The Christ Myth Theory

[dbz]

 

[dbz]

• Christopher Jon Bjerknes contra Richard Carrier

[15:00]
...Barabbas again is meant to represent the victorious messiah, son of David and it is Jesus Christ who is the suffering messiah of Isaiah chapters 52 to 53 who has to die in order for Jesus Barabbas to live and succeed.
• "Richard Carrier Is Wrong About Jesus Christ". YouTube. cjbbooks. 1 June 2022.

• "Jesus: Myth Vs. History | Dr. Richard Carrier". @time:00:30:00 YouTube. Gnostic Informant. 8 July 2022.

LOL,  Michael R. Licona holds that if Jesus had his throat cut inside the temple .. then he would be a cogent goat allegory!

 

[dbz]

...a 4th-century copy of Mark omits discussion? … What do the mythicists think of this? That Mark was writing about some other fictional Jesus, but his Gospel was grandfathered-in for old time's sake?

• "Jesus: Myth Vs. History | Dr. Richard Carrier". @time:01:17:04 YouTube. Gnostic Informant. 8 July 2022.
Carrier opines that it was an appendix which was a 2nd century commentary summing up the other gospel endings that became incorporated into the Markan narrative in the 3rd century.

 

[Swammerdami]

...a 4th-century copy of Mark omits discussion? … What do the mythicists think of this? That Mark was writing about some other fictional Jesus, but his Gospel was grandfathered-in for old time's sake?

• "Jesus: Myth Vs. History | Dr. Richard Carrier". @time:01:17:04 YouTube. Gnostic Informant. 8 July 2022.
Carrier opines that it was an appendix which was a 2nd century commentary summing up the other gospel endings that became incorporated into the Markan narrative in the 3rd century.

(Yet, "incorporated in the 3rd century" it was still missing in the 4th-century Sinaiticus. Remarkable oversight if this religion were created by myth-makers' skill.)

Let me repeat my point: This Markan discrepancy does serve as evidence that the Resurrection was mythical. But it also serves as evidence that the Crucifixion itself was historic.

 

[skepticalbip]

...a 4th-century copy of Mark omits discussion? … What do the mythicists think of this? That Mark was writing about some other fictional Jesus, but his Gospel was grandfathered-in for old time's sake?

• "Jesus: Myth Vs. History | Dr. Richard Carrier". @time:01:17:04 YouTube. Gnostic Informant. 8 July 2022.
Carrier opines that it was an appendix which was a 2nd century commentary summing up the other gospel endings that became incorporated into the Markan narrative in the 3rd century.

(Yet, "incorporated in the 3rd century" it was still missing in the 4th-century Sinaiticus. Remarkable oversight if this religion were created by myth-makers' skill.)

You may note that it wasn't until 325AD that the church decided on the idea that Jesus was a god and the concept of a trinity (a confusing concept with no support in the religious texts). Before that, there was wide disputes between congregations as to whether Jesus was divine or simply a human prophet. They came up with the the idea of a trinity as a compromise between those monotheists that saw Jesus as a mere human and the polytheists who saw Jesus as a god.

Let me repeat my point: This Markan discrepancy does serve as evidence that the Resurrection was mythical. But it also serves as evidence that the Crucifixion was historic.

I have never met anyone who denied that the Romans crucified people. The dispute was over whether or not the Biblical Jesus was based on a real historical person.

 

[Swammerdami]

(In this thread I have tried to provide common-sense reasons to think that the Crucifixion of a Jesus called "the Nazarene", along with some of his Markan biography, is historic. Any rebuttals to my arguments have "passed over my head." I see excerpts from Wikipedia and links to Richard Carrier YouTubes. My eyes glaze over before seeing anything relevant to my arguments. [And I have no patience for further Carrier YouTubes.])

(If these opinions by Carrier et al DO refute the common-sense arguments I've raised, please connect the dots for me with little words, rather than long quotes irrelevant to my point.)

I have never met anyone who denied that the Romans crucified people. The dispute was over whether or not Jesus was based on a real historical person.

Hunh??

I'm really curious what you think this contributed to the discussion. Nobody disputes that 'Jesus' was a common name in Judaea and that some of the crucifixees were probably named 'Jesus.' I am asserting that, operating Occam's Razor on several specific clues, most probably one of these crucified Jesuses came from Galilee and lived a life which inspired a 1st-century religion.

