You can watch an edited video of my live talk, with slides, for the Secular Humanist Society of New York earlier this month: How Would We Know Jesus Existed? But here I will provide a brief written methodological summary, for ease of reference and use.
My talk drew from my new book Jesus from Outer Space, which has an entire chapter on this point…because evidently it was needed. In my formal study, On the Historicity of Jesus, I took for granted that historians would already know what kinds of evidence we have, and thus expect to have, for historical persons whose existence we’re sure of. This has turned out a sadly false expectation. Historians shockingly often don’t know this at all. I did give two examples in OHJ, Alexander the Great (pp. 21-24) and Socrates (Ch. 8.2), and surveyed the matter using those points of reference. But people kept missing the point, and went on trying to find some example that somehow could “get passed” the point I made. They proposed Spartacus. Nope. They proposed Tiberius. Nope. They proposed Julius Caesar. Nope. They proposed Pontius Pilate. Nope. They tried Herod Agrippa, Hannibal, Caligula, and Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. All backfired. Because we are confident in these men’s existence precisely because of all the evidence we have establishing it—literally none of which evidence we have for Jesus.
There is no person whose evidential status is actually comparable to Jesus, yet whom we are confident existed. The historicity of Apollonius of Tyana, for example, is actually sketchy. Historians aren’t that confident. And yet we still have more evidence he existed than we have for Jesus. Attempts to gainsay this fall into amateur mistakes no competent historian should be stumbling over, like counting dependent evidence as independent (it does not matter how many copies and retellings of and back-references to the same story we have, we only have the one story—that’s one item of evidence, not a hundred), counting non-evidence as evidence (Thallus never mentioned Jesus at all, and Pliny the Younger never mentioned him being a historical person), and counting hypothetical sources as actual. That it is possible the various Gospels got their different stories from tradents preserving oral tradition going back to eyewitnesses does not make it probable they did—we have abundant evidence they also just made stories up, whereas we have zero evidence they got any from sources. And that honestly should decide the matter of which is more likely. Evidence trumps hope.
We don’t do this for any other ancient person. So why are historians so desperate that they resort to this method when it’s Jesus? Anyone else, we have the evidence; we don’t have to make excuses. That we can’t make the honest case for Jesus that we can for all those other people should leave you less confident he existed, not more. And regardless of your confidence in that, you should still not be trumping up such bad evidence as we have. We don’t have anything unambiguous; and almost nothing independent of the Gospels. And the Gospels are the worst kind of evidence we could have. Some historians have been figuring this out: see Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature and my growing List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously (and Ch. 5 of Proving History).
It’s just one step of logic from there to the obvious conclusion: having only the Gospels is like having (as we do) multiple biographical accounts of Hercules and his twelve labors—all more evidence of a mythical man than a real one (see, for example, my recent discussion in My Rank-Raglan Scoring for Osiris). “But we have the Epistles” doesn’t gain you much, because they fail to corroborate nearly everything in the Gospels, and what remains is strangely ambiguous, not at all a clear expression of Jesus having been more than an imaginary person learned of from revelation and hidden messages in Scripture (see OHJ, Chs. 9, 10, and 11). “But we have Josephus” (or Tacitus) should be too embarrassing an argument even to mention; even if they did write what their books now say about Jesus (and they probably didn’t), it still in all probability derives from the Gospels (or Christian informants relying on the Gospels). It is therefore not independent evidence. And dependent evidence has no value. A thousand copies of and references to a source still equals only the one source. A mere copy or back-reference cannot corroborate the original (beyond that it existed, which no one doubts of the Gospels).
In any event, a lot of people evidently need it spelled out more clearly: what would convince us Jesus existed? What is it that we are supposed to have, but don’t? This was the focus of my chapter on the point in JFOS, and my recent New York talk. The recorded talk briefed the most likely alternative theory of Christian origins, but it wasn’t a lecture on that, but rather on this other side of the coin: what we would actually need to be so sure Jesus existed, yet curiously don’t.
Getting Up to Speed
I will assume readers have adequately read up on the background of this debate. But for those who haven’t, you should start with the first complete peer-reviewed study of this question published in a hundred years, my post-doc work On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield-Phoenix 2014); and then the only other study yet published since, which essentially confirmed my results: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus by Raphael Lataster (Brill 2019). In any other science, replication (two corroborating studies getting the same result), and no peer-reviewed study getting a different result, would be sufficient to conclude that the traditional view is at least legitimately questionable. But emotion-driven dogmatism still resists this obvious conclusion. There are two other books to consider that contribute: my contractually peer-reviewed study of the methodology involved in Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Prometheus 2012); and my brief colloquial summary of the results in Jesus from Outer Space (Pitchstone 2020), from which the lecture I am presently summarizing derives.
The gist is this: we cannot doubt the historical existence of any person, thing, or event, without having a plausible alternative explanation of how belief in its existence arose. But once we have one of those, it all depends on the evidence.
I often use the analogy of the “Roswell saucer crash”:
- What Really Happened: In 1947 a guy found some sticks and tinfoil in the desert.
- What Was Immediately Said to Have Happened: That this was debris from an alien spacecraft.
- What Was Said to Have Happened within just Thirty Years: An entire flying saucer was recovered, complete with alien bodies that were autopsied by the government.
Here we have the analog sequence of events: the believers maintain the evolved myth (“an entire flying saucer was recovered, complete with alien bodies that were autopsied by the government”), without any doubt, and just repeat it as a given; but the myth started with something else—a real thing, but not the same thing.
