With my move back to California and so much else going on I haven’t had time to closely read several books I want to review here, including Raphael Lataster’s peer reviewed defense of historicity agnosticism regarding Jesus, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus (Brill 2019). With my preceding monograph On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield-Phoenix 2014), this makes now two peer reviewed books against in the last hundred years; zero, for.

Thomas Brodie also recently produced a peer reviewed book explaining why he came to doubt Jesus existed, but it was only a memoir, a biography of his life and research pertaining to the subject, not an organized thesis. OHJ and QHJ, by contrast, are actual dissertations thoroughly and systematically comparing arguments for and against historicity. And yet all anyone can do to resist this challenge to the tired old consensus that originated in Christian faith is lie about what we argue (example, example, example, example, examples, examples). Which just about proves we’re right; because, evidently, no one wants to confront our actual evidence and arguments.

There has, by contrast, been no peer reviewed monograph in defense of the assumption of historicity for over a hundred years—not since Shirley Jackson Case published a now-deeply-outdated treatment for the University of Chicago in 1912 (a second edition released in 1928 isn’t substantially different). Which is so old, even mainstream scholars reject most of Case’s assumptions now (see OHJ, pp. 592-93). Which is why it’s fair to say historicity is only the consensus now by assumption, not argument; because no new defense of it has appeared. Instead, excuses are thrown together here and there for believing that assumption valid, which are all ad hoc, contradictory, contrafactual, or fallacious, and altogether ignore competing theories rather than properly ruling them out. This should worry scholars.

Alas, I can’t review Lataster’s monograph yet. But there was a brief exchange on its subject in the online trade journal Bible & Interpretation between Lataster and James McGrath, whose dishonesty on this subject has already known no bounds (example, example, example, example, example). This I can now review for you.

Lataster’s Point

Lataster begins his article “Questioning Jesus’ Historicity” by paring down the evidence, outside-in. He starts with an apt observation that even famed historicity fanatic Bart Ehrman admits we have no usable extrabiblical evidence for Jesus (emphasis now mine):

Let us start with the case of New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman who published Did Jesus Exist? in 2012. The book starts quite competently, with Ehrman rightly acknowledging how problematic the sources are. Especially important is that Ehrman recognises that we would prefer numerous, contemporary, detailed, and somewhat disinterested sources, which corroborate others’ accounts without collaboration having taking place—all those things we lack with regards to Jesus. He even downplays the importance of the earliest non-Christian references to Jesus, since they likely just reiterate what Christians at the time believed about Jesus. For example, Ehrman says, “It should be clear in any event that Tacitus is basing his comment about Jesus on hearsay rather than, say, detailed historical research”, and “whether the Testimonium is authentically from Josephus (in its pared-down form) or not probably does not ultimately matter for the question I am pursuing here. Whether or not Jesus lived has to be decided on other kinds of evidence from this” (pp. 52-66).

Lataster notes that Ehrman also agrees the only other evidence we have, Christian devotional texts, “are terrible sources,” as Lataster puts it, because “they are not contemporaneous, they are not from eyewitnesses,” and “they are biased, full of contradictions, fabrications, and implausible claims.” Ehrman does admit to all of this, even if not using exactly those words; as must every honest historian. And they ought to further admit, in consequence of that, that this is a problem.

Lataster’s point after that is that the historicity of Jesus is really only defended today on the back of purely hypothetical sources and interpretations. Not actual evidence; imaginary evidence. Ehrman says we can trust the Gospels report true facts about Jesus because “Q” and “M” and “L” really existed, and we can assume “they” are reliable…for some reason never explained. But we don’t even have any evidence those sources did exist; much less were recording any history at all, rather than just myth and legend, fiction about a cult’s magnificent, often celestial founder, no different than fiction about Osiris, Romulus, Hercules, Moses.

