The Christ Myth Theory

[Copernicus]

What are you talking about? A lot was written about and by Julius Caesar while he was alive. Have you never even heard of De Bello Gallico? I even read the original in Latin. You do know that Cicero, the greatest Roman orator of his time, had things to say about him, don't you? Again, you seem to be making a false equivalence here between Julius Caesar and Jesus. Are you just going into argumentum ad nauseam mode?

So you're up to two...

Actually, I'm not trying to satisfy your demand for names, but you can keep count. Or do your own research, if you are truly interested in naming contemporaries of Caesar who wrote about him. Since I reject the validity of your analogy, there wouldn't be much point for me to pursue it.

There seems to be some kind of communication malfunction here, because you seem to be making truly absurd claims. You need to explain how it is that the posthumous references to Jesus are equivalent to the contemporary records of Caesar, not to mention the existence of works that he authored

Predictable change of subject. You complain that my analogy is bad, but offer no better analogue.

It's your analogy so I don't see why you expect me to fix you up a better one. I've only pointed out that you need to find a historical figure whose existence is only known through a textual record. Caesar is incredibly well-attested, but there is too much evidence from other sources to support his historicity. There are other mythical characters from those times that may or may not have been real people. Analogies tend never to be valid methods of reasoning in support of a conclusion, but I'm not going to get all fussy about the logic of your argument here.

Actually, perhaps it would be helpful to list five 1st century Judeans you are certain exist, so we could go through the documentary evidence and look for common trends. Maybe get something like average number of contemporary written sources that exist pertaining to any particular individual.

There you go. You are well on your way to constructing a better analogy. You do realize that I am agnostic about the historicity of Jesus, don't you? There may or may not have been a real person, although I don't feel there is any convincing evidence to support belief in one. I'm not agnostic about the historicity of Caesar for the reasons I've already given.

 

[No Robots]

To Jews the gospels would have been blasphemy. The idea of a human Jew being related to god.

Here's Waton on this subject:

Moses and the Prophets spoke in the name of Jehovah, while Jesus spoke in his own name. This was regarded by the Jews as blasphemy, but there was no blasphemy about it. The truth is this. When Moses and the Prophets spoke in the name of Jehovah, they in truth spoke in their own name, being fully conscious that Jehovah spoke through them. At this time of the development of the Jews it was yet impossible for Moses and the Prophets to speak in their own names to the Jews, for the Jews were not yet prepared to understand such language. But in the time of Jesus the Jews were already prepared to understand such language. Hence Jesus no longer found necessary to speak in the name of Jehovah, because he knew that Jehovah spoke through him. And, while there were many Jews who understood this language, the ruling classes could not bear it. They could not bear it for the same reason that centuries before they could not bear the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah, though they spoke in the name of Jehovah, because what they spoke was against the interests of the ruling classes. The same was the case with Jesus. They could not bear the language of Jesus, because he spoke against the ruling classes. And, just as today, when the communist speaks against the ruling classes, the latter declare the communist an enemy of society, of religion and morality; so the ruling classes declared that Jesus was an enemy of society, of religion and morality. In the days of Jesus, Moses and the Prophets would also speak in their own names, for the time passed to speak in the name of Jehovah, as if Jehovah was sitting in heaven and giving orders to men on earth. Thus, again, we see that the Christians are right when they say that Jesus was the highest development of Judaism. And, since the Christians identify Christianity with Jesus, they are right to say that Judaism was a preparation for Christianity, and that Christianity is superior to Judaism.

 

[Politesse]

It's your analogy so I don't see why you expect me to fix you up a better one. I've only pointed out that you need to find a historical figure whose existence is only known through a textual record. Caesar is incredibly well-attested, but there is too much evidence from other sources to support his historicity. There are other mythical characters from those times that may or may not have been real people. Analogies tend never to be valid methods of reasoning in support of a conclusion, but I'm not going to get all fussy about the logic of your argument here.

It's not really my analogy. Bringing up Mr. Caesar is very nearly a cliche in this discussion, as he is customarily brought up (by Jesus mythers) as an example as a person who historians more or less agree exists, and who lived (somewhat) near Jesus' time. My point is that despite that, if you're only looking at textual sources, he still fails to meet many of the standards often set for estabishing Jesus' likely existence. It's just a handful of sources, nearly all of them openly propagandistic in character. The thing that offends me most about this conspiracy theory is that it hinges on common misconceptions about the Roman period and the study of history than it does on any sort of evidence or reasonable argument.

