The Christ Myth Theory

[Jarhyn]

[H]ow do you explain parallels between the writings of Paul and Tacitus? Did some clever 2nd-century writer notice the Christ/Chrest confusion and exploit it in his construction of a false Pauline narrative? William of Ockham is rolling over in his grave.

Paul worshiped a god whose name was only ever given as abbreviated ΧΣ.

• Per Richard Carrier October 2, 2019, 11:39 am

(1) Suetonius mentions Christians as persecuted by Nero but does not know of any connection between that and the fire at Rome. This may be an interpolated line, but the evidence to confirm that is too weak to be confident.


(2) Suetonius separately mentions riots in Rome instigated by a certain Jewish leader named Chrestus under Claudius (not Nero) in the 50s A.D. Many have attempted to connect this to Christianity somehow but there is no credible reason to.


(3) Tacitus’s text as we have it speaks clearly of a Christ executed by Pilate under Tiberius who inspired the “Chrestians” which a later copyist “fixed” into “Christians” (the e was erased and replaced with an i), who were blamed for the fire at Rome under Nero.


(4) This text might be authentic up to the Chrestians being blamed, but yet have one interpolated line linking the Chrestians to Christ. In a peer reviewed journal (which article is what is reproduced in Hitler Homer) I presented abundant evidence that this indeed is what happened. No one knew of any connection between the fire at Rome and Nero’s persecution of Christians until we start seeing it reflected in legendary and forged material in the 4th century, despite many prior authors, including Christian authors, knowing the text of Tacitus and writing about the persecution of Christians under Nero, which is just one of many evidences that’s very improbable unless Tacutus’s text about Chrestians never connected them to Christ (until the text was “fixed” to say that sometime in the 4th century).


Once you sort all that out, the issue is not that no one knew of a legendary persecution of Christians under Nero until the 4th century; rather, no one had any idea it had any connection to the fire at Rome, the unique contribution of the text of Tacitus. So there is no difficulty explaining the demonization of Nero in Revelation. Even if we were to assume that was due to his persecuting Christians; but as we know Christians often fabricated or exaggerated their claims of persecution (see Moss, The Myth of Persecution), even that might not have been meaningfully true but just believed by the end of the first century (in the same way later legends grew of Domitian persecuting Christians, out of reports that originally said those he persecuted were Jews, with no connection to Christianity).

It could also, in such a case, be a complex interchange of Jewish revolutionaries who spread propaganda that elevated some real person after the fact, and converted them into a deity long after the fires.

Ie:
Chrestus starts trouble, people join him, he gets killed, people dislike that, Nero sucks, Rome burns, people die. The reality of Chrestus is lost to history as one of his followers (or someone else) mythicized him in drama either before or after the fires, but they didn't use the name "Chrestus" in their literature because that was hazardous to one's health. They might instead have used his first name.

Later, Chrestus is elevated to Christ in some sects, Someone gets the sects communicating, they eventually align on "Christ" when they've been calling their hero Jesus for so long that Chrestus gets "fuzzy", even though it's not so hazardous to utter the name at that point.

"Paul" if his existence is to be accepted at all would know the real history of Chrestus and call them such if he was employed, truly, in trolling their shit. It wouldn't matter if "Christ" language was in circulation yet at that point for "Paul" because he would know the truth and call him by his real name abbreviated.

 

[dbz]

Don't Paul and Josephus refer to the same historic James?

Per Josephus.

[AJ 20.197] And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. [AJ 20.198] Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests. [AJ 20.199] But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed.
[AJ 20.200] When, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: [AJ 20.201] but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; [AJ 20.202] nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrim without his consent.
[AJ 20.203] Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.

Per "Reading Josephus on James: On Valliant Flunking Literary Theory". Richard Carrier Blogs. 24 December 2021.

