An interesting exchange just occurred at MerionWest. Peter Clarke wrote a decent essay on why it is becoming more acceptable to doubt the historicity of Jesus than scholars tend to let on, which Paul Krause answered with “In Reply to ‘Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream’.” Unfortunately, Krause didn’t do any research on the question, but only read Clarke’s essay and maybe skimmed one or two casual video conversations about it, rather than reading the peer reviewed literature on the point (not good behavior for a scholar). The result is predictable scholarly mistakes. But Krause did catch me in one myself that I will correct here, as well as his.

I’ll start with mine. In a video conversation recently I was asked to think of examples of heroes who came from obscure places, and I gave the incorrect example of Romulus hailing from Alba Longa. Krause is right. Though Alba Longa was an obscure and trivial town when the Romulus myth originated, it was in legend an important origin of past kings long before. This makes it actually more comparable to Bethlehem for Jesus, which was also an obscure and unimportant town when the Gospels were written, but had been in legend an important origin of past kings. So this was a bad example that didn’t address what I was asked to produce. This doesn’t appear anywhere in my peer reviewed scholarship on mythicism, however. It was just a casual mistake that came up in an open conversation. A better example would have been Dionysus being born in the obscure town of Ikaria, or Theseus, mythical founder of Athens, being born in the (then) obscure city-state of Troezen (not even in Attica), or Osiris’s birth in the otherwise (at the time) obscure town of Rosetau, instead of the nearby prestigious cities of Memphis or Abydos. Prestige of city wasn’t the criterion for assigning heroes hometowns. As I noted in that same conversation, Jesus was only assigned to Nazareth because scripture said he should be.

Beyond that, everything Krause says is false. Even in his first paragraph, his assertion that “no one in any historical-critical religious studies department reads” mythicist arguments, a well-poisoning fallacy (“if no expert takes this seriously, neither should you,” move along, nothing to see here)—except, to this day some twenty experts do take this seriously (probably more; those are just the ones documented), and most definitely do read things written on this. Krause might do well to listen to them. Even the half or so who still conclude Jesus existed agree it is not implausible to doubt it, and that any peer reviewed cases for doing so are worth taking seriously. Of which there are now at least two, my publication with Sheffield-Phoenix in 2014, On the Historicity of Jesus, and Raphael Lataster’s publication with Brill in 2019, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. By contrast, there has yet to be any dedicated peer reviewed monograph defending the historicity of Jesus for almost a hundred years now. That’s not even one, much less the “thousands” Krause goes on to falsely claim (so, of course, he names none). So far, all we get are books presuming historicity and arguing over different models of it, with at best a few paragraphs on the question of historicity itself; or mere review articles that ignore the actual case now made against it (I maintain a catalogue). This does not make Krause’s position look particularly good. It seems more an ostrich position than one well-founded. Again, notice that well-poisoning fallacy: it is an excuse not to examine the case; not an actual response to that case. That this typifies the behavior of academia is not to its credit. Nor to the credit of its case.

Krause exemplifies this head-in-sand approach throughout his article, where not even once does he ever reference the content of either Carrier 2014 or Lataster 2019. He simply avoided it. Yet he then claims to be able to produce a response to it. This is not the kind of scholarship whose opinion anyone should trust. Krause does even worse than that, though, as he litters his article with emotional fallacies instead, dishonest manipulation from top to bottom. For example, in his very first paragraph he includes not just one, but two well-poisoning fallacies, falsely accusing any doubting the historicity of Jesus of having an “anti-Semitic origin” by “seeking to divorce Jesus from his Jewish context.” Uhem. If he had read either of the peer reviewed cases against historicity now in print, he’d find neither of them “divorce Jesus from his Jewish context” but extensively situate him in that context. So Krause both lies (claiming to know a thing about our work that is in fact false) and deploys those lies into outrageous ad hominem (calling us anti-Semites).

His second paragraph continues these dishonest and disgraceful tactics, disparaging me personally (and likewise Robert Price, and our popularizer David Fitzgerald) without giving a single example of anything he claims about me (or them). Never once does he address any argument in my peer reviewed book on this subject, or even cite any challenge to it (or even bring up anything they’ve argued, either). Which he could have done, yet that would then lay upon him the responsibility of honestly evaluating whether it was valid—which would require pulling his head out of the sand and actually reading my book. Which he is clearly terrified of doing. Why?

His third paragraph then makes false claims about the nature and evidence of archetypal structure shared across countless pagan myths that are also shared across the myths composed of Jesus. As also, of course, are archetypal structures borrowed from Jewish myths (especially of Moses and Elijah, primary models of emulation in Gospel tales about Jesus, a fact on which all mainstream scholars agree); the Gospel Jesus, after all, being an amalgam of both, as all studies of syncretism show is the normal process by which new religions are formed, particularly within imperial power systems (see OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 29, and Ch. 4, Element 11). In other words, Krause simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He isn’t responding to the evidence and argument we’ve presented. He’s just gainsaying it without even knowing what it is.