I'd say a better analogue for Jesus might be someone else who, like Jesus, we know only from Josephus and from early Christian documents. The high priest Caiaphas, for instance, who is mentioned in both of those sources.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If not an actual Jesus on which the myth was built there were similar people.

The writer wasn't writing a myth, unless you consider Superman a mythical character. The writer could have very well written about GJ from real life experiences with real people and real places. But that doesn't make GJ historical or mythical anymore than the authors of Superman.

I hope that makes sense.

 

[Jarhyn]

Well, we had to read Caesar's The Gallic Wars in Latin in high school. Catholic school. It certainly was intened to enhance Caesar's political image. I don't recall his having walked on water.

No, just single-handedly led his people to victory over the forces of darkness, against overwhelming odds, culminating in a venture to a faraway island swathed in myth and mystery.

No, just single-handedly led his people to victory over the forces of darkness, against overwhelming odds,

So did Rambo and John Wayne's cowboy characters.

In reality Caesar made blunders and the Roman army was never invincible. Caesar's tactics worked well out in the open. In modern terms he developed battlefield command and control.

My point is Paul was a Roman citizen. He would certainly invent and exaggerate to establish his position.

To Jews the gospels would have been blasphemy. The idea of a human Jew being related to god. The Romans on the other hand elevated emperors to god like status as a matter of course.

Egyptian pharaohs and Chinese empowers.

I'd say the embellished gospels could not have orginated in Jewish culture. If you want to bring authority to a narrative, bring in a god-man. Routine in the ancient world.

You speak as if the Jews of the day were not also largely, if not mostly, influenced by Roman culture. Of course they could have originated in Jewish culture, and moreso on the borders of the two.

Tht would be lke saying modern Israell is cultrally influnced by Iran and Iran is culturally infkluenced by Saudi Arabia.

No, it's like saying Amish culture is influenced by American culture. They were part of the Roman empire and there were people from all over there in the region.

To make the proclamation that only a Roman and not a Jew in such a time as a hundred years after the events of Chrestus and 30+ years after Ananus (nope, still can't say it without snickering) could have the culture to write it is downright silly.

At any rate it's almost certainly a mashup of two Jewish legends of a Jesus told as you say, western mashup style.

The thing is, it's a completely fictional character, and once the story got out, it got legs because the fact is, it's not a bad story, especially for it's time.

 

[Copernicus]

It's your analogy so I don't see why you expect me to fix you up a better one. I've only pointed out that you need to find a historical figure whose existence is only known through a textual record. Caesar is incredibly well-attested, but there is too much evidence from other sources to support his historicity. There are other mythical characters from those times that may or may not have been real people. Analogies tend never to be valid methods of reasoning in support of a conclusion, but I'm not going to get all fussy about the logic of your argument here.

It's not really my analogy. Bringing up Mr. Caesar is very nearly a cliche in this discussion, as he is customarily brought up (by Jesus mythers) as an example as a person who historians more or less agree exists, and who lived (somewhat) near Jesus' time. My point is that despite that, if you're only looking at textual sources, he still fails to meet many of the standards often set for estabishing Jesus' likely existence. It's just a handful of sources, nearly all of them openly propagandistic in character. The thing that offends me most about this conspiracy theory is that it hinges on common misconceptions about the Roman period and the study of history than it does on any sort of evidence or reasonable argument.

I'd say a better analogue for Jesus might be someone else who, like Jesus, we know only from Josephus and from early Christian documents. The high priest Caiaphas, for instance, who is mentioned in both of those sources.

It is your analogy, because you alone introduced it in this thread, not some alleged group of Jesus mythers. I don't think any of us feel obligated to defend bad arguments brought up by people who aren't part of the discussion and aren't here to argue with you. And you keep missing the real point here, which is that textual sources are the only sources we have to go on with Jesus. It is absurd to argue that the historicity of Julius Caesar was based on similar types of textual sources to those that people use to argue for the historicity of Jesus. I'm not going to argue with you over what constitutes a "handful of sources" for Caesar, because the Caesar comparison isn't relevant here. If it annoys you that some mythers use that analogy, then take it up with those mythers. It is also annoying that you inserted into the discussion an analogy that annoyed you so much elsewhere so that you could criticize mythicism in general.