On the most likely alternative account, Christianity did not start with a Galilean preacher named Jesus; it started with an imagined cosmic being becoming incarnate, getting killed to effect a magic spell on the universe, and rising back from the dead to prove his triumph; all of which known only by revelation (directly or through ancient prophecies). Then a lifetime later a historical man was invented to represent all this, and that then taught as “gospel.” Which is why no solid records of the original belief were preserved: that would have undermined the newfangled gospel (see How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?, which discusses some of the other content of my lecture I won’t duplicate here).
There is a scientifically relevant anthropological analog to this sequence of events, and a relevant historical analog, and even a contextually relevant historical analog, all establishing proof of concept:
- What Really Happened: In the 1920s the Cargo Cult movement spread across several Melanesian islands.
- What Was Immediately Said to Have Happened: Visions & spirit communications came to various shamans imparting new teachings.
- What Was Said to Have Happened within just Thirty Years: Instead of visions and spirit communications coming to many different shamans, an actual singular savior figure came to each island to impart all those teachings. In some sects this became John Frum; in others, Tom Navy; in yet others, even Prince Phillip, the queen consort of England, unlike John and Tom an actual historical man whose son is now king, yet still who never came to that island or did or said any of the things claimed.
- Yet no such persons ever existed. Sure, like Haile Selassie, Prince Phillip was real, but in the case of John and Tom, whole historical men were invented, and came to be solely believed the founders of their sects, when in every case, originally the religion began by revelation to a multitude of “apostles” and not any single person. And this transformation happened in the same exact time-frame as Christianity: revelations in the 30s; then assigned to an invented historical founder within thirty years.
- And if it wasn’t for anthropologists, we wouldn’t know that. By luck, actual scientists were studying these Melanesian cultures when all this began, so we have independent, objective, third-party observations of that—including such oddities as shamans putting their ears to telegraph poles to hear the spirit-messages that would become their religion. Needless to say, we didn’t get any such luck with Christianity: no third party observations of its origin (much less by scientists) were made (or at least preserved for us to even know about them). Imagine if this were where we were with the Cargo Cults: all we had were the later belief-claims of John Frum and Tom Navy, and all original accounts lost and not even referenced (as they conflicted with the evolved belief). We would be in exactly the situation we are with Jesus. That’s how easily it could have happened.
Likewise:
- What Really Happened: Saboteurs in 1811 invented the legend of Ned Ludd to justify their anti-industrialization movement (accordingly known as the Luddites).
- What Was Immediately Said to Have Happened: Ned Ludd was a real man who sabotaged a factory in 1779.
- Which Was Just Thirty Years after the Alleged fact: And yet it was widely believed the story was true and Nedd Ludd a real man. It was never questioned until recently. But late 18th century England remains very well documented; even newspapers exist from the time, as well as extensive collections of memoirs and correspondences, and a huge supply of commercial and government documents. Record of Ludd should exist. It does not. But imagine if that century hadn’t been so well-documented; that it was as poorly documented in extant remains as the first century. We would be in exactly the situation we are with Jesus. That’s how easily it could have happened.
And finally there is the example of Osiris, the resurrected personal savior god popularized from Egypt, a province adjacent to Judea and populated with traveling Jews, before and during the very time Christianity arose. We are directly told by one devotee, Plutarch (in his essay On Isis and Osiris), that in public stories (his “Gospels”) Osiris is represented as a historical Pharaoh, with a life on Earth, complete with named family, teachings, and adventures, but in private to true initiates it was explained that that was all myth, that no such person lived on Earth, but the real Osiris dies and rises in outer space below the moon, to where he descends from the heavens above, becomes incarnate, is killed by sky demons, and is resurrected and ascends back to glory, thereafter able to confer eternal life upon followers baptized in his name, who are thus “reborn” by symbolically sharing in his death and resurrection through that baptism.
This is basically Christianity. Except with an Egyptian skin rather than Jewish. Judaize it, replace all the Egyptian stuff with Jewish stuff, and presto, it is Christianity. Yet Osiris never existed as what we would consider a historical man—he was an imaginary being, imagined to have really died in outer space. Yet his devotees publicly preached his historical existence. This is a contextually relevant proof of concept. Osiris went from a celestial being, whose incarnation and death and resurrection were likewise mytho-celestial, to a historical being, whose incarnation and death and resurrection happened historically on Earth. If this could happen to Osiris cult, it could happen to Jesus cult. The only question is—did it?
There were in fact a lot of these religions. It was fashionable to have a historicized celestial savior deity. Practically every culture had one but the Jews. Christianity looks like they simply got around to inventing one. And like many others, it became more popular abroad than at home. In every case, these mythical-yet-historicized gods have the same structural role:
- They were all “savior gods”
- They were all the “son” of God (or “daughter”)
- They all undergo a “passion” (patheôn)
- They all obtained victory over death, which they share with their followers
- They all have stories about them set in human history on earth
- Yet none of them ever actually existed
Why would we assume Jesus is the sole exception, the only one who actually existed? As I’ve explained before (and do again in JFOS), Jesus is not like just any historical person mentioned—a teacher or administrator or politician or general, or that general’s wife or servant—he is a heavily-mythologized and worshiped savior deity, a magical culture-hero. Those people tended not to exist. So we need better evidence for any one of them, than we’d need for just any random person spoken of.