His fourth paragraph then pauses to repeat the false ad hominem and well-poisoning fallacies that doubting the historicity of Jesus is anti-Semitic, based now on the genetic fallacy, that it must be if that’s how the idea started over a hundred years ago. It’s not. But never mind that. It doesn’t matter if some anti-Semite somewhere has pushed an anti-Semitic version of mythicism (whether now or in the long gone annals of history), as that has nothing whatever to do with the version that has actually passed peer review by respectable biblical studies publishers today. This is an excuse not to examine that. Not an argument that it is incorrect. (Need I list all the anti-Semitic defenses of historicity here?) Krause is arguing for going full apocryphal ostrich on this. This is a behavior of fear, not reason.

In his fifth paragraph Krause deploys the rather lame fallacy that Jesus had to be real because his teachings were special. They aren’t. (No seriously, they really aren’t.) But never mind that all savior cults predating Christianity also had ethical teachings at their core (OHJ, p. 100, n. 79). Even were that not true, it is still not logically valid to argue that Jesus had to be real because his teachings were impressive. Any human being (indeed, any whole community) can have originated those teachings, and then placed them in the voice of a beloved character. Just as happened with Moses. No mainstream scholar today believes Moses existed. And none would be such a fool as to argue “Moses had to have existed, because look at how special the 613 commandments are that he brought down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai!” This can’t be described any more honestly than, quite simply, stupid. Why deploy such a stupid argument? (Other than that you’re a Christian apologist, and not even attempting to do any real scholarship here?)

Krause’s sixth paragraph circles back to his prior point and goes on about the differences between Osiris and Jesus myth, and though he gets some facts wrong (for example, in the form of the cult Christians would have been emulating— consciously or not—Osiris ascends to heaven after his resurrection, he does not descend to live in the underworld: OHJ, pp. 118 & 186), nothing he says in this paragraph is even relevant to any peer reviewed case for Christian syncretism. To see what I mean, just take an example accepted across all mainstream scholarship: the Nativity narrative of Matthew is an emulation of nativity myths of Moses (not only in the OT, but it draws on Jewish apocrypha as well). You’d look like a stone cold idiot if you stood up at an SBL conference and tried to argue that that can’t be because “look at all the differences!” Why, Herod isn’t even a Pharaoh! And there’s no basket of reeds! Um. No. That’s not how even literary emulation works, much less religious syncretism.

This shows us that Krause really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He knows nothing of the relevant literary studies (or any of the literature on mimesis and literary dependence), nor anything of the relevant religious studies (or any of the literature on syncretism or the study of new religions). And yet he would, if he would just actually read the book he is supposed to be responding to. Trust me. I cover all this in OHJ. In more than adequate detail. With a decent and up-to-date bibliography (as of 2014; even more excellent work has published since). Because I don’t just make shit up from the armchair like Krause does. I actually do scholarship. Krause could start doing that too. The question is why he won’t.

In paragraph seven, Krause argues that Jesus, unlike all other savior and culture heroes, “is a figure situated in history.” Um. Dude. Literally every single ancient savior and culture hero was situated in history (see the works cited in OHJ across Ch. 5, especially Elements 31 and 45-48). He claims I “ignore actual academic scholarship.” The bibliography of peer reviewed scholarship I cite and rely on in OHJ extends to over fifty pages. Krause cites almost nothing, and not even anything published since 1985. And none of it relevant to any argument in OHJ. Who, then, is “ignoring actual academic scholarship”? Like, you know, the latest peer reviewed scholarship on this subject? Or the hundreds of studies since 1985 that I rely on in my bibliography?

If Krause had caught up on mainstream scholarship he would know his claim that “the gospels are not ‘mythological’ in nature but biographical” has been thoroughly refuted and is no longer the consensus. Quite the contrary, that’s now recognized to be a false dichotomy, and the mainstream view now is that the Gospels are indeed mythographies. And that shift in opinion across the field happened well before I published. I summarize all the latest findings and conclusions regarding that, with endless examples, in OHJ, Ch. 10. Krause might want to stop sticking his head in the sand and go read that before falsely claiming it doesn’t exist. Or making any other false claims about the state of mainstream scholarship today. “Mark’s source material is widely accepted as having come from many witnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry.” False. “[T]he Q-source … is hardly ‘a contested source’.” False. “[T]he gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke are widely accepted as having come from independent witness sources.” Also false—no one “witnessed” the Nativity, for example, so even if Matthew and Luke used any “sources” for that, it is widely agreed they were not “witness” sources. Krause even goes on to gullibly believe the authors of John when they claim “many other stories … exist from the many who knew Jesus of Nazareth.” Pro tip: hardly any mainstream scholar today believes even “John’s” Unnamed Beloved really existed, much less that the authors of John really had access to any accounts from anyone “who knew Jesus of Nazareth” (see my discussion in OHJ, Ch. 10.7). Krause is here aping Christian apologetics, not scholarship; likewise in his eighth paragraph, where he continues the same completely inaccurate claims about modern scholarly opinion.

Krause then closes his article with a few paragraphs devoid of any relevant content on this issue, so I can conclude with what I’ve already illustrated. Historicists need to stop acting like this guy. They are only making their position look ridiculous. Which reminds the rest of us that, evidently, real Jesus mythicism must have a formidable case. Why else would these fellows so ardently avoid ever finding out what it really is? Why would they instead try to dissuade you from finding out either, with litanies of well-poisoning and ad hominem and lies? Really. Think about it.

Discover more from Richard Carrier Blogs

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading