Merci again for all your explanations, patience and time, Dr Carrier. Even if we do not share same beliefs as I’m an agnostic deist with spiritual views, you were quite respectful, which I didn’t see much from Christian fundamentalists wishing everyone to go to Hell or from dogmatic atheists trolling and bashing on everything that is not atheism.

Sure on some points I do agree with atheist, there is no personal God walking around the planet, watching for us…

I’m now following your blog for almost 1 year now. It was my decision to know more about you and your work and not let the Christian bashers determine my view about mythicism as I wanted to go 360 as an amateur in the field.

I’m also critic and open minded, which is why I’m agnostic and deist. Atheism as theism, with respect to your position, seem to me more like the two sides of the same coin, and I’m trying to get in the third way, as we don’t know everything about Universe, life on Earth, etc.

I’ve worked in medical field until 2016 with people having mental health issues and having myself a PTSD, and my view from my biology and pathology courses were like : Are we on Earth like a human cell in the body of the Universe / God / Creator. Or a drop of water into all the Oceans that surround us.

I’m amazed to read your work and like you said in your 12 points on this post, you really have to be critic toward all the information and the evidences (9 and 11).

It sadden and disapointed me a lot to learn there is not much evidences about a real Jesus out there. But as you already mentionned, you were not into mythicist, until you started your own research…

For me Jesus, as Buddha, Krishna were kind of Saints or Masters that came down to guide mankind and than Religions came along with their agenda and corrupted all. I was portraying Jesus doing like Martin Luther King (Jesus in the Temple going against the merchants) and Gandhi, which were great men from XXth century.

Also book I’ve loved from a French modern philosopher that studies religions: Frédéric Lenoir, that was about Socrate, Buddha and Jesus: https://www.fredericlenoir.com/essais/socrate-jesus-bouddha-trois-maitres-de-vie/

But as you point out evidences are dim to nothing.
I’m looking forward to have your book with some impatience. My spouse will buy it for my upcoming birthday !

Hope to see you in Montreal, Quebec, Canada for your next tour and lecture in 2018 !!!

I find that thinking far too speculative and of no use. It’s funny how biblical scholars will do that, and then ridicule those mythicists who are just as speculative and fact-less as that. They should turn that criticism back on themselves.

Goodacre proved GThom is based on the Synoptics. And we have no evidence anything GThom adds to that base existed before. And what we have no evidence for, we can’t argue.

The method applied is fallaciously circular as well: if one excludes all the cross/resurrection/church sayings and then claim wow isn’t it amazing that what’s left has no church/resurrection/cross sayings, one badly needs a course in logic. I point out this flaw in respect to Bermejo-Rubio, who does the same thing to the Synoptics.

Likewise, the church began fundamentally about cross/resurrection/church (Paul repeatedly attests these were core to the creed from day one, and attests no other version of the religion). So to find it missing does not argue for early. It argues for late: someone is trying to change things away from where they originally were. And this gets to the problem of where new sayings come from. Jesus? A later innovator? A Jewish or pagan sage they are borrowing sayings from for Jesus? Or some other revelator? Even if original (e.g. somehow they predate even Paul), are these just the revelations of a different apostle, maybe one of those condemned by Paul in Gal. 1 as listening to deceiving angels? In short, you can’t get to historicity this way.

So I don’t treat GThom in OHJ. It’s post-canon. And therefore derivative, late, and useless. And any suggestion otherwise is not fact but speculation. And speculation in = speculation out. That’s of no use when we are trying to ascertain what’s probable, not just what’s “possible.”

(OHJ, p. 94, n. 66, and p. 273, and p. 274, n. 41, summarize much of the above, and cites experts concurring, on why I don’t consider it evidence of anything in the first century.)

Ok I understand the whole here. Are you covering the Gospel of Thomas in OHJ? Some scholars seem to think its oldest parts were written even before Mark, like the Q source, because it’s only Jesus’ sayings, no cross, no resurrection. Also no need of churches or temples in some of his sayings or that his only fake assumptions as well?

John is using miracles that way; the Synoptics were not. And that’s actually intentional (John does not like what the Synoptics were saying). I discuss this in my section on John in Ch. 10 of OHJ.

As to Peter and Paul, their Jesus was a celestial archangel only known through mystic visions. They had no knowledge yet of a minister traveling Galilee. In fact, Paul all but says Jesus performed no miracles in life at all (Phil. 2 says he surrendered all his powers and became a slave to the natural order; elsewhere he says no signs were performed before the Jews; etc.). So they weren’t even looking for “men” to build a “historical” Jesus out of. That task wasn’t even attempted until the first Gospel was written, likely Mark, after the Jewish War, which so far as we know was after all the original apostles, including Peter and Paul, were dead.

Thanks again for your comment and answer, so nice to be communicating with someone of your level of knowledge !

I’m looking to buy your book on Amazon Canada, price was reduce from 55 $ to 45 $…. But still I’m trying to deal it from Amazon.com from a independant seller.

One last point about your saying in the last paragraph: “And that is different from Jesus originating by amalgamation of many persons (which cannot have happened: Jesus begins an archangel in Jewish angelology, and is suddenly a singular figure at the launch of Christianity—if historicity is true, his twelve knew who he was, so they certainly weren’t inventing him out of other people yet; ”

Maybe my comparison will be weak, but I was seeing it a little bit like what Mel Gibson did in his historical drama : Braveheart, with the historical William Wallace. All that revenge part never happened and else.

Even in the movie they have almost made a joke about it, when people were spreading his legend of a 7 foot tall warrior and so on…

Either Jesus was real or not, couldn’t that be that either Peter or Paul would just boast their story to match already known Deity for Paul and for Peter he was the true Messiah ? Or even trying in Paul case to create some kind of a new Hercules of Jesus, as a champion of the poor and the widow.

Isn’t it what we are seeing from Gospel of Mark to the Gospel of John ? That in each Gospel they are boasting Jesus’ deeds with more miracles, John having even that miracle for the wedding of Cana ?

I discuss in OHJ the scholarship pointing out Christian wisdom came from preceding movements (e.g. Cynic philosophy and Jewish counter-cultural sects) and their own internal reformers (e.g. Paul invented the Torah-free gospel, and “by revelation” came up with a bunch of “laws” from “Jesus”; on minimal mythicism, the first apostles, especially Peter, would have been doing the same).

No differently than “where did all the wisdom in the Book of Mormon come from” or “where did all the wisdom in the John Frum cult come from” or “where did the Torah and Mishnah come from if there was no Moses” and so on.

Christians were doing the same things Rabbis were doing: inventing, selecting, and disseminating their own favorite wisdom. And giving it authority by “crediting it” to Jesus. This isn’t even a controversial hypothesis. All mainstream scholars agree this is where most of the wisdom in the Gospels came from. They continue to debate what little of it may still go back to Jesus. A lot of them, think very little does (just look at the results of the Jesus Seminar!).

So, yes, this is a “many sources” conclusion. The same way probably Homer came to be composed, and the Fables of Aesop came to be collected. And the “teachings” of Moses. No one author. Just many contributors over time, all assigning their innovations to a one respected authority, so people will pay attention.

This is a little different from the biography of Jesus being assembled from many sources (though that seems evident too, historicity or not). And that is different from Jesus originating by amalgamation of many persons (which cannot have happened: Jesus begins an archangel in Jewish angelology, and is suddenly a singular figure at the launch of Christianity—if historicity is true, his twelve knew who he was, so they certainly weren’t inventing him out of other people yet; and if mythicism is true, his twelve only knew him by revelation, which would mostly be at the suggestive influence of Peter, and not as a historical figure to even be amalgamated in the first place…that happened decades later).

Thanks for your reply Dr Carrier ! As being born and raise from Catholic ground and roots, even in an earlier age I was disputing my mother about Paul…

Today I no longer consider myself as a Christian, but agnostic with deist views, and honnestly I still use some of Jesus’ saying in my personal life as carry your cross or forgive your enemy (truly a hard one) and I can see the wisdom of some.

If Jesus never existed, where that wisdom comes from, knowing that the 4 Gospels were not written by the apotles?

Also in a previous post we spoke about the probability that Jesus was a construct of more than one person?

Could that wisdom be taken from multiple sources as well?

Paul would in that case have constantly had to argue why his revelations equal having known and been taught and handpicked in life by Jesus. Instead, he argues as if revelation is the only way anyone, even the original apostles he was competing with and trying to court, ever met Jesus. Likewise, Paul is courting the original apostles, trying to get their endorsement. Rather than trying to turn people against them. He wants to integrate his novel ideas with theirs, rather than steal their congregations.

Certainly, we should not assume Paul is always being honest. But even a liar is restrained to lies that actually have any chance of working, and has to defend himself against challenges. Those restraints and challenges then become visible. From that we can reconstruct a lot of what was really going on. But when we do that, “what was really going on” seems mysteriously never to be a real Jesus, only a revelatory one.

More in Ch. 11 of On the Historicity of Jesus.

My arguments if they are valid are that we cannot tell all the people from the 3rd class that have died on the Titanic wreck that happened a hundred years ago, how can we assume for someone that might have lived or not 2000 years ago. Even homeless people die everyday with no ID, no relatives and being buried in nameless grave…

My other question and I’m not familiar with all your work is why Paul can be trusted on anything he has written. My point is he was persecuting Jesus’ followers sect in the beginning, if that story is to be believe.

Couldn’t be possible he was more like an infiltrating agent and his way to gain credibility amongst followers and Gentiles was to create that BS story about having revelations of a Jesus ? Like Mormon book fairy tales ?

Narcissistic leaders can be doing much everything to gain fame and power, because why Paul was eager to get away from Jewish tradition in order to gain Gentiles over to his ministry ?
So maybe there was a Jesus out there, but Paul came out to divide these people to prevent any movement to grow out in Judea in pushing for a more Godly Jesus than human…

Isn’t a perfect way to divide to better conquer and confuse as Roman were good at, knowing that Paul has his Roman citizenship ?

Thanks for your patience and clarification 🙂