The two competing hypotheses therefore are:

• [Hv] Josephus violated every literary and narrative standard he follows in every other passage across dozens of volumes of literary work, and expects his readers to just “know,” without explanation or referential prompting, what a “Christ” is, what Christians are, that James was one, that they got executed a lot for some reason, and that these random other people killed were also Christians, and that the Jewish and Roman elite would readily punish rather than back their killers, and all that to explain why Ananus was deposed and replaced with, coincidentally, another Jesus—which otherwise none of that other stuff explains in any way at all.
• [Hc] Josephus wrote a narrative about priestly succession without the two words “called Christ,” that articulates and presents a sequence of events exactly matching his narrative discourse style everywhere else in his works, complete with how and when he expects readers to make inferences from his juxtaposition and provision of facts, and how and when he makes causes and their effects more explicit, and that exactly matches the context of the passage, being an explanation for why Jesus replaced Ananus.

It is readily plain that [Hv] is wildly improbable and that [Hc] is as near 100% certain as makes all odds.

 

[dbz]

I was taught that as the Gospels were released, the Jesus will be, was, was born god timeline shifts back. There is this indication that they expect a return and as that fades, the significance of who he is going to be shifts into ultimately what he was. Oh, he was god all along, jinx!

Per Ehrman (2 March 2018). "Early Christology: How I Changed My Mind". The Bart Ehrman Blog.

I have been arguing that there were two separate streams of early Christology (i.e. “understandings of Christ”). The first Christologies were almost certainly based on the idea of “exaltation.” . . . The other type of Christology came a bit later. It was an “incarnation” Christology which indicated that Jesus was a pre-existent divine being – for example, an angel – who became a human being for the purpose of salvation.

See:
Reasonable Doubts Podcast @time 00:15:25. "How Jesus Became God". YouTube. Bart D. Ehrman. 29 September 2017.

Per Richard Carrier:

Christianity began incarnationist (OHJ, Element 10 in Ch. 4, with Ch. 11). . . . And the evidence for that is as solid as any evidence we have for early Christianity: Paul explicitly says it was incarnationist; Paul even quotes a pre-Pauline creed that affirms it was; and Paul never mentions anyone ever contesting it, even when he mentions competing sects of the faith that he insisted be declared anathema (e.g. Galatians 1). There is, likewise, no other evidence from pre-Markan Christianity that mentions anything else.[346]

• Question: Which is more likely: a) the first Christology was based on the idea of “exaltation"; or b) the first Christology was based on the idea of “incarnation”?

In Roman 1, Paul say Jesus was made the son of God by the resurrection.

Per Bird, Michael (23 February 2015). “Rom 1:3-4 as a Non-Adoptionist Text with Christology of Incarnation and Enthronement”. Euangelion.

[Per Rom 1:3-4] there is no adoptionistic christology here since “the resurrection event was the occasion at which the Son of God, who was in fact already deemed the pre-existent Son of God before the resurrection event, was appointed to a new office that was able to be described by the phrase Son-of-God-in-Power.”
He [sc. Matthew W. Bates contra e.g., Rudolf Bultmann, Robert Jewett, James Dunn, A.Y. Collins, and Bart Ehrman] would paraphrase Rom 1:3-4 as follows:

The gospel concerning the Son of God, who was brought from preexistence into human existence by means of the Virgin Mary, the seed of David, as it pertains to the flesh, that is, to the fleshly realm characterized by human physicality with all its limitations. This Son of God was installed into a new office – Son-of-God-in-Power – as it pertains to the realm dominated by life in the Holy Spirit – by means of his resurrection from among the dead ones. This Son-of-God-in-Power is Jesus Christ our Lord.

• My spin:
  Our second-god was brought from celestial existence into human existence. Second-god was then installed into a new office—Holy Potentate—by means of his resurrection from among the human dead ones. This Holy Potentate is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Assuming arguendo
• Rom 1:3-4 is an Adoptionist pre-Pauline text.
And
• Paul’s ‘Philippians poem’ is a Incarnational pre-Pauline text.

QUESTION: Which is earlier, Rom 1:3-4 or ‘Philippians poem’?

Ehrman presents hypothetical sources that would support a conclusion that Rom 1:3-4 is earlier.

Per Lataster, Raphael (2016). “Review Essay: Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus“. Literature & Aesthetics 26 (1): 181–192. ISSN 2200-0437.