 

[Kylie]

I'm curious...

What events of Jesus' life as told in the Bible can be verified from actual archaeological evidence?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It would be great to have a thread here where the meaning and value of the New Testament could be discussed without the intrusion of any mythicism.

But the specific purpose of this thread is to discuss mythicism.

"What is Jesus mythicism and how is it understood among Biblical historians?". Reddit. r/AcademicBiblical. 2 August 2018.

This is to continue our series of questions for the FAQ over at r/AskBibleScholars.

Also, and importantly, all Jesus mythicist posts will be removed from r/AcademicBiblical and the OP will be directed to the answer(s) provided for the FAQ.

r/AcademicBiblical declared "No más" ( "I quit" match), but later walked it back:

EDIT: We will not be issuing blanket removals. See the helpful comment here.

and with >=20 upvotes given to this comment:

Jesus mythicism is the view that Jesus of Nazareth, the founder figure of Christianity, was more likely to have been a mythical person who was later historicized than a historical person who was later mythologized. It is in contrast with minimalist historicism (the mainstream view in current scholarship, that Jesus was an ordinary but real person, whose life share certain characteristics with the Jesus of the Gospels) and supernaturalist historicism (the view that Jesus was actually the Son of God as presented in the Gospels).
Mythicism in one of its earliest forms arose in the 19th century, owing much to the 1835 publication of David Strauss' Das Leben Jesu. Strauss did not argue that Jesus did not exist, but his work opened up scholarship to the idea that the supernaturalist narrative of the Gospels was fabricated for the purpose of creating a messiah figure. Bruno Bauer, building on Strauss' work, was perhaps the first to argue that the miracle stories were not just added on top of real events that occurred to a real Jesus, but entirely fabricated events that only occurred in the stories. His Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics proposed that the Jesus of the Gospels was a literary creation, which expanded in A Critique of the Gospels and a History of their Origin to that literary creation not being based on a historical person.
There are many hypotheses which can be considered mythicist, some more plausible than others. Those that rely on conspiracy theories (such as Joseph Atwill's thesis in Caesar's Messiah, or the work of D.M. Murdock) or non-scholarly sources (such as the documentaries Zeitgeist and Religulous) are considered highly problematic at best by both mainstream scholarship and prominent proponents of mythicism. More reasonable hypotheses resemble that presented by Earl Doherty in The Jesus Puzzle, as summed up here by Richard Carrier:

On this model, Christianity, as a Jewish sect, began when someone (most likely Cephas, perhaps backed by his closest devotees) claimed this “Jesus” had at last revealed that he had tricked the Devil by becoming incarnate and being crucified by the Devil (in the region of the heavens ruled by Devil), thereby atoning for all of Israel’s sins, so the Jerusalem temple cult no longer mattered, the sins of Israel could no longer hold back God’s promise, and the end of the world could soon begin. On this theory, Christians did not go looking for proof-texts after their charismatic leader died, but actually conjured this angelic being’s salvific story from a pesher-like reading of scripture, finding clues to the whole thing especially in the conjunction of Daniel 9, Jeremiah 23 & 25, Isaiah 52-53, and Zechariah 3 & 6. Because it solved a major theological and political problem of the time: how the world could be saved when God’s temple (and thus atonement for Israel’s sins) remained in the hands of a corrupt elite “obviously” rejected by God.

It would be several decades later when subsequent members of this cult, after the world had not yet ended as claimed, started allegorizing the gospel of this angelic being by placing him in earth history as a divine man, as a commentary on the gospel and its relation to society and the Christian mission.

...

On this theory, when Paul says “the scriptures” tell us that Jesus “died” and “was buried” and only then was he ever “seen” by Cephas and the apostles (1 Cor. 15:3-5), he means exactly what he says. Just as in this and all other summaries of the gospel Paul provides (from here to Philippians 2) there is no mention of a ministry, or of Jesus being seen by anyone (much less anyone taught and hand-picked by him in life), because these things did not yet exist in Christian conception. They would be allegorical fictions contrived later by the authors of the Gospels. When Paul wrote, the death and burial of Jesus were known only from hidden messages in scripture, just as Romans 16:25-26 says. And this knowledge was facilitated by this Jesus then at last appearing to the apostles to inform them of all this, and what it meant. In fact, being thus visited by the celestial Christ is what secured one’s status as an apostle (1 Cor. 9:1; Gal 1:11-12).

