Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[Brainache]

We have actual manuscripts and Codices that describe Jesus as a Myth--The Son of God, the Logos, and Creator.

What would it take to falsify your belief that your assumed HJ was a Rabbi?

Is your position falsifiable?

I think if evidenced surfaced of a cult who worshipped a celestial Messiah who lived and died in some sub-lunar celestial field for generations before the gospels were written, rather that a man who preached and lived on Earth within living memory, then that might do it. It was a prerequisite for a Messiah that he be a human, Jewish and a descendant of David, a ghost preacher in the sky doesn't fit the job description.

But also, as such real live Messianic pretenders were common in 1st century Judaism, I don't see why anyone would need to invent a mythical one. Just retrofit whatever "Miracles" you want to the guy who got killed by the "Archons of the age". The fact that people in the second to fourth centuries were saying crazy stuff about the "Logos" and the "Creator", has no bearing on where the story started.

But I think I'm in full agreement with DougW in regards to your nonsense, there really isn't much point even trying to explain this stuff to you.

 

[IanS]

Come now, Ian – with respect, you do go on.

‘Quite correct’, only referred to Brainache’s mention as to how historians arrive at their conclusions.

Is it valid to claim that it would not settle the matter if someone produced an ancient script saying they’d met Jesus?

Well, Eusebius asserts he found a letter ostensibly written by Jesus, translating it from the Syriac. But in light of all else that’s known, what historian grants such absurdity the slightest bit of credence?

If on the other hand, we turned up some Roman letter (a private one perhaps, for they were great gossips, one devoid of ulterior motives) that happened to innocently mention Jesus and/or some of the surrounding events, it would certainly alter the situation drastically, as you say. The complete lack of any such evidence, the very kind we might reasonably expect to find, of course bolsters the case for non-historicity no end, again as you say.

I don’t think analogies with other historical events mean much. The swarm of manuscripts leading up to the Gospels, or the Gospels themselves, by their very nature, hardly pass muster as any sort of history per se, as opposed to the development or evolution of a particular creed. Cheers.

Indeed. So where is the disagreement?

Nobody thinks it would "settle the matter". And nobody suggested any such thing.

As I said many times before - the fact of this matter is that the gospels in particular are not admissible as credible evidence of their authors ever knowing any living Jesus (for the same reasons long since established by law).

And the other writing, i.e. Paul’s letters and the non-biblical writing from the likes of Tacitus and Josephus is little better in that respect, and barely admissible for a range of similar reasons.

There is no need for any specific myth theories. It’s more than sufficient just to recognise the complete lack of any credible evidence.

If people want to believe religious claims without evidence then that's up to them. But that is called "faith" .

 

[Brainache]

Indeed. So where is the disagreement?

Nobody thinks it would "settle the matter". And nobody suggested any such thing.

As I said many times before - the fact of this matter is that the gospels in particular are not admissible as credible evidence of their authors ever knowing any living Jesus (for the same reasons long since established by law).

And the other writing, i.e. Paul’s letters and the non-biblical writing from the likes of Tacitus and Josephus is little better in that respect, and barely admissible for a range of similar reasons.

There is no need for any specific myth theories. It’s more than sufficient just to recognise the complete lack of any credible evidence.

If people want to believe religious claims without evidence then that's up to them. But that is called "faith" .

The point is that you can't compare the study of Ancient History to a trial in a modern court of law which requires "proof beyond reasonable doubt". Ancient History doesn't work that way, it never has.

If you want to say that Jesus didn't exist, you have to come up with a plausible scenario that fits the evidence (such as it is) better than the current HJ scenario.

Carrier is currently trying that, whether or not he is successful remains to be seen.

Just saying we can't be sure therefore no HJ, isn't good enough, you need a better story than that to satisfy the demands of the Academy.

 

[dejudge]

I think if evidenced surfaced of a cult who worshipped a celestial Messiah who lived and died in some sub-lunar celestial field for generations before the gospels were written, rather that a man who preached and lived on Earth within living memory, then that might do it. It was a prerequisite for a Messiah that he be a human, Jewish and a descendant of David, a ghost preacher in the sky doesn't fit the job description.

Your statement has very little value since there are hundreds of Myths who lived on earth in Jewish, Roman and Greek Mythology.

Adam, Eve, Noah, Romulus, the angel Gabriel, and Satan the Devil were depicted as characters on earth.