This should not be surprising. Religious founders are often mythical, yet turned into and regarded as real historical people: Moses; Romulus; Theseus; Osiris; Dionysus; Mithras; Inanna; Zalmoxis; Adonis; Attis; King Arthur. Why would it be so weird that Jesus should be among them? And how could we tell the difference? How would we know Jesus was real any more than they were? What evidence would we need?
This should not be confused with the separate question of, “How would that evidence survive for us to have it today?” As with John Frum or Ned Ludd or the Roswell saucer, it was logically possible that we’d never know—that none of the evidence we have telling us they were made up survived. But explaining why we don’t have that evidence would not make them any more likely to be historical. This is the real problem. And you can’t make that problem go away by having a good account of why we don’t have the evidence we need to be sure someone existed. We still don’t have it.
What We Could Have Had
It’s important to recognize the timeline, especially in relation to average expected lifespans back then:
The idea that this conversion of a celestial, revelatory being into a historical preacher happened too quickly simply isn’t true. We already saw that thirty years, the same time it would have taken in Christianity, witnessed much the same thing happen in even better-documented eras (Roswell; John Frum; Ned Ludd). And we simply don’t have the records (unlike we do for Roswell, Frum, and Ludd). That it could happen in the face of far better documentation and universal literacy means it is even more likely to happen in eras with a mere fraction of those assets—like the first century. So we need evidence to be sure Jesus is any different than his parallels, ancient or modern. Better evidence than we have.
In my lecture (and the corresponding chapter in JFOS) I present actual quotes of people today claiming we have better evidence for Jesus than (fill in the blank); I then list the evidence disproving this. The examples are instructive, because they reveal not only what kinds of evidence we could have had, but also what kinds of evidence we need to have—because the only reason we are confident these people existed is because we have that kind of evidence. And yet we have none of it for Jesus. I’ll just quickly survey the list:
Socrates
- We know the names of numerous eyewitnesses who wrote books about him, including at least sixteen of his disciples.
- We know of not even one such book for Jesus.
- We even know the titles of some these books, and have a number of paraphrases and quotations from them.
- Two of them we actually have (Xenophon and Plato).
- And they were written within a few years of his death, not nearly half a century later; and in his own country and language (the Gospels, remember, were written in a foreign land and language).
- And we even have an eyewitness third-party account written during his lifetime: Aristophanes, The Clouds.
- We know of not even one such account for Jesus.
- Indeed we have many contemporaries attesting to Socrates, spanning four modern volumes (Gabriele Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae 1990).
- We have none for Jesus—other than as a celestial being.
- We have quotations from many historians of Socrates, using written sources about Socrates from his own time: e.g. Idomeneus, On the Followers of Socrates.
- We have none for Jesus—only repeaters of the Gospels.
- And yet Socrates wrote nothing himself and there was no global Church of Socrates to preserve records of him. And still we have vastly better evidence he existed than we have for Jesus.
Alexander the Great
- We have abundant contemporary coins, inscriptions, tablets, and other physical objects from and about him (we even have his de facto death certificate, printed in clay, from the archives of Persia).
- We have many contemporary and eyewitness sources discussing him (including contemporary texts inscribed in those same clay archives that date from his actual lifetime).
- And we have numerous credible, detailed historical accounts, referencing contemporary and eyewitness sources.
- Even Arrian wrote some five hundred years later, but used only three eyewitness historical accounts, described them and why they are good sources, and explained his method of using them.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Roman Emperors
- We have abundant contemporary coins, inscriptions, papyri, and in some cases even inscribed personal objects from and about them.
- In many cases we have their own writings, and references to yet other writings of theirs.
- We have many contemporary and eyewitness sources discussing them.
- We have numerous credible, detailed historical accounts, which reference contemporary or eyewitness sources.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Spartacus
- Sallust’s Histories covered Spartacus. He was born 10 years before the Spartacan war and wrote 30 years after, and shared the Senate with those who fought Spartacus.
- Cicero mentions Spartacus in Response to the Haruspices and Against Verres. He served during the Spartacan war.
- Diodorus covered Spartacus in his Library of History. He was a contemporary.
- Varro mentioned him (as quoted by Sosipater Charisius in Grammatical Arts 1.133). He actually fought Spartacus.
- Plus many later credible histories (within 100-200 years) using contemporary records and sources.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Hannibal
- We have the epitaph of Quintus Fabius Maximus. Who fought Hannibal.
- Carved in stone at his death in 205 B.C. Boasts of his victories against Hannibal, e.g., “he besieged and recaptured Tarentum and the strong-hold of Hannibal.”
- We have the epitaph of Felsnas Larth. Who was a soldier of Hannibal.
- Mentions his service under him.
- Many credible, detailed accounts by later historians who cite and quote from many writings of eyewitnesses to the war.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
- Indeed we have a credible, detailed account from Polybius, a contemporary.
- He was a friend of the family of Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal.
- He was ambassador to Hannibal’s country after the war.
- And he relied on documents and eyewitnesses. For example…
- He interviewed King Massinissa, a Roman ally who fought Hannibal.
- He interviewed Gaius Laelius, a personal friend and companion of Africanus during the war.
- He quotes from Scipio Africanus’s letter to King Philip V of Macedon regarding his personal dealings with Hannibal.
- And he quotes a bronze inscription erected by Hannibal himself.
- We have none of this for Jesus.