...

This “Jesus” would most likely have been the same archangel identified by Philo of Alexandria as already extant in Jewish theology. Philo knew this figure by all of the attributes Paul already knew Jesus by: the firstborn son of God (Rom. 8:29), the celestial “image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4), and God’s agent of creation (1 Cor. 8:6). He was also God’s celestial high priest (Heb. 2:17, 4:14, etc.) and God’s “Logos.” And Philo says this being was identified as the figure named “Jesus” in Zechariah 6. So it would appear that already before Christianity there were Jews aware of a celestial being named Jesus who had all of the attributes the earliest Christians were associating with their celestial being named Jesus. They therefore had no need of a historical man named Jesus. All they needed was to imagine this celestial Jesus undergoing a heavenly incarnation and atoning death, in order to accomplish soteriologically what they needed, in order to no longer rely upon the Jewish temple authorities for their salvation.

Mythicism currently does not enjoy much acceptance in the Biblical studies community. Most scholars currently believe that there was a historical Jesus, even if it is difficult to know anything about him due to the state of the evidence. Notable exceptions include Thomas L. Brodie (Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery), Robert M. Price (The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems), Hector Avalos (not a mythicist, but expresses approval for the project in The End of Biblical Studies), Thomas L. Thompson (The Messiah Myth, Is This Not the Carpenter?), Philip R. Davies (not a mythicist, but argues that less certainty as to Jesus' existence would “nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability”), Kurt Noll (“Investigating Earliest Christianity without Jesus” in Is This Not the Carpenter?), Richard Carrier (On the Historicity of Jesus), and Raphael Lataster (argues for historicity agnosticism, There Was No Jesus, There Is No God, Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists). Also of note is the work of G.A. Wells (Did Jesus Exist?, The Jesus Myth, Cutting Jesus Down to Size).
Edit: A useful reference list of mythicists, historicity agnostics, and sympathetic historicists who have been alive this century, as well as what they say, can be found here.

• Godfrey, Neil. "WHO's WHO: Mythicists, Mythicist Agnostics & Historicists Who Call for Scholarly Debate (Updated 6th August 2020)". Vridar.

It occurs to me that people were writing the DaVinci code much earlier - two thousand years earlier - than would seem apparent. Makes a lot of sense when you think about it, it explains the mythicist position pretty well and makes a compelling argument.

 

[Copernicus]

I'm curious...

What events of Jesus' life as told in the Bible can be verified from actual archaeological evidence?

The answer is simple. None. The earliest real citation is from Paul's reference to having met Jesus's brother well after the alleged execution. We have evidence that Pontius Pilate really existed, but not regarding events in the stories of Jesus himself.

 

[dbz]

I'm curious...

What events of Jesus' life as told in the Bible can be verified from actual archaeological evidence?

• "FAQ: Did Jesus Really Exist?". Reddit. r/atheism.

What evidence is there?​

It would be wrong to say that there is literally no evidence of Jesus' existence as a real person... but only in the same sense that it would be wrong to say the same thing about Hercules, Osiris, Sherlock Holmes, or Captain America.

 

[Politesse]

I'm curious...

What events of Jesus' life as told in the Bible can be verified from actual archaeological evidence?

None, but there are vanishingly few artifacts from the 1st century that could confirm the existence of any particular individual who wasn't a god or a king.

 

[dbz]

...a 4th-century copy of Mark omits discussion? … What do the mythicists think of this? That Mark was writing about some other fictional Jesus, but his Gospel was grandfathered-in for old time's sake?
• "Jesus: Myth Vs. History | Dr. Richard Carrier". @time:01:17:04 YouTube. Gnostic Informant. 8 July 2022.
Carrier opines that it was an appendix which was a 2nd century commentary summing up the other gospel endings that became incorporated into the Markan narrative in the 3rd century.

(Yet, "incorporated in the 3rd century" it was still missing in the 4th-century Sinaiticus. Remarkable oversight if this religion were created by myth-makers' skill.)

