The Christ Myth Theory

[dbz]

Kind of like the collection of moral stories under the heading of Aesop's Fables.

7. IS said a
Fortunate is the lion this one which the human will eat him
and of-the-lion being becomes man.
And he befouled, the human, this one who the lion will eat him
and the lion will come to be human.

Re: A question for mlinssen about Thomas​

by Leucius Charinus » Wed Jul 13, 2022 3:57 pm

Scholarly Quotes
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... omas7.html

F. F. Bruce writes:
"The point of this seems to be that a lion, if eaten by a man, is ennobled by rising in the scale of being, whereas a man, if eaten by a lion, is degraded to a lower status than was originally his and may even risk missing the goal of immortality. It is not that we become what we eat but that what we eat becomes part of us (as in Walter de la Mare's poem 'Little Miss T-'). Whether, in addition, there is any special symbolism in the lion, as in 1 Peter 5.8 ('Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour'), is exceedingly difficult to determine." (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 115)

Funk and Hoover write:
"This saying is obscure. In antiquity the lion was known to be powerful and ferocious. Hunting lions was the sport of kings. The lion was often the symbol of royalty. The winged lion figures in apocalyptic visions, sometimes as the consort of God, at other times as a symbol of evil. In Rev 4:7, the four figures that surround the throne are the lion, the young bull, the human figure, and the eagle. These images were later adopted as symbols of the four canonical evangelists; the winged lion specifically became the symbol for the Gospel of Mark." (The Five Gospels, p. 477)

Funk and Hoover continue:
"The lion was also used to symbolize human passions. Consuming the lion or being eaten by the lion may therefore have had to do with the relation to one's passions. Understood this way, the saying embodies an ascetic motif. At any rate, Jesus, who was reputed to be a glutton and a drunkard, probably did not coin this saying." (The Five Gospels, p. 477)

Marvin Meyer writes:
"This riddle-like saying remains somewhat obscure. In ancient literature the lion could symbolize what is passionate and bestial. Hence this saying could suggest that although a human being may consume what is bestial or be consumed by it, there is hope for the human being - and the lion. In gnostic literature the ruler of this world (Yaldabaoth in the Secret Book of John) is sometimes said to look like a lion. This saying may ultimately be based upon statements in Plato, for instance his comparison (in Republic 588E-589B) of the soul to a being of three parts: a many-headed beast, a lion, and a human being. Plato recommends that the human part of the soul (that is, reason) tame and nourish the leonine part (that is, the passion of the heart)." (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, pp. 71-72)

Gerd Ludemann writes:
"Verse 1 is about the humanization of bestial forces in human beings, v. 2 about human beings lapsing into a bestial nature. Because of the parallelism, I have emended the text in v. 2b, 'and the lion will become man', to the text above ['and the man will become lion']. The logion fits well with the ascetic-Gnostic circles which are interested in taming or humanization of bestial passions. They are often concerned with taming bestial natures, of which that of the lion is the strongest." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 593)

Jean Doresse writes:
"No doubt the lion here represents human passions, or more precisely, the lying spirit of evil. This is suggested by a passage from a Coptic Manichaean Psalm (CCLVII): 'This lion which is within me, which defiles me at every moment, I have strangled it and cast it out of my soul. . . .'" (The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, p. 371)

Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write:
"This saying, as Doresse notes (page 134), is extremely obscure. From other sayings in Thomas we may infer that the lion can be eaten only if it is killed and becomes a corpse (60), and that knowing the world is equivalent to finding a corpse (57) - the world is not worthy of those who find such a corpse. The Gnostic who has eaten what is dead has made it living (Saying 10). Therefore, by eating the dead lion, which may be the hostile world (cf., 1 Peter 5:8: 'Your adversary the devil, like a raging lion . . .'), you can overcome the world by assimilating it to yourself. If the true inner man is consumed by the lion, and the lion becomes the man, the world has overcome the Gnostic (cf., Clement, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 84)." (The Secret Sayings of Jesus, p. 126)

 

[Swammerdami]

We still have to encounter the first Jesus or Christ spelled out in full in a Greek MS - I've come to 7th CE and not seen anything but the (anti)Chr?stians of Acts ff

I fail to see how this is an argument against historicity. By the 7th CE the myths of Jesus Christ were firmly entrenched. Saint Anatolius reigned as Patriarch of Constantinople in the mid 5th CE, for heaven's sake! If they were still using the abbreviations in the 7th CE, it does NOT mean they were unsure about the name of their Saviour! No?