Pontius Pilate
- We have a historical account from a contemporary who dealt with his actions in the political arena (Philo of Alexandria, ambassador of the Jews to Rome).
- We have credible, detailed historical accounts from historians relying on contemporary sources (Josephus; Tacitus).
- We have his own autograph inscription in stone.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Herod Agrippa
- We have multiple inscriptions and coins attesting to Agrippa’s existence.
- We have a contemporary account (from Philo of Alexandria).
- We have a credible, detailed account from a historian writing a generation later, using firsthand, non-mythological sources (Josephus).
- Josephus even personally knew Agrippa’s son, and clearly describes him and his father as real people, an actual father and son.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Caiaphas
- We have his inscribed casket.
- We have credible, researched accounts in Josephus.
- Also he was never a revelatory superbeing, mythologized hero, or cosmic savior lord.
- His earliest records don’t depict him as someone only met in dreams and visions.
- And his earliest historical accounts don’t describe him in just the same respects as persons who usually didn’t exist (like Moses, Osiris, or Romulus).
Consider even Apollonius of Tyana, the heavily mythologized historical person we arguably have the least evidence for:
- Maria Dzielska, in her study Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History, outright admits “a historian assuming that Apollonius of Tyana existed solely as a hero of an extensive legend…would not stray far from the truth.” So much for being confident.
- Except that: there is evidence external to the mythological Life written of him (by Philostratus) over a century later.
- Dzielska documents evidence of a cult attesting to Apollonius being a historical personage before that Life was written.
- The best example: Lucian of Samosata says Apollonius was so famous that every reader would know of him, and that he met a student of one of his Disciples, saying “Alexander of Abonuteichos” studied under “a man of Tyana by birth, one of those who had been associates [suggenomenôn] of the famous [panu] Apollonius and eyewitnesses [eidotôn] to all his tricks,” clearly establishing Apollonius as a historical person, widely known as such, and his eyewitness associates likewise.
- We don’t have even this for Jesus. And still we are not that confident in Apollonius. No one freaks out at the suggestion he might not have existed. And yet even he we have better evidence for than Jesus.
We don’t doubt personages we have no reason to doubt (mundane officials, family, and the like). We only doubt those we have reason to doubt—like mythologized superheroes. Then, and only then, do we need better evidence than just the existence of stories about them. And for every person we are confident existed, we have that evidence. Therefore, that we don’t have that for Jesus should leave us no longer so confident he existed. It’s as simple as that. Making excuses for why we don’t have that evidence does not change his epistemic status. We still don’t have the evidence.
Conclusion
So, in general, what could we have had:
- Possibly nothing. Then we couldn’t know. Jesus would simply be unlikely to be historical in the same way all other savior heroes were. He’d be John Frum. Ned Ludd. Moses. Osiris. The Roswell saucer. Maybe he existed; but we couldn’t say for sure, just as we can’t for any other savior heroes.
- But probably the actual first letters. As we have for other mythologized historical persons, from Alexander the Great to Ras Tafari, we’d have more mundane memoirs, correspondence, recollections. They’d clearly (not ambiguously) indicate their subject to be a recent historical man. They’d include examples from and disputes about his life, his teachings, the accusations against him. For more examples of what we could expect to have found in the earliest letters, see my discussions across Chapter 11 of On the Historicity of Jesus.
- For example: in Galatians 1 Paul could have indicated he meant not a cultic brother but an actual one (e.g. “James, the brother of the Lord according to the flesh” rather than just any brother of the Lord, which Paul elsewhere says described any baptized Christian); in Romans 1 Paul could have indicated he meant an actual descendant of David in the ordinary way (he could have simply said Jesus was, indeed, “a descendant of David,” or even better, have added how they knew that, e.g. “according to his family records,” instead of what he did say, which is weird—and wholly indeterminate); in 1 Thessalonians 2 Paul could have said something that he (in this case) would actually have believed (like that Jesus was “killed by the leading men of Judea,” and not by “the Jews,” and he wouldn’t have referred to a fall of Jerusalem that hadn’t happened yet, and so on).
- Less likely but possibly inscriptions and papyri. Even the godless Diogenes of Oenoanda erected the “gospel” of his hero, Epicurus, in stone. Faithful Jews carved their private scripture, the Revelation of Gabriel, in stone. The Letter of Mara bar Serapion is an example (forged or real) of a third party commenting on Jesus as a historical person (it just doesn’t likely date to the first century). A lot we know about ancient religious beliefs and persons comes from actual epitaphs: stone tributes to the dead, often describing what they believed, prized, or valued, and Christian believers (or even just inspired contemporaries) could have left us some. There are many ways we could have had this kind of evidence for Jesus. It is true none such is expected. But that doesn’t make the fact go away that, unlike for many historical persons claimed to have less evidence than Jesus, we still just don’t have anything like this for Jesus.
- Likewise, contemporary or researched historical accounts. The Gospels are mythographs. We could have instead had researched histories, actual or in quotation or paraphrase, by writers consulting various contemporary sources. They could have given credible accounts rather than fantastical ones. They could have named or identified sources. This is what we have for most everyone else, from Pilate and Caiaphas to Agrippa and Socrates.
