describing him as a new apologist (bet you’re surprised they said that!)
        I think Carrier gets the stature over Price because of the insults. Your critics aren’t just wrong, they’re “pathetic”. Some of his groupies (e.g., Lataster) tend to repeat this behaviour.

  5. “I explore how much reading they have done on the source material”
    I’ll honestly admit haven’t done much reading either. It’s just that I
    1. recognize that Kenneth Humphreys is a conspiracy thinker;
    2. recognize that Earl Doherty relies on Bible exegesis;
    3. notice that “expert” Robert Price is a theologian (a category New Atheists are supposed to look down upon);
    4. saw Richard Carrier’s math getting trashed by an actual mathematician;
    5. recognize that JMs are as unwilling/incapable of reaching any consensus as creationists and instead take a sort of big tent attitude;
    6. notice that they use the same kind of negative arguments as creationists, while offering zilch evidence for their claims that deviate from scholarly consensus;
    7. see them displaying the same extreme skepticism towards the scholarly consensus and the same lack of skepticism towards their pet hypotheses

    For a layman like me that’s more than enough.

    “the Two Source Hypothesis”
    I’d like to remark that regarding the historicity of Jesus this hypothesis is nothing but a definition: Q is everything that Mattheus and Lucas share, but cannot be found in Marcus. Hence we have at least two independent sources and the demand of multiple attestation (aka Testis Unus Tesis Nullus) is fulfilled.

    “the idea that these sources may not have existed at all”
    And here the conspiracy element comes in – how is it possible then that Mattheus and Lucas have things in common that cannot be traced back to Marcus? Given “could be works of fiction ” JMs apparently assume that at least two authors (Mattheus and Lucas) consulted each other when writing their Gospels, ie took part in a conspiracy.

    1. No – I believe the alternative theory to Q is that Luke based his gospel directly on the gospel of Matthew (rather than on Mark + Q). Or, possibly, Matthew based his gospel directly on the gospel of Luke. I’m not familiar with the arguments but understand that textual analysis has made this very much a minority view at this point.

      On a tangent: Tim, I think there may be a problem with the ‘subscribe to comments’ feature on your blog. I tried subscribing to the comments on this one, but the e-mailed link for completing the subscription just took me back to the ‘put in your e-mail address here to subscribe’ page.

      1. You’re right. Q theory says there was Mark and another source (or set sources), and both Matthew and Luke used Mark and “Q” plus a small reliance on others. http://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/ask-a-scholar/q-source

        One alternative to this is called Farrer hypothesis, which is that Mark wrote first, Matthew used Mark plus other stuff, and then Luke used Mark and Matthew with some other small additions (e.g. parables about wealth). Mark Goodacre gives an argument for the Farrer Hypothesis here http://www.markgoodacre.org/Q/farrer.htm

  6. I was so looking forward to your roasting of Dick Carrier or debunking the Ascension of Isaiah argument but this was good. Lataster needed a good spanking

  7. Minor erratum: That’s Zeba Crook. Our Ottawa CFI group has had him speak at a couple of events (including one in which he discussed — not debated, in any formal sense — this issue with Carrier. This was before Carrier made himself odious among the left wing of the atheist movement). That same weekend, I personally drove Carrier over to Doherty’s house (they’d never met in person). Of course, Earl Doherty is a bit of a hero among our local Humanists.

    I hung out a lot at Pharyngula for about 10 years before quitting about three years back, mostly just because I needed to read something different, and generally spend less time online. But I count PZ as a personal friend, and it’s nice to see him being reasonable about this.

    There is one point brought up in those comment threads that I think is worth addressing: Just what does it mean to talk about a historical Jesus, if he doesn’t much resemble the Christ of faith. If there is a continuity of tradition (A’s teachings, and stories about him, were passed to B, thence to C, to D, and so on, eventually reaching Z) then it seems to me that it is still meaningful to identify A as the founder, even if the teachings and stories have been radically changed or buried under later accretions by the time they get to Z. It may be very difficult to recover much authentic information about A, but he’s still there. Interestingly, there’s an analogy to be drawn with evolutionary biology: On a cladistic account, humans are lobe-finned fish, because that is the group we descended from, back in the Paleozoic, and even though our physiology and mode of life are radically different.

  8. I loved Casey’s “Jesus of Nazareth” – his forensic dissections of Mark and Q and his reconstructions of the Aramaic sources behind them were absolutely fantastic. I wasn’t always convinced by his views as to which passages go back to the historical Jesus (as with his view on “Talitha koum”). But I was very convinced by his “chaotic model” of Q.

    “Mythicist Myths” was something of a disappointing book, though. He spent too much time attacking the mythicists personally and asserting that they’re all ex-fundamentalists (which is not true). I agree with him that the mythicists are cranks, but I wish he’d stuck more to the substantive issues in the book. It’s also unfortunate that Carrier’s book hadn’t yet been published when Casey wrote – it would have been good to see his responses to it.

    (As an aside, I like PZ; I was a Pharyngulite once upon a time, under another name.)

    1. “Mythicist Myths” is a mixed bag. I remember being disappointed by it for the same reasons when it first came out. The opening chapters seemed more about personal attacks and “he said” / “she said” squabbling. The book would be so much better without the Introduction. I learned not long after that what as published was essentially an unfinished work (Casey died not long after). But there is plenty of gold in there if one takes the time to get through it – especially on the the Ascension of Isaiah nonsense regularly spouted by Carrier-school JMs and Paul’s understanding of an Earthly Jesus.

  9. Carrier makes much of the fact that Paul says Jesus was “made” of the sperm of David. But this notion of God forming/making the fetus in the womb is completely in line with the normal Jewish understanding of pregnancy. For instance, we read:
    (A).
    Isaiah 44:24
    24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
    who FORMED you from the womb:
    “I am the Lord, who made all things,
    who alone stretched out the heavens,
    who spread out the earth by myself,
    (B)
    Jeremiah 1:5
    5 “Before I FORMED you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

    1. An analysis of all the many things wrong with Carrier’s ridiculous “cosmic sperm bank” argument is on the long list of things to be tackled in future articles in my “Jesus Mythicism” series. It’s so comically bad that it’s my go-to example for when I need to explain to someone how implausible Mythicism is.

