See my discussion on OHJ (Ch. 11). Paul is arguing in Gal. 1 that anyone who receives the gospel through flesh and blood is a fraud (more specifically, that’s the argument against him that he is responding to, by swearing he didn’t receive it that way, and that anyone who does, should be condemned). That entails no one else got it any other way. And 1 Corinthians 15 establishes that Paul saw no difference in how he received the gospel from any other apostle (it was all in post-mortem visions, without distinction of mechanism; Jesus teaching it before his death to anyone is never mentioned). Likewise in 1 Cor. 9 Paul assumes that an apostle simply is defined as one who received a revelation of Jesus like he did. He repeats the same assumption in Romans 16:25-26 (the teaching of Jesus is there said to be learned only by revelation and scripture; no other mechanism is mentioned) and in Romans 10 (where he says no Jew ever heard Jesus’s teaching except from apostles, which entails revelation was the only way to learn it known to him). And conspicuously, Paul never has to respond to the argument that he didn’t learn from Jesus in the way the other apostles did. Not anywhere in 20,000 words. Even Gal. 1 weirdly has him respond to the opposite argument, requiring him to swear up and down that he only got it by revelation, meaning that was the only respectable way to receive it that anyone credited.

16 to reveal His Son in ME so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood,

11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by ME is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Carrier –

I’m with you on most accounts in this post, but am having a tough time seeing how you transfer Paul’s first person account in the passages you site to “all” apostles? It seems clear that Paul is speaking only of himself. What am I missing?

Good ideas! Thanks. I especially liked the analysis about Eusebius and lying, which I hadn’t heard of before.

That’s possible. And well worth adding to the list of things like that that we know. See also Eusebius’s Christian defense of the legitimacy of lying.

But it’s also possible they didn’t really care about God’s approval, or didn’t even think to look for scriptural support. As for example when Joseph Smith fabricated the Book of Mormon or Mohammed (or whoever) fabricated the Quran. Those people clearly knew they were 100% making shit up. And falsely passing it off as delivered by angels from God. The same motives that moved them, could have moved any Christian author in antiquity.

People conflate religion with politics, and use religious discourse to “convince” people of socio-political policies (like the sets of rules and allegiance policing the define a religion or a sect thereof). And in pursuit of that often it is not even relevant to them what God thinks, or if they even really think there is a God (many likely didn’t; pretending to be a theist, was a common occupation among the ancient elite, as still today). And for those who even really believed, the same reasoning as “kill them all, God will sort them out” applies to lying: “I can tell any lie I want; God will judge whether it was to his glory or not.” See Chapter 10 of Not the Impossible Faith for the anthropology of this.

Almost all religious literature, in all ancient religions, was fake. So in fact, lying was not an exception. It was exceptionally the norm. See Element 44 in Chapter 5 of On the Historicity of Jesus on that point. Since all religions did this routinely, evidently scriptural support was unnecessary.

And it was standard elite ideology across all religions that lying was always acceptable as long as there was a “meta-level” truth your lie supported. Hence the “double truth” system admitted to by Origen (in the third century) as standard-operating-procedure among the Christian elite: stories would be written and passed off as literally true to convert the simpletons, while the “real meaning” is some deeper abstraction only symbolized by the literal story that is actually literally false but “spiritually” true. This reasoning is defended by Plato and even the Jewish theologian Philo. See Elements 13 and 14 in Chapter 4 of OHJ.

There are of course many precedents in Judeo-Christendom for forging documents in the names of respected authorities to swindle a populace into thinking it came from that authority. The book of Daniel. The forged sections of Isaiah. Etc.

“And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him … I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him and prevail also; go forth and do so. (1 Kings 22:21-22).”

No one says the mythologization in Mark entails Jesus didn’t exist. Rather, it reduces the probability that he exists. Just as it does for Hercules and Dionysus and Osiris and everyone else. The question is, by how much. And you need frequency data to answer that. How often do people actually like Jesus get made up entirely, vs. mythologized from a real person? That gets you a prior. Which affects the final calculation. But is not the final calculation.

However, even if the Gospel of Mark is a literary invention that doesn’t reflect the events in the life of Jesus, this still doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t exist. Maybe Mark wanted to write a narrative piece of eschatological or apocalyptic writing depicting historical figures he knew like John The Baptist, Pilate, and Jesus caught up in events at the end of time.

Regarding Dr. Dennis R.MacDonald’s new book “The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides (2017),” I wrote a guest blog post at Vridar a few years ago about the relationship between Euripides’ Bacchae and The New Testament here: http://vridar.org/2015/09/27/new-testament-in-the-greek-literary-matrix/

Also, on the relationship between Dionysus and the Gospel of John, Vridar has previously posted this: http://vridar.org/?s=dionysus+john+gospel

Dr. MacDonald’s new book should be excellent!: https://www.amazon.com/Dionysian-Gospel-Fourth-Euripides/dp/1506423450/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1495901062&sr=8-3&keywords=dennis+macdonald

One of the big themes I outline in the blog post is the connection between the New Testament and Euripides’ Bacchae.

The key verse from the Bacchae seems to be when Cadmus says “Even if this man (Dionysus) be no God, as you think, still say that he is.  Be guilty of a splendid fraud, declaring him to be the son of Semele, for this will make it seem she is the mother of a God, and will confer honor on all our race.”

Imagine my surprise when I found out today that Dr. Dennis R. MacDonald just published a book called:
“The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides (2017).”

Wow!

It’s hard to say if Paul really believed the end was coming, or only used that as a device to motivate moral and social action. Either is possible.