- For example: in Pliny the Younger’s letter on the Christians, he would have related what he knew of Christian origins from his father’s History of Rome, which devoted an entire volume to the year in which Nero supposedly blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians, and before that event his father would have had access to relevant provincial dispatches. But the Younger Pliny says he knew nothing about Christians—which means the Elder Pliny never mentioned them, which means the tale that Nero persecuted them for the fire is false. But this didn’t have to be. The Elder could have mentioned them, this could even have been Tacitus’s source, and the Younger could then have related what his father said about them—and this could have been detailed enough to demonstrate Jesus was known to be historical independently of the Gospels, and by a third party source who would know, much as we have references like that for the other historical people I just surveyed.
- Likewise: in Josephus’s accounts of the Jewish War he plausibly relates the stories of four Jesus Christs: The Samaritan, The Egyptian, The Impostor, and Theudas. Josephus says each was equating themselves with Jesus (Joshua) and making veiled claims to be the Christ (Messiah). That is, they were claiming to be the new Joshua (the same name as Jesus), the fabled conqueror of the Holy Land, and the messiah (a christos, even though Josephus conspicuously avoids the word) who would accomplish God’s plan. The Samaritan, ascended like Joshua (Deut. 27:12) on Mount Gerizim. Theudas, like Joshua (Josh. 3), would part the Jordan. The Egyptian, like Joshua (Josh. 5), would miraculously fell the walls of a great city. The Impostor, like Joshua, would lead the people in the wilderness to paradise (see my discussions of these fellows in OHJ, index). Josephus could have related the story of our Jesus the same way. Indeed, had he really known of him, our Jesus would have received the same study. And it would thus have included plausible historical details not found in the Gospels, implying independent sources and an objective outsider view (see, for example, Reading Josephus on James). But alas, we get no such account of Jesus from him, or any historian—not even Eusebius could find any to quote or cite.
In short, we could have had what we have that convinces us all those other people existed. Jesus could even have written things (the way we know a lot of historical people existed, from Paul to Josephus). And so on. But the fact is, we don’t have any of those things—and yet Jesus is more like figures who didn’t exist than those who did. So because we have no evidence establishing him to be an exception to that trend, we have to assume he, too, didn’t exist. Or at least honestly doubt it. Or at the very least admit it’s doubtable.
We also have the many claims found in the NT attesting to Christ and his supposed fame, renown, works, deeds, miracles, etc., which allegedly everyone knew about – yet no records of this sort exists either. So either these passages are lying, conflations or imaginations, this evidence is also entirely absent.
In fact, it is the absences of essential and crucial evidence that reveals the fiction – a fabricated narrative about a fictional character written about long after his alleged death (of which was also supposed to be well known). Virtually everything about Christ the man, Christ the human, Christ the life is completely missing. That’s remarkable for a supposedly famous character.
This is why I personally abandoned Christianity. I came across the contradictions, failed promises, misleading and conflicting claims and endless empty words which caused me to embark upon the journey of figuring out what was supposedly real and what was not. I didn’t find what I was looking for in terms of any actual evidence and neither has any of the scholars, historians and researchers who are the real experts in this subject. I concluded as I must that Christianity is based upon fraudulent claims.
I now how all of your books on my shelf for reference and reading, every few years I reread them and anything new that comes out, but still, the lack of evidence screams the conclusion that any honest researcher would now know – Christianity is a fraud. I also think it is a cult (in all forms).
Anyway, thanks for yet another great update to your readers and supporters.
Just so readers know where we are coming from:
(1) In my academic study I don’t consider “famous Jesus” or “miraculous Jesus” models of historicity. I test against ony minimal historicity. Which means assuming the Gospels invent all that fame and supernaturalism. This model of historicity is immune to your concerns. Thus it is the strongest steel-man of historicity we can question. If even that version of historicity can’t prevail, then historicity is in trouble.
(2) But you are right, Christianity the religion can’t survive on such a model of historicity anyway. If Jesus wasn’t that famous and powerful, Christianity is false. Hence this is really only a debate among non-Christians: those who still are sure at least a guy existed; and those who are not. We all agree Christian apologetics is folly, and their religion isn’t true.
That the Gospels are that mythical is already the mainstream consensus. So historians have already proved Christianity false. What’s scary is that I’m saying our doubt should be even deeper still. Which, for whatever reason, remains a bridge too far even for nonbelievers.
One thing I have never understood is why those people who are convinced there never was, or doubtful there was, a historical Jesus accept (for the point of argument) the claim Jesus was born around the 4 B.C. and died around A.D. 33.
The supposedly rapid development of the cult is wholly based on accepting the dates of an undocumented birth and death. By the time the authentic letters of Paul (48 A.D.) or the Gospels were written it could be there were earlier writings which are unknown or undocumented oral stories.
You’d have to give an example of what you mean. I know of no one you describe.
Perhaps you are confusing an argument ex hypothesi, which is a form of reductio, where the arguer does not believe the premise (as to Jesus being born) but grants that premise “for the sake of argument,” in order to show that the believer’s position is even then untenable or self-contradictory.
For example, when I debate the resurrection, I always grant historicity. I don’t argue “the resurrection didn’t happen because Jesus didn’t exist” because I am far less certain of that premise than I am of the conclusion; hence I can prove the resurrection false to a vastly higher probability than I can the historicity of Jesus, simply by conceding historicity ex hypothesi (see my article Fincke Is Right: Arguing Jesus Didn’t Exist Should Not Be a Strategy).