“Apart from his use of hypothetical sources,” Lataster goes on to point out, “Ehrman highlights two key points that apparently make Jesus’ existence a sure bet.” The first of which “is Paul’s relationships with Peter and James, who surely knew a historical Jesus.” But Paul never says they knew a historical Jesus. Other than in the same sense he did: as a celestial, revelatory being, encountered only in visions. To the contrary, Paul seems very clearly to say that that is the only way they knew him (Romans 16:25-26; Romans 10:13-14; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8; 1 Corinthians 9:1; Galatians 1:11-17). Even regarding James, Ehrman has to circularly presume his hypothesis is true in order to use Paul’s mention of James as evidence for his hypothesis (likewise people Paul never says he met nor ever even says were people). All as Lataster points out, Ehrman is fabricating evidence not in existence, and using that fabricated evidence to defend the historicity of Jesus. Worse, he is fabricating that evidence contrary to that actual contemporary eyewitness evidence, and instead basing his contrary fabrication on later myths about Jesus—circularly presuming myth to be history, in order to argue that myth is history. This is what’s fundamentally wrong with almost the entirety of Jesus studies today.

The “second” point Lataster rightly notes Ehrman leans on “is that Jews would apparently never invent a suffering Messiah.” But, Lataster observes, that is more fabricated evidence, again contrary to what evidence there actually is. There is in fact no evidence no Jews would ever conceive of such a thing—particularly counter-cultural Jews like the Christians, preaching a message of pacifist repentance rather than military rebellion. In actual fact, Judaism was at that very time extremely diverse (not absolutist, non-innovative, or obsessively orthodox); and we have many examples of Jews conceiving of suffering, even dying, messiahs, martyrs, or cultural heroes. The Christian concept is thus very conceivable, not inconceivable. In contrast with Ehrman’s baseless assertion, we have actual evidence of the point (see On the Historicity of Jesus, Chs. 4 & 5, Elements 2, 5-7, 16-18, 22-29, and 43; along with discussion of the Nickelsburg Jewish mythotype pp. 430-32; see also my previous discussions of Ehrman’s particular version of this fallacy here, here, and here).

The irony is that Ehrman actually knows this second pillar of his is fallacious because he himself explains why we should dismiss it (unaware of the fact that he is contradicting himself): “How would we know” any particular thing “about ‘every’ early Christian, unless all of them left us writings and told us everything they knew and did?” (DJE, p. 193). Replace “early Christian” with “early first century Jew” and his own argument here, refutes his own argument there. If Ehrman revised his argument to one of prior probability—instead of saying, irrationally and uninformedly, that “no” Jew thought a certain way, saying rather that it’s “unlikely” any Jew thought that way given what we do know—he is then refuted by all the evidence, which entirely supports the contrary conclusion: the established facts of Jewish diversity, creativity, and acceptance of slain and suffering heroes, martyrs, and messiahs, and the counter-cultural and anti-militarist—hence anti-orthodox—stance of the Christian sect. None of which supports, but rather contradicts, his position.

Why must historicity be defended with fallacies and counterfactual assertions? Shouldn’t it be defensible without them? Unless … it isn’t defensible. Q.E.D.

Lataster makes the same point about the only other expert’s monograph defending historicity in the last hundred years or so, the one by the late Maurice Casey—also, like Ehrman’s pop market attempt, not peer reviewed, and littered with errors. Lataster rightly notes Casey’s screed is filled with “many rudimentary errors and unscholarly comments (such as an unnecessary remark about one discussant’s sexuality)” and ultimately “has nothing substantial to add to the debate.” It, too, defends historicity with imaginary rather than actual evidence (with made up stories about non-existent sources, non-existent authors, and non-existent events); and then adds an elaborate layer of argument ad hominem in place of any kind of discernible logic. Again ask yourself: Why is this the only way to defend the historicity of Jesus?

When we sweep away all imaginary and hypothetical evidence and draw conclusions solely from actual evidence (and stop using fallacious, self-refuting arguments), we end up with at least one plausible alternative (as a dozen experts now agree): when Paul appears to say the only way anyone ever met Jesus is in visions, how it appears is how it was. That is in fact the simplest explanation of the evident facts. We can retool our hypothesis of historicity, add a bunch of ad hoc excuses for why Paul would only ever, and repeatedly, talk that way and no other, despite Jesus having recently been a renowned executed criminal who hand-picked his Disciples in life. And with that newly elaborate theory we can get the evidence in Paul at least to fit our new hypothesis. But that it fits does not make it the more probable. It rather only leaves us with at best a 50/50 chance it is what it seems, or it is what you have elaborately now proposed. So what evidence do you have that your newly elaborated theory is correct? You can’t circularly appeal to your hypothesis as evidence for your hypothesis. And you can’t fabricate evidence that doesn’t exist. So what then?