In fact, it is claimed Satan the Devil was with YOUR LORD Jesus on the Jewish Temple around c 27-37 CE when Pilate was governor of Judea.

Essentially, Your Lord Jesus is a Myth just like Romulus.

But also, as such real live Messianic pretenders were common in 1st century Judaism, I don't see why anyone would need to invent a mythical one. Just retrofit whatever "Miracles" you want to the guy who got killed by the "Archons of the age". The fact that people in the second to fourth centuries were saying crazy stuff about the "Logos" and the "Creator", has no bearing on where the story started.

Your statement has NO bearing on evidence for an historical Jesus.

You must have forgotten people were saying crazy stuff about Romulus, the Myth Founder of Rome.

In fact, in Plutarch's "Romulus", some of the crazy stuff about Romulus match the crazy stuff about Jesus the Myth founder of the Jesus cult.

But I think I'm in full agreement with DougW in regards to your nonsense, there really isn't much point even trying to explain this stuff to you.

I am merely exposing that you really have no actual evidence for your LORD Jesus in Galatians 1.19. Your Lord Jesus was a resurrected being--a Myth.

You must have forgotten that DougW does NOT agree with your nonsense that Paul was an Herodian.

There is NO consensus that Paul was an Herodian by Historians and Scholars.

Your idea is fringe of fringe, un-evidenced and admittedly based on ambiguity.

 

[David Mo]

And just in case you did not notice what was going on with David Mo’s last half-dozen posts - he is trying to re-run an argument he pressed here at length about 6 months ago, where he claimed that historians believe in a Battle of Thermopylae upon evidence which is no better (in fact iirc, actually “worse”) than that which we have for the existence of Jesus. He was trying to re-run that argument using Plato instead of Thermopylae, to repeat the standard HJ claim that all of ancient history would collapse if we were to reject the biblical writing as credible evidence of the existence of Jesus

No, by Jove! I never had affirmed that: “the standard HJ claim that all of ancient history would collapse if we were to reject the biblical writing as credible evidence of the existence of Jesus”. Neither: "that historians believe in a Battle of Thermopylae upon evidence which is no better (in fact iirc, actually “worse”) than that which we have for the existence of Jesus". This is absolutely false and contrary to my thought.

You repeat and repeat your mantra because you don’t understand my position. I have explained it long ago and I concluded this:

“Conclusion: Most of the facts we know as ancient history would not pass the test of legal evidence of a modern court. Or we ignore this criterion or we use it and break down the Ancient History.

If you want to compare the degree of evidence of the battle of Thermopylae and the death of Jesus, this is another matter. But, as I have shown now and before, the legal standard does not help at all because it would invalidate both of them. We should look for other criteria more in line with the methods of history”.

You don’t read my true words because you go with a fixed idea that does not correspond to my point of view. Really, your bloody-mindedness surprises me.

I have proposed you a debate about methods of verify the authorship and dating of ancient texts because your criteria are maximalist and unfit for use in Ancient History. You refused again and again without any reason. Perhaps you know why, but at least do not distort my words, please.

 

[dejudge]

The point is that you can't compare the study of Ancient History to a trial in a modern court of law which requires "proof beyond reasonable doubt". Ancient History doesn't work that way, it never has.

Your statement cannot be shown to be true. Ancient History is directly dependent on evidence just like a court trial.

In fact, in court trials, the past is being re-constructed.

If you want to say that Jesus didn't exist, you have to come up with a plausible scenario that fits the evidence (such as it is) better than the current HJ scenario.

Your statement is a fallacy.

If you want to claim your Lord Jesus in Galatians 1.19 was a Rabbi you are OBLIGATED to present credible historical evidence.

The authors of the NT and Apologetic writings ADMITTED their Lord Jesus was a Myth--a Son of a God, born of a Ghost and God Creator.

What other evidence do you want?

In the NT, Your Lord Jesus, the Son of the Ghost Walked on the sea, transfigured, resurrected, ATE Food after the resurrection and ascended in a cloud.

What else could they have written to show their Lord Jesus was a Myth?

Paul claimed your Lord Jesus was the Firstborn of the DEAD.

Just saying we can't be sure therefore no HJ, isn't good enough, you need a better story than that to satisfy the demands of the Academy.