          1. I try to post an article at least once a month. I haven’t decided what the next article will be on.

          2. @Tim Do your response to Carrier’s latest love letter to you or the Ascension of Isaiah argument

          3. It will probably have to be my response to Carrier’s article my critique of his Jesus-James article. Responding to him is a chore, but it has to be done.

          4. I’ve been looking forward to the Ascension of Isaiah post for a while now. It’s an argument to which, as far as I know, no one has yet written a comprehensive response. And it’s not a text with which I am particularly familiar (though I’ve read parts of it on Early Christian Writings).

            At the same time, I can see why Carrier’s James post does merit a response. It seems to me that the crux of the issue is whether it is plausible that Josephus would have said “the brother of Jesus called Christ” without explaining to his Gentile readers why Jesus was called Christ or what Christ means. Carrier says it isn’t, but he hasn’t really responded to your argument about other instances in which Josephus refers to a person or place as “X called Y” while leaving Y unexplained. If he’s wrong on that point, then it significantly weakens his case, because we are left without any positive reason to think that “called Christ” at 20.200 is an interpolation.

          5. >Responding to him is a chore, but it has to be done.

            Nah, I am sure it can be fun if you are suitably sarcastic in your tone.

          6. @Tim In a recent article, he’s also peddling that the Romans were on the verge of an industrial revolution until the big bad Christians ruined everything

          7. “In a recent article, he’s also peddling that the Romans were on the verge of an industrial revolution until the big bad Christians ruined everything.”

            Because when you have virtually unlimited slave manpower your natural thought is to switch to a system based on labour saving machinery?

      1. It was things like that that really killed Carrier’s arguments for me. Why, for example, did he find it more plausible to suggest that God made Jesus out of the sperm of David out of a bank stored in one of the heavens (can’t remember which one) *that isn’t evidenced in any other extant ancient sources* than to just accept that Paul believed that Jesus was a real man who was really born and had a real father who would be framed as a descendant of David? Why did he decide that “born of a woman” meant some sort of generic cosmic mother than accepting the more natural reading, which is that Paul thought that Jesus was born on Earth to a human mother? Why make an argument that “brother of the Lord” must be a special designator for a baptized Christian vs. an unbaptized Christian? Mythicism requires a number of ad hoc rationalizations to explain away passages in the Pauline Epistles that indicate that Paul was following a tradition that saw Jesus as a real, historical figure who had lived and preached on Earth.

      2. Tim, in just in case you’re not aware – Simon Gathercole has published an excellent article in the December edition of the ‘Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus’ tackling many of Carrier’s claims about Paul’s conception of Jesus. The article approaches the issue with a deliberately self-imposed rule to not use the Gospels for evidence to help date and interpret so-called “ambiguous” passages in Paul (those rather obvious ones that Carrier keeps insisting are “ambiguous”). Even with this self-imposed artificial rule, Gathercole quite easily and swiftly tonks any prospect of a Paul who did not think Jesus to have been here on Earth as a Jew in recent history. This article may be of interest to you in your upcoming post on Carrier’s “cosmic sperm bank” thesis.

        1. Yes, I’ve read Gathercole’s article. I don’t agree with all of his interpretations, but overall it’s an excellent catalogue of why it is clearly most likely Paul knew Jesus had been a historical and earthly being, whatever else he believed about his heavenly pre-existence and his post-resurrection exalted status as Messiah. I was more impressed with his article than I expected to be, since Gathercole wrote a very weak defence of the historicity of Jesus for the Guardian last Easter which was, rightly, heavily criticised by Mythicists at the time. Predictably, I see Ol’ Grandpa Godfrey is already explaining to his tiny audience of contrarians that Gathercole has got it all wrong.
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  10. Now Lataster has graduated (which, saving your presence, having read some of his work doesn’t say much for the academic rigour of the Theology department at Sydney) what is he actually doing? Are they trying to find him a position or is he going back into the world of work?

    1. He did his doctorate in the Department of Studies in Religion – Sydney University does not actually have a Theology department. Lataster is still listed as “Production Editor” of the e-journal Literature & Aesthetics, but he is no longer listed as part of the teaching staff of the Department of Studies in Religion. He had been a “teaching fellow” there while doing his doctorate, which is a title for a role similar to a “teaching assistant” in the US or a “tutor” in the UK and is held by some post-graduate students like Lataster. I can only assume he is trying to secure an academic position somewhere. I wonder if he will have more luck than Carrier.

      1. That’s interesting, thanks. Correction noted on the status of the department at Sydney.

        It is especially interesting however if they have removed him from the list of active teaching staff. While doing my doctorate I taught for two years, and then a further year on a sessional contract. I could have had longer, had I not gone into teaching. It suggests either he doesn’t want to stay in academia or they don’t want him back. Of course I may be overthinking that – a lack of budget may be a further issue.

        On his (now deleted) Wikipedia page – which was essentially a puff piece and made many outrageous claims, including the claim his self published book was a top ten bestseller (which it was, in the atheism subcategory of Religion on Amazon, there being approximately fifteen books in said category) he made much of the fact that he had won awards for his teaching. I will confess I enjoyed pointing out that the award in question was given by application, not nomination, and was therefore meaningless except as an example of his egotism. I was irresistibly reminded of Carrier’s claim that 48 hours’ training in handling sonar equipment made him a world leading expert on Bayesian probability theory.

        I wonder how long it will be before Lataster goes full Carrier.

        1. Not meaning to go down a path of personal attacks. But it looks like Lataster is now employed by the University of Sydney. As a tutor in the centre for continuing education:
          https://cce.sydney.edu.au/tutor/3812#:~:text=Raphael%20Lataster%20holds%20a%20PhD,such%20as%20pantheism%20and%20pandeism.

