No.

The reference you are quoting is to the mythicist hypothesis, wherein there was no Pilate execution. Jesus didn’t ever visit earth in that theology.

Paul seems to believe, as we can tell from 1 Corinthians and Galatians (and elsewhere) that the religion only recently began. Thus he clearly does not know of any Jannaean Christ gospel. So that likely post-dates Paul, just as a Pilate-executed Jesus appears to.

request for painstaking clarification: “. . . just as [i]the narrative of[/i] a Pilate-executed Jesus appears to.” = correct?

The Toledot Yeshu is, of course, late polemical fiction. But it does strangely assume the Babylonian-Nazorean storyline and shows no knowledge of the Roman-Pilate narrative. Other than that, I suspect its uses are probably limited. At the very least, proceed with caution.

Richard: “That’s why the Jannaean Jesus is evidence for a mythical Jesus (not a proof, but it weighs in that direction, not the other).”

Indeed, the Yeshu story, born in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, is evidence that indicates a mythical JC, a composite or symbolic JC figure, i.e. not a historical JC figure. But perhaps much more as well…

What the Toledot Yeshu story does do is widen the field of research for the roots of early christian history. Yes, that story is easily ridiculed or denied relevance. But, surely, if we are wanting to dig deep for the roots of early christian history, we should not be so quick to rule the Toledot Yeshu out of our field of focus.

I’ve just put up a thread on FRDB related to the Queen Helene of the Toledot Yeshu. For anyone interested, here is the link.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=7246235#post7246235

Who is the Queen Helene of the Toledot Yeshu?

That early Christians believed in a Jannaean Christ does not entail that that belief even existed in Paul’s day, much less preceded it. If Jesus was mythical, historical contexts could have been invented for him at any time decades after the religion started, allowing Eastern Christians to place him under Jannaeus, and Western Christians to place him under Pilate, independently of each other.

Paul has no idea of a Jannaean Christ either, so that is just as fake as the Pilate-executed Christ. To the contrary, Paul seems to believe, as we can tell from 1 Corinthians and Galatians (and elsewhere) that the religion only recently began. Thus he clearly does not know of any Jannaean Christ gospel. So that likely post-dates Paul, just as a Pilate-executed Jesus appears to.

That Jesus was placed in two completely different historical times and given two completely different biographies around them proves your last point false: clearly creating whole new myths from scratch was very easily done (we have many more examples in the Christian tradition, from the Infancy Gospels to the Acts of Paul), and we know this is how most myths get created (Romulus: created from scratch, borrowing materials and elements from prior Greek myths; Hercules, from scratch; Osiris, from scratch; Attis, from scratch; and so on).

It’s actually more likely that a mythical person would get two myths placing him in two different historical periods. A historical person would be extremely hard to suddenly and inexplicably “relocate” to a different historical period, as if everything about Jesus interacting with Herod and Caiaphas and Pilate and Antipas was being preached for years and then someone decided “hey, that’s all bullshit, I say he was executed a hundred years before those guys even lived!” (or vice versa). It’s a lot harder to pull that off, than for a celestial deity to be “historicized” differently in two different geographical regions.

That’s why the Jannaean Jesus is evidence for a mythical Jesus (not a proof, but it weighs in that direction, not the other).

I apologise for the long delay in replying – life and all that!

In reply to Dr. Carrier’s response at 12-1:

Third, we have the Nazoreans who have more claim to being descendants of the first Christian sect (prior even to Paul, as they were still Torah observant and did not adopt the new fangled name “Christian” for themselves), and they believed Jesus lived and died under King Alexander Jannaeus circa 70 BC. That is hard to explain if there was a historical Jesus–easier to explain if there wasn’t, and two separate historicizing myths then developed independently.

That’s an interesting point, Dr. Carrier, in that – if Christian sects existed prior to Paul, then that would disprove the claim by some mythicists that Paul “invented” Christianity: that there were no “Christians” which Paul persecuted.

Secondly, if the Jesus of King Alexander Jannaeus is the “true” one, then it could be argued that there *is* an historical Jesus, even if it’s not the one Christianity considers to be him.

Fourth, we have hints of Christian sects who denied the historicity of Jesus (in the early layer of The Ascension of Isaiah and by rebuttal in 2 Peter 1:16-2:1), we just don’t know which sects those were.

It would certainly be interesting to know if these were the followers of the earlier “Jesus” or, perhaps, those who dismissed the Jesus of Peter as the celestial one mentioned by Philo. Or, even more of a stretch, a gnostic version – perhaps the earliest reference to Docetism?

I take your points in the rest of your argument: it may well be impossible to identify an historical Jesus due to all the changes that have been made to texts, etc.

I just feel – yes, appeal to emotion(!) – that it would be easier to “hang” a myth on a real person than to create one from scratch.

Kindest regards,

James

Thank you.

I fully approve. I can’t vouch for translations done of my work, of course. But I don’t mind them being done when it’s of anything already available for free online (like that video), and is being provided to the public for free (or at no more than cost).

When it’s my books, the issue is more complicated, and prospective translators should contact me directly to work out a foreign language license.