[Bart] Ehrman is of the belief that Paul’s ‘Philippians poem’ is pre-Pauline, which would make it earlier than our earliest extant sources, and yet he does not – unlike the mythicists – entertain the notion that the high Christology found therein is the earliest one. Thanks to Ehrman’s penchant for hypothetical sources, it simply does not matter which extant source is older; any scholars can invent sources to bolster her theory. —(p. 186)

also Geza Vermes insists the Philippians hymn is surely an interpolation, therefore arguendo .. Rom 1:3-4 is earlier.

Comment by Richard Carrier—21 December 2012— per “The Goodacre Debate”. Richard Carrier Blogs. 20 December 2012.

Larry Hurtado blogged on a really good recent article about this (rather, more generally, on the whole notion of early “high” Christology): see “Early High Christology”: A Recent Assessment of Scholarly Debate. In the comments there Geza Vermes gets into a snippy debate with Hurtado, insisting the Philippians hymn is surely an interpolation, and Hurtado keeps asking him what evidence he bases that on, and Vermes keeps avoiding the question. Pretty much a typical debate in Jesus studies these days.

 

[neilgodfrey]

Also, this is kind of interesting. Dr Dennis MacDonald did an Internet Infidels podcast interview with our social media guy Ed today where he basically sums up how absurd the academy thinks mythicism is:

I was curiously accused of twisting scriptures when I pointed out that there are scholarly arguments out there that interpret the Gospel of Mark's centurion's "confession" as a sarcastic gloat over the death of Jesus on the cross instead of as a genuine confession of faith. By pointing out that such an argument was considered within the bounds of reasonableness I was accused of justifying McGrath's supposed claim that I "twisted" the scriptures.

So given that Dennis MacDonald is here cited in the video presentation as a scholar whose opinion is worthy of respectful hearing, I have finally got around to digging out his own interpretation of the centurion's remark, "Truly, so this was the Son of God". Is MacDonald also "twisting" the evidence or is he proposing an alternative and quite legitimate interpretation". It's from page 142 of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark:

Commentators have scrambled to find some motivation for the affirmation of Mark’s centurion within the Gospel. For example, many have thought the centurion somehow knew that veil of the temple had been rent, took this as a divine sign, and therefore pronounced Jesus as the Son of God. If this were what Mark intended, he should have written, “And when the centurion saw the rending of the veil, he said . . but Mark wrote no such thing. Rather one reads: “And when the centurion . . . saw that he thus had expired___ ” Other interpreters have attributed to the centurion a sophisticated theology of the cross; unlike everyone else in the narrative, he recognized in Jesus’ death —sans miracle or resurrection -evidence of divine sonship. This reading is possible, but it surely is not the most natural reading of the text. The words of the centurion drip with sarcasm. They constitute a gloat, a well known and ancient speech act mocking the arrogance of a victim and enhancing the stature of the gloater. Those who had taunted Jesus invited him to come down from the cross and save himself, if he were indeed the “destroyer of the temple,” or “the Messiah, the King of Israel.” Some at the foot of the cross thought his prayer of dereliction was a call to Elijah to rescue him. So when the centurion saw that neither Jesus himself nor Elijah delivered him from the cross and that he actually died, he reasonably assumed Jesus’ boasts were hollow and gloated over him. Greek and Roman gods —and sometimes their sons —were immortal, so Jesus’ death was proof of his hubris. One might paraphrase the centurion like this: “Oh sure, this corpse is God’s Son!” The reader, of course, fully understands the irony of the situation: Jesus actually was God’s Son and would be vindicated.

 

[neilgodfrey]

Some may think MacDonald is a somewhat eccentric scholar because of his argument that the Gospel of Mark draws upon Homeric epics in addition to biblical material. So here is another quotation from another more mainstream critical scholar, Mark Goodacre, who has the same opinion of the centurion's words as Dennis MacDonald. Goodacre writes, p. 160, in The Case Against Q:

In Mark 15:39 the Cenrurion says, presumably sarcastically, "Truly this is a son of God- when be observes 'how Jesus thus breathed his lasr' ... willie the reader is given privileged information to which the Centurion does not have access - the rending of the curtain in the temple (15:38).