As for Caiaphas, I would agree that he would be a better analogy, but all analogies break down at some point. He may have been popular or not in his time, but he did not generate a widespread cult of followers trying to exalt and preserve his legacy. Hence, we get a much more distorted picture of Jesus merely from the fact that he got so much attention. Ditto for Pontius Pilate, whose existence was known from literary sources but confirmed archaeologically in recent times. Ironically, all of the controversy surrounding the question of Jesus seems to have cast more doubt on him than Caiaphas and Pilate simply because there weren't so many people interested in finding out about them. Jesus is held to a more rigorous standard of proof precisely because of the effect his legend had on later generations. In that sense Jesus is more similar to Julius Caesar than Caiaphas or Pilate are. It's just that the lack of corroborating evidence for Jesus outside of the literature is so scant that there is more reason to doubt his existence.

 

[Politesse]

It is your analogy, because you alone introduced it in this thread, not some alleged group of Jesus mythers.

As an offhand joke that you've been banging on about for two pages now....

It's just that the lack of corroborating evidence for Jesus outside of the literature is so scant that there is more reason to doubt his existence.

Unless you're rational, and understand that demanding extraordinary evidence to prove the existence of historical figures - as you more or less admit, more out of objection to their legacy than any of the facts at hand - is folly, an activity undeserving of the respect of any serious student of history. Why would we wxpect a back country preacher to generate more of a material record than the leader of a nation?

 

[Swammerdami]

Like Richard Carrier, I "believe" in Bayes' Theorem; I have frequently invoked it myself, explicitly or implicitly, in discussions of historicity or possible hoaxes.

HOWEVER it is almost ridiculous to think Bayesian analysis can come up with a useful final number! For example, consider my "common-sense" arguments in support of historicity. We can disagree on whether these arguments are weak or strong (and thus use different weights in our Bayesian arithmetic) but unless you claim there is ZERO correlation between historicity and "being without honor in one's own country" they cannot be omitted from the calculation. A complete Bayesian analysis would consider this and many thousands of other facts or arguments, all with controversial prior probabilities, and with complex inter-fact correlations.

I do not accuse Carrier of deliberately cherry-picking the parameters for his Bayesian analysis. I am saying that it is futile to imagine a little arithmetic will produce a useful probability estimate for such a complicated problem.

I am reminded of another thread, in which I claim that what was clearly a disguised name — "Will Monox with his great dagger" — increases the chance that "Great Ox" used "Will" as a pseudonym. But does this small fact increase the net chance of a hoax from 91% to 92%? Or from 0.00001% to 0.00004%? It would be futile to bundle together thousands of correlated probabilities — whose values we could never agree on anyway — to attempt to derive a single number. But it is wrong to dismiss such pieces of evidence with "Too confusing to plug into my Bayes software. Sorry."

 

[steve_bank]

If not an actual Jesus on which the myth was built there were similar people.

The writer wasn't writing a myth, unless you consider Superman a mythical character. The writer could have very well written about GJ from real life experiences with real people and real places. But that doesn't make GJ historical or mythical anymore than the authors of Superman.

I hope that makes sense.

I read something about the original idea for Superman was from a Jewish marginalized immigrant who felt he was as American as anyone else, and just as strong.

Robert Howard was sickly. Conan was an expression of his alter ego.

All things literary are an extension of ourselves. If not nobody would read anything. IMO.

 

[dbz]

Is it?

...wrong to dismiss such pieces of evidence with "Too confusing to plug into my Bayes software. Sorry."

• "Website". C.H.R.E.S.T.U.S.

You can analyze your own evidence for or against a historical Jesus claim using our Bayesian Calculator. All you have to know is how much more likely a piece of evidence is to support your claim, whichever position you choose.
This calculator can be used for other historical clams as well! You can use this tool to test the historicity of Julius Caesar or Abraham.
This is a valuable tool for anyone interested in historical research or general historical claims.