          Not sure why anyone would want to pay $140 for any course in “Does God Exist” to add to their education. But maybe it’s a money-spinner for the centre from people who want to construct their own arguments for or against better (*shrugs*)…

          1. He’s not “employed” – the people who teach courses at the CCE are volunteers. The University’s CCE program is a community education outreach. Any higher degree graduate can propose a course and teach it there.

          2. Very strange to see a comment on this old thread pop up in my email. Or perhaps not, given it’s petty malice indulging an ad hominem argument.

            Given the example of O’Neill, the suppression of unwelcome scholarship by bureaucratic means, rather than the incompetence of mythicists is the most plausible explanation for unemployment among mythicists.

            There are a number of serious problem with the apocalyptic prophet=historical Jesus. Most generally, it is very much like pretending the true founder of Bahai was the Bab. There is no meaningful sense in which this is true. Pretending the historical Jesus was the equivalent of the Bab is pretending a false genealogy advanced by later pretenders is valid. As scholarship it is absurd. It is merely truckling to convention.

            Another problem is that apocalypticism as the historical Jesus is entirely meaningless, merely a tag used by an Ehrman to pretend there is a real historical validation. The thing is, apocalypticism is a political movement. The book of Daniel is the classic example of Jewish apocalypticsm, being canon, and its politics are exceedingly clear. There is no political content to Christian apocalypticism. And, if there is, any legitimate scholar would start by consulting Karl Kautsky’s Foundations of Christianity, as someone who actually knew something about political movements. They won’t, because the apocalypticists are in no sense whatsoever serious scholars.

            Yet another problem is the obvious, that the apocalypticism is so closely associated with John the Baptist. Unless O’Neill dares to confess that the historical Jesus really was the Baptist’s cousin? A false genealogy to a still revered figure, with an extant cult to be recruited into the fold, would serve as motive to attribute the Baptist’s traits to “jesus.”

            And of course, any actual politics in the gospels center on the passion. O’Neill pretends that just writing “apocalyptic prophet” actually serves to make the passion plausible. Nonetheless, the fact that there are multiple judges—including the entire Jewish people—shows there is only contemporary content to any claim that Jesus was executed at all.

            Even in its own terms, a historicist position that centers on apocalypticism, even a strategically undefined apocalypticsm (should use scare quotes here!) doesn’t work well. Philo had reason to mention the judicial murder of Jesus when making a case against the Roman administration in Palestine. Josephus had every reason to discuss Jesus when surveying the eruption of the Jewish war. The fact they do not is not just the absence of evidence, it is the absence of evidence where expected.

            And if O’Neill wants to claim Josephus did mention Jesus, he is right down there in the muck with the crudest Christian apologists.

            Carrier’s Bayesian fetish aside, he is much sounder an just about anything than O’Neill…especially the scientific achievements of the middle Roman empire, which is a nice example of someone talking out of field. Except that it’s O’Neill who’s the offender.

          3. “Given the example of O’Neill, the suppression of unwelcome scholarship by bureaucratic means, rather than the incompetence of mythicists is the most plausible explanation for unemployment among mythicists.”

            How can *I* be the “example” of this imaginary bureaucratic “suppression” exactly?

            “Pretending the historical Jesus was the equivalent of the Bab is pretending a false genealogy advanced by later pretenders is valid. As scholarship it is absurd.”

            That”argument” is what is absurd. And incoherent.

            “Another problem is that apocalypticism as the historical Jesus is entirely meaningless, merely a tag used by an Ehrman to pretend there is a real historical validation. The thing is, apocalypticism is a political movement. The book of Daniel is the classic example of Jewish apocalypticsm, being canon, and its politics are exceedingly clear. There is no political content to Christian apocalypticism. “

            Another ridiculous set of incoherent claims. Given that Christian apocalypticism refers to that found in Daniel all the time – especially in the climax of Jesus’ teaching in the “Little Apocalypse found in Mark 13 – to claim Danielic apocalypticism is “political” but that found in the gospels isn’t is totally absurd. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.

            “Yet another problem is the obvious, that the apocalypticism is so closely associated with John the Baptist. Unless O’Neill dares to confess that the historical Jesus really was the Baptist’s cousin? A false genealogy to a still revered figure, with an extant cult to be recruited into the fold, would serve as motive to attribute the Baptist’s traits to “jesus.””

            More gibberish. That Jesus’ apocalypticism is derived from that of the Baptist is evidence that Jesus’ teaching was apocalyptic – he got his central message from the Baptist. But the Baptist poses some problems for the later three gospel writers because his baptism of Jesus implies Jesus was the Baptist’s subordinate. That’s why gLuke inserts the material about them being cousins – so he can have the Baptist acknowledge Jesus in the womb and get around the implications of the baptism scene later. No other gospel mentions this relationship and not even gLuke makes any later reference to it, indicating its a plot device. Why you think that both the Baptist and Jesus preaching the same apocalyptic message means Jesus was a non-existent figure I have no idea. Your incoherent argument above certainly doesn’t make your reasoning clear. If Jesus was just a figure who had “the Baptist’s traits” attributed to him, why is the Baptist also in the Jesus story? Especially since he complicates it considerably and doesn’t fit well with the whole “Jesus as Messiah” narrative. This makes more sense if both Jesus and the Baptist are historical and the gospels are trying to make known traditions about them work together.

            “Philo had reason to mention the judicial murder of Jesus when making a case against the Roman administration in Palestine.”

            He does? Where? Why?

            ” Josephus had every reason to discuss Jesus when surveying the eruption of the Jewish war.”

            How? The two things are separated by decades.

            “And if O’Neill wants to claim Josephus did mention Jesus, he is right down there in the muck with the crudest Christian apologists.”

            Garbage. Pretty much everyone accepts Josephus mentions him at least once – in Ant. XX.200. And a majority of non-apologists accept that the TF is partially authentic. So once again you show you don’t have a clue.

            “Carrier’s Bayesian fetish aside, he is much sounder an just about anything than O’Neill”

            That’s hilarious. I have pretty much all scholars across all relevant fields in my corner. He has … virtually no-one. Get a grip.

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          4. @Steven TJ: “the suppression of unwelcome scholarship by bureaucratic means”
            Yeah, what would pseudoskepticism like JM and creacrap be without a substantial share of conspiracy thinking?