 

[neilgodfrey]

Personally I find another scholar, Whitney Shiner's conclusion, the most satisfactory. He addresses the well-known motif of irony found throughout the Gospel of Mark. This gospel at almost every step with every episode raises questions that can open up the meaning to opposing interpretations. The centurion, on the surface reading, is being sarcastic. But the reader knows "the truth" about Jesus and recognizes that the centurion's disbelief is actually expressing a true belief, but one hidden from the centurion himself. Here is the abstract of Shiner's article: DOI: 10.1177/0142064X0002207801

The pronouncement of the centurion in Mk 15.39 is commonly understood as the end of the messianic secret in Mark’s narrative. This paper challenges that interpretation on the basis of the syntax of the pronouncement, the connection of the pronouncement with the portents surrounding Jesus’ death, and the audience’s expectation that can be assumed from the literary parallels. As the narrative continues we see continuing confusion in the reaction to Jesus’ death and resurrection. The pronouncement is intentionally ambiguous and is used by Mark to allow his audience to hear a deeper meaning while leaving the veil of secrecy, an essential part of Mark’s religious world view, intact.

 

[neilgodfrey]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

Albert Schweitzer was no fool and he wrote at length against the Christ myth arguments of his day. But one thing he did understand is that the historian needs INDEPENDENT evidence to confirm hypotheses or the reliability of data that comes from a single source. With Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Socrates, Alexander,.... historians are loaded with independent sources that help them make judgements about what is being addressed in those sources. In the case of Jesus, however, there is no verifiably independent source to confirm the claim of any particular text about Jesus.

The problem is partially -- only partially -- acknowledged by a few NT scholars. Hence Bart Ehrman tries to claim that the evidence for Jesus is secure because of.... a host of hypothetical sources! Q, M, L, Signs Gospel, ... all sources that are hypothesized on the basis of circular reasoning.

Philip Davies, no lightweight in the field of biblical studies, addressed the logical circularity at the heart of much of biblical studies. A story is deemed to have a core of historical truth because the authors responsible for it were careful to sift through traditions and sources to find some basis for their story; we know the authors were so diligent because the story is evidently based in some historical core. That circularity pretty much sums up the case for the historicity of Jesus, too.

Forget Tacitus and Josephus. Look up any book by historians discussing their methods of research (I have posted many times on their works and their specific discussions on this question) and you will find that material that is not contemporary with the subject, or that cannot be traced to sources contemporary with the subject, is always suspect. One historian even says that new information appearing twenty years after the death of a person should be considered suspect if there is no clear evidence to show how that new information suddenly appeared in the record.

Historical Jesus scholars rely upon hypothetical guess work to "establish" what they deem to be "probable" about Jesus -- they use "criteria of authenticity" and now "memory theory". No historian in any other field of historical research uses those methods to establish "the facts." A few historians have actually expressed some dismay at such methods of their New Testament "peers".

 

[Copernicus]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him. What is so suspicious about Jesus is that nobody that we know of made any contemporary reference to his existence until years after he had allegedly ceased to exist. What we do have is evidence of a posthumous cult and lots of Jesus stories floating around in the area of the Roman Empire. Not much to go on.

 

[Politesse]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

 

[Copernicus]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

If I knew that, I would have used a stronger word than "doubt", and this isn't the first time that you've played a little obtuse on an issue where you know perfectly well what the real problem is. You framed it as if mythicists were complaining about ONLY Christian cult followers writing about and preserving the legacy of Jesus. The real problem is that there is no contemporary historical record of any kind regarding the existence of Jesus. It wasn't just that only Christians wrote about Jesus. It was that NOBODY wrote anything about him--not followers, not enemies, not Romans, not other inhabitants of the region. Not until well after Jesus died.

As you know, the earliest reliable reference to a real Jesus is Paul, who may or may not have met someone said to be his brother. It's possible that Paul was being played by James and Peter or that he was just making the meeting up to pump up his bona fides. There are no bona fide relics, just evidence of a huge industry of fake relics that were created by people capitalizing on the lack of any real evidence. For Caesar, we have his own actual writings, contemporary references by many people, including relatives, territory conquered, busts, monuments, place names. For Jesus, we have people claiming he was illiterate, although his followers would surely have sought to preserve records and mementos of his ministry. Caesar himself employed scribes, so surely more than one of Jesus' supporters could have helped. So your attempt to mock the mythicists by comparing a small cult to a vast empire with written records by several authors plus relics was more than a little absurd.