We're probably actually in agreement about the Jesus character in the NT as far as historicity goes, we're just using different words. I just don't put any credence in the religious spin. Does that make sense? I know how writers write.

Jarhyn and I seem to be in general agreement, although he nominally takes a "mythicist" line. I can accept the possibility that Paul, Luke, Peter et al helped develop a cult in which, for whatever reason, they elevated a minor zealot named Jesus to celebrity status just to flesh out their myths. I just think it overwhelmingly likely that their Jesus came from Galilee and was indeed executed in the time of Pontius Pilate. Frankly I'm baffled by those who consider this unlikely.

We've been around and around and around on this. In this post I'll just mention a few reasons to think that the Gospels were written fairly early and not heavily edited thereafter. This fact, if accepted, turns any mythicist notion of massive rewriting circa 200 AD or later into nonsense. (Having said this, it IS true that some of the earliest Christian writing shows no miracles. Paul emphasizes the miracle of resurrection but admits no other miracle by Jesus IIUC. I hope it's clear that those omissions SUPPORT historicity.) Is it possible to nitpick and fulminate against those inferences? You betcha! But if you think mythicist arguments are immune from rebuttal, you've not been paying attention.

* Based on a fragment of John's Gospel found in Egypt, some scholars think texts of that Gospel were in existence no later than 90 AD. (Many scholars give the synoptic Gospels dates even much earlier than this, but I'm emphasizing hard physical evidence.)

* The so-called  Egerton Gospel fragments parallel the synoptic Gospels (though sometimes called "Johannine"), but has some new material. The dating of the actual papyrus manuscript is controversial: Some show 200 AD or a little later; some show 100 AD or a little earlier. The later date is justified by a single apostrophe (looks much like a smudge) in a context which was rarish in the 2nd century. Yet a document from 109 AD has a similar apostrophe. (There are now non-destructive ways to do C14 dating. The bulk of the "Egerton Gospel" is held by the British Library, but the University of Cologne has a small fragment. Any plans to radio-test it?)

* The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are based on Mark and a hypothetical "Q" source, both in Greek, but also on Aramaic texts. Why would myth-makers use Aramaic sources, especially if they couldn't translate them properly? The original Sermon on the Mount, quoted by Matthew, is known to come from an Aramaic original Also, compare the reddened phrases from these Gospels:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanness. Thou blind Pharisee, first make clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside may become clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful but within are full of dead men's bones and of all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just: but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

And the Lord said to him: Now you, Pharisees, make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter: but your inside is full of rapine and iniquity. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make also that which is within? But yet that which remaineth, give alms: and behold, all things are clean unto you. . . . Woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the uppermost seats in the synagogues and salutations in the marketplace.

Matthew's version is a nice little parable. Luke's makes no sense: The Aramaic word for 'to cleanse' /dakkau/ mutated into 'give alms' /zakkau/.

* There were discrepancies between different 2nd-century versions of Mark that we know about because they were commented on. For example

And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.

Why mention entering Jericho if nothing happened there? In the earlier version, something DID happen but it didn't fit with Mark's desired story-line. But why retain the mention at all? Perhaps because the scribe did NOT see himself as a myth-maker, but as a relatively faithful. copyist.

Do any of these arguments constitute "proof" of historicity? No, of course not! but they are among many MANY clues that direct Occam's Razor toward some sort of historic Jesus.

Mythicists, on the other hand — at least those participating in this thread — were unable to come up with any explanation even for the dual mentions of Jesus' historical brother.

You are correct that I don't put much thought into 'James the brother of Jesus.'

Suppose hypothetically that you were arguing against the historicity of William Shakspere of Stratford. Would you ignore mentions of him in Stratford parish records?

 

[dbz]

We still have to encounter the first Jesus or Christ spelled out in full in a Greek MS - I've come to 7th CE and not seen anything but the (anti)Chr?stians of Acts ff

I fail to see how this is an argument against historicity.

Lord IS, the Middle-Platonic  Demiurge, revealed himself to his first devotee and said many wise thing to him. Said devotee gave Lord IS the cognomem XS, and started a cult called XSians. The cult then wrote down the sayings of Lord IS in the Gospel of Thomas.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

"IS XS: No Jesus or Christ spelled out in early MSS" earlywritings.com

The information in that link is nothing short of astonishing. We read these early documents today and assume that when we see the word "Jesus" or "Christ" that we're reading the work as it existed, but it never occurred that way. The discussion of Thomas is also quite interesting. The Jesus character or the nomina sacra seems to have been simply a repository for sayings. Really changes the appreciation, like learning Shakespeare's alleged signatures are actually the hand of legal clerks.