            “There is no political content to Christian apocalypticism.”
            This is simply silly. Organized religion, including Jesus’ little cult, is by definition is political.

            “the apocalypticism is so closely associated with John the Baptist.”
            Why exactly is this a problem? Are jews from 0 – 50 CE supposed not to influence each other for some mysterious reason?

            “especially the scientific achievements of the middle Roman empire”
            What exactly did the Roman intellectuals know and understand regarding science and math that their Greek and Babylonian predecessors didn’t? The Romans excelled at technology, but technology is not science. It’s applied science.
            Of course such inaccuracies are typical for quacks. Without them they can’t maintain their predetermined conclusions.

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          5. @steven t johnson
            I think Tim has dealt with all the off-topic pro-mythicism ignorance. So I’ll stick to this:

            “Or perhaps not, given it’s petty malice indulging an ad hominem argument.”

            I made it clear that I’m not trying to get ad-hominem, and that’s why I didn’t relate it to his (*cough*) “agnostic” arguments. I brought this up because there is an interest with what will happen to Lataster now he’s earned his PhD, and whether he’ll manage what Richard Carrier failed to do: Become an actual academic.
            Because if he ever does: It will be the first time Mythicism actually has a scholastic leg to stand upon.

            Of course; it looks he hasn’t. He’s involved in the University but not in any actual academic faculty. So he’s not doing any scholarship, just earning a few bucks.

  11. On the other hand, in another aptly-named recent post by Myers:

    the Nazis fully embraced Christianity, used Christian imagery in their propaganda, and established the legitimacy of their regime by relating it to the dominant Catholic and Lutheran faiths of the people

    AFAIK there’s some merit, “Nazis couldn’t have been Christians” is indeed ridiculous but so is the Nazis fully embraced Christianity.

    1. They persecuted the Catholic Church, burned churches & replaced crosses with swastikas, and tried to replace it with their warped “Positive Christianity” which had little-to-nothing to do with Christian doctrine

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      1. It’s not true at all that the Nazis persecuted the Catholic Church.
        The history between the Nazis and the Catholic Church is complicated. As I understand it: For the most part the two avoided interfering with each other. There were individual German Catholics, especially amongst the clergy, who spoke out against the Nazis and who were as a result persecuted and sometimes even eliminated. Likewise there were plenty of devout German Catholics and clergymen who either were also Nazis or completely supported the Nazis. It’s not a black and white thing. It should also be noted that the Nazism had their roots and most of its support in Germany’s Catholic south and also held a lot of popularity (more than across Germany) in Catholic Austria.
        To claim that the Nazis persecuted Catholicism is just as silly as claiming that the Catholic Church was overall Nazi or overall supported Nazism

        1. I’m sure the inmates of the “Priest Block” at Dachau would be fascinated to learn how unpersecuted they were. I think you need to listen to my interview on the subject on the Serious Inquiries Only podcast – “Did the Catholic Church Support Hitler”. The claim that the Nazis had the highest support in Catholic areas of Germany is also dead wrong. Look at these two maps:

          1993 Votes for Nazis vs German Catholic Population levels

          You really need to do your homework on this one because you’re massively understating the Nazi antipathy toward the Catholic Church. It was indeed persecuted and would have been more so if the Nazis weren’t busy fighting a war and exterminating the Jews. Hitler and his cronies made it very clear that when the war was over, it would be the Catholics’ turn next.

          1. “I’m sure the inmates of the “Priest Block” at Dachau would be fascinated to learn how unpersecuted they were. ”
            I was always understood that the vast majority of the “priest block” were actually Poles, and for the most part rounded up after the Nazi conquest of Poland in 1939.
            Whilst many of the priests block before their would’ve been German Catholic clergy; they would not have been amongst the majority of German Catholic Clergy who sided with the non-confrontational policy of Cardinal Adolf Bertram.
            “I think you need to listen to my interview on the subject on the Serious Inquiries Only podcast – “Did the Catholic Church Support Hitler”. The claim that the Nazis had the highest support in Catholic areas of Germany is also dead wrong. Look at these two maps:”
            Ah not so fast.
            That was merely the first election where the Nazis enjoyed a large surge in votes, and that surge and the geographic locations it occurred in have long been easily correlated with the decline in the DVNP (AKA the German conservatives). Put simply: These were votes that switched from the now disintegrating DVNP party to the Nazis. But I’m most of us are well aware that votes for a party does not always mean the same thing as strong support for that party let alone party membership. In the case of rural Prussia; it was more a case that they felt that they had nobody else to represent their conservative and nationalistic values more than any of them actually being Nazis nor any love of their style of politics (which it’s know now that many of these stuffy conservatives held strong reservations about).
            It should be noted that even with the existence of the strong (and catholic aligned) “Centrist party”; The Nazis still attracted the most votes of any party in Germany’s Catholic South. These sheer numbers of people were a big block in the overall % that the Nazi’s received of the entire electorate (under Germany’s proportional representation system). And these were people who had been long-term supporters of the Nazis and were often party members involved in the organisation of spreading Nazi support and votes beyond it’s original base in the Catholic South.
            “You really need to do your homework on this one because you’re massively understating the Nazi antipathy toward the Catholic Church. It was indeed persecuted”
            From everything I’ve ever read it more a case of coercion than outright persecution. Catholics in Germany were fine as long as they suspended their beliefs and refrained from questioning euthanasia etc. No more “persecuted” than the Protestants were.
            “nd would have been more so if the Nazis weren’t busy fighting a war and exterminating the Jews. Hitler and his cronies made it very clear that when the war was over, it would be the Catholics’ turn next.”
            Well I find that very hard to believe. Not least because everything I’ve ever read has stated that next in line were eastern Slavs and “Asiatics” from the conquered Soviet territories.
            About a third of all Germans and all Austrians were Catholics and generally more religiously so than the Protestants were. As were Germany;s Hungarian, Italian, and Slovak allies. To think that the Germans would begin exterminating such a chunk of their own population sounds fantastical to me. I can believe that the Germans would try and undermine and generally force decline the institution of the catholic church (and lutheran church) the way the Soviets had to the religions in the Soviet Union is believable, but not the sort of extermination that the Nazis had enacted upon the Jews and Roma Gypsies.