As we just saw, there is no “what then.” The historicity of Jesus, it turns out, rests on no actual evidence or valid form of argument. It depends entirely on made-up evidence, circular arguments, and self-contradictory assertions.

Looking at That Alternative

As Lataster describes it, Paul “we all know believed in the existence of sky-demons” and “spoke of Jesus” in a way suggestive of their role: in 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 Paul appears to say “Jesus was killed by the sky-demons” who “wouldn’t have killed Jesus had they known.” Could that be just a weird way to describe earthly powers, the Romans presumably? It’s possible. But how likely? Had the Romans really known killing Jesus would free the world from death, they’d have killed him. So Paul cannot be talking about them here. Only demons wanted to maintain the existence of death they brought into the world; and only demons would have understood that abolishing death would actually result from killing Jesus. The Romans would neither know nor believe such a thing—and if somehow they were genuinely convinced of it (and how do you imagine that happening?), they’d not have opposed but supported that magical effect.

Indeed, Paul outright says this: “there is no authority” on earth “except that which God has established” for “the authorities that exist have been established by God” and are in fact “God’s servants” and thus serve his will (see the entirety of Romans 13). Which means Paul cannot have imagined them so intent on thwarting God’s will that they would have not killed Jesus simply to destroy God’s plan and keep the power of death in the world.

In both passages Paul uses the same word, archon. Principally, of the earthly authorities in Romans, he uses exousia, but once switches to archon in the sentence, “For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong” (Romans 13:3), which obviously cannot be referring to the same beings as in 1 Corinthians 2:8, who oppose and seek to undo God’s will. And this is why Paul never anywhere describes those earthly authorities as “the archons of this eon,” which refers to an entire age of cosmic history (typically on the order of thousands of years); he is thus referring to beings of very extended lifespan, with esoteric magical knowledge, and a totality of sublunar power (see OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 37)—the very beings who opposed God’s will, who fully understood and believed a messianic sacrifice would disempower them and actually put an end to death in the universe. The very beings whom Paul could actually say were now “being abolished” (1 Corinthians 6:6). No such thing was happening in the 50s AD to the Romans or the Jewish elite; so this cannot be who he meant. He means the demons that Christ’s power now grants Christians the ability to overpower and expel, and from whose mortal grasp they have at last been freed.

It is thus notable that when Paul describes the Christian creed, never is Jesus ever on earth in any version thereof. In 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus only ever appears to anyone after he died; anything that happened before that, was known only from scripture. No visit to earth. No earthly ministry. In Philippians 2:5-11 we learn that they believed Jesus was a celestial being who chose to assume a human form and be killed on a stake, but curiously never does it say this occurred on earth, or by any human hands. No ministry exists in this account. No Romans or Jews, or other people at all. It’s weird that time after time, every creed Paul announced, neglects to mention any earthly presence, activity, or involvement, and even seems to exclude it (whereas only much later creeds emphasized it). So should we take this as it appears, or should we invent elaborate ad hoc hypotheses for how it can look like this, repeatedly, yet mean something else? Well, the latter would require evidence; of which there is none—outside of later mythology. The former requires only what Paul says.

This is not a fringe view. Many scholars admit Paul may be referring to demons and not human authorities—including, most recently, M. David Litwa, who concedes that when “Paul says that the ‘rulers of this age’ crucified ‘the Lord of glory’,” these rulers “are probably daimonic agents,” in How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (Yale 2019; for many other examples of scholars concurring, see n. 86 in OHJ, p. 189). Even the ancient Christian scholar Origen agreed (Commentary on 1 Corinthians, fragment 9.14-25). Maybe, scholars now often propose, Paul means these demons manipulated the humans; but note, that is not what Paul says. So even these scholars must resort to counterfactual distortions to make Paul mean what they want, despite their admitting he is overtly talking about demons here and not people.