Kind of like the collection of moral stories under the heading of Aesop's Fables.

And it makes you realize that at least in all the Greek manuscripts there was no Jesus, only the nomina sacra, and there are lots of different nomina sacra. There had to be a key to understanding these abbreviations and that's a major point of discussion but the leading theory is that they were meant to entice readers to seek out the bishops who would know.

Coptic manuscripts were different in that they used names as I understand the discussion.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Jarhyn and I seem to be in general agreement, although he nominally takes a "mythicist" line. I can accept the possibility that Paul, Luke, Peter et al helped develop a cult in which, for whatever reason, they elevated a minor zealot named Jesus to celebrity status just to flesh out their myths. I just think it overwhelmingly likely that their Jesus came from Galilee and was indeed executed in the time of Pontius Pilate. Frankly I'm baffled by those who consider this unlikely.

For me it's the same as the Authorship Question. Follow the evidence, not the tradition.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

* The so-called

Egerton Gospel fragments parallel the synoptic Gospels (though sometimes called "Johannine"), but has some new material. The dating of the actual papyrus manuscript is controversial: Some show 200 AD or a little later; some show 100 AD or a little earlier. The later date is justified by a single apostrophe (looks much like a smudge) in a context which was rarish in the 2nd century. Yet a document from 109 AD has a similar apostrophe. (There are now non-destructive ways to do C14 dating. The bulk of the "Egerton Gospel" is held by the British Library, but the University of Cologne has a small fragment. Any plans to radio-test it?)

That is sooooooooooo similar to the latest findings concerning Shakespeare's alleged signatures. if you are interested I'll try to dig up a link. The contention is that he never signed anything but that it was all done by legal clerks which was quite common at the time. Signatures were not important.

 

[Swammerdami]

We still have to encounter the first Jesus or Christ spelled out in full in a Greek MS - I've come to 7th CE and not seen anything but the (anti)Chr?stians of Acts ff

I fail to see how this is an argument against historicity.

By the 7th CE the myths of Jesus Christ were firmly entrenched. Saint Anatolius reigned as Patriarch of Constantinople in the mid 5th CE, for heaven's sake! If they were still using the abbreviations in the 7th CE, it does NOT mean they were unsure about the name of their Saviour! No?

Lord IS, the Middle-Platonic  Demiurge, revealed himself to his first devotee and said many wise thing to him. Said devotee gave Lord IS the cognomem XS, and started a cult called XSians. The cult then wrote down the sayings of Lord IS in the Gospel of Thomas.

You managed to delete my sentence explaining why the argument is absurd.
I've restored it for you, using an enlarged font.

 

[dbz]

* The so-called

Egerton Gospel fragments parallel the synoptic Gospels (though sometimes called "Johannine"), but has some new material. The dating of the actual papyrus manuscript is controversial: Some show 200 AD or a little later; some show 100 AD or a little earlier. The later date is justified by a single apostrophe (looks much like a smudge) in a context which was rarish in the 2nd century. Yet a document from 109 AD has a similar apostrophe. (There are now non-destructive ways to do C14 dating. The bulk of the "Egerton Gospel" is held by the British Library, but the University of Cologne has a small fragment. Any plans to radio-test it?)

That is sooooooooooo similar to the latest findings concerning Shakespeare's alleged signatures. if you are interested I'll try to dig up a link. The contention is that he never signed anything but that it was all done by legal clerks which was quite common at the time. Signatures were not important.

• “Papyrus Egerton 2” is likely just a redaction of John (or vice versa)

Carrier (23 September 2016). "Three Things to Know about New Testament Manuscripts". Richard Carrier Blogs.

• When we look at the thousand or so remaining manuscripts, nearly all of them are from the Middle Ages, in fact most by far are eight or more centuries later than the original texts they purport to contain. All they show us is how the text was transformed by error and alteration in the Middle Ages, representing the stabilization of the text that medieval Christendom wanted, rather than any effort at determining their accuracy in respect to the originals. Some of those medieval manuscripts will by accident preserve early readings, which makes them at least useful as a check against some of the errors and meddlings of all the others, but again, only in respect to determining what the text looked like in that one single late 2nd century manuscript created and edited for propaganda purposes. Though it’s theoretically possible some preserve corrections to that text in later copies against earlier copies, but that’s both unlikely and impossible to ever determine has happened.
• That leaves us with that paltry 124 manuscripts that are not Medieval and not copies of manuscripts we already have. So we’ve gone from nearly six thousand to barely more than a hundred
• And almost all of those are just tiny random scraps, not full manuscripts of even a single book. Some of these (the smallest at least) could derive from pre-C150 edition manuscripts (as does, for example, the aberrant Egerton Gospel, which may be an earlier version of John: OHJ, p. 492, n. 217), but there is no way to tell, and they contain too little information to be of much use even if they did.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We still have to encounter the first Jesus or Christ spelled out in full in a Greek MS - I've come to 7th CE and not seen anything but the (anti)Chr?stians of Acts ff

I fail to see how this is an argument against historicity.

By the 7th CE the myths of Jesus Christ were firmly entrenched. Saint Anatolius reigned as Patriarch of Constantinople in the mid 5th CE, for heaven's sake! If they were still using the abbreviations in the 7th CE, it does NOT mean they were unsure about the name of their Saviour! No?

Lord IS, the Middle-Platonic  Demiurge, revealed himself to his first devotee and said many wise thing to him. Said devotee gave Lord IS the cognomem XS, and started a cult called XSians. The cult then wrote down the sayings of Lord IS in the Gospel of Thomas.

You managed to delete my sentence explaining why the argument is absurd.
I've restored it for you, using an enlarged font.

Miracle of Marcelino

The story, revised and modernised in both the book and film, dates back to a medieval legend, one of many gathered together in a volume by Alfonso el Sabio.[1] It was a critical and commercial success, and other countries have produced versions of it.

I remember seeing this film as a kid along with other cult films that sought to establish the legitimacy of our particular sect of christianity. Had I not been exposed to other ideas I may have still been swallowing it hook, line and sinker. I think this experience was not unlike early century christians. They didn't know what was true and many probably didn't care. 'revised and modernized...based on a legend.'

Little known is the fact that many immigrants to america remained fiercely loyal to their religious communities out of need and necessity. A local parish has done excavations. Immigrants brought their laundry to be done and gathered food. Their parish was really an extension of their home, or maybe vice-versa. They could not survive in their new land without their religious clubs.

For me it is easy to think of early century christians being no different. They believed in their savior because they believed in their savior and needed to believe in their savior. They were more interested in surviving than in the veracity of what the local bishop was telling them about their religion. And they didn't live very long.

 

[Swammerdami]

For me it's the same as the Authorship Question. Follow the evidence, not the tradition.

Do you think that differs from what I am trying to do?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

For me it's the same as the Authorship Question. Follow the evidence, not the tradition.

Do you think that differs from what I am trying to do?

No.

 

[Swammerdami]

[*]“Papyrus Egerton 2” is likely just a redaction of John (or vice versa)

Even the Wikipedia article mentions an otherwise unknown miracle story from the "Egerton Gospel." And two stories present in Egerton and the synoptics but NOT in John.

Wikipedia may not be the best source, but based on all that we've seen here it's definitely better than Carrier.

 

[Jarhyn]

We still have to encounter the first Jesus or Christ spelled out in full in a Greek MS - I've come to 7th CE and not seen anything but the (anti)Chr?stians of Acts ff

I fail to see how this is an argument against historicity.

Lord IS, the Middle-Platonic  Demiurge, revealed himself to his first devotee and said many wise thing to him. Said devotee gave Lord IS the cognomem XS, and started a cult called XSians. The cult then wrote down the sayings of Lord IS in the Gospel of Thomas.

This all comes back to discussions of the Demiurge, then, I suppose.

One of the most common delusions is to believe oneself to BE the demiurge, and the Jesus narrative shot through as it is with rebirth as an idea creates a fertile ground for that madness to grow.

Anyway, I am now working through Toledot Yeshu as is a mailable at https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Story_of_Jesus

I'm not sure how authentic or old it is, but even at the beginning it hints that "Jesus" is more of a "the name of the forgotten" than "an actual name".

 

[steve_bank]

"IS XS: No Jesus or Christ spelled out in early MSS" earlywritings.com

The information in that link is nothing short of astonishing. We read these early documents today and assume that when we see the word "Jesus" or "Christ" that we're reading the work as it existed, but it never occurred that way. The discussion of Thomas is also quite interesting. The Jesus character or the nomina sacra seems to have been simply a repository for sayings. Really changes the appreciation, like learning Shakespeare's alleged signatures are actually the hand of legal clerks.

Kind of like the collection of moral stories under the heading of Aesop's Fables.

And it makes you realize that at least in all the Greek manuscripts there was no Jesus, only the nomina sacra, and there are lots of different nomina sacra. There had to be a key to understanding these abbreviations and that's a major point of discussion but the leading theory is that they were meant to entice readers to seek out the bishops who would know.

Coptic manuscripts were different in that they used names as I understand the discussion.

The conversion tactic I have seen is 'let me explain it to you'. At some point the perosn becones losr-t in it.

TV preachers all use the you don't understand I'l explain the bible for you.

 

[dbz]

This all comes back to discussions of the Demiurge, then, I suppose.

There remains only one explanation: Paul believed … in a divine Christ, before he believed in Jesus.

—William Wrede [6]

In short: Paul believed in the divine XS from the very beginning!

So Paul never knew about XS on Earth until he was told this strange tale:

Fafhrd broke his longsword across his knee (cutting himself badly in the act), tore from his garments the few remaining ornaments (dull and worthless scraps of metal) and bits of ratty fur, forswore strong drink and all allied pleasures (he had been on small beer and womanless for some time), and became the sole acolyte of Bwadres, the sole priest of Issek of the Jug. Fafhrd let his beard grow until it was as long as his shoulder-brushing hair, he became lean and hollow-cheeked and cavern-eyed, and his voice changed from bass to tenor, though not as a result of the distressing mutilation which some whispered he had inflicted upon himself—these last knew he had cut himself but lied wildly as to where.
[...]
Now Issek of the Jug, whom Fafhrd chose to serve, was one of the most lowly and unsuccessful of the gods, godlets rather, in Lankhmar. He had dwelt there for about thirteen years, during which time he had traveled only two squares up the Street of the Gods and was now back again, ready for oblivion. He is not to be confused with Issek the Armless, Issek of the Burnt Legs, Flayed Issek, or any other of the numerous and colorfully mutilated divinities of that name. Indeed, his unpopularity may have been due in part to the fact that the manner of his death—racking—was not deemed particularly spectacular. A few scholars have confused him with Jugged Issek, an entirely different saintlet whose claim to immortality lay in his confinement for seventeen years in a not overly roomy earthenware jar. The Jug (Issek of the Jug's Jug) was supposed to contain Waters of Peace from the Cistern of Cillivat—but none apparently thirsted for them. Indeed, had you sought for a good example of a has-been win the center of the Street. They passed back and foho has never really been anything, you could hardly hit on a better choice than Issek of the Jug, while Bwadres was the very type of the failed priest—sere, senile, apologetic and mumbling. The reason that Fafhrd attached to Bwadres, rather than to any one of a vast number of livelier holy men with better prospects, was that he had seen Bwadres pat a deaf-and-dumb child on the head while (so far as Bwadres could have known) no one was looking and the incident (possibly unique in Lankhmar) had stuck in the mind of the barbarian. But otherwise Bwadres was a most unexceptional old dodderer. However, after Fafhrd became his acolyte, things somehow began to change.
[...]
What the crowd saw—the god-intoxicated, chanting, weeping crowd—was very different indeed.

They saw a man of divine stature strapped with hands high to a framework of some sort. A mightily muscled man, naked save for a loincloth, with a shorn head and face that, marble white, looked startlingly youthful. Yet with the expression on that marble face of one who is being tortured.

And if anything else were needed (truly, it hardly was) to convince them that here was the god, the divine Issek, they had summoned with their passionately insistent cries, then it was supplied when that nearly seven-foot-tall apparition called out in a deep voice of thunder:

"Where is the jug? WHERE IS THE JUG?
[...]
Gods have their own doorways into and out of space and time, and it is their nature to vanish suddenly and inexplicably. Brief reappearances are all we can hope for from a god whose chief life-drama on earth has already been played, and indeed it might prove uncomfortable if he hung around very long, protracting a Second Coming—too great a strain on everybody's nerves for one thing.

The large crowd of those who had been granted the vision of Issek was slow in dispersing, as might well have been expected—they had much to tell each other, much about which to speculate and, inevitably, to argue.

"Lean Times in Lankhmar - Chapter 2". [URL='http://www.baen.com']www.baen.com[/URL].

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

[*]“Papyrus Egerton 2” is likely just a redaction of John (or vice versa)

Even the Wikipedia article mentions an otherwise unknown miracle story from the "Egerton Gospel." And two stories present in Egerton and the synoptics but NOT in John.

Wikipedia may not be the best source, but based on all that we've seen here it's definitely better than Carrier.

So aside from the impossible and the exaggeration you hold that the gospels are factual accounts and that the Pauline Corpus is about the same person?