Well, just saying that your Lord Jesus was a Rabbi is NOT good enough.

You need evidence from antiquity to SATISY your argument.

Your Lord Jesus called Rabbi was God Creator.

 

[IanS]

No, by Jove! I never had affirmed that: “the standard HJ claim that all of ancient history would collapse if we were to reject the biblical writing as credible evidence of the existence of Jesus”. Neither: "that historians believe in a Battle of Thermopylae upon evidence which is no better (in fact iirc, actually “worse”) than that which we have for the existence of Jesus". This is absolutely false and contrary to my thought.

You repeat and repeat your mantra because you don’t understand my position. I have explained it long ago and I concluded this:

“Conclusion: Most of the facts we know as ancient history would not pass the test of legal evidence of a modern court. Or we ignore this criterion or we use it and break down the Ancient History.

If you want to compare the degree of evidence of the battle of Thermopylae and the death of Jesus, this is another matter. But, as I have shown now and before, the legal standard does not help at all because it would invalidate both of them. We should look for other criteria more in line with the methods of history”.

You don’t read my true words because you go with a fixed idea that does not correspond to my point of view. Really, your bloody-mindedness surprises me.

I have proposed you a debate about methods of verify the authorship and dating of ancient texts because your criteria are maximalist and unfit for use in Ancient History. You refused again and again without any reason. Perhaps you know why, but at least do not distort my words, please.

OK, well if I have misrepresented your position when I said that like almost everyone else who has used that argument of saying "all ancient history would collapse", then I happily apologise to you ... though I am sure you know that is almost always the argument that HJ people are proposing when they say that we cannot discard the gospels as evidence, because on that basis "all of ancient history would also need to be discarded" ... that exact argument has been repeated here countless times, as I'm sure you know.

However, I don't know that your above highlight is actually true where you say that legal standard would invalidate both Thermopylae and Jesus (Thermopylae was your preferred example of course .. I had never mentioned it all). And to explain that ....

... as I said to you before - I do not believe that genuine historians (as distinct from bible scholars) actually do believe in the battle of Thermopylae upon evidence no better than that which we have for Jesus. Because if that were the case, then they would believe in Thermopylae upon no actual credible evidence of any kind at all!

If it's true that historians in general do believe events such as the battle of Thermopylae, then I strongly suspect that they can cite some sort of independent confirming evidence which conforms to other established events in history. But that is not the case with Jesus ... in the Jesus case there is no such evidence, precisely none at all. So I don't think that examples like Thermopylae are in fact analogous to the case Jesus belief .... which is actually a religious belief known only as a matter of religious faith, without any other supporting evidence.

In fact, I suspect what is being compared in these two cases, is evidence for the battle of Thermopylae as a real event, compared to evidence of peoples beliefs in Jesus. Well, that much is true! And nobody has ever denied that. There is certainly plenty of evidence that people believed the Jesus stories and wrote about them as gospels and letters etc. But what is NOT true, is that there is any evidence that those religious beliefs were actually true. Whereas if objective historians think the Battle of Thermopylae was a real event, then I suspect that belief must be based on something more than un-evidenced religious beliefs in the supernatural!

 

[DougW]

Indeed. So where is the disagreement?

Nobody thinks it would "settle the matter". And nobody suggested any such thing.

As I said many times before - the fact of this matter is that the gospels in particular are not admissible as credible evidence of their authors ever knowing any living Jesus (for the same reasons long since established by law).

And the other writing, i.e. Paul’s letters and the non-biblical writing from the likes of Tacitus and Josephus is little better in that respect, and barely admissible for a range of similar reasons.

There is no need for any specific myth theories. It’s more than sufficient just to recognise the complete lack of any credible evidence.

If people want to believe religious claims without evidence then that's up to them. But that is called "faith" .

I mostly agree, except for the fact that an Argument from Silence, as above, requires bolstering by, as Brainache points out, “with a plausible scenario that fits the evidence (such as it is) better than the current HJ scenario” (Argument as to Best Explanation).

 

[DougW]

You’re clearly not going to let up with your spurious assertions, dejudge.

No matter how often disproved, you mean to keep on repeating them, willfully and deceitfully. It doesn’t even look as if you particularly care what you post – getting a reaction of sorts, any excuse to keep on posting for its own sake, the sole motivation; one swag of rubbish supersedes another.