Let me repeat my point: This Markan discrepancy does serve as evidence that the Resurrection was mythical. But it also serves as evidence that the Crucifixion itself was historic.

• Carrier (11 December 2018). "Was the Long Ending of Mark Original? A Serial Debate with Jonathan Sheffield". Richard Carrier Blogs.

Beginning today and for the next six weeks I will be engaging a formal debate here on my blog with Anglican autodidact Jonathan Sheffield over whether the long ending of Mark (verses 16:9-20) [LE], almost universally agreed to be a later interpolation not written by the author of Mark, was in fact in the original draft of Mark and not an interpolation after all. On that theory, the removal of that ending in early manuscripts was the corruption, not its later addition.

• Carrier (12 December 2018). "Was the Long Ending of Mark Original? First Reply". Richard Carrier Blogs.

All the earliest manuscripts extant, including the earliest complete bibles to survive, lack the LE; it begins to appear in the extant manuscript record only in the 4th century, which means it can only have been a rare reading before that (Hitler Homer, pp. 269-72).

• Carrier (8 January 2019). "Was the Long Ending of Mark Original? Carrier's Closing Statement". Richard Carrier Blogs.

The internal case I laid out in my opening is alone decisive: the probability the same author composed the LE as the rest of Mark is shown there to have a probability near zero.

It is agreed that the last 12 verses of Mark's Gospel were later additions — according to Wilson they do not appear in the mid-4th century Sinaiticus copy of Mark. Think about that for a moment. A canonical Gospel published three (3) centuries after the alleged Resurrection doesn't mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!

Yes, "the last 12 verses of Mark's Gospel were later additions" that began to be slowly incorporated into some of the MSS of the Markan narrative beginning in the 3rd century, and later being added as new copies were made of the MSS w/o the LE. Most of the old MSS w/o the LE were lost, but there are some that survived.

A canonical Gospel published three (3) centuries after the alleged Resurrection doesn't mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!

• Rather, the original first gospel (i.e. the Markan narrative) did not "mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!"

 

[Swammerdami]

I'm curious...

What events of Jesus' life as told in the Bible can be verified from actual archaeological evidence?

What sort of archaeological evidence do you imagine might exist? A wooden cross bearing the inscription quoted in John 19:19? Do you think a site where 4000 people feasted on fish and bread 2000 years ago could show that secret today? Recall that Jesus' followers were mostly illiterate, could not afford parchment, and any papyrus documents they might have created disintegrated long ago.

There IS some archaeological confirmation. John 5:2 describes the Pool of Bethesda where some lame people bathed hoping to be healed. My understanding is that this Pool was built by Romans during the 1st century BC and dedicated to "heathen" Gods. Herod Agrippa, who ruled Judaea from 41 to 44 AD, built an outer wall in Jerusalem, which we now know would have contained the Pool, possibly rendering its (heathen-dedicated) use sacrilegious to Jews. In any event, the Pool of Bethesda disappears from history. Surely it would have been revered by Christians as a physical bathing-place they could look at and recall that it was there that Jesus allegedly cured a man who had been lame for 38 years. But no: It was just a name in a Gospel.

Of course, the 2nd-century myth-makers would have been happy to associate real places with their fictional Messiah. But this was a Pool which had been abandoned and forgotten when the myth-makers were doing their alleged myth-making.

The Pool of Bethesda was finally discovered by archaeologist Conrad Schick in the 19th century. (That's 'Nineteenth' with an 'N'!) Here's a diagram. And here it is mentioned in a book with the title 'Jesus and Achaeology' (That title sounds intriguing! Is the book available on-line outside of Google the Teaser?)

Finally, one old complaint of the mythicists was that the town of Nazareth didn't even exist in the 1st century. But archaeologists found the town where expected: those digs were in the 20th century if I recall correctly.

 

[Swammerdami]

...a 4th-century copy of Mark omits discussion? … What do the mythicists think of this? That Mark was writing about some other fictional Jesus, but his Gospel was grandfathered-in for old time's sake?
• "Jesus: Myth Vs. History | Dr. Richard Carrier". @time:01:17:04 YouTube. Gnostic Informant. 8 July 2022.
Carrier opines that it was an appendix which was a 2nd century commentary summing up the other gospel endings that became incorporated into the Markan narrative in the 3rd century.