          2. There was no shortage of German priests in Dachau. The voting patterns clearly reflect the anti-Nazi line the Catholic Church took from the early 20s onward. And no, it’s unlikely the Nazis were planning to exterminate all Catholics, but they most definitely planned to suppress the Church even more than it already had. The Catholic Church was overwhelmingly anti-Nazi and the Nazis knew it. And the Vatican was closely involved in no less than three plots to overthrow Hitler, including two plots to KILL him. That’s about as anti-Nazi as it gets.

          3. As a German I’d say that “it is complicated” is the right take. Yes, the Nazis wanted complete ideological control, and the Catholic church was an obvious competitor. Then again, millions of Nazis were Catholic, as was, by the way, Adolf Hitler himself.

            Yes, priests saved people from the holocaust. On the other hand, churches handed over genealogical records that allowed the identification of people with Jewish ancestry, and after the war the Catholic church allowed war criminals to escape justice by helping them go into exile with fake identities.

          4. Hitler was about as Catholic as I am. And of course it’s fucking “complicated”, but on the whole the Nazis saw the Catholic Church as an opposition force and intended to neutralise it as such. The Vatican’s policy once Hitler got into power was a pretence of outward neutrality while actively assisting the German resistance behind the scenes (thus things like not refusing to hand over that geneological information). The “Catholic Church” did NOT “allow war criminals to escape justice” – only a few individual clergy did: primarily Bishop Alois Hudal, and he did it on his own initiative partly because of his resentment at being marginalised by the Vatican precisely because he was too friendly toward the Nazis. To pretend that the actions of a few individuals can be referred to as some kind of policy of “the Catholic Church” is absolutely ludicrous and a total distortion of the facts.

            This is off topic. I will be writing a couple of future articles on the myths surrounding the relations between the Catholic Church and the Nazis as part of my Great Myths series, so until then keep the discussion here to Myers and “Jesus Agnosticism”.

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          5. Tim, are your positions on the Catholic Church and Nazism as uncontroversial to qualified academics as your positions on other new atheist views you’ve excoriated on this blog? I ask because the blog “Philosophy Of The Socratic Gadfly” had made a rather big deal about recommending you, and then removing you, from his blogroll because he considered you an “apologist for papal antisemitism”; your exchange with brother Dan reminded me of said spat between you and that Gadfly blog.

          6. It’s a heated topic for many, but in the last couple of decades the whole “Hitler’s Pope” thing has pretty much been debunked. Among mainstream WWII historians the idea that the Papacy was anti-Nazi and aided the Allies and the German Resistance is standard and accepted. And Mark Reibling’s recent acclaimed book Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler (2016) has really pulled together the evidence of exactly how closely entangled the Vatican was with efforts to overthrow Hitler, while maintaining a facade of neutrality. Even Sam Harris had to admit he’d been wrong about the Church and the Nazis after reading Riebling’s book.

            That “Socratic Gadfly” guy was pretty weird. He screamed a lot of nonsense at me in the comments on my podcast on the subject, while refusing to even listen to the podcast itself or acquaint himself with the evidence. Yet another example of an atheist who can be rational until he comes across a subject he has emotional prejudices about, then all rationality flies out the window.

            Now can we please get back on topic?

        2. What about the 3 million Catholics that were killed?
          The OSS has evidence and documentation behind it (read: “The Nazi Master Plan: Persecution of the Christian Churches”).
          Also look up the wikipedia pages on the “Kirchenkampf”, “Nazi Persecution of the Catholic Church” and “Rescue of Jews by Catholics during the Holocaust”, and “Rescuers of the Jews during the Holocaust”.

  12. Cannot help but wonder – might the mythicist celestial sperm bank have been taken from the late ( or, as people unfortunately seem to put it, “medieval” ) zoroastrian concept of Lake Kansava? Am not really up to date with mythicist writings, apart from what O’Neil has refuted of them, but traditionally that line of thought has been quite keen on Zoroaster

    1. No, it’s a bit of weird and typically contrived eisegesis by Carrier used to make the reference to Jesus as a descendant of King David in Romans 1:3 somehow conform to this idea that Paul thought of Jesus as only existing in the heavens. It’s (loosely) based on some contorted readings of 1 Cor 15:45 and 2 Sam 7:12-14. I will be discussing this in detail in my next appearance on the Non Sequitur Show and will cover it in a future article.

      1. Wierd, indeed. One would have thought that using the folklore surrounding Elijah, for instance, would have been more obvious – but then, parsimony is not a myther speciality.

  13. @Nick

    Why is that an odd thing to say? Price is a rare exception. He is not the norm. Again I will maintain the average myther is far more rational than the average evangelical.

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  14. Hi Tim,
    I’ve only got up to the bit where you bring up this Raphael Lataster.
    I only started seeing his name getting mentioned (by mythicists lising “mythicst scholars” and when I discovered that it was he who (in my opinion dubiously) peer-reviewed Carrier’s opus so I did a bit of research into him and discovered that he was really merely a post graduate scholar (his website talks him up as a teacher) at the University of Sydney. But that it seems that he has disappeared without a trace since earning his PhD. I can’t find him getting any research position anywhere (just like that Richard Carrier clown). I’m willing to be corrected on that.

    I generally regard Carrier as a pseudo scholar. I accept that he was a postgraduate scholar, but he’s not been one of those for some time now. As he’s not employed to do any scholarly work in any recognised institution and his “scholarship” since has been of more self-published books (with the one dubious peer-review, from guess who) I don’t really regard Carrier as a scholar.

    Am I wrong in that assessment? And if I’m not; can I also not regard this Lataster as a scholar anymore (assuming that he really hasn’t secured any position)?

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  15. As an atheist and Scientist thank you so much for a careful and thorough post (and blog). I’ve never invested much intellectual time into thinking about the historical method (so much to read within my own field), and have regularly questioned the historical veracity of the big J. I came here from Myer’s response to your summary, and I’m glad I did. I’ve saved your articles for a deeper read. Thank you!