Take this nonsense of yours: “Effectively, gMatthew, gLuke, gJohn, Acts of the Apostles and the Entire Pauline Corpus were composed AFTER the SHORT gMark.”

In lieu of all that we do know and that’s been said, do you actually think there’s anyone here who doesn’t instantly recognize this for what it is! Unmitigated bollocks!

The same goes for your claims that Justin Martin did not mention the Gospel or Recollections of Peter, and, yes, I know only too well where you got your second-hand quotes.

The underlying Greek is not only ambiguous but displays faulty construction, with the result that some interpreters translate the passage as referring to Peter, and others to Him, here meaning Christ. The trouble with Memoirs of Christ is that there is simply no such manuscript, nor does Justin use the phrase anywhere else.

Apart from which Justin relies in his writings on the Gospel of Peter in various places, as for others, as already pointed out, so what difference does it make! (Except to give you something to score brownie points with, that is.) Elsewhere Justin only refers to Memoirs of the Apostles, another text that, as far as we know, never existed (even though pakeha added it to his reading list!), which here refers to the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles. Neither do I mean to waste any more time on any of this.

Scholars argue that the author of gLuke used gMark and gMatthew or similar sources? There are similar passages in gLuke, gMatthew and gMark”?

Naturally there exist numerous parallel passages in the synoptic gospels, seeing only 24 verses of Mark are not found in the other two combined! Scholars have struggled to explain the order of the canonical passages for centuries, as well as the similarities, delivering all kinds of wondrous theories, as well as conjuring a common source document, ‘Q’. Working on the fallacy that they are first-century productions no doubt only serves to compound the confusion.

The synoptic gospels weren’t the only compilations floating about around that time, and if one assumes the existence of some preceding, if not fragmentary composition, one variously relied on by all three authors, the contradictions are readily reconciled.

The notion that Luke should mention a number of gospels etc, subsequently deemed apocryphal, yet omit to mention the other inspired canonical gospels, is plain absurd. Why would he refer to discredited writings yet omit to mention those recognized as authorized and inspired? In fact, Origen, Jerome, Epiphanius, and Venerable Bede, by affirming that Luke only arrived after all of the gospels listed, thereby also reject apostolic origin.

And the fact that Luke came first isn’t only based “because they were not mentioned”. Both internal analysis (derived from some of the earliest manuscripts, as also for Marcion’s gospel) combined with the need to refute Marcion’s gospel, suggests that Luke was indeed the first. Successive church fathers avow that Matthew came first (as well as having been first written in Hebrew), as no doubt explained by the fact that the early Oracles were originally wrongly attributed to him.

Here and elsewhere you’ve trumpeted for who knows how long that Ephraem did not mention Paul. In fact, he asserts that Paul preached from Jerusalem to Spain! As for your citation of Empedocles, Celsus, and others, you’ll of course keep on citing them anyway.

Whatever Marcion preached, analysis demonstrates that every manuscript used by Marcion, after the first eight used by Luke, appears pretty well in both gospels; even using a similar style. I already pointed this out before and I’m really not interested in forever repeating myself just because simply nothing registers or penetrates your preconceived fancies.

 

[DougW]

Carrier is currently trying that, whether or not he is successful remains to be seen, Brainache?

He, and others, may have a hard time if he maintains a first/early second century scenario for the canonical gospels …

I think it’s fairly self-evident that Jesus is rooted in first century Gnosticism (possibly drawn in the first instance from Philo’s expositions), rather than being based on any historical person in Palestine to begin with, as subsequently made material or historized in the second half of the second century.

As already shown by Edwin Johnson, a variety of Christian concepts and terms are already found in the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus, the Books of Tobit and Enoch, and others, together with the Didache (or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas, and which he clearly demonstrates to be pre-Christian texts, later Christianized.

Humphrey’s Site sums it up well for me: “It is not with a human being that the Jesus myth begins. Christ is not a deified man but a humanised god who happened to be given the name Yeshu. Those real Jesuses, those that lived and died within normal human parameters, may have left stories and legends behind, later cannibalised by Christian scribes as source material for their own hero, but it is not with any flesh and blood rebel/rabbi/wonder-worker that the story begins. Rather, its genesis is in theology itself.”

 

[Brainache]

Carrier is currently trying that, whether or not he is successful remains to be seen, Brainache?