Comments per: Godfrey, Neil (12 May 2019). "The Questions We Permit Ourselves to Ask". Vridar.

Christoph Heilig says: 2019-05-14 21:28:08 GMT+0000 at 21:28

If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other – and how often other formulations are used for both concepts!

Richard Carrier says: November 11, 2019, 4:11 pm

If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other…

That’s not correct procedure. Context changes meaning. All language is contextual. How one author uses words differs from another, and how words get used in different periods of church history will differ, and the contexts words are used likewise confers different meanings.

So the base rate has to be discerned from like contexts: which I demonstrate are (a) a writer (Paul) who only ever mentions being brothers of Jesus in a spiritual sense (the baptized are the “adopted” sons of God and thus “the firstborn of many brethren”) and never shows any need to distinguish this from being biological brothers of Jesus (a linguistically unlikely behavior, unless there was no distinction needing to be made–and thus only the spiritual kind of brother ever meant) and (b) contexts where Paul is distinguishing apostles from lower ranking Christians (the only contexts in which he ever uses his complete phrase “brother of the Lord”). Otherwise, Paul almost always uses “brother” fictively, and always because the referenced persons are the adopted sons of God (which entails they are brothers of the Lord, who, as Paul says, was likewise adopted as the son of God). And Paul only ever uses “Brother of the Lord” twice, without making any distinction from his usual practice.

This actually makes a biological meaning statistically unlikely. But at best can make it no more likely. So even at best it’s a wash. We cannot tell what kind of brother he means here. We therefore cannot use it to argue anything.

It would be wholly invalid to use other contexts for one’s base rate here (e.g. writers a hundred years after Paul, i.e. “the early Christian literature”). Whereas it is valid to use all the above contextual information in Paul.

…the brother of the apostle John (who, of course, had been executed in 44 CE)

This is based on relying on the chronology of Acts which is wildly inaccurate in light of the letters of Paul. It’s therefore a useless datum. And one need not interpret the pillar as the same James as the brother of John. Since the grammar of Paul in Galatians 1:19 entails the James there referenced is not an apostle, it cannot be the same James as in Galatians 2, who is a “pillar” and thus definitely an apostle (he is one of the apostles Paul is saying he never met until the second Jerusalem visit; as until then, he says, he only met one, Peter). So it doesn’t matter who that second James is. It’s not the first James regardless.

Neil Godfrey says: 2019-11-12 22:56:17 GMT+0000 at 22:56

If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other – and how often other formulations are used for both concepts!

Tim addressed this method in three posts — see especially the video on Part 1:
What’s the Difference Between Frequentism and Bayesianism? (Part 1)
What’s the Difference Between Frequentism and Bayesianism? (Part 2)
What’s the Difference Between Frequentism and Bayesianism? (Part 3)
— Frequentist and Bayesian analysis examine different things.

 

[Copernicus]

It is your analogy, because you alone introduced it in this thread, not some alleged group of Jesus mythers.

As an offhand joke that you've been banging on about for two pages now....

I couldn't have done it without you being there alongside me every step of the way. You seem passionate about defending your offhand jokes.

It's just that the lack of corroborating evidence for Jesus outside of the literature is so scant that there is more reason to doubt his existence.

Unless you're rational, and understand that demanding extraordinary evidence to prove the existence of historical figures - as you more or less admit, more out of objection to their legacy than any of the facts at hand - is folly, an activity undeserving of the respect of any serious student of history. Why would we wxpect a back country preacher to generate more of a material record than the leader of a nation?