 

[Politesse]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

If I knew that, I would have used a stronger word than "doubt", and this isn't the first time that you've played a little obtuse on an issue where you know perfectly well what the real problem is. You framed it as if mythicists were complaining about ONLY Christian cult followers writing about and preserving the legacy of Jesus. The real problem is that there is no contemporary historical record of any kind regarding the existence of Jesus. It wasn't just that only Christians wrote about Jesus. It was that NOBODY wrote anything about him--not followers, not enemies, not Romans, not other inhabitants of the region. Not until well after Jesus died.

As you know, the earliest reliable reference to a real Jesus is Paul, who may or may not have met someone said to be his brother. It's possible that Paul was being played by James and Peter or that he was just making the meeting up to pump up his bona fides. There are no bona fide relics, just evidence of a huge industry of fake relics that were created by people capitalizing on the lack of any real evidence. For Caesar, we have his own actual writings, contemporary references by many people, including relatives, territory conquered, busts, monuments, place names. For Jesus, we have people claiming he was illiterate, although his followers would surely have sought to preserve records and mementos of his ministry. Caesar himself employed scribes, so surely more than one of Jesus' supporters could have helped. So your attempt to mock the mythicists by comparing a small cult to a vast empire with written records by several authors plus relics was more than a little absurd.

You have VERY much so misrepresented the documentary evidence for Julius Caesar. We have an autobiographical work whose authenticity has been challenged, and a handful of works by contemporaries, ALL of whom are connected to the Roman government in some way. There's a lot more archeological evidence in Julius' case, but the documentary evidence is slim as hell and definitely biased. I wouldn't even call his biographers "secular" -- they freely included religious language and justifications into the history.

So if the question is "can we consider a source evidence of a person's existence even if there is bias", then there were no actual people in the ancient world if the answer is no. No serious person doubts that Julius Caesar existed, even though we really only know the details of his life from ancient propaganda, and beyond a handful of basic facts, most of those details have been challenged or reinterpreted over the centuries. Hell, even during his lifetime. He was a controversial man.

 

[dbz]

So if the question is "can we consider a source evidence of a person's existence even if there is bias", then there were no actual people in the ancient world...

Jesus is in a different reference class then most actual people in the ancient world. As I understand the reference class for Jesus contains ~33% real historical people and ~66% non-historical people.
• "Jesus and the Problem of the Fraudulent Reference Class". Richard Carrier Blogs. 20 August 2021.

if you want to get a different prior probability for Jesus than I did, you have to actually do the work of finding an actual reference class that produces a more applicable and usable base rate of historicity, which does not ignore the effect of other classes he belongs to. Making an excuse to ignore data is just that: an excuse to ignore data. And that’s epistemic fraud.

 

[Copernicus]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

If I knew that, I would have used a stronger word than "doubt", and this isn't the first time that you've played a little obtuse on an issue where you know perfectly well what the real problem is. You framed it as if mythicists were complaining about ONLY Christian cult followers writing about and preserving the legacy of Jesus. The real problem is that there is no contemporary historical record of any kind regarding the existence of Jesus. It wasn't just that only Christians wrote about Jesus. It was that NOBODY wrote anything about him--not followers, not enemies, not Romans, not other inhabitants of the region. Not until well after Jesus died.

As you know, the earliest reliable reference to a real Jesus is Paul, who may or may not have met someone said to be his brother. It's possible that Paul was being played by James and Peter or that he was just making the meeting up to pump up his bona fides. There are no bona fide relics, just evidence of a huge industry of fake relics that were created by people capitalizing on the lack of any real evidence. For Caesar, we have his own actual writings, contemporary references by many people, including relatives, territory conquered, busts, monuments, place names. For Jesus, we have people claiming he was illiterate, although his followers would surely have sought to preserve records and mementos of his ministry. Caesar himself employed scribes, so surely more than one of Jesus' supporters could have helped. So your attempt to mock the mythicists by comparing a small cult to a vast empire with written records by several authors plus relics was more than a little absurd.