We know ancient Jews believed there were copies of everything on earth in every level of the heavens, including the sublunar firmament (as explained in the Ascension of Isaiah, “as above so on the earth also; for the likeness of that which is in the firmament is here on the earth”). Many thought that the Garden of Eden was really located in the third heaven (Paul even describes a visit there, concurring with the account of its presence there in The Life of Adam and Eve). Talmudic Jews believed without doubt that all the heavens were populated with palaces, thrones, temples, rooms, gardens, objects of all varieties. We also know it was the standard belief at that time that Satan and his demons resided in secret castles and palaces in the sky; where they even made war on each other. (See OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 38, with Elements 34-37 supporting.)

Obviously a culture that believed all that would readily believe a person could be crucified in the sky, by those demons, in their very castles and grounds. If those demons had gardens and thrones and swords and scrolls (as many texts attest was believed), they would have their own stakes and nails too. If the third heaven could have soil and trees, so could the firmament. And if humans were believed capable on exceptional occasions of ascending into the sky, the idea of demons finding one there would not be inconceivable, but readily imaginable.

And lo, sorcerers were widely believed able to fly into the sky—the Acts of Peter describes Simon Magus doing it, and ancient texts on magic mention the ability often. And many in legend were carried aloft by demons or angels: Paul himself imagines a mortal man ascending even as far as the third heaven, and though he is uncertain if that ascent was bodily, that very uncertainty means he believed it a possibility; likewise it was widely believed Elijah flew into the sky, body and all, even to the heavens above; there were even legends Moses had done so. There is therefore nothing at all implausible about ancient apocalyptic mystics such as the Christians imagining a celestial lord assuming a mortal body (as Philippians describes), being found so by demons above, and being killed there. Indeed, the Book of Revelation appears to describe exactly this. That would be as plausible to ancient apocalyptic Jews as a celestial lord assuming a mortal body (as Philippians describes), being found so by Jews, and being killed on a hill outside an entirely human city. You cannot read Philippians as saying anything other than either of those two things. And yet both are equally weird; which means neither is inherently less likely.

So to decide between those two possibilities, we need evidence. And there really isn’t any actual evidence for the historicity option; no extrabiblical evidence helps, the Gospels are thoroughly hagiographic myth that was never verified by any known person, and the Epistles seem only to know of a celestial being who never visited Earth. At the very least this should entail some agnosticism—a significant uncertainty—regarding the historicity of Jesus; not fanatical allegiance to the idea.

Enter McGrath

James McGrath published a response piece in the same online trade journal, “Exorcising Mythicism’s Sky-Demons: A Response to Raphael Lataster’s ‘Questioning Jesus’ Historicity’.” To which Lataster there replied, “When Critics Miss the Point About Questioning Jesus’ Historicity.” This was all in August of 2019.

McGrath begins with a bizarre complaint about Lataster being or claiming to be a “secular scholar,” as if McGrath has no idea that Christian faith undermines any objective reaction to the hypothesis that Jesus never existed, so it matters whether someone has that immovable faith-bias or not. Atheists don’t need Jesus not to exist; there are plenty of mundane, historical Jesus theories that amply fit the evidence (indeed, I give good odds on them, a whole 1 in 3). But Christians, in contrast, need Jesus to exist; otherwise they are questioning their entire religion, faith, worldview, mortality, sense of justice—their entire identity. Yes, we know this isn’t determinative. Christians can sometimes be objective enough not to succumb to these biases; and atheists can have less essential biases in the other direction. But it is relevant. Ultimately, only people who already accept Jesus isn’t God, can honestly debate whether he even existed at all.

McGrath then contradicts himself by claiming to accept mainstream facts about the sources (such as that the Gospels are highly legendary, and no non-Christian sources usable), and then immediately insinuating the Gospels were actually written by Disciples—which no mainstream scholar believes! “I trust,” McGrath bizarrely argues “that most readers will agree that it would be ludicrous to suggest that disciples of Socrates or Confucius (to give a couple of examples) cannot be trusted to inform us about whether these were actual human beings.” True. But we don’t have any Disciples of Jesus telling us that. That’s Lataster’s point. Thus immediately McGrath exposes his Christian bias, leading him to make irrational, irrelevant, even contradictory arguments for the historicity of Jesus.