That's who you imagine he was? I thought he was just some drunk who desecrated the Temple by smashing up the local loan shark business they had going. If you start with the assumption that some real Jesus figure existed, you can come up with all sorts of explanations as to why we have no records of the man that the gospels all portrayed as a well-known miracle worker whom Pontius Pilate had crucified. The back country preacher somehow managed to spawn stories about himself far and wide, most of which seem to have been suppressed quite vigorously by the cult that decades later made him out to be a real guy. Then he became the central figure in the Roman Empire's state religion. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Or maybe there were just a lot of messianic cults giving Roman authorities grief, including the so-called Dying Messiah versions. And maybe there were a lot of preachers out there making a living off of spreading religious memes that would attract a following. Paul was clearly one of those, and he was engaged in a rivalry with erstwhile mentors for the business of selling a more gentile-friendly Jewish messiah doctrine to his congregations. He had never met Jesus nor had much to say about details of the life of Jesus, and he may have embellished some of what Cephas and others were preaching. Who knows whether there was ever a real Jesus? When we start speculating, we can come up with all sorts of scenarios that make the mythicist one plausible and consistent with what little evidence we have today of the origins of Christian mythology. You believe that there had to be an actual historical Jesus. I don't see the necessity, but I admit to not being an expert in early Christianity. It's just fun to speculate sometimes. When I taught linguistics at Barnard, I used to have loads of fun discussing the Gnostic gospels with Elaine Pagels at afternoon teas. She impressed me with how much I didn't know about early Christianity and how much of that history was suppressed by the orthodox juggernaut that came afterwards.

 

[Copernicus]

Is it?

...wrong to dismiss such pieces of evidence with "Too confusing to plug into my Bayes software. Sorry."

• "Website". C.H.R.E.S.T.U.S.

You can analyze your own evidence for or against a historical Jesus claim using our Bayesian Calculator. All you have to know is how much more likely a piece of evidence is to support your claim, whichever position you choose.
This calculator can be used for other historical clams as well! You can use this tool to test the historicity of Julius Caesar or Abraham.
This is a valuable tool for anyone interested in historical research or general historical claims.

Comments per: Godfrey, Neil (12 May 2019). "The Questions We Permit Ourselves to Ask". Vridar.

Christoph Heilig says: 2019-05-14 21:28:08 GMT+0000 at 21:28

If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other – and how often other formulations are used for both concepts!

Richard Carrier says: November 11, 2019, 4:11 pm

If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other…

That’s not correct procedure. Context changes meaning. All language is contextual. How one author uses words differs from another, and how words get used in different periods of church history will differ, and the contexts words are used likewise confers different meanings.

So the base rate has to be discerned from like contexts: which I demonstrate are (a) a writer (Paul) who only ever mentions being brothers of Jesus in a spiritual sense (the baptized are the “adopted” sons of God and thus “the firstborn of many brethren”) and never shows any need to distinguish this from being biological brothers of Jesus (a linguistically unlikely behavior, unless there was no distinction needing to be made–and thus only the spiritual kind of brother ever meant) and (b) contexts where Paul is distinguishing apostles from lower ranking Christians (the only contexts in which he ever uses his complete phrase “brother of the Lord”). Otherwise, Paul almost always uses “brother” fictively, and always because the referenced persons are the adopted sons of God (which entails they are brothers of the Lord, who, as Paul says, was likewise adopted as the son of God). And Paul only ever uses “Brother of the Lord” twice, without making any distinction from his usual practice.

This actually makes a biological meaning statistically unlikely. But at best can make it no more likely. So even at best it’s a wash. We cannot tell what kind of brother he means here. We therefore cannot use it to argue anything.

It would be wholly invalid to use other contexts for one’s base rate here (e.g. writers a hundred years after Paul, i.e. “the early Christian literature”). Whereas it is valid to use all the above contextual information in Paul.

…the brother of the apostle John (who, of course, had been executed in 44 CE)

This is based on relying on the chronology of Acts which is wildly inaccurate in light of the letters of Paul. It’s therefore a useless datum. And one need not interpret the pillar as the same James as the brother of John. Since the grammar of Paul in Galatians 1:19 entails the James there referenced is not an apostle, it cannot be the same James as in Galatians 2, who is a “pillar” and thus definitely an apostle (he is one of the apostles Paul is saying he never met until the second Jerusalem visit; as until then, he says, he only met one, Peter). So it doesn’t matter who that second James is. It’s not the first James regardless.

Neil Godfrey says: 2019-11-12 22:56:17 GMT+0000 at 22:56

If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other – and how often other formulations are used for both concepts!

Tim addressed this method in three posts — see especially the video on Part 1:
What’s the Difference Between Frequentism and Bayesianism? (Part 1)
What’s the Difference Between Frequentism and Bayesianism? (Part 2)
What’s the Difference Between Frequentism and Bayesianism? (Part 3)
— Frequentist and Bayesian analysis examine different things.