  16. Speaking of Dick Carrier’s review of his debate with David Marshall, he said that he is a disgusting person who can go die in a fire (he edited it out). LOL literally no scholar talks like that

      1. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11915

        If you go in the comment section he says he removed it. I was originally at the end of the paragraph where he says something like someone who would lie in front of thousands of people is disgusting. It originally said like is disgusting and should go die in a fire. But l guess it’s ok when he does it…

  17. Hey Tim have you seen PZ’s post about this post, “The Tim O’Neill Treatment” (and Neil Godfrey’s post about it)?

    1. Yes. Note my addendum to my article above, which addresses Myers’ response. I pay no attention to Ol’Grandpa Godfrey though – he and the other jabbering boneheaded contrarians who gather in his little Treehouse Club for fringe weirdos are not worth the time.

      1. I love the reference you made to 1998. God, l miss those times; the golden age of PlayStation, the Attitude Era of WWF. In reference to your last sentence, seeing how dumber society is getting and how much culture has died since back then, I’m slowly losing the will to live…..that’s why I’m a history buff. To look back to better times. Guys like you are needed to help preserve history from being abused to bolster ideologies that are dragging us down further.

        1. Tim pointing out the gap between Paul’s letter and the crucifixion being roughly the same as the gap between our era and the 1990’s gives us an example of a major celebrity death where legends emerged, but mixing up the guy with similar people from the period clearly hasn’t occurred. While rap music is low on the list of things people who read this blog enjoy, when the rapper Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996, it immediately spawned a bunch of conspiracy theories claiming that the dude actually faked his death, fled to Cuba, and would reveal himself in 7 years. All of this was allegedly alluded to in the lyrics of his songs from ’95 onward. When prophecy failed and seven years passed without 2pac emerging, true believers still thought that he fled to Cuba and was still alive. Googling around turns up articles written as recently as two years ago still arguing that Tupac faked his death and fled to Cuba, completely ignoring the fact that he was supposed to reveal himself in seven years. Hell, the Serbia Strong/Remove Kebab meme jokingly claims Tupac fled to Serbia!

          Twenty years have gone by, and legends still persist that this dead gangsta rapper is still alive. Yet, Tupac was not the only rapper murdered in this period after talking a bunch of gangster shit on his songs-Big L and Biggie met a similar fate in the 90’s. None of the people putting forward fanciful myths about Tupac twenty years after the fact have mixed the details of his life and death up with other 90’s rappers who were murdered.

          Obviously the parallel isn’t precise-information spreads much quicker and we have access to significantly more information in modernity than Paul and other figures from antiquity did, so it would be more difficult for Tupac to be mixed up with Biggie and Big L. Nonetheless, if these sort of myths emerge about far better documented figures in our decidedly less superstitious era, it seems reasonable to suggest the same is true of Paul and others who believed legends which emerged about a peasant preacher at the periphery of the Roman world.

          1. Confusingly, Edward Lansdale had a plan to fake the Second Coming IN Cuba, with a projected “hologram” of Jesus on the clouds off Havana, to get Castro overthrown.

  18. This is kind of interesting:

    Carrier, apparently irritated with Ehrman’s refusal to debate him (because of Carrier’s childish behavior), has participated in a mock-debate with Ehrman, where a sound clip is played of Ehrman from the Ehrman/Price debate, and Carrier responds to Ehrman in place of Price. I was particularly interested in Round One where Carrier argued for the relationship of Mark’s Gospel with the idea of The Noble Lie in Plato’s Republic. The mock-debate is here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thewaterboyz/2018/10/06/richard-carrier-vs-bart-erhman-hypothetical-debate-did-jesus-historically-exist

      1. Or, more apropos for atheism, William Lane Craig setting up an empty chair to represent Richard Dawkins, who had declined to debate him.

        1. In fairness ,if memory serves me correctly, the chair was set up for Dawkins, assuming he showed up. When he didn’t show up Craig just addressed his arguments. He wasn’t pretending the chair was Dawkins. On the other hand Eastwood pretend the chair was Obama.

    1. Interesting?

      The entire thought of it only makes me cringe. Not only is this evidence of many things seriously wrong with Richard Carrier (s a person); but it also sheds light on his bumbling acolytes and how socially-challenged they must also be to broadcast this inherently terrible idea.

      Although it is amusing to see mythicist indulge in a delusion that Carrier would fare any better against Ehrman than Price did….

      1. The fundamentalist side of me would have to guess he had to have made a pact with Satan to gain the inexplicable recognition he does (Kardashian fame is also inexplicable). His low-IQ followers whine that his degeneracy has nothing to do with his work (which is also shit). I say it has a helluva lot to do with his lack of integrity and possibility that he’s, just maybe, dishonest with the evidence. But then again, we do have flat-earthers and even dinosaur-deniers now

    1. Replying to every bit of bad history Carrier peddles would be a full time job. Carrier may be unemployed, but I already have a full time career – this is a hobby. I will be writing something on medieval technology for the Great Myths series, so I will address his arguments then. Until then, suffice it to say his arguments boil down to not much more than “the economic output and technological level of the whole of the Greco-Roman world was greater than that of its poorest northwest corner as it recovered slowly from the collapse of its entire economic system and political infrastructure”. Not exactly a profound insight.

    2. Just his anti-Christian vilification again. Rome was on the verge of no such thing. Look how little ancient Egypt changed in its 2-3 thousand year history. Greece and Rome each had a thousand years of more-or-less the same song-and-dance also. The Renaissance put us in an entirely new direction

      1. I’m sorry but that’s just not true.

        If you look at the artefacts; you’ll see an natural evolution and refinement of the Hellenic and Roman civilisations over the centuries.
        Archaic Greece is an ideal case-study in how the arts became ever more refined from simple clay figurines and clay pots decorated with basic patterns evolving into refined marble statues and earthenware decorated with intricate artwork alongside similar refinements in architecture, ship design, tools & weapons, etc.