Indeed.

He, and others, may have a hard time if he maintains a first/early second century scenario for the canonical gospels …

I think it’s fairly self-evident that Jesus is rooted in first century Gnosticism (possibly drawn in the first instance from Philo’s expositions), rather than being based on any historical person in Palestine to begin with, as subsequently made material or historized in the second half of the second century.

Self evident? Not really.

As already shown by Edwin Johnson, a variety of Christian concepts and terms are already found in the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus, the Books of Tobit and Enoch, and others, together with the Didache (or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas, and which he clearly demonstrates to be pre-Christian texts, later Christianized.

Link? I've never heard of this Johnson.

Humphrey’s Site sums it up well for me: “It is not with a human being that the Jesus myth begins. Christ is not a deified man but a humanised god who happened to be given the name Yeshu. Those real Jesuses, those that lived and died within normal human parameters, may have left stories and legends behind, later cannibalised by Christian scribes as source material for their own hero, but it is not with any flesh and blood rebel/rabbi/wonder-worker that the story begins. Rather, its genesis is in theology itself.”

An interesting assertion, but lacking any evidence that I can see.

I note that you never reference the Dead Sea Scrolls which are indisputably second Temple Jewish documents, Apocalyptic and Messianic in tone (at least the Sectarian ones) and they speak of a flesh and blood Teacher, the Branch of David etc, not some ethereal figure.

You are also the only person I have ever seen here who disputes that gMark was the first of the Gospels. Is it your contention that the Author of gMark edited down his Gospel from a version of Luke? How does that work?

 

[IanS]

I mostly agree, except for the fact that an Argument from Silence, as above, requires bolstering by, as Brainache points out, “with a plausible scenario that fits the evidence (such as it is) better than the current HJ scenario” (Argument as to Best Explanation).

OK, well, then we differ on just that one point.

But there is absolutely no obligation on any of us here to propose any specific myth theory. There is no legal force, nor any other force requiring anyone here to do that.

Richard Carrier may feel compelled to provide a specific theory, but that's because he is trying to sell a commercial book where his publishers probably insist that he does endorse some particular theory. Most publishers probably would not think it was a good business idea to try selling books which merely pointed out why the evidence was not good enough.

But beyond that it's hardly a situation crying out for some amazing explanation, as if it was impossible to imagine how uneducated superstitious people in the 1st century could possibly come to believe in a fictional miraculous deity. At that time everyone believed in one such fictional deity or other. And they had believed such things for thousands of years before anyone ever mentioned Jesus. More than half the world still believes that today (apparently).

So there is no great mystery about that. And in fact as authors like Randel Helms have shown (Gospel Fictions), the gospel stories of Jesus are easily found to have been taken from what had been written centuries before in the Old Testament as so-called "citation fulfilment". So it's quite obvious where the Jesus stories came from, and why Paul kept saying that his beliefs were "according to scripture".

The idea that we must all have some specific myth theory in order to understand how on earth messianic Jesus belief could have possibly come about unless Jesus was real person, is frankly an argument from naive incredulity which turns a blind eye to all the countless previous fictional religious deity figures. Figures which often had many features in common with the later stories of Jesus, e.g. the idea of dying and rising again as symbolic proof of salvation granted to the faithful.

It does not need any theory of Paul or anyone else deliberately inventing Jesus as a complete "lie" in order to deceive anyone. Nobody needs to have lied or invented anything. Religious beliefs of that kind were ubiquitous throughout that region, and especially the belief that Yahweh would send a saving messiah as prophesised long before in the OT.

 

[dejudge]

I think it’s fairly self-evident that Jesus is rooted in first century Gnosticism (possibly drawn in the first instance from Philo’s expositions), rather than being based on any historical person in Palestine to begin with, as subsequently made material or historized in the second half of the second century.

You have ZERO evidence from antiquity that Jesus was rooted in 1st century Gnosticism. You cannot present any 1st century Gnostic source.

Philo was NOT a Gnostic.

The Jesus story was fabricated to explain the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE.

The earliest stories of Jesus in the NT Canon are rooted in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and the Septuagint--NOT Gnosticism.

There is NOT a shred of Gnosticism in the Short gMark--the earliest version of the Jesus story.

In the short gMark, Jesus Taught his disciples that he would be Killed by men in Jerusalem and resurrect AFTER three days.