One thing that bothers me about all of this discussion over frequencies of occurrence is that highly skewed historical record of the expressions that Paul and others actually used. We are looking at modern records of their writings, so we really don't know the frequency with which Paul talked about the "brother" of James. We only know the frequency off occurrence in surviving texts. I really wish that Carrier had steered clear of Bayesian analysis. I think that it was largely a distraction in the debate over historicity, and I much prefer what he wrote as a classicist and historian of the early Roman Empire.

 

[dbz]

Bruce Grubb says: 2019-05-19 14:19:46 GMT+0000 at 14:19

One of my major beefs is the inconstancy with which the historical method is used. The best example of this is Sun Tzu. You can hold a translation of his work in your hands, he was written about by a professional historian who noted in his work “I have set down only what is certain, and in doubtful cases left a blank.”, and yet we are not even sure if Sun Tzu even existed.
More over c 180 Irenaeus’s Against Heresies gives conflicting information on when Jesus lived. In Book III, Chapter 21 Paragraph 3 he states “for our Lord was born about the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus” which would work out to 14 CE and yet earlier in that work (Book II, Chapter 22) when showing how Jesus had to be between the age of 46 and 50 when he was crucified cites Luke (which set Jesus between 26-34 c 28 CE) and John as proof and back this up in Demonstrations (74) which states “For Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar, came together and condemned Him to be crucified.” With the exception of Pontius Pilate this would put the crucifixion 42-44 CE – well after Paul’s conversion (no later then 37 CE)
Yet despite all this Jesus gets effectively a free ride in the ‘he’s historical’ train.

• Sima Qian trans. Watson, Burton (1958). Ssu-Ma Ch’ien Grand Historian of China. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-343-25000-3.

A little further on we find how important it is for the historian to record no more than he knows to be absolutely true. Under Duke Huan, fifth year, we find two days recorded for the death date of Marquis Pao of Ch’en. “Why two death dates?” the Kung-yang asks itself and replies: “The Scholar [i.e., Confucius] was in doubt and so he recorded both days.” Tung Chung-shu, the most important exponent of the Kung-yang school in the early Han, remarks on this: “He copied down what he saw but did not speak about what was unclear.” In this connection we may notice a saying of Confucius recorded in the Analects (XV, 25): “The Master said, ‘Even in my early days a historiographer would leave a blank in his text.’ ” The passage, obscure as it is, has been interpreted to mean that the ancient historians were in the habit of leaving unrecorded anything they were in doubt about, but that this commendable practice was being violated in Confucius′ later years. —(p. 80)

 

[Politesse]

You believe that there had to be an actual historical Jesus.

Not true. I just think the conspiracy theory is dumb as hell.

 

[dbz]

I just think the conspiracy theory is dumb as hell.

I assume the "Historical Jesus agnostic viewpoint " is not so characterized?

Per Raphael Lataster:

Carrier published his academic book in 2014[353] and I have published mine in 2019.[15] We are still waiting for a proper refutation of my case for agnosticism and his more ambitious case for outright mythicism. I suspect that this will never occur, because ‘at least agnosticism’ is very sensible.[354]

• Question: When will an academic book—published by a respected biblical studies press—present a proper refutation of Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt and also make a peer reviewed case for historicity?
• Question: Do you concur that 'at least agnosticism' is very sensible?

For all the evidence anyone has ever adduced from the Epistles (once we exclude those known to be forged): it is ambiguous as to whether an earthly or celestial Jesus is being referred to. The Gospels I found wholly symbolically fictional and not even interested in actual history. And the Jesus in them I found to be so very like other mythical persons of the period. And then I found that no other evidence can be shown to be independent of the Gospels. At the very least, putting all of that together should make agnosticism about the historicity of Jesus a credible conclusion.