        And this can also be seen with the Romans. and with the Kemetic Egyptians. Although the Kemetic civilisation continued for so long that it also went through periods of decline and revival.

        And the same is true of civilisations beyond Europe and the middle east such as China, the Indus valley, Siam, Persia, the Inca’s etc.

        After-all; much of the renaissance (and subsequent age of enlightenment) was western Europe becoming acquainted with ancient texts and ideas.

        1. Yet it took us far less time from the Renaissance (l vaguely remember Tim doesn’t like that term) to the Victorian era – compared to Egypt and the Greco-Roman world (heck, look at China up until the 19th century) – didn’t it? Carrier’s claims, as usual, is pure fantasy.

        2. “much of the renaissance (and subsequent age of enlightenment) was western Europe becoming acquainted with ancient texts and ideas.” – but the thing is Western Europe could only advance after taking these ideas in and spitting them out as most of them were patently wrong. There was a sort of orthodoxy when it came to Aristotle that had to be challenged to be able to move forward.

    3. Well I think this Carrier nonsense can be debunked by the well known anecdote about the Roman emperor who on being presented with an impressive machine (I think it was to more efficiently erect columns) said something like:
      “Yes this is very impressive. But what will the slaves have to do all day?”

        1. “[Vespasian] was the first to establish a regular salary of a hundred thousand sesterces for Latin and Greek teachers of rhetoric, paid from the privy purse. He also presented eminent poets with princely largess and great rewards, and artists, too, such as the restorer of the Venus of Cos and of the Colossus. To a mechanical engineer, who promised to transport some heavy columns to the Capitol at small expense, he gave no mean reward for his invention, but refused to make use of it, saying: “You must let me feed my poor commons.”(Suetonius, Vespasian, 18)

          The anecdote doesn’t actually make any reference to slaves – the key word in the final sentence is plebecula – “the common people, the populace, the mob, rabble”. But the point is that the ancient world had a massive labour surplus, especially considering the vast number of slaves. Early medieval Europe, by contrast, had a labour shortage. This was due to demographic decline in Late Antiquity, partly because of the impact of the Justinian Plague in the early sixth century, and the fact that northern and western Europe had always been more lightly populated. Of course, exactly how much of a retardant effect the Roman labour shortage had on technical innovation is a topic of debate, but it is generally accepted that it did. Carrier, of course, disagrees. As usual.

          1. Thanks for giving more detail on that Tim. I heard that story a long time ago (over 15 years) and didn’t quite remember the details.

            But yes it was from a friend of mine who’d studied classics and who explained to me and another friend how there was no shortage of cheap labour during most of the history of the Roman empire and that it was a later shortage of labour that promoted the constructions and refinements of mechanical machines (such as water wills and windmills) during the dark ages and medieval era.

            And she was correcting another friend of mine who claimed that the Romans wee on the verge of an industrial revolution and he’d got that idea from playing computer games. It looks like Carrier’s ideas are nothing new amongst fans of the age of empires series…

  19. “the, to some, uncomfortable realisation that there most likely was a historical Jesus.”
    I think I already wrote what follows, but it bears repeating.
    As an instrument to push christians buttons on internet JM is totally worthless. Tell a christian that no Jesus roamed Galilea 2000 years ago and the best reaction you’ll get is a polite smile; contempt is more likely.
    Telling christians that he was a scatterbrain (thinking you’re the son of a god is not exactly evidence for mental health) with a failed prophecy, who during his life hardly meant more to the authorities than an annoying mosquito and hence was crushed in a similar way (this is an exaggerated and somewhat one-sided version of how I view him that still can easily be backed up with Bible quotes) works a lot better to upset them.
    I strongly suspect that JM is all about ego-stroking, similar to christians telling each other what a swell guy he was (eg perfect embodiment of agape). If the expression atheist religion makes sense then JM is a good candidate.

    1. As I think I’ve mentioned already, I was recently contacted by someone who thanked me for my stuff on the historical Jesus because it has caused him to re-evaluate his faith. Previously he had only ever come across Mythicist stuff as an alternative to the Christian conception of Jesus. Because he found that pretty easy to reject as unscholarly and unconvincing, he accepted that the orthodox Christian conception of Jesus was more acceptable. It was only after reading my stuff and then reading some of the non-Christian scholars I mention that he realised there was a third alternative which actually made more sense historically than either the Christian Jesus or the Mythicist one.

      As you say, Mythicism is actually a very bad tool for those people who actually want to deconvert Christians. But it seems to be an effective security blanket for those who have abandoned their faith, especially if they are absolutists who need to find a way to reject all of their former beliefs as much as they possibly can. I’ve actually had several online Mythicists tell me that while my arguments made sense, they couldn’t accept that a historical Jesus existed because “if the Christians are right about that, maybe they are right about everything else”. I find this kind of “slippery slope” thinking incomprehensible, but these guys were absolutely genuine that this was the main reason they clung to Mythicism like an article of faith. Ironic really.

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  20. Odd to see Myers being the current forefront of this discussion when I first encountered him as a supporter of Richard Carrier’s insults against Erhman.

    The basic problem with Myers and other people attempting to be moderates on this position is that their favoured ‘composite figure’ theory of Jesus makes no sense if you think about it in contrast with historicism.

    I can understand that someone escaping a textual literalist Jesus might come up with the composite figure hypothesis as a counter, but I can’t understand how anyone could hold to that hypothesis in opposition to the historical Jesus.

    If one of the composite 1st century preachers who end up merging into the literary Jesus was a man from Nazareth called Jesus, then the composite Jesus model is simply indistinguishable from the historical Jesus perspective and nothing but reinventing the wheel to stake up pointless contrarianism.

    In order to argue for a composite Jesus perspective that is meaningfully distinct from the historical Jesus then the Jesus of literature and faith would need to be a composite figure based on various real people none of whom were a Jesus of Nazareth. Which is a straw man position no one would argue.

    I can tell that some of these people aren’t stupid because their arguing about how a composite Jesus might arise echoes so many of the ways the historical Jesus scholars theories about how the literary Jesus of the gospels might arise from a real person. Their inability to recognise that their arguments aren’t unique and are just amateur versions of the professional work they claim to be unconvinced by just shows the limits of their engagement with the topic.

    1. There’s even a sense in which the composite theory is somewhat true: The Golden Rule seems to have been lifted from Hillel, and it would not be surprising if a lot of other maxims found in the Gospels were borrowed from elsewhere and placed in Jesus’s mouth.

      1. Except both the (reported) teaching of Hillel and the (reported) teaching of Jesus is based on Leviticus 19:18 and Leviticus 19:34. It is also attributed to Rabbi Akiva (Kedoshim 19:18) and is found in Tobit 4:15 and Sirach 31:15. So it’s far too simple to conclude it was “lifted from Hillel” given it is based on the Torah and was expressed by various Jewish teachers both before and after Jesus’ time. If anything, it is just more evidence that he was a Jew of his time and religious context.

  21. Just curious Tim (since you’re knowledgeable in the Greek), did Jesus, in Luke 14:26, say “hate” or “Love less”?

    1. μισέω can be used in both senses. Its primary meaning is “to hate, detest”, and so we can see that in Matt 5:44 (ποιεῖτε τοὺς μισοῦντας ὑμᾶς – “do to those who hate you”) or John 3:20 (φαῦλα πράσσων μισεῖ τὸ φῶς – “evil hates the light”). But it can also be used as a comparative to mean “to love something less”. But that should not give the idea that it means merely “to love something just a little bit less but still love them a lot”. Look for example at Matt 5:43 – “You have heard it said that you should love your neighbour and hate (μισήσεις) your enemy”. The sense here is clearly comparative but also one of contrast. The Luke 14:26 is setting up the same kind of contrast for rhetorical effect.

      Of course, anti-Christian atheists who are still stuck in a literalist mindset are oblivious to the rhetorical emphasis here and say “In Luke 14:26 Jesus says you have to HATE your family – what an arsehole!” What it is actually depicting him saying is “compared to how much you have to love me, you have to hate your family” They also ignore the fact that he adds “and even life itself” to the list of things a disciple must “hate”. Rhetoric is a bit subtle for ex-fundie atheist fundies.

      1. I always ask them in what context would it make sense for Jesus to say to love your enemy but hate your family. The best answer thry can come up with is “Well, he’s inconsistent”

        1. And I would argue that the context for both is Jewish apocalypticism – “love your enemies but also give up your possessions and even abandon your family if you have to, because the end is nigh. Do what you have to do now, because we don’t have much time.”

          1. Also this might not have much to do with the post but since you’re critiquing a fellow Aussie, l may as well ask: is Christianity “dying” in Australia or is that just propaganda?

          2. How many times do I have to tell people that off topic questions to me are to be sent using the “Contact the Author” link?

  22. This Jesus agnosticism is just intellectual laziness, but I respect that more than “Derpdadoo, Jezuz did nawt exzist cuz Carrier sed so…derpdalerp!”. Most Jesus agnostics tend to go hardcore mythicist once provoked, and then revoke back to agnosticism once humiliated. The fact is that all the evidence we have points toward a historical Jesus, and we have no evidence that he started out as a celestial being turned into a historical person. This conspiracy that scholars are ignoring secret evidence that proves them all wrong is just that: A conspiracy. A very stupid one. Carrier is very quickly becoming like Atwill, albeit with a better education.

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  23. I felt that “Jesus might exist as a composite character, there was a lot of preacher and Jesus is a common name” argument is similar to Holocaust number of victim and climate change severity argument from respective deniers.

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  24. Just as a side note:

    I’ve noticed that a lot of Mythicists who argue their case like Myers does, always seem to first argue black & blue with every old hoary Mythicist non-argument to try and deny the evidence for an historical Jesus.

    But when you start dismantling their arguments; just like Myers, they suddenly claim that they’re “agnostic on the topic” and “don’t have an opinion one way or the other”. Suddenly after all the insults/patronising tones and accusations of being a supporter of Christianity hurled my way they’re (temporarily) not mythicists.

    Of course this is nonsense, if the were the case they wouldn’t have argued for mythicism to begin with. They’re mythicists but they’re trying to avoid losing the argument by suddenly having the glass half full.

    I personally find it to be cowardice.

    1. And a pattern I’ve noticed is when you dismantle mythers’ arguments and show then how Dick Carrier is a crackpot, many go off on a tangeant about how Christianity is bullshit and rant about grievances against religion.
      And how most just repeat Carrier ver batum like they’re programmed to sound alike when you spot them

    2. An argument that seems pretty popular among these so-called agnosts is “all the the miracles are myths so we should doubt the rest, hence the conclusion that Jesus was historical is unjustified”. They never make any effort to collect and study the evidence, let alone which methods are used.

    3. Daniel,

      I read Myers a great deal, and he’s not the type to fail to acknowledge when he’s been wrong. As the oringinal post notes, ‘Not all “Jesus agnostics” are taking Myers’ modest and circumspect approach …’.

      Did Myers ever claim to be firmly on the mythicist side? I did not find a citation there.

  25. Since you brought him up, Robert Price seems to be no longer a mythicist either. Since his debate with Bart Ehrman, whom he now is friends with BTW according to him, in an entry on his blog from January of last year he said he is “agnostic on the very existence of Jesus” like PZ Myers here. An interesting development……..

    1. ” … in an entry on his blog from January of last year … “

      Link? And I don;t think this is a great change of heart. My understanding has been that he has always tended to a form of “agnosticism”. It doesn’t seem to be Myers’ kind though – that consists of “I’m not qualified to judge”. It’s closer to Lataster’s.

  26. While I’m no defender of mythicism, might Lataster’s book choices be excused by the fact that the historicity of Jesus hasn’t been a live issue in academia since the 1960s if not earlier, and so finding recent scholarly works advocating for it will be pretty hard?

    1. The issue isn’t his choice of Mythicist works. It’s the fact he doesn’t bother to apply the same level of criticism to them as he does to the works of Ehrman and Casey, yet somehow pretends to be a neutral observer.

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