Such a teaching has nothing whatsoever to do with Gnosticism.

The Short gMark 8

31 And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be put to death, and rise after three days.

The short gMark 9 31

For he taught his disciples and said to them that the Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and when he has been killed he will rise after three days.

 

[maximara]

The case of Plato's letters is similar to Paul's epistles in some relevant features:
1. Both are private or semi private writings. There are some exceptions.
2. They are attributed to two important characters in History.
3. Some letters are considered authentic and others apocryphal.
4. We have no contemporary manuscripts to decide it. Therefore, we cannot appeal to Archaeometry, graphology or similar disciplines and we have to use some alternative methods to determine the authorship and the dates.

Richard Carrier addressed this kind of nonsense in one of his blogs:

"Just FYI, most experts are historicity agnostics about Aesop and Zoroaster, and odds favor non-existence for both.
Meanwhile, many scholars are agnostic about Homer and Pythagoras (the latter is outside our ability to know, while every expert agrees no one author composed the works of Homer any more than one author composed Genesis, so the historicity of Homer is on the same level as “the author of Genesis”: obviously such an author existed, since the text didn’t write itself, but there was more than one of them over centuries, and we know nothing about them).

Similarly, all experts agree no one person lies behind the writings of “Hippocrates” and we know nothing reliable about “Democritus,” only that he wrote some things that were later quoted and talked about–which entails someone wrote those things, regardless of their name, so “Democritus” is as good a stand-in term for them as anything.

Likewise the evidence for Epicurus is a bit better than we have for Jesus (e.g., unlike Jesus, we have the actual writings of Epicurus himself.)

And so on.

So you really don’t get anywhere with an argument like this. Especially since no good case for the non-existence of Jesus rests on our merely not having records of him."

 

[proudfootz]

Richard Carrier addressed this kind of nonsense in one of his blogs:

"Just FYI, most experts are historicity agnostics about Aesop and Zoroaster, and odds favor non-existence for both.

Meanwhile, many scholars are agnostic about Homer and Pythagoras (the latter is outside our ability to know, while every expert agrees no one author composed the works of Homer any more than one author composed Genesis, so the historicity of Homer is on the same level as “the author of Genesis”: obviously such an author existed, since the text didn’t write itself, but there was more than one of them over centuries, and we know nothing about them).

Similarly, all experts agree no one person lies behind the writings of “Hippocrates” and we know nothing reliable about “Democritus,” only that he wrote some things that were later quoted and talked about–which entails someone wrote those things, regardless of their name, so “Democritus” is as good a stand-in term for them as anything.

Likewise the evidence for Epicurus is a bit better than we have for Jesus (e.g., unlike Jesus, we have the actual writings of Epicurus himself.)

And so on.

So you really don’t get anywhere with an argument like this. Especially since no good case for the non-existence of Jesus rests on our merely not having records of him."

The 'historical hostage swap' is a perennial favorite:

'Give us Jesus or Plato gets it!'

 

[proudfootz]

You are also the only person I have ever seen here who disputes that gMark was the first of the Gospels. Is it your contention that the Author of gMark edited down his Gospel from a version of Luke? How does that work?

It's my impression the idea is that gMatthew, gMark, gLuke, and gJohn are all works compiled from previous materials (some of which they share - like gMatthew and gLuke supposedly independently take materials from the hypothetical Q text) and are not necessarily cribbing from one another.

 

[proudfootz]

OK, well, then we differ on just that one point.

But there is absolutely no obligation on any of us here to propose any specific myth theory. There is no legal force, nor any other force requiring anyone here to do that.

Richard Carrier may feel compelled to provide a specific theory, but that's because he is trying to sell a commercial book where his publishers probably insist that he does endorse some particular theory. Most publishers probably would not think it was a good business idea to try selling books which merely pointed out why the evidence was not good enough.

But beyond that it's hardly a situation crying out for some amazing explanation, as if it was impossible to imagine how uneducated superstitious people in the 1st century could possibly come to believe in a fictional miraculous deity. At that time everyone believed in one such fictional deity or other. And they had believed such things for thousands of years before anyone ever mentioned Jesus. More than half the world still believes that today (apparently).

