In my last article (on The Historicity of Nazareth) I mentioned in the course of a mostly positive review of Ken Dark’s new book (Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth) that he completely shits the bed when it comes to arguing that “surely” Jesus existed to contemplate as a Nazarene. You get a foreshadowing of this when he says (earlier on p. 138):

All the Roman-­period tombs in Nazareth are of types which could date from the mid-­first century onwards. This has been used by so-­called ‘mythicists’—people who believe that both Jesus and Nazareth were fictitious—to claim that Jesus’ Nazareth never existed at all. They are certainly wrong: there is, as we have seen in previous chapters, plenty of archaeological evidence for early first-­century Nazareth.

There is indeed plenty of archaeological evidence for early first-­century Nazareth (see my last). But it’s totally face-palmingly embarrassing to think doubting that is the definition of mythicism. In fact no peer-reviewed mythicism doubts it—only internet sleuths, and cranks. But that Dark doesn’t know the difference shows us he didn’t check any of the academic literature on this before pontificating on it like an expert—which is ironically the behavior of a non-expert. Experts check. So that he didn’t tells us he is so driven by emotion on this point that he literally forgot how to behave like an expert as soon as this is the subject at hand. Indeed, it shows us he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And as I document in The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus, this misbehavior typifies the field, indeed it’s the only thing it has left to offer.

So Dark has provided us with yet another own-goal for his field on this, proving my point. I suspect Dark’s ball-drop here reflects a wilful situational incompetence. He has the skills and qualifications and training to do this competently. He is simply choosing not to in this case. Which commonly occurs when an expert has an emotional motivation they need their objective critical skills not to get in the way of.

Dark’s Case “against” Mythicists

Dark leads with the lazy and inaccurate claim that “self-­styled sceptics about Jesus’ existence—such as the mythicists already mentioned—often claim there is insufficient, or no, written evidence of Jesus as a historical figure” (p. 149, leading a section spanning pp. 149–54). Of course, being a skeptic simply is being self-styled, so his snarky inclusion of that adjective doesn’t seem to carry any argument, indicating he has lost the plot, and is just angry, and flailing around for some way to insult mythicists that comes across as dumb. But more importantly, he isn’t even making a true statement about them—he isn’t even correctly describing the cranks! If you can’t tell the truth about someone’s position you mean to refute, you have already told us you can’t honestly refute them. You’ve immediately lost the argument.

We could drop mic and move on.

But let’s continue anyway. Even the likes of Salm (really, the only “mythicist” Dark has in mind) don’t say there is “no” written evidence for Jesus. And certainly, mainstream peer-reviewed studies explicitly reject that position (see OHJ 2014 and QHJ 2019; and now OPH, 2025). So he is attacking a straw man from practically his first sentence. Hence, he doesn’t know that in fact Lataster and I make exactly the same argument Dark does across pp. 149–50, negating the entire point of his making that argument. We establish even more thoroughly than he does that the expectation of textual evidence for Jesus is low and an argument from silence cannot by itself challenge his historicity. And we detail every single item of “written evidence” there is. And I even count some of it as positive evidence for historicity in my final calculation, when establishing my upper margin of error.

That Dark does not know any of this proves he did not check any of the peer-reviewed literature on this. He doesn’t even do the lazy and stupid thing some have done, of only citing the negative reviews by Christian apologists, which would at least show he was aware of the fact that peer-reviewed studies arguing mythicism exist. But he isn’t even aware of that. Of course, even that would fail to achieve his objective. Because merely citing dishonest and unreliable apologetics, rather than reading the actual academic studies they are slandering (as I document in OPH, Ch. 3), would be another example of failing to check and thus not knowing what you are talking about, and thus having no chance of successfully defending the historicity of Jesus. But Dark falls short of even that failure-mode.

Imagine you were insisting it was “obvious” that Moses existed or Jesus rose from the dead, and instead of reading the extensive peer-reviewed literature questioning those things, you only mentioned amateurs and cranks, pointed out that they are amateurs and cranks, therefore “Moses existed” or “Jesus rose from the dead.” Everyone would immediately recognize this approach as completely incompetent and practically admitting their own position cannot honestly be defended. In effect, your having to behave like this is itself proof that “Moses did not exist” and “Jesus did not rise from the dead.” You don’t make stupid arguments for conclusions you have real arguments to defend. You only make stupid arguments in defense of conclusions you can’t really defend. Dark has done the same with mythicism. His own approach proves mythicism.