Plus, it’s a minor point, but I should note we don’t have any Disciples writing about Confucius either; and his historicity is actually not so certain. All sources for him are extremely late and themselves unsourced, and there is much to be suspicious of. But ultimately he wasn’t a highly-mythologized and worshiped savior deity first declared to be seen in visions, so the priors against some version of Confucius existing aren’t as strong (see my brief remarks on Confucius specifically, and on that methodological point generally, in So What About Hannibal, Then?). But for Socrates, I already showed in On the Historicity of Jesus (Ch. 8.2) that in fact if we had the evidence for Jesus that we have for Socrates, the historicity of Jesus would be assured. It is only because we don’t that it’s doubtable. Why does McGrath not know this? He claims to have read my book. Clearly he didn’t. That sounds a lot like lying to me.

It also sounds a lot like lying when McGrath rightly notes that historians accept that all sources have biases and yet often can still reconstruct history from them, but then claims “mythicism does not take the force of such arguments as seriously as it deserves.” I do nothing but take that point seriously in OHJ. As I have illustrated time and again since (see every example listed in the first paragraph of my article on Spartacus). It is literally impossible for anyone who actually read On the Historicity of Jesus to actually believe I do not accept that principle as a strong and legitimate point that any argument for ahistoricity must overcome. Indeed, my entire book is precisely about that very point! So why does McGrath have to defend historicity with lies like this?

McGrath lies again when he argues Lataster is wrong to criticize Ehrman’s extraction of evidence for historicity from the Gospels as deeply illogical—and it is: I cite, summarize, and expand on numerous scholars proving the arguments he uses to do this are indeed illogical and unusable on the Gospels, in my other peer reviewed book on this very point, Proving History (and you’ll find countless examples specific to Ehrman here). Indeed McGrath’s insistence that no one needs the Gospels as evidence for historicity anymore would even appear to be agreeing with Lataster on this very point. Yet McGrath then contradicts himself and the facts by claiming at this point that “Historians do not depend on the Gospels, much less hypothetical sources behind them, for their conclusion that there was a historical Jesus.” Holy balls, Batman. Dr. MacGrath, that is a lie. Ehrman does that extensively. So did Casey. And Lataster documents this in his peer reviewed book extensively. So Lataster must address this argument, because it is an argument historicists like Ehrman commonly make; and Lataster is right to say these arguments they use to try and extract evidence from the Gospels are illogical and would not fly in any other field of history. Because they wouldn’t. Which is why no one can ever find any examples of them doing so, from any kind of comparable sources.

All McGrath then does is repeat the same arguments Lataster had just pointed out the flaws of, without responding to any of the reasons these arguments are flawed. For example, McGrath says “The letters of Paul” were “written within decades of Jesus’ life by someone who had met his brother,” but we actually don’t know that: Paul says every baptized Christian was Jesus’s brother. So when he says someone is his brother, does he mean actually, or ritually? Paul does not tell us. And yet we should expect he would—if he knew there was a difference, which means there wasn’t. And that means Paul only knew of one kind of “Brother of the Lord,” the cultic kind. That’s the only kind he ever discusses in his letters. So how can we know he ever knew of biological brothers? This is a problem for historicity. McGrath just pretends he’s never been told any of this.

McGrath then says we can argue for historicity by combining that flawed argument “not only with the Gospels” (even though he just argued historicists don’t need the Gospels so mythicists shouldn’t bother explaining why we can’t use them) “but also Roman and Jewish sources” which Lataster just quoted Ehrman himself arguing are unusable for this purpose (and Ehrman is right). It’s as if McGrath didn’t even read what Lataster wrote, or bizarrely ignored it; and as if McGrath wasn’t just told plenty of mainstream historians agree such sources can’t be used this way; and as if he wasn’t just told why the Gospels are unusable as well (his response to that simply ignores what Lataster said). So McGrath wants us to listen to mainstream historians, except when their views undermine his arguments, then we’re to ignore mainstream historians—for no logical reason. This is profoundly irrational. Even more irrationally, McGrath is acting like arguments against relying on the Gospels we should just ignore altogether, and answer instead with completely irrelevant, factual false arguments about what Lataster and I have actually said about that—and said under peer review no less.