So there is no great mystery about that. And in fact as authors like Randel Helms have shown (Gospel Fictions), the gospel stories of Jesus are easily found to have been taken from what had been written centuries before in the Old Testament as so-called "citation fulfilment". So it's quite obvious where the Jesus stories came from, and why Paul kept saying that his beliefs were "according to scripture".

The idea that we must all have some specific myth theory in order to understand how on earth messianic Jesus belief could have possibly come about unless Jesus was real person, is frankly an argument from naive incredulity which turns a blind eye to all the countless previous fictional religious deity figures. Figures which often had many features in common with the later stories of Jesus, e.g. the idea of dying and rising again as symbolic proof of salvation granted to the faithful.

It does not need any theory of Paul or anyone else deliberately inventing Jesus as a complete "lie" in order to deceive anyone. Nobody needs to have lied or invented anything. Religious beliefs of that kind were ubiquitous throughout that region, and especially the belief that Yahweh would send a saving messiah as prophesised long before in the OT.

We have about the best direct evidence we're ever likely to get of how the process of literary invention works in the Nag Hammadi cache: someone adapting a 'wise sayings' source from the 1st century BC to create a Jesus narrative.

The Sophia of Jesus Christ is clearly dependent on Eugnostos the Blessed, both of which were unearthed at Nag Hammadi (in two differing copies for each). The Sophia of Jesus Christ transforms Eugnostos into a dialogue with Jesus. Douglas M. Parrott places the two side by side in his translation for the book The Nag Hammadi Library in English edited by Robinson.

Parrott writes: "The notion of three divine men in the heavenly hierarchy appears to be based on Genesis 1-3 (Immortal Man = God; Son of Man = Adam [81,12]; Son of Son of Man, Savior = Seth). Because of the presence of Seth (although unnamed in the tractate), Eugnostos must be thought of as Sethian, in some sense. However, since it is not classically gnostic and lacks other elements of developed Sethian thought, it can only be characterized as proto-Sethian. Egyptian religious thought also appears to have influenced its picture of the supercelestial realm. The probable place of origin for Eugnostos, then, is Egypt. A very early date is suggested by the fact that Stoics, Epicureans and astrologers are called "all the philosophers." That characterization would have been appropriate in the first century B.C.E., but not later.


http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/sophia.html

Interestingly, the original savior figure in this trinity isn't named Jesus, but Seth.

 

[dejudge]

It's my impression the idea is that gMatthew, gMark, gLuke, and gJohn are all works compiled from previous materials (some of which they share - like gMatthew and gLuke supposedly independently take materials from the hypothetical Q text) and are not necessarily cribbing from one another.

The hypothetical Q text has never ever been found and no apologetic writer made reference to such a text.

The hypothetical Q is a modern invention.

Who wrote hypothetical Q?

 

[David Mo]

Richard Carrier addressed this kind of nonsense in one of his blogs:

"(...)
Similarly, all experts agree no one person lies behind the writings of “Hippocrates” and we know nothing reliable about “Democritus,” only that he wrote some things that were later quoted and talked about–which entails someone wrote those things, regardless of their name, so “Democritus” is as good a stand-in term for them as anything.

This is an evident proof that Richard Carrier is an ignorant on History of the Philosophy or a “provocateur”. Right now, I could get up from my chair, go to my modest library and find easily more that ten books written by some relevant experts on the matter that affirm the contrary. From Jaeger to Cornford. I have recently finished a book about Democritus with 260 pp. You can say that we not know too much biographical data of Democritus, but not that we cannot attribute to him some of his main writings and discern what is the democritean thought. “Democritus” is more than a “stand-in-term”. I would like to know who are the experts that agree on this.

But this is not the point. The matter is that you misunderstand my point of view. Carrier is speaking about a comparison between our knowledge of some problematic individuals in History and Jesus of Galilee.

I was searching with the four points you quote to do a comparison between the letters of Plato and those of Paul in order to establish some criteria of authenticity (dating and authorship). I was trying to speak about what are the usual criteria in Historiography and see if they are useful for the problem of Paul’s letters. And I was intending to do so without any preconceived notion. Now I wonder if this is your case.

I would like to say now what are my initial hypotheses, but I think it will be long and I am preparing my baggage to go on holiday. Perhaps in another occasion.

 

[Belz...]

The 'historical hostage swap' is a perennial favorite:

'Give us Jesus or Plato gets it!'

It's almost as if you didn't read the thread, except to confirm what you already thought.