—Richard Carrier[26]

The Historical Jesus agnostic viewpoint is given by Raphael Lataster, who writes:

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 the issue of God’s existence, the ‘historicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘theist’, and the ‘mythicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘strong atheist’ or ‘hard naturalist’. The oft-forgotten ‘Historical Jesus agnostic’ is the equivalent of, well, the ‘God agnostic’.
I'd like to throw one more term into the mix. Not all ‘atheists’ are ‘strong atheists. Some are simply ‘agnostics’. I would like to propose, then, that we use the term ‘ahistoricists’ to encompass both the ardent ‘mythicists’ and the less certain ‘agnostics’. This avoids the false dichotomy, which I think historicists (much like theists) have been taking advantage of. They often frame the debate as only being between the right and the wrong, the reasonable and righteous historicists versus the silly mythicists, ironically appearing as unnuanced and dogmatic fundamentalists in the process. (As with the common false dilemma, presented by apologists, of ‘the truth’ being found in ‘Christianity’ or in ‘strong atheism’.)[14]

 

[Politesse]

Question: Do you concur that 'at least agnosticism' is very sensible?

It's silly to present Jesus as some sort of special case demanding a statement of faith or anti-faith on the basis of nearly absent evidence. We don't really know whether any historical figures existed, but I wouldn't normally call it "agnosticism" to acknowledge that, and definitely think it is silly to throw out one wild historical conspiracy theory after another to explain away the origins of Christianity - let alone making a career out of publishing books about them - while pretending to be "just asking questions" without being ideologically invested in the answer. We (and every other atheist forum back when there were many of them) don't have thread after thread questioning the existence of every historical figure. Just the one.

 

[Swammerdami]

Is it?

...wrong to dismiss such pieces of evidence with "Too confusing to plug into my Bayes software. Sorry."

• "Website". C.H.R.E.S.T.U.S.

You can analyze your own evidence for or against a historical Jesus claim using our Bayesian Calculator. All you have to know is how much more likely a piece of evidence is to support your claim, whichever position you choose.
This calculator can be used for other historical clams as well! You can use this tool to test the historicity of Julius Caesar or Abraham.
This is a valuable tool for anyone interested in historical research or general historical claims.

I can't tell whether you're posting in support of my argument or against it. I will say that the existence of an App to estimate the chance of Jesus' historicity rather SUPPORTS my thesis.

I am not wholly unfamiliar with statistical treatments. Some of my patents are in the field of probability estimation.

 

[Copernicus]

You believe that there had to be an actual historical Jesus.

Not true. I just think the conspiracy theory is dumb as hell.

You have imagined some kind of conspiracy theory and imputed it to mythicists. Mythicists are just those who believe that historicism is unproven and somewhat implausible. They don't even have to believe they can prove that Jesus did not exist historically, although that caricature makes it easier for folks who don't like mythicism and like to call it a dumb as hell conspiracy theory. Personally, I don't think either mythicism or historicism are dumb as hell.

As for religious conspiracies, there are plenty of examples that they do happen. Mormonism, which was founded by a convicted con artist, comes to mind. It's not as if religious charlatans are hard to find even in modern times. Of course, I'm not talking about Scientology. That's the only true religious movement that I know of.

 

[No Robots]

Mythicists take no consideration of what kind of literature was possible within the Judaism of the time. They never attempt to correlate New Testament literature with any comparable Jewish literature, such as the Talmud. Mythicism is at root a continuation of the Christian practice of ignoring the Jewish nature of the New Testament.

 

[dbz]

I am not wholly unfamiliar with statistical treatments. Some of my patents are in the field of probability estimation.

Do you have any opinion on:

• "Did Jesus Exist Debate: Godless Engineer vs. Kamil Gregor". YouTube. MythVision Podcast. Feb 26, 2021. duped "Is Jesus A Historical Figure? @Godless Engineer vs Kamil Gregor (w/ @MythVision Podcast )". YouTube. Godless Engineer. Mar 4, 2021.
• "Kamil Gregor and Joel Pearson discuss the Historicity of Jesus". YouTube. Religious Debate. Jun 27, 2019.

"Kamil Gregor on the Historicity of Jesus". Richard Carrier Blogs. 31 October 2019.

Gregor understands the math. So what he gets wrong about it, and about the facts and arguments in OHJ, might be informative to people who don’t understand the math.

Comment by dbz November 1, 2019, 12:07 am

OP: “Dependent evidence has zero value in Bayesian estimates of likelihood (OHJ, Ch. 7.1).”

Kamil Gregor if you intend to further argue that Josephus’ testimony and other non-Christian sources are independent of the Gospels (and Gospel-dependent Christian legends and informants). Please do that first and separately.