Further exhibiting completely irrational behavior, McGrath then throws in a totally irrelevant—and again bizarre—argument against Lataster’s use of “William Lane Craig” as an example, feigning indignation at how dare Lataster suggest Ehrman is just like Craig. But this reveals McGrath didn’t even pay attention to what Lataster’s point was: Lataster is agreeing with McGrath, that Craig and Ehrman are so unalike that Ehrman should know better than to be using Craig’s shoddy methods, which belong to apologetics and not real scholarship. Lataster is pointing out a simple, undeniable fact: that Ehrman nevertheless is using those shoddy methods; which is a red flag for that very reason. What is McGrath’s argument against Lataster’s actual point? Nothing whatever. McGrath simply ignores what Lataster said, pretends he said something else, and defends Ehrman with a fallacious “Argument from Prestige” that doesn’t address the evidence Lataster just presented of a problem in Jesus studies.

McGrath similarly wastes word count arguing “nothing … has been identified that reflects Bantu languages” are behind the Gospels, and “Lataster offers no case to suggest otherwise,” as if Lataster actually suggested otherwise. Does McGrath literally not comprehend what Lataster actually said? That would suggest a literacy incompetence below the level of even an average high school student. Lataster did not say the hypothesized lost sources of Jesus were written in Bantu; he said it wouldn’t matter what language they were written in, it still wouldn’t establish them as not just as mythical and made-up as the Gospels we have. So again McGrath completely ignores Lataster’s actual point, and confidently responds to a point Lataster never made, which response completely fails to answer Lataster’s argument—an argument, in fact, that McGrath never answers. This is, again, profoundly irrational.

McGrath then reveals he has not read either Lataster’s or my book, when he gets completely confused about what Lataster means by “sky” demons. Like some drunk uncle, McGrath complains that surely everyone in antiquity thought demons spent time on earth around humans, not so much in the sky, so what’s with all this sky demon stuff? That remark reveals a total—and by this point we must assume wilful—ignorance of all ancient Jewish literature on demonology. In OHJ (see, again, Chapter 5, Elements 34-38), I document extensively that Jews commonly believed the entire region between the earth and the moon (hence including “the sky” as the vast majority of that space) was populated by demons, that these demons principally resided in their own thrones and dominions in the sky above, and occasionally visited or influenced events below (some few even tended matters “below” the earth, but that wasn’t as prominent an idea until later).

Ironically, McGrath then uses circular reasoning to accuse Lataster of circular reasoning: he makes another argument that Paul is really talking about demons influencing Romans in 1 Corinthians 2, as if Lataster and I haven’t already pointed out why that neither makes sense of the text nor gets you to the conclusion—it’s just another speculation as to what Paul meant, one that has less evidence in its support, is more contrary to what Paul wrote, and requires more ad hoc suppositions. But even were that not all the case, we are left at 50/50: what Paul means Paul does not say. This is not circular reasoning. This is simply an accurate description of the facts. It is McGrath who is arguing in a circle when he tries to escape this problem by assuming Paul means what McGrath wants him to meant, then uses this as evidence that that’s what Paul meant. No, Dr. McGrath. That’s irrational. If you want that to be the more probable reading of Paul you must present actual evidence of it—and you’ve offered none. Whereas we have presented ample evidence against—which you simply ignore. Why?

And that’s it. That’s all James McGrath has to offer his profession.

Lataster’s brief reply addresses some of these as well as several other aspects of McGrath’s fallacious and ad hominem response to his essay, so is worth reading as well. “As is to be expected,” Lataster points out regarding the imaginary sources invented by scholars in Jesus studies, “McGrath was unable to explain why we should trust those sources, and why we should trust, say, his own hypothetical sources, instead of a conservative Christian’s, or a fringe mythicist’s.” Indeed. McGrath simply asserts. He never gives any evidence in support of any of his assertions. And yet often the actual evidence is against them; or does not exist in support of them. This is the exact opposite of sound scholarshnip. By contrast, Lataster and I marshal extensive evidence for our every claim. Which McGrath simply ignores. This is not how honest history gets done. So why is this all that McGrath does? Or any historicist?