You have VERY much so misrepresented the documentary evidence for Julius Caesar. We have an autobiographical work whose authenticity has been challenged, and a handful of works by contemporaries, ALL of whom are connected to the Roman government in some way. There's a lot more archeological evidence in Julius' case, but the documentary evidence is slim as hell and definitely biased. I wouldn't even call his biographers "secular" -- they freely included religious language and justifications into the history.

OK, stop. The greatest orator of the time, Cicero, made speeches about Julius Caesar. The fact that he was a Roman citizen is not the same as being the member of a cult. Cicero was both a friend and an enemy. Caesar's adopted son became the first Roman emperor. Don't give me such preposterous nonsense about there being slim documentary evidence. You need to pick someone with far less evidence of historicity to compare with Jesus.

So if the question is "can we consider a source evidence of a person's existence even if there is bias", then there were no actual people in the ancient world if the answer is no. No serious person doubts that Julius Caesar existed, even though we really only know the details of his life from ancient propaganda, and beyond a handful of basic facts, most of those details have been challenged or reinterpreted over the centuries. Hell, even during his lifetime. He was a controversial man.

You are making a molehill out of a mountain. You just picked the wrong person for your false analogy.

 

[neilgodfrey]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

"Romans" is not a single ideological group. There can be many independent ideological viewpoints among Romans. There can be many rival partisan groups within the collective "Romans" (whatever "Romans" means -- city of Rome inhabitants? Italians? citizens? slaves?) Caesar had supporters and critics and they both spoke about him. That's independent attestation among contemporaries. We also have something written by Julius Caesar himself along with independent attestation that he did write about his Gallic campaign.

 

[neilgodfrey]

Anyone who thinks the evidence for Jesus is on a par with any other historical person from ancient times has never taken the very short time it takes to see exactly how historians know other ancient persons existed. ​

​

• Comparing the sources for Caesar and Jesus​

• Comparing the evidence for Jesus with other ancient historical persons​

• Jesus Is Not “As Historical As Anyone Else in the Ancient World”​

 

[bilby]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

"Romans" is not a single ideological group. There can be many independent ideological viewpoints among Romans. There can be many rival partisan groups within the collective "Romans" (whatever "Romans" means -- city of Rome inhabitants? Italians? citizens? slaves?) Caesar had supporters and critics and they both spoke about him. That's independent attestation among contemporaries. We also have something written by Julius Caesar himself along with independent attestation that he did write about his Gallic campaign.

Well, sure; But it doesn’t matter, because Politesse probably doesn’t exist.

I mean, we have testimony of his existence, but only from humans, and humans are obviously going to be biased on the question of whether a particular human exists.

Apparently.

 

[Swammerdami]

I'm glad we have many experts here, to help me with my own common-sense questions about historicity. Let me start with these comments:

Comparing the evidence for Julius Caesar with the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth seems very silly. (Is there more evidence for King Henry VIII than for the innkeeper's son who shined his shoes once?) We all concede that the stories of an historic Jesus, if any, were embellished for almost a century before the written form we have now. Does anybody think the turning of water into wine would certainly have become well-known EVEN IF Jesus were a talented mesmerizer who convinced the drunken guests their water was wine?
("Hey, how about the bride-groom John or James or Justin or whatever — some name with a J (or Y)? They say he magically turned water into wine." "Yeah sure. I think you drank a little too much of that wine.")

John the Baptist was obviously MUCH more famous in his lifetime than Jesus: Look at the prominence he's given in Acts and all four Gospels. And Pontius Pilate was the frigging Governor of Judaea. But outside of Josephus, how many 1st-century writers refer to John or Pilate? More than Jesus of course, but compared with John or Pilate, Jesus was an obscure carpenter from the Galilean backwater whose ministry lasted only three years. It's absurd to imagine the illiterate followers of a random preacher would produce as much written documentation as was generated for Pilate or the Baptist.

What about the famous fire during the reign of Nero? How many 1st-century texts mention that? Tacitus is usually cited but, though born during the reign of Nero, his earliest extant writings date from the 2nd century, no?


ETA. Googling now I see that some mythicists think that John the Baptist was also fictional, with Josephus' mentions interpolated later as Jesus' mentions allegedly were.

How about the mythicist Infidels arguing here: Did J the B exist?

 

[dbz]

How about the mythicist Infidels arguing here: Did J the B exist?