So it’s “even if” Jesus existed, “the Gospels still date the birth of Jesus ten years apart and wildly disagree in numerous particulars concerning his birth, therefore they are demonstrably prone to outrageous fabrication or gullibly believing outrageous fabrications; therefore they are not reliable sources for anything; therefore Christianity the religion does not rest on any sturdy evidential foundation, but on myths and lies; and that which is based on myths and lies is itself a myth and a lie.”
Hence I have a whole chapter on the contradicting dates for the birth in Hitler Homer Bible Christ, where at no point is my argument “this is all a waste of time because there was no Jesus.” Rather, my argument is, in effect, “even if we grant Jesus existed, these stories contradict each other too overwhelmingly for either of them to be true.”
As to the “possibility” of early stories, that’s a fallacy. Possibly does not get you to probably. So fantasizing about mere possibilities is idle.
A good talk.
I can’t help but notice that the audience seems to include almost nobody under the age of about 60.
Perhaps that’s just how this group turned out. But if not, do you have any thoughts on how typical or significant that is – in regards to secular humanism in general, secular humanist societies in particular, or specific interest in the Jesus question?
I doubt it has anything to do with the subject.
IRL atheist groups trend older because older people have more money and/or time to attend public events. And Humanst groups trend even older because “Humanism” as a term and identity had a wave of popularity in the 60s and 70s but has diminished on that metric since. The pandemic also killed most IRL atheist groups and meetups, leaving mostly the most tradition-devoted still running, which again selects for those with a much older membership.
Young atheism has moved almost entirely online; and even IRL attends mostly only the scant few major national or regional conferences still going (which have also greatly declined im number since the pandemic, although the number had been shrinking already in the few years before).
Possibly the mythologization of Alexander and Lycurgus, or more recently, Frederick Barbarossa and Richard Lionheart might usefully be analyzed. From what little I know, the fabulous accretions to their names, either have a blatantly apologetic function, claiming the sanction of hoary antiquity for contemporary custom (Lycurgus) or a messianic hope of salvation (Barbarossa.) Or they have a narrative flair that seems far more about entertaining bored people before television. Blondel is vaguely anticipatory of a Harlequin romance, to be kind of reductive.
But the really acid test of mythologizing historical figures is the saint or sage, isn’t it? Not just Christian saints, but sufi and shia and Hindu gurus and Chinese sages.
True. But in historical-causal terms, you have to stick to a relevant culture and era, because trendlines vary by culture and era. Unless you can establish analogous conditions for any relevant comparison. For example, in OHJ I outline the analogous sociopolitical conditions between Christianity and the Cargo Cults allowing the comparison to carry, on the points of similarity actually claimed.
And there just aren’t that many “saints” or “sages” comparable to Jesus in Greco-Roman antiquity with extant content enough to build any statistical conclusions, outside of their occasional appearance inside other categories with far more members (like Rank-Raglan heroes) or far clearer parallels (like the Socrates-Aesop model, a set to which Jesus is the only other known member; and three people just is too small a sample size to draw any useful conclusions from by itself).
The only sufficiently-sized, context-applicable reference class for Jesus is “marvelous culture heroes,” and the only subset of that class with enough parallels to objectively prove membership is the Rank-Raglan Heroes set (see my article last month on that). Jesus does clearly belong to many other myth-heavy sets, but none with more than six or so members, and most with fewer than four. The Rank-Raglan set has fifteen (counting Jesus).
For example, Jesus indisputably belongs to the Personal Savior Lords set. But that set has no more than maybe six clear members (besides Jesus). So statistical results from that set are going to be weaker than we get from the Rank-Raglan set. But it is notable that the Personal Savior Lords set is all mythical as well. So that Jesus belongs to at least two sets all of whose members didn’t really exist yet all of whose members were placed in history and given mythographic biographies does validate the conclusion: guys like Jesus typically didn’t exist.
Its interesting, seeing that reference to david. From my readings, the historicity of david, “king David” is rather shaky at best as well.
And yet still better than Jesus.
The “rich, oral tradition” claim has always seemed circular to me. “If there was a historical Jesus, there must have been an oral tradition” got turned into “there was an oral tradition, therefore there was a historical person”.
But I’m a layman. I don’t know much of the scholarship. Is there scholarship advocating for a rich, oral tradition about a historical Jesus, something the historicists would point to if asked?
Your observation is correct: the field has conflated “if he existed, there was likely an oral tradition” with “there was likely an oral tradition, therefore there he existed.” There is no empirical basis for this. So, no, there is zero evidence they can point to if asked how they know there was an oral tradition. Other than the very circular reasoning you identity.
There is actually evidence against an oral tradition (e.g. stories in the Gospels are missing from all documents of the preceding generation; the Gospels are literary constructs, and copy and riff on each other literarily, not orally; the freeness with which the Gospels alter and change the story indicates the absence of any controlled oral tradition; early Christian discussions, e.g. from Papias to Ignatius and later, indicate the absence of any kind of schools or institutions or even practices for preserving oral lore, such as exist for many other well-documented oral traditions; there are no disputes about the accuracy of preservation, i.e. no one defends the pedigree of anything they relate, there are no meta-arguments about which tradition should prevail when there is a conflict, etc.).
This has not gone unnoticed. The historiography of how the field came to be so certain of oral tradition without any evidence of it is actually half of Robyn Faith Walsh’s recent book on the subject (see my blog on that this year).