Since Dark behaved totally irresponsibly for a scholar here and checked none of the real literature on this (not even to know that it exists!) he literally presents zero arguments against its arguments and results. All he has is obvious 101 stuff the peer-reviewed studies already acknowledge and incorporate. He doesn’t even know what their remaining arguments are that he is supposed to be responding to or evaluating the merits of. Accordingly, his entire positive case for historicity is itself hopelessly naive, as uninformed and unsophisticated as any internet amateur. Which is embarrassing coming from someone with a PhD.

Dark’s Case “for” Historicity: Priors

Accordingly, when Dark lists evidence for historicity, he doesn’t know how any of it has been challenged or even refuted, and consequently does nothing to recover it from those challenges or refutations, rendering his pages defending historicity completely useless to anyone.

The first of these failures occurs at constructing a defensible prior probability that someone like Jesus would be historical. Dark foolishly thinks it a point to make that “If another group of texts written within a century said this,” e.g. “that [a guy named] Joseph was a tekton [a craftsman] in Nazareth who passed on this trade to [a son named] Jesus,” about “another family,” some random family unconnected to any religion, “historians would consider it unremarkable and probably accept it without the need to comment” (p. 158). This is true. It’s what I have pointed out before (and in all my formal studies) as the reference class effect (OHJ, Ch. 6; OPH, Ch. 6). The problem is that (as I once explained for Hannibal) Jesus is not in the reference class of “just some guy said to be a carpenter in some town.” Mundane people reported in histories do tend to exist (not always, but with enough frequency for their priors to favor it, as I show for numerous examples in OPH, Ch. 6). But heavily mythologized and worshiped superheroes tend not to exist. And we have to admit that and take it into account. Jesus is not just like some random guy reported in some history book. He is like Osiris and Hercules and Aesop and Romulus and Moses and Joseph. These guys tend not to exist.

It thus matters that Jesus is never clearly identified as a historical person in any materials whatsoever that aren’t mythologies. He does not show up in a personal letter as a guy someone met or in someone’s memoirs or anywhere else that mundane people show up. He only appears in myths—which are usually about mythical people. Not always—but again, with enough frequency for their priors to favor it. And he or his father being a Maker had obvious mythic resonance to invent. So we need more evidence for Jesus than for just “some guy,” much less for him being “actually” a craftsman (just as for Hephaestus or Daedalus being “actually” a craftsman, or Apollo a shepherd or Poseidon a bricklayer).

Without specific evidence establishing Jesus to be one of the exceptions to mythical superheroes, one of the few who really did exist in some mundane sense originally, we have no basis for being sure they did. Dark is thus starting from the wrong reference class, by incompetently ignoring the fact that Jesus only appears in myth (and religious texts reporting myth). Dark completely skips over this, tanking his entire argument from its very first premise. The fact that he has to pretend Jesus is “just some guy” is itself proof that he has no case and really is just trying to avoid the factual reality that Jesus’s existence is actually doubtable, and does need more than the mundane evidence that would suffice for anyone else.

I illustrate this point in Jesus from Outer Space and Obsolete Paradigm with the example of the risen Jesus. Paul says in personal letters that he spoke to the dead Jesus in his head multiple times: 2 Cor. 12:6–9, 1 Cor 15:8, Gal. 1:11–16, Gal. 2:2, etc., including 1 Cor. 11:23–25, which, as I show in Obsolete Paradigm, has been proved to be a report of a dream or vision by multiple scholars now, from myself to Francis Watson, Afetame Alabi, Hans Lietzmann, and John Dominic Crossan, with support even from Joshua Garroway and Steve Mason, and others. Dark would surely agree that Jesus is not historical. He is entirely imaginary. But does a guy you talk to in your head usually also really exist? Or would you need more evidence than that that he did? Even when Paul talks about his imaginary friend having previously died, he appears to say he only knows that from secret codes in the Bible (1 Cor. 15:3–5, Rom. 16:25–26) and thinks he was killed by magical demons (1 Cor. 2:6–8), as many scholars now agree, as I also document in Obsolete Paradigm, in peer-reviewed studies ranging widely from Walter Wink to Beverly Gaventa, Arthur Droge, M. David Litwa, Robert Moses, and others.

Obviously we need more evidence for that man having been a real person than this. Paul only ever talks about Jesus as if he were (once and now) a space-alien. We have no one from Paul’s generation claiming ever to have met or seen him in real life. Jesus only appears in revelations and esoteric bible-code theology throughout Paul’s authentic letters, as well as in Hebrews, 1 Clement, even 1 Peter (if you take that as authentic). The first time Jesus appears “in earth history” is in the mythological hagiography of Mark, which reifies teachings of Paul into stories about and sayings from Jesus (as many scholars also now agree: see Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles). This does not look encouraging. This state of affairs should warrant doubting the historicity of Paul’s imaginary friend, not “being sure” of it.

And if this is true for “the risen” Jesus, it’s just as true of the pre-mortem Jesus. Because we have no better evidence for the latter than we have for the former. So we need something more. We can’t just say “Jesus was just this guy, you know; therefore surely he existed, because ordinary dudes usually do.” That’s simply, literally, false. The inference is correct; but the premise is not. Jesus is, in all sources we have, a superhero from outer space. Not just some carpenter from Kent.

Dark’s Case “for” Historicity: Likelihoods

After completely getting wrong the prior probability that someone like Jesus would exist, Dark then flubs every likelihood ratio that could have turned that around. Dark’s first attempt to build a favorable likelihood ratio for Jesus reads like street-corner apologetics, not serious scholarship (p. 150):

Jesus is, of course, mentioned in the four Gospels, the book of Acts, and the seven letters of St Paul … We usually think of all of these as parts of the Bible, but they were written as independent texts. Only later were they combined, with other texts, to make the New Testament. There are, then, twelve separate written texts rather than one (the Bible) for the existence of Jesus as a historical figure. 

This is all false. In fact, so false, that no competent historian should ever have written this paragraph. These are not independent sources. Paul’s letters all come from one source (Paul). They are not “seven” independent sources. And the Gospels and Acts all embellish on each other; they are not independent of each other; they are not “five” independent sources. They are all the elaborations of one source—which is dependent on Paul. So it all goes back to a single source: Paul. That’s all we have. And Paul does not actually corroborate anything historical about Jesus in the Gospels or Acts.

Everyone agrees there is really only one known source among the Gospels and Acts for Jesus: Mark. Matthew simply embellished Mark, stating no sources for what he added, and a lot of what he added is by most scholars agreed to be fictional; Luke combined and embellished Mark and Matthew, again citing no sources for anything, and simply re-referenced that in Acts; and John responds to (principally) Luke and Mark, in the most wildly fictional story yet, and even credits as his source a fictional character: Lazarus. Yes, Lazarus: see OHJ, Ch. 7, again with many scholars concurring, from Floyd Filson to Keith Pearce, and many more cited by Christian apologist James Charlesworth, whose only argument against them and their extensive list of evidence is—and I kid you not—that Lazarus can’t be the Beloved Disciple (John 11:1-3, 11:5, 20:6-10, cf. 11:43–44, and 21:21-24, cf. 11:43–44) because Lazarus could not possibly run faster than Peter (John 20:3-5), since he had recently been resurrected from the dead (John 11:38–44). That is rank apologetics of the most gullible and stupid kind. But it reflects how there just are no competent arguments against these conclusions—forcing the likes of Charlesworth to argue the world works like a cartoon.

The Gospels are all myths, and they are not independent. They are all dependent on Mark (and each other). And Mark is dependent on Paul—and not in respect to the historical truth of Mark’s tales about Jesus, but in respect to their fictionalizing Paul’s theology, not memories of Jesus. So this is not good evidence for Jesus. To the contrary, this all together stinks of a mythical Jesus. To treat all this as “twelve” independent, sober historical accounts of a real guy is to be extraordinarily gullible, not professional. Dark is proving Jesus didn’t exist by showing us that he only has the most credulous and ridiculous defense of his existence to offer us, rather than any sound or serious argument.