Mark's reliance on Jesus ben Ananias/Hananiah​

[The Markan] sequence of the Passover narrative appears to be based on the tale of another Jesus: Jesus ben Ananias, the ‘Jesus of Jerusalem’, an insane prophet active in the 60s CE who is then killed in the siege of Jerusalem (roughly in the year 70). His story is told by Josephus in the Jewish War, and unless Josephus invented him, his narrative must have been famous, famous enough for Josephus to know of it, and thus famous enough for Mark to know of it, too, and make use of it to model the tale of his own Jesus. Or if Josephus invented the tale then Mark evidently used Josephus as a source. Because the parallels are too numerous to be at all probable as a coincidence. [citation no. 86.] [...] 86. Theodore Weeden, ‘Two Jesuses, Jesus of Jerusalem and Jesus of Nazareth: Provocative Parallels and Imaginative Imitation’, Forum N.S. 6.2 (Fall 2003), pp. 137- 341; Craig Evans, ‘Jesus in Non-Christian Sources’, in Studying the Historical Jesus (ed. Chilton and Evans), pp. 443-78 (475-77).

—Richard Carrier[154]

Carrier clarifies his citation of Weeden and Evans in OHJ,[155] writing:

Note the Evans piece was published a decade before Weeden’s.[156][157] . . . Of course Evans, a conservative Evangelical Christian, attempts an alternative explanation of the parallels, but even he cannot deny they are real. Evans’ argument is of course apologetic nonsense,[158] ably refuted by Weeden, and numerous other notable scholars...[159]

Weeden asserts that the Markan text is reliant on Josephus' report of Jesus ben Ananias

in part due to many obvious parallels between them.[160] Weeden also holds that Jesus-Ananias was not a real historical person active in the 60s ce, but was an invention of Josephus. Thus the Markan text could not have been written before the early 80s CE.[161]

Mark's inadvertent reliance on Hyrcanus II​

In the same way [as demonstrated with other unrelated but likewise dislocated accounts], Josephus’s John the Baptist story reads as a doublet or different version of Hyrcanus II chronologically dislocated to the time of the wrong Herod. In this case Josephus did not place the two versions of the death of Hyrcanus II close together in the same time setting as in some of the other cases of doublets. If Josephus had done that, the doublet in this case would have been recognized before now. Instead, Josephus mistakenly attached one of the traditions of the death of Hyrcanus II to the wrong Herod, just as he separately mistakenly attached documents to the wrong Hyrcanus. [...] If this analysis is correct—that Josephus misplaced this story to the wrong Herod in Antiquities—then there is no attestation external to the New Testament of the Gospels’ figure of John the Baptist of the 30s CE. The implication would seem to be this: either the Gospels’ John the Baptist has been generated in the story world of the Gospels, or he derives from a different [unevidenced] figure than Josephus’s John the Baptist, [and then was] secondarily conflated with Josephus’s John the Baptist. These issues are beyond the scope of this paper.

—Gregory Doudna[162]

It is commonly maintained that the composition of the John story found in Antiquities postdates and is derivative from the John the Baptist story found in the Gospel of Mark. However Gregory Doudna argues that this premise needs to be questioned, Doudna writes, "There needs to be consideration given to an inversion of that premise, in which literary influence operated in the reverse direction from what has been assumed",[163] Doudna furthur states:

In this light, references to what the Gospels say of their John figures are of no relevance to understanding the Antiquities John passage. There is no beheading of John in the story in Antiquities, and therefore beheading has nothing to do with understanding Josephus’s John passage.[163]

Per Doudna, "Where my proposal differs from prevailing conceptions is in understanding the Antiquities passage as coming from a Jewish source telling a story of an undated John killed by an undated Herod, a tradition of the death of Hyrcanus II at the hands of Herod the Great, mistakenly dated by Josephus to the wrong Herod–and the Antiquities story generates the stories of the Gospel of Mark re John the Baptist rather than vice versa."[163]

Brad McAdon notes the similarities between the Markan text and Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus:

The narrative similarities between Antiq 18 and Mark (especially) 6 seem striking:

1. Flashbacks: Both accounts are widely recognized as literary ‘flashbacks’.
2. “Herod” instead of “Herod Antipas”: “Antipas” does not occur in any of the passages under consideration in Josephus’s Antiq, but only “Herod”; “Antipas” does not occur in Mark’s account, only “Herod”.
3. “John a good man”: Josephus expresses that John “was a good and righteous man” (18.117); “Herod in awe of John, knowing him to be a good and holy man” (Mk 6:20).
4. Reference to John’s arrest: Because of Herod’s suspicions, John was brought in chains to Machaerus (18.119); “Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison” (6:17).
5. A reason for John’s arrest: Herod’s fear of John’s persuasive effect may lead to a form of sedition (18.118); “On account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her” (6:17).
6. Herodias’s previous marriage: Herodias was previously married (18.110); Herodias was previously married (6:17-18).
7. Herodias’s previous husband identified: Correctly as Herod’s step-brother (Herod II, 18.106); incorrectly as Philip (Mark 6:17).
8. Herodias has a daughter: Herod II and Herodias have a daughter named Salome (18.136); Herodias’s daughter is not named in Mark.
9. A “Philip” in both narratives: Philip as Herodias’s daughter’s (Salome’s) husband (18.136); Philip as Herodias’s first husband (Mk 6:17).
10. Criticism of Herod and Herodias’s marriage: Herod and Herodias’s marriage criticized for traditional / religious reasons (18.136); Herod and Herodias’s marriage criticized for traditional/religious reasons (Mk 6:17).
11. Leviticus 18:16 and 21: Implicit reference to Leviticus (18.136); implicit reference to Leviticus 6:17-18).
12. Reasons for John’s death: Because of Herod’s suspicion that John’s ability to persuade the people may lead them to revolt (18.118); not because of John’s persuasiveness and fear of sedition, but because of his denouncing of Herod for taking his brother’s wife (Mk 6:17).
13. Herod executes John: Antiq 18.116-19 and Mk 6:16,27).

From a narrative perspective, it seems that the material in Antiq 18 could provide auMark [author of Mark] with much of the narrative material that would be needed to frame the ‘death of John’ narrative in Mark 6—very similar to, as just one example, how the narrative material in LXX Jonah 1:4-16 served as his framing material for the Jesus “calming the sea” narrative in Mk 4?[164][165]

 

[Politesse]

This just in - Julius Caesar never existed.

(Only Romans wrote about him, and they're biased).

You were being facetious here, but I doubt that only Romans wrote about him. That would be suspicious. There were plenty of non-Romans who had a thing or two to say about him.

Such as whom, exactly?

"Romans" is not a single ideological group. There can be many independent ideological viewpoints among Romans. There can be many rival partisan groups within the collective "Romans" (whatever "Romans" means -- city of Rome inhabitants? Italians? citizens? slaves?) Caesar had supporters and critics and they both spoke about him. That's independent attestation among contemporaries. We also have something written by Julius Caesar himself along with independent attestation that he did write about his Gallic campaign.

Well, sure; But it doesn’t matter, because Politesse probably doesn’t exist.

I mean, we have testimony of his existence, but only from humans, and humans are obviously going to be biased on the question of whether a particular human exists.

Apparently.

It's not my dumb argument. I do not, in fact, hold that there must be an enormous volume of "unbiased" evidence to suppose that a historical figure probably exists. Mythicism is dumb as shit, and it appeals to a large volume of "Roman records" that do not, in fact, exist, at least not in the way they seem to mean.

 

[dbz]

Mythicism is dumb as shit, and it appeals to a large volume of "Roman records" that do not, in fact, exist, at least not in the way they seem to mean.

Lataster (ISBN:9789004408784) "interprets" Richard Carrier’s exhaustive (ca. 600 pages) case for mythicism (On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt). Not distinguishing "all" mythicist arguments from "all" peer reviewed scholarly arguments is disingenuous. Per Meggitt 2019, p. 447. "It would be a rather thankless and dispiriting task to correct the egregious errors of . . . Kersey Graves or Acharya S, but it would be unfair for the contributions of Brodie, Price, Carrier and Wells to ‘be tarnished with the same brush or be condemned with guilt by association’; indeed such scholars are generally as critical of the failings of the excesses of fellow mythicists as any others."