The Name of Jesus

To illustrate all of the above, especially the fact that McGrath ignores every argument we make, consider one last example. In a closing footnote he says “it would be surprising for a purely celestial figure to have an ordinary human name” like “Jesus,” and suggests we don’t know this is actually just an English rendering of “Joshua.” In fact we well know all that; I devote several paragraphs to it in OHJ (Ch. 6.3). Following is what I wrote there—note how McGrath completely ignores every single point I made, and pretends we said none of this, and offers instead an argument that addresses not a single thing we did say:

The name ‘Jesus Christ’ literally means ‘Savior Messiah’, which actually just means ‘Anointed Savior’. The author of the Gospel of Matthew was well aware of this, and even made a point of it [Mt. 1:20-21]. Jesus is an English derivation from the Greek spelling of the Hebrew name Joshua (Yeshua), which means ‘Yahweh saves’. Christ is from the Greek christos, meaning ‘anointed’, which in Hebrew is māšîaḥ, ‘messiah’.

That should make us suspicious from the start. Isn’t his name abnormally convenient? The ‘Christ’ part was assigned by those who believed he was the messiah, and thus not accidental. But what are the odds that his birth name would be ‘Savior’, and then he would be hailed as the Savior? Are historical men who are worshiped as savior gods usually so conveniently named? No, not usually. Are mythical men who are worshiped as savior gods usually so conveniently named? Surely more often than historical men are. [Analogously, the mythical Abraham is conveniently named (‘father of many’) in Gen. 17.5 (and his original name, Abram, ‘exalted father’, is no less convenient), similarly anticipating what he would become in the future, which doesn’t tend to happen in the real world.] Obviously it’s more likely that a mythical godman would be conveniently named than that a historical one would be. Indeed, I would expect the ratio must surely exceed 2 to 1. That is, for every deified man who is conveniently named, there are surely at least two mythical god-men with convenient names. And that even looks too generous to me—the actual ratio must surely be higher than 2 to 1.

…

Even if we tried to work the question from the probability of any Jew actually being named Jesus (which is roughly 1 in 26) [as tabulated by Bauckham] in comparison to the probability of any savior god being named Savior (among that god’s many names, and Jesus also had many names, from Christ to Lord to Emmanuel), we’d end up even worse off. Because probably most savior gods were called Savior (sōtēr in Greek), I’d say that ratio is closer to 1 in 2, and that is over ten times more likely than 1 in 26, not just two times more likely as we were suggesting before. But again, we don’t have clear or reliable data to build this result from; we’d just be working again from plausible but still hypothetical datasets.

OHJ, pp. 239-40

Consequently (as I go on to explain) I don’t use any of these arguments for the prior probability of Jesus; I look for better data sets. But note that these observations already refute McGrath’s nonsense here about “celestials” not typically getting “ordinary” names. That argument completely ignores the fact that this “ordinary” name actually has a peculiarly apposite meaning (a fact McGrath peculiarly fails to mention) which was routinely attached to celestials (a great many of whom were named “Savior” precisely because that’s what they were). Indeed, to celestial savior deities it was a name given far more commonly than to historical Jews. So there is nothing “unusual” about this happening on mythicism. To the contrary, this specific name is unusual on historicity; it entails a bizarre coincidence, a coincidence mythicists have no need of in their theory.

What does McGrath have to say against any of this? Nothing. What effect does what McGrath did say have on any of this? Nothing. So why say it?

Conclusion

After this long, irrational, factless screed James McGrath laments that “it is because of my great appreciation for the way academic research proceeds that I find mythicism…such a huge disappointment.” Yet he is the one demonstrating Jesus studies to be the huge disappointment: judging by how he argues, the only thing mainstream Jesus studies has to offer in defense of its assumptions is lying about the evidence or the contrary arguments, ignoring the evidence or contrary arguments, inventing arguments that weren’t made and arguing against them instead, arguing in a circle, contradicting yourself, and cherry picking (as in, simply choosing with no sound reason given) which mainstream views to take as rote and which to reject. If historicity were defensible, none of this would be necessary. And yet it’s all James McGrath has. Please ask why.