 

[dbz]

[...]

So aside from the impossible and the exaggeration you hold that the gospels are factual accounts and that the Pauline Corpus is about the same person?

N.B.:

Where testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good independent evidence of their truth.

—The contamination principle of Stephen Law [41]

Stephen Law[42] holds that for Jesus—in the context of the contamination principle—we have no good independent evidence for the mundane claim that Jesus existed. Therefore the Gospels' inordinate amount of myth and fabulation about Jesus actually leave us in doubt whether he existed.[41] Concurring with Law, Carrier writes, "The more fabulous the only tales we have of someone are, the more likely we doubt their historicity, unless we have some good mundane corroboration for them. Hence we doubt the existence of Hercules, Dionysus, Romulus, and so on" and "Jesus is one of the most mythified persons in human history."[43]

 

[dbz]

"Interview with Dr. Dennis R. MacDonald & Edouard Tahmizian". YouTube. Freethinker Podcast. 3 June 2022. @time:00:02:12

[2:12] ...these [gospel] texts are not written by fishermen or they're not folklore and historical memory of Jesus. They're full of themselves insofar as they're creating foundational myths for various Christian communities and they were not intended to be taken as historical works as the Christian tradition has traditionally understood them... [2:39]

Bird, Michael (24 October 2019). "The gospels, myths and history". ABC Religion & Ethics.

David Litwa’s new book, How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths — whose central claims are summarised in a recent article on this site — is a fascinating study about the relationship of the Christian gospels to certain mythological motifs from antiquity. In a nutshell, Litwa regards the gospels as a form of “mythic historiography.” Instead of seeing the gospels as history that over the time became myth, he suggests, to the contrary, that they were always a type of mythology that was given the features of history for the sake of apparent verisimilitude.

Arnal, William E. (2015) [2005]. The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-32440-9.

Whether Jesus himself existed as a historical figure or not, the gospels that tell of him are unquestionably mythic texts.… In seeking to find the real, historical person behind these narratives, we are using these texts as sources for a figure that they themselves show no interest in at all. Just as the myths and legends about Herakles are simply not about a historical person, so also the gospels are not about the historical Jesus. (pp. 75–76.)

 

[Swammerdami]

So aside from the impossible and the exaggeration you hold that the gospels are factual accounts and that the Pauline Corpus is about the same person?

There is much to doubt in the Gospels. Jesus is portrayed as a preacher, healer and zealot/insurrectionist. Was he really all three of those things? Many parables and aphorisms are attributed to him; were they all really Jesus' words? Probably not. During his trial/execution, Jewish leaders are made the culprits with Pilate and the Romans relatively innocent. Were these details altered to appeal to a Roman Gentile audience?

BUT there are very good reasons to think Paul and the Gospels were talking about the same Jesus. In Galatians Paul meets with Peter, one of the leading figures in the Gospels and Acts. Paul mentions him (as 'Cephas') in 1st Corinthians as well. Christians (Chrestians? ) are active in Rome before Paul ever gets there. (What's the evidence Peter made his way to Rome? I am not a historian.)

The linkage of James to Jesus Christ made by both Paul and Josephus has significant evidentiary value, in my opinion. Could one (or necessarily both) of these mentions have been altered in the 2nd century? Sure, though there is no evidence of that. But for all their prattle, mythicists have been unable to posit even a single scenario that makes such alterations plausible. (For one thing, determined counterfeiters would have set their sights higher than one obscure brothership, and there's no evidence they did.)

 

[dbz]

There is much to doubt in the Gospels. Jesus is portrayed as a preacher, healer and zealot/insurrectionist. Was he really all three of those things? Many parables and aphorisms are attributed to him; were they all really Jesus' words? Probably not.

In summary, [separate from the historicity of Jesus] it is clear that there are many contradictions between one gospel and another, many dubious statements of history, many suspicious resemblances to the legends told of pagan gods, many incidents apparently designed to prove the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, many passages possibly aiming to establish a historical basis for some later doctrine or ritual of the Church. The evangelists shared with Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus the conception of history as a vehicle for moral ideas. And presumably the conversations and speeches reported in the Gospels were subject to the frailties of illiterate memories, and the errors or emendations of copyists. (p. 558.)

Durant, Will; Durant, Ariel (1944). "XXVI -- Jesus -- 4 B.C.-A.D. 30". Caesar and Christ, a history of Roman civilization and of Christianity from their beginnings to A.D. 325. The Story of Civilization Vol. 3. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4516-4760-0.