I translated the Madison Freethought Festival presentation into Italian and published it here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1TByLBN_JEOSg8zL9dk1X84D8eX7By741LeXs9coot0s&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

This Italian version is being linked by the following post, which gives full credit to Dr. Carrier: http://uticense.blogspot.it/2012/08/richard-carrier-presenta-la-sua-teoria.html

However, since I do not claim any right on the presentation (nor on its translation) I will immediately delete it if requested.

I hope this is fine with Dr. Carrier.

First, we rarely to never hear what those sects actually believed from the sects themselves. We just have what their opponents claimed they believe, which many scholars point out we often have good reasons to distrust.

Second, we can trace none of those sects reliably to the first century. They might therefore all be descendants of the earliest historicizing sect of the late first century.

Third, we have the Nazoreans who have more claim to being descendants of the first Christian sect (prior even to Paul, as they were still Torah observant and did not adopt the new fangled name “Christian” for themselves), and they believed Jesus lived and died under King Alexander Jannaeus circa 70 BC. That is hard to explain if there was a historical Jesus–easier to explain if there wasn’t, and two separate historicizing myths then developed independently.

Fourth, we have hints of Christian sects who denied the historicity of Jesus (in the early layer of The Ascension of Isaiah and by rebuttal in 2 Peter 1:16-2:1), we just don’t know which sects those were.

Fifth, the Essenes were not a Christian sect. In fact, many so-called “sects” of Christianity may in fact have just been separate messianic Jewish sects, who worshipped or preached some Christ or other, who was not the same guy “the Christians” were talking about. The Essenes, for example, at least the Qumran subsect, appear to have believed the Christ (the final victory-producing “messiah”) was the celestial Melchizedek soon to return to earth (Melchizedek having visited earth before, to bless and feed Abraham). Could their discourse have been confused as Christian-sounding to later heresy-hunting Christians? Possibly. We don’t know.

And finally, the original Paulines might even have been the ones who invented the myth (in some form) as an exoteric teaching tool, and only initiates were told the real meaning, which would be (for us) the esoteric myth. This is exactly the case in Osiris cult, where the public myths placed Osiris in history and on earth, but higher ranking members were taught the true story, that he only dies and rises in outer space–this is explained in Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris. It would therefore be difficult to tell the difference between a true historicizing sect, and one that only appeared to be. And without their own internal documents, we often can’t tell.

This is the main problem with Christian history: even though hundreds of letters and books would have been written in the first century by many different sects, we have almost none of it. We get only a tiny selection (not even a complete selection of Paul’s letters, by the way; for example, his actual first letter to the Corinthians, which he refers to in 1 Corinthians, was not preserved…why?), and that selection being the documents the victorious church approved. We don’t even get these Christians’ polemical writings against their opponents in the first century, so we don’t even get to hear second hand what their opponents were arguing.

The first documents we get in which the victorious church’s advocates argue against opponents appear in the mid-to-late second century, a hundred years after the Pauline churches were thriving (a possible exception are the Ignatian letters, which at least are anti-Docetist, but there are serious problems with the claim that those letters actually date to the early second century). We simply do not know what happened to those churches in the interim; nor do we know what they were saying, even if they still knew the truth of the matter. How, after all, would they? Eventually no one would be left alive to vouch for their gospel being actually the original rather than a “Satanic corruption” of it.

In the battle to win the hearts and minds of the various churches, the historicists would always have the more attractive and persuasive argument, regardless of the evidence, simply because a “historical” Jesus makes for a more defensible authority figure, whereas an a-historicist would have no evidence the historicist was wrong (there not having been any historical Jesus before that, there will not be any documents “saying” he did not exist, or anything else by which to prove their case). This and other points along these lines are precisely what is argued by K.L. Knoll in Is This Not the Carpenter?

interesting videos.

As I’m currently in a discussion on the historicity of Jesus on another site, and am currently reading up more books – including yours (though it’s a pity your forthcoming book on Jesus isn’t available yet!) – on top of those I’ve already read, I’d like to take the opportunity to ask a question, which I haven’t seen addressed.

My own take is that there’s an historical figure behind the biblical Jesus – more a legend (like that of Robin Hood: there’s a core tradition, with other stories added to it, which are of the “Robin Hood was here!” type).

My problem is that, if one takes the “standard model”:
John the Baptist > Jesus > James/Peter and the various sects of Jewish Christianity (Zadokites, Essenes, Ebionites, Rechabites, Elchasites, Sabeans, Mandaeans etc.) and then remove Jesus, how can one explain these sects?

Bearing in mind that, at least one (Ebionites), saw Jesus as a purely human figure, with no divine nature.

I say this because of your mention, in the first video and in your reply to Emma Zunz (#8), of the story of Philo’s “celestial Jesus”.

In my view, although this may explain the Gnostic – particularly Docetic – take on Jesus, and may also be how Paul viewed Jesus (apart from his “conversion”), it does not explain the Ebionites’ and other Jewish Christians (including those led by James/Peter) down-to-earth perception of Jesus.

Without a historical Jesus, these sects appear to be orphaned and cannot be explained.

What is your view of this, Dr. Carrier?

Kindest regards,

James