(Yet, "incorporated in the 3rd century" it was still missing in the 4th-century Sinaiticus. Remarkable oversight if this religion were created by myth-makers' skill.)

Let me repeat my point: This Markan discrepancy does serve as evidence that the Resurrection was mythical. But it also serves as evidence that the Crucifixion itself was historic.

• Carrier (11 December 2018). "Was the Long Ending of Mark Original? A Serial Debate with Jonathan Sheffield". Richard Carrier Blogs.

Beginning today and for the next six weeks I will be engaging a formal debate here on my blog with Anglican autodidact Jonathan Sheffield over whether the long ending of Mark (verses 16:9-20) [LE], almost universally agreed to be a later interpolation not written by the author of Mark, was in fact in the original draft of Mark and not an interpolation after all. On that theory, the removal of that ending in early manuscripts was the corruption, not its later addition.

• Carrier (12 December 2018). "Was the Long Ending of Mark Original? First Reply". Richard Carrier Blogs.

All the earliest manuscripts extant, including the earliest complete bibles to survive, lack the LE; it begins to appear in the extant manuscript record only in the 4th century, which means it can only have been a rare reading before that (Hitler Homer, pp. 269-72).

• Carrier (8 January 2019). "Was the Long Ending of Mark Original? Carrier's Closing Statement". Richard Carrier Blogs.

The internal case I laid out in my opening is alone decisive: the probability the same author composed the LE as the rest of Mark is shown there to have a probability near zero.

It is agreed that the last 12 verses of Mark's Gospel were later additions — according to Wilson they do not appear in the mid-4th century Sinaiticus copy of Mark. Think about that for a moment. A canonical Gospel published three (3) centuries after the alleged Resurrection doesn't mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!

Yes, "the last 12 verses of Mark's Gospel were later additions" that began to be slowly incorporated into some of the MSS of the Markan narrative beginning in the 3rd century, and later being added as new copies were made of the MSS w/o the LE. Most of the old MSS w/o the LE were lost, but there are some that survived.

A canonical Gospel published three (3) centuries after the alleged Resurrection doesn't mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!

• Rather, the original first gospel (i.e. the Markan narrative) did not "mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!"

Do I understand correctly that you are taking my side on this question? Most of your excerpts paraphrase the exact same point I make. (Surely you're not focused on whether the "Markan LE" was composed in the 3rd, rather than 4th century??) If you have something to serve as rebuttal to my view, please connect the dots for us. In your own words.

 

[dbz]

Do I understand correctly that you are taking my side on this question?

• "my side" is "Max 1:3 possible that Jesus b. Joseph/Pantera was a historical personage"

That the original first gospel (i.e. the Markan narrative) did not "mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!" has already been taken into account per "my side".

Surely you're not focused on whether the "Markan LE" was composed in the 3rd, rather than 4th century??

• That is correct

 

[dbz]

It is dubious to claim that vivid details in the gospel narratives are indicators of eyewitness sources. Lataster cites a range of scholars, including biblical ones, who raise doubts about such a claim; and he also notes many examples of vividly told fiction. Carrier asserts that: "Verisimilitude is . . . just as likely to be found in fiction as history; it is what mythographers aimed to create. 'Verisimilitude' therefore cannot be evidence warranting our putting the same trust in the private, uncorroborated details of a tall tale that we can put in the public, corroborated incidentals that tale is colored with. To behave otherwise is simply to codify gullibility."[173]

It is even more dubious to claim that vivid details in "John 5:2" and not mentioned by previous gospel narratives is "indicative" of historicity.

There IS some archaeological confirmation. John 5:2 describes the Pool of Bethesda where some lame people bathed hoping to be healed.

[. . .]

But this was a Pool which had been abandoned and forgotten when the myth-makers were doing their alleged myth-making.

 

[Swammerdami]

I must be articulating my reasoning VERY badly, because the "rebuttals" offered have ZERO to do with any point I'm making.

In the 4th century Bible — the oldest copy of that document in existence — Mark's Gospel had no mention of any post-Crucifixion sightings. (And the briefly implied Resurrection itself might also look like an earlier addition.) The point is that the Resurrection — absolutely essential to most Jesus "mythology" — is not mentioned in that Gospel, three^* centuries after the death of Jesus. That's a long time for the myth-makers not to get their myths consistent. A likelier interpretation is that Mark overlooked the Resurrection sightings because they were not historical.

* - " Surely you're not focused on whether the "Markan LE" was composed in the 3rd, rather than 4th century??"
"That is correct."

Mention of the Pool of Bethesda was in response to another Infidel's question. But you missed the whole point of my comment — "vividness" has nothing to do with it.

I noted (though without thoroughly indentifying the dots to be connected, I guess) that the Pool might have fallen into disuse by 44 AD and, in any event, seems to have soon disappeared from memory. If John claims that the Pool of Bethesda was where Jesus healed an invalid, the point is that "John" or his informant was familiar with pre-44 Jerusalem. (And the Pool as viewed after 19th-century digging is compatible with its implied use in Jesus' lifetime.)

 

[Swammerdami]

Do I understand correctly that you are taking my side on this question [inferences from Mark gospel]?

• "my side" is "Max 1:3 possible that Jesus b. Joseph/Pantera was a historical personage"

That the original first gospel (i.e. the Markan narrative) did not "mention any post-Resurrection sightings!!" has already been taken into account per "my side".

If you think this is a reasonable or responsive way to summarize alleged errors in my reasoning, then I am disappointed in you.

 

[Kylie]

I'm curious...

What events of Jesus' life as told in the Bible can be verified from actual archaeological evidence?

What sort of archaeological evidence do you imagine might exist? A wooden cross bearing the inscription quoted in John 19:19? Do you think a site where 4000 people feasted on fish and bread 2000 years ago could show that secret today? Recall that Jesus' followers were mostly illiterate, could not afford parchment, and any papyrus documents they might have created disintegrated long ago.

There IS some archaeological confirmation. John 5:2 describes the Pool of Bethesda where some lame people bathed hoping to be healed. My understanding is that this Pool was built by Romans during the 1st century BC and dedicated to "heathen" Gods. Herod Agrippa, who ruled Judaea from 41 to 44 AD, built an outer wall in Jerusalem, which we now know would have contained the Pool, possibly rendering its (heathen-dedicated) use sacrilegious to Jews. In any event, the Pool of Bethesda disappears from history. Surely it would have been revered by Christians as a physical bathing-place they could look at and recall that it was there that Jesus allegedly cured a man who had been lame for 38 years. But no: It was just a name in a Gospel.

Of course, the 2nd-century myth-makers would have been happy to associate real places with their fictional Messiah. But this was a Pool which had been abandoned and forgotten when the myth-makers were doing their alleged myth-making.

The Pool of Bethesda was finally discovered by archaeologist Conrad Schick in the 19th century. (That's 'Nineteenth' with an 'N'!) Here's a diagram. And here it is mentioned in a book with the title 'Jesus and Achaeology' (That title sounds intriguing! Is the book available on-line outside of Google the Teaser?)

Finally, one old complaint of the mythicists was that the town of Nazareth didn't even exist in the 1st century. But archaeologists found the town where expected: those digs were in the 20th century if I recall correctly.

Records of the census being taken, for example? Records of Jesus being crucified. The Bible says that when Jesus died there were earthquakes and also the bodies of dead saints being reanimated. Any record of these events? They were (presumably) noteworthy, and the Romans were fairly decent record keepers...

 

[Jarhyn]

@Learner

One thing you should be very careful about is claiming that the Gnostics were twisting the gospel texts away from their original intent.

The gospels are a mashup of Kabbalah and other Jewish mysticism as much as they were anything else.

The writer of Mark was necessarily either a Jew or someone who actually spent a significant period of time learning about Jewish culture.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Gnostics was and is their interest in that same Jewish mysticism that pervaded especially among the long line of "Jesus" figures actually validated by history.

So, perhaps you need to rethink which is the real perversion: the religion, or the groups that have always had to hide from "religion" ala the shape of the original cults referenced in the Pauline letters.

In fact, those letters describe people much like the Gnostics of the middle ages being hunted down by a religious establishment for being heretics...