In the end, the net “likelihood” of these twelve dependent sources and their contents is at best the same whether Jesus existed or not. And thus none of this makes the case that Jesus is “an exception” to the usual trend that mythologized superheroes are mythical and not historical. To the contrary, that Jesus only exists in myth—the overt unsourced mythologies of the Gospels and Acts (OHJ, Ch. 9 and 10), and the celestializing mythology gullibly believed by Paul (OHJ, Ch. 11)—argues for Jesus being as typical as everyone else in that category: mythical people, only ever imaginary or imagined. Just as with any of them, we would need more than this for Jesus to prove him an exception to that rule. You can’t just circularly cite all the mythologies of Jesus and letters referencing an imaginary Jesus as evidence Jesus wasn’t imaginary or mythical.

As it stands, the Gospels establish Jesus was a heavily mythologized person, and such persons tend not to exist. So you need evidence to get Jesus into the small set of exceptions. But nothing in any text raises those odds. So we are left with what we have: more likely than not, Jesus was mythical. Now, of course, there is an argument to proceed from there—one can nitpick specific passages in Paul, and in the Gospels and Acts and other texts, to try and “get” that extra needed evidence, some smoking gun that proves Paul or they knew Jesus was a recent historical convict executed by Rome for example, or that Mark was recording the memoirs of Jesus’s companions in life, or something, anything. And I cover all that and its net effects on the probability of Jesus in my studies, and Lataster does the same in his. But Dark is unaware of any of this, and thus never references it—even to respond to any of it (much less, competently).

So all we have from Dark is the totally gullible and naive circular falsehoods of Christian apologetics: that a plethora of mythologies copying each other, riffing on reports from one guy who says he met an imaginary friend (and contemporaries who say nothing more than that), somehow “count” as “twelve” “independent” “sources” “attesting” to a historical Jesus. And that’s ridiculous. It is, in fact, why I no longer believe Jesus exists: this naive nuttery is all historicists have to argue the contrary. With this nonsense we could argue the historicity of Moses, Osiris, Romulus, Aesop; any mythical person we wanted. It’s obviously therefore only an argument for what someone like Dark wants. It is not an argument for what a sober professional should believe.

And Then, What?

That’s really all Dark has. He scatters some typical gullible apologetics here and there besides, but none get anywhere, and all are unprofessional and naive—and simply wrong, in one way or another. For example (p. 151):