You probably covered this in OHJ, but do you apply a “discount” to probability for the forging/falsification/destruction of texts by early Christian leaders that would have supported mythicism or undermined historicity? I’m not sure if I made that clear, but, as an example, shouldn’t Eusebius’s interpolation of Josephus’ TF count as a big strike against historicity? And if so, how do you quantify that in your Bayesian calculations?
That they had no evidence is not evidence he didn’t exist—though only if you concede to minimal historicity (Jesus was not famous, didn’t do hardly anything claimed of him, etc.). Which is a problem for conservative Christians, but not mainstream scholars.
Rather, the fact that medieval Christians controlled the survival of evidence to skew for historicity (destroying or letting disappear all literature that would challenge it) is background fact, and thus affects how we estimate probabilities.
For example, I have a section in OHJ on why there isn’t more evidence for mythicism and all the evidence for it there is is indirect (e.g. 2 Peter and Ignatius talk about mythicist Christians, but only to insist they be shunned; we don’t get to read anything those Christians actually said).
The usual argument is “If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have more from them, therefore Jesus existed.” The response is “Due to document control (which is an empirically provable fact, not some excuse we made up), it is not true that we would have more from them.” The premise of the argument is false; but that does not entail the conclusion of the argument is false.
So, basically, the fact you observe is not evidence against historicity, but it does remove evidence for historicity.
Where do you get your “average life expectancy” information from? Especially, “average life expectancy of a thirty year old”?
I mean, “life expectancy” is the length of life which the average baby could expect at birth. It’s a purely a mathematical construct and has little to do with real lengths of life over historical periods. In times and places where infant mortality is high, and childhood illnesses are often fatal, obviously, the average lifetime will be consequently low. At least, if we are to understand “life expectancy” as I mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. (BTW – wiki defined “life expectancy” as “This average is calculated based on the year of birth, sex, and region, factoring in the causes of mortality that would most likely affect the particular population.” – which is consistent with what i’ve stated).
So, how on earth are you establishing the average life expectancy of a thirty year old?
Just curious and interested…
I cite the demography scholarship in OHJ. In short, a number of studies have been done on ancient graveyards and ancient epitaph statistics, and demographic data extractable from the tens of thousands of papyrological documents we have recovered from Greco-Roman Egypt (as well as pertinent surviving literature like Ulpian’s Life Table), which has all been benchmarked to populations of known similar conditions (i.e. the early Third World) that have extensive statistical data to compare.
One result of this research is Frier’s Life Table, which is adopted by all experts in the subject today.
In short, all the forensic and documentary archaeological data matches that of early Third World life expectancy statistics (which makes sense; human life expectancy should have been the same across civilization before the interventions of modern technology).
P.S, Also, note that life expectancy for someone who has already survived to the age of thirty is going to be higher than just any life expectancy owing to the vast number of kids who died back then (e.g. 50% of all children before the age of 2).
If you average life expectancy for a newborn, it’s actually in the thirties, but this is because the huge number of dying infants and toddlers is skewing the average down. If you survived childhood, your life expectancy is better than that.
So I always use the life expectancy of an adult. They are the onlty relevant witnesses, since no one who was a baby when Jesus died is going to remember him, and it would conceal the survival expectancy of adult witnesses if we set the average for them as that of infants. Whereas life expectancies for adults are close enough to use a typical value (since fewer are dying each year, survivors of adult years don’t increase their life expectancy as substantially as survivors of childhood do).
This seems weird to WEIRD cultures (Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic) because we don’t experience half of all our kids dying on a regular basis, and modern technologies add decades to our lives now. It was different back then. Very different. And we must take that into account.
The question “[W]hy are historians so desperate that they resort to [hope as a belief strategy] when it’s Jesus?” is easy to answer: because they were either raised Christian and haven’t fully escaped from it yet, or they are dependent on such people to keep their jobs.
(I say this because if some other explanation seems more likely, I hope someone will tell me what it is and explain why.)
Hey Tim, I’m with you 100%; I’m convinced there isn’t a more likely alternative. I think more so, it’s the latter part of the explanation.
Anyway, I did hear a novel alternative to this that I was sympathetic to. Ultimately I don’t think it’s more likely; more like the exception, but I still thought it provided a charitable alternative to our theory.
The comment came from someone I was having an exchange with on a comment thread on one of the mythvision youtube channel videos.
The gentleman seemed genuinely concerned about scholarship. It was very much analogous to what we often hear about “science denialism” these days.
In his mind, mythicism was undermining the project of scholarship itself. He cited the fact that in the WAY in which Jesus historicity was being approached was identical to the methods used for other historical figures. And that mythicism raises the bar. I’d heard this before, and I don’t agree with it for a variety of reasons, but the guy seemed to think, I believe somewhat legitimately, that younger scholars would throw out the baby with the bathwater and essentially start denying the historicity of other figures.
I believe he’s genuine but I think there are a lot of mitigating factors that defeat this perspective but again, I was sympathetic to it because it echos how so much science denialism has in fact proliferated.
sorry, long winded.
Why is it that the only way I can find to purchase and read “Questioning the Historicity of Jesus” by Raphael Lataster, is to buy it from the publisher for $229! I find it no where else on the net! I also can’t seem to find his previous book about the same topic, “The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence”. Strange.
There is a solution at the end of this rant (so wade through):
This is the standard model now of academic publishing: fleece academic libraries (and thus students, whose tuitions pay for their libraries) with an enormousluy priced hardback; then “if” that sells “enough” copies, “then” publish an affordable softback.