• “We can’t … dismiss [these “twelve” documents] as sources for the existence of Jesus—no matter how we then analyse what they say in detail—on the grounds that they were written by Jesus’ supporters.” No one under peer review does. In all my formal studies and Lataster’s we never make this argument. To the contrary, we make the case against trusting the Gospels from extensive evidence of their mythmaking and invention and documented unreliability. Dark has no word to say against any of that evidence—or even the conclusion. Which illustrates his complete ignorance of his own field’s literature.
• ­”If the Gospels were all there was to attest the historical existence of Jesus, they would be taken as more than enough evidence.” No honest professional believes that. Because the Gospels are identical in function, origin, and construction to the myths of Osiris, Moses, Aesop, Romulus, Dionysus, and beyond. And obviously no honest professional believes those provide any evidence that those men existed. Dark’s special pleading for the Gospels to be treated differently is more of the same apologetical false equivalence between mythical and historical writing in antiquity. It is not a serious argument. And it carries no logical weight at all. It’s embarrassing to see him even say it.
• Josephus’s passage about James “provides really firm evidence” that Jesus existed. This has been refuted under peer review half a dozen times now (as I show in OPH, e.g. pp. 363–71, citing studies from myself, Lataster, Allen, Hansen, Williams, and List). Dark clearly does not know this, as he provides no arguments against their case and doesn’t even know he has to, proving he never competently checked before making this gullible assertion. But for my most recent discussion of why this is unusable as evidence (because the reference in it to Christ cannot be established even to refer to a biological relation, much less to be authentic, to any greater chance than 50/50) see Schmidt on James.
• “The famous Roman historian Tacitus refers in his book Annals (15.44) to ‘Chrestus’ (probably meaning Christ), when relating the allegation that the Christians started the fire in Rome.” Here Dark shows he didn’t even check the text he is referencing—he has garbled apologetical claims that a certain “Chrestus” in Suetonius (not Tacitus) is Christ (a conclusion rejected by nearly every expert now, and useless as evidence for historicity even if it were true, as then Suetonius hoses every historical fact of the man and thus would appear to only have reports of a belief in Christ causing riots, not a historical man doing so) with the fact that our only manuscript of Tacitus’s account originally called Christians “Chrestians,” calling into doubt his writing the line about “Christ” explaining that name, and thus his ever meaning this about Christians at all. This shows that Dark’s treatment of this subject is so extraordinarily lazy and incompetent as to call into doubt anything he says on the subject.
• “This passage is accepted as a genuine part of the Annals by most twenty-­first-­century historians.” Based on the above, his allowing that some scholars disagree (a curious thing to do and yet have no argument against their case—making this a fallacy of “argument from most people think so”) is probably just instinctive cautious writing. I do not get the impression that Dark knows any of those dissenting scholars or their arguments (see OPH, pp. 76–88), and in any case, he recovers his point from none of them. Nor would that matter, because…
• More importantly, the majority of “twenty-­first-­century historians” (if that is what Dark wants to go with) who have published peer-reviewed studies of this evidence have concluded it cannot evince the historicity of Jesus even if entirely authentic (see OPH, pp. 76–88, citing myself, Lataster, Williams, Hansen, Prchlík, Drews, Barrett, Shaw, Jones, Van der Lans, Bremmer, Cineira, and Cook), because it is derivative of the Gospels (directly or through Christian informants) and therefore not independent. Yet Dark incompetently treats it as a “fourteenth” independent source for Jesus—Josephus’s remarks about James being the thirteenth, yet even that, even if authentic, also cannot be established to be independent. Not knowing how to establish the independence of a source is a thing Dark himself knows is reflective of incompetence in a historian. Yet Dark chooses incompetence.
• Finally, Dark tries to imply that oral lore “could” be reliable enough (p. 153) to justify 4th century legends (p. 155) about which house Jesus lived in at Nazareth being reliable. He admits this is not enough to warrant confidence, just a “possibility,” which is trivially true. So there is nothing I need respond to here except that he claims “several studies” have found ancient oral traditions to be true, but never names or cites any, so I have no idea what he is talking about or if it bears any useful analogy here at all. Which matters because…
• Dark implies he means studies regarding lore of “volcanic eruptions or tsunamis,” which are so catastrophic one can hardly expect lore of them to die out. But this is a fallacy of affirming the consequent: if a real catastrophe, then probably enduring lore (which is true); therefore, if enduring lore, then probably a real catastrophe (which is false—lots of lored catastrophes aren’t real or don’t trace to any specific one, much less just because some do). Likewise, “there was a guy who lived here once” is not a catastrophe wiping out half the population, so it’s a fallacy of false analogy (there are tons of “that famous guy was here once” myths in human history—it’s practically an inevitable industry); and the fact (and it is a fact, acknowledged even by Dark) that pilgrim myths were fabricated by deliberate imperial propaganda and profiteers in the 4th century entails a prior odds against any such lore being true, not in favor of it. Which is a fallacy of neglected background knowledge. However, that historians would suck at logic is expected (see Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies and OPH, Chs. 4 and 5).

Dark also doesn’t know there is abundant evidence that “Jesus the Nazorian” was his original appellation, not “Jesus of Nazareth,” and that the latter was a later attempt to reify the former in alignment with prophecy. But I covered that last time. The bottom line is that I am as sure as Dark is that Nazareth was a real and flourishing town for Jesus to have hailed from, but I am just as sure Jesus was never thought to have hailed from there until the Gospels made that up to perfect their religious fiction. And therefore whether it existed or not has no impact on the historicity of Jesus. The assignment was fake either way.

So Nazareth is a red herring for mythicists. It can never be relevant to any argument even for, much less against, the historicity of Jesus. If he had remained competent when discussing this subject that would have been Dark’s argument. Instead, we get embarrassing cartoonish drivel. Which is yet more evidence that no historian believes Jesus existed for any legitimate reason—and so you have no reason to believe there is any legitimate reason.