It’s a greedy, cynical, abusive, elitist, and completely irrational business model that will not produce the revenues a more populist model would. Lower prices sell more units, producing greater net profits. But the elitist, out-of-touch fools running these presses disdain the common people so much they believe they wouldn’t buy obscure footnoted academic treatises.
In reality, they would. Certainly enough as would make the revenues they already are and more. Long tail niche market sales models are proven successful in every other domain. It would work in this. Especially if their editorial standards were revised to promote and facilitate clear and engaging writing as well as rigor (colloquial rather than academic English; narrative organization; etc.).
I wrote a letter to my publisher asking that they not apply this model to On the Historicity of Jesus, on both that business argument and a social justice argument (academics ought to be more accessible to the poor, not cut off from them by predatory pricing). I asked that they either skip the hardback or make both available simultaneously. They chose the latter. But I had to personally go out of my way to make that happen; not everyone realizes they can do that, and not all will succeed (my publishing house is a bit less stuffy and stuck in its ways than others).
Sheffield-Phoenix books are still slightly overpriced, but not prohibitively. Like Brill volumes are; as you are experiencing with Lataster’s book. All Brill books are like that; they consider it the price of prestige, but in reality it’s that same stupid and contemptible business model I just described.
This isn’t Lataster’s fault. The system has made it so scholars have to go through these publishers and acquiesce to their business model in exchange for the renown and hence prestige of their peer-review process (journals, BTW, are doing the same thing; in case you haven’t noticed how common a $35 prince for a single PDF is in that market). And as long as people continue pushing “Arguments from Prestige” (what I call the “your book isn’t serious scholarship because it wasn’t published by Yale” argument), this system will continue in its irrational and elitist fashion—forever.
That said, here is how you punish them and bypass their predation:
Go to your local public library and order the book on loan through the Interlibrary Loan process (speak to a reference librarian; they’ll set you up).
Because there is one loophole in this model: most of the libraries they are preying upon are in the World Catalog system, an agreement to share books with all other libraries in the network (which is most libraries in the US for example). It’s free (or at most a nominal fee). One more reason (of many) to fight to keep your local public libraries funded and thus existing—so you can use them.
Did anyone else notice how Burton Mack’s thesis would support (even though he would probably reject this) the idea that the Roman Empire created Christianity?
Not to my knowledge.
Hi, Dr. Carrier. Hope you’re doing well.
You’ve mentioned many times that Moses is now widely considered to be a mythical figure (if I’m not mistaken). But i have also seen and read that his existence is considered debatable among scholars, and that he may or may not have existed.
I’m fairly convinced that the Exodus is BS, but not too sure about Moses himself. I would just like to know if you have any resources where i could learn more about where scholars stand on this debate, and why you think he is mythical and not historical.
Thanks.
Only religious scholars try to keep the door open with a “maybe” (and maybe with a ridiculous “just so” story that gerrymanders around all the missing evidence). But religious or not, all mainstream scholars agree the historicity of Moses is dubious. Whether they allow a small probability of some extremely minimal and completely different Moses to have existed does not alter that.
And when it comes to the Moses of the Bible, all mainstream scholars agree that is a myth. So the only window left open at some unconvincing probability is some other Moses, who isn’t represented in any way accurately in the Bible.
To illustrate how minimal this has to be: all mainstream scholars agree there was no actual Exodus, that Jews were always native Canaanites and never “invaded” the Holy Land. They were always there (see A Test of Bayesian History: Efraim Wallach on Old Testament Studies). So to get a minimal Moses back in, they have to invent a completely different story about some small “band” of Jews escaping Egypt to get back home to the rest of the Jews already waiting for them for centuries; and this imagined tiny band of desperados just happened to be led by someone named Moses; and somehow his inspiring tale got coopted into the fabulous and entirely fake origin myth for all the Hebrews. There is zero evidence for any such rewrite of the story. So only desperate religionists cling to retellings like this.
It’s just like someone insisting Hercules might have really existed because the Augean stables could really have been just a small-scale hydroengineering operation and the Lyrnaean Hydra a gang of bandits, and so on. All made up stories to get the myth back to plausible, so you can leave the door open for it “maybe” being true. But as there is no evidence for it, the honest ones admit this still only gets to a small probability, not a convincing one. It’s in effect identical to adopting my error margin for Jesus: I say at most a 1 in 3 chance he existed; someone could say the same of Moses, and they’d be in exactly the same position vis Moses as I am vis Jesus. That doesn’t make them a Moses historicist any more than it makes me a Jesus historicist.
Thank you! Very informative, and seems like a pretty common tactic by apologists and Christians in general, I should have suspected as much lol.
What is the reason why the disciples are assumed to be around 30 in your graph? The stuff I’ve seen seemed to indicate (at least based on the stories and known practice of the time) that they would have all been young teenagers.
I cannot fathom any reason they would be teenagers. Such a thing is never mentioned, yet would be remarkable.
For example, the one unnamed “young man” Mark claims fled the arrest naked is described as a neaniskos (a young man, typically meaning under 30). Yet no Disciple is ever so described.
And that’s an implausible story if ever there was one (it has obvious symbolic meaning: linen garments were a common analogy for bodies, nakedness for losing a body, and white or glowing garments as resurrection bodies: hence the neaniskas in one at the tomb is probably meant to be the same boy).
In any event, you can add 15 years and it makes a trivial difference to the chart’s ranges.