So James McGrath is a liar for Jesus, defending Christian dogma with slander and lies about me and my work, desperately, childishly, trying to get people to not read it lest they discover his lies and uncover the truth. He is clearly so terrified of this that he is willing to abandon his morality and act like an immature buffoon in a professional journal. Of course, a real journal would retract entries containing lies. So if this journal doesn’t, that will prove we can no longer trust this field to tell us the truth. And that is why it is stalling out.

So let’s get to that. In Obsolete Paradigm I make an extensive, evidence-based case for why the field needs a new paradigm. It needs to stop evading evidence, and abandon old indefensible presumptions, and revisit the texts and evidence from a more defensible point of view, to finally construct a more credible account of how Christianity began and developed. It needs to abandon the lies, and evasions, and unsupported assumptions that have been propping it up to the present day.

A Brief History of How We Got Here

Explaining that requires starting with a very brief and simplified history of how we got here. The mainstream consensus today favors a vague ordinary Jesus. Contrary to McGrath’s baloney, the field now admits the Gospels and Acts are mythographies. Until recently they thought they could recover some few details about a historical Jesus using “criteria of authenticity,” but every study in the field of the validity of those criteria—literally every single one—confesses they don’t work and should be abandoned. I already documented this in Proving History but as I show in Paradigm the field has moved even more in this direction since. The Demise of Authenticity is now the norm, as I’ll give a very recent example of scholars admitting below. But before that recent development, the field had clung to some ambiguous competing models of a historical Jesus. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet or a misunderstood Rabbi or even a violent revolutionary (and so on). But now the field is side-eyeing even that much. More on that in a moment.

When this was the majority consensus ten years ago, there were two alternatives most abundantly endorsed: the goofy Ken Ham version of a historical Jesus (that it’s all true, the Gospels are eyewitness records—what I called the “triumphalist” version in OHJ 14) and the opposite, ultra-skeptical version (that it’s all myth, there was no Jesus: the only complete thesis on this question that has survived peer review in a hundred years—twice). That’s commonly now called mythicism. But you mustn’t confuse that (as McGrath does) with Gospel mythicism, which is the majority mainstream consensus: most experts agree the Gospels are myths about Jesus. The question of whether there was any kind of historical Jesus buried somewhere underneath that myth was generally just assumed to be answered with “yes.” But as I and Lataster pointed out, that assumption wasn’t based on any evidence that survives logical review. And they’ve had ten years since to redress that missing case. They have avoided it instead. So it remains an unevidenced assumption—against our extensively proven case. That’s where things stood. That stand is starting to crumble.

Mythicism is an old but much feared idea. Open doubts began in the 18th century. The first systematic case was mounted by the German scholar Bruno Bauer in the 19th century. But the most modern scholarly case began in the early 20th century, particularly with the studies and influence of another German, Arthur Drews. His serious peer reviewed case was then attacked by Shirley Jackson Case in 1912, which was updated in 1928 (pretty much only by adding a “what’s happened in the last ten years” chapter at the end), which remains to this day the only peer reviewed academic study specifically and comprehensively arguing for the assumption of historicity for Jesus ever—ever. None has ever been published since. None was ever published before. It’s the only one.

Yet this is all before 1950—when history remained highly unreliable. Drews is obsolete now. Case is even more so. Indeed, he defended historicity by relying on premises almost all of which have been abandoned by mainstream scholarship since. Yet the field just keeps circularly citing Case (or handwaving in his direction, unable to identify who or what study they mean as having “refuted that already” when asked about mythicism). No one has stopped to realize that Case has largely been refuted by the field itself. So the field needs a more modern, up-to-date defense of the assumption that Jesus existed at all. Instead, scholars just keep acting like McGrath. “Nothing to see here. Don’t look. We don’t need to defend our assumption. It’s all uninteresting. Trust me.” Joke. Insult. Flip table.

There was a revival of interest in mythicism by outsiders and amateurs in the 1970s. That’s when the bogus, crappy, conspiracy theory versions of mythicism got their start (see The Problem with Varieties of Jesus Mythicism) and are still being ground out today as if by some Monster Generator in Gauntlet. But there was also a serious case made across several studies by G.A. Wells back in the day. Wells was not a biblical scholar or even historian of antiquity, but a Professor of German Literature. Which is why he is the one who discovered and thought to revive the Jesus skepticism found across previous German literature. But he published none of his studies under peer review. And they were defective in a number of ways, as he lacked the relevant skills, training, and background knowledge. Which made him, alongside the cranks, easily dismissed.

And I was one of the crowd dismissing it all as crank. As editor at The Secular Web and a graduate student at Columbia University in ancient history, I thrashed every attempt to claim or push mythicism there. One of the prominent outcomes of that was my scathing review of The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors of Kersey Graves (a review that is now grossly out of date, as one can tell by my subsequent published findings, but Graves’ book remains useless garbage). More modern stuff was either crap or unconvincing. So I didn’t see the value of reviewing it. It thus took much cajoling to get me to bother to read Earl Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle, assuming it would be more of the same. It wasn’t. It led me to conclude against all my prior hostility that maybe mythicism was plausible—if you got rid of all the garbage. As I said then in 2002, “all this is not to say that the historicity of Jesus has been refuted or that it is now incredible” but that “we must entertain the plausible possibility that Jesus didn’t exist.” I still leaned toward historicity, but had lingering doubts.

Then in 2008 the economy crashed right when I received my PhD and I ran a crowdfund to get me on a postdoc research project, and unanimously donors wanted a peer reviewed study of the Doherty thesis (trimmed down) and whether historicity can survive it. The result was several peer reviewed articles (most affordably reproduced now in Hitler Homer Bible Christ), and two peer reviewed academic monographs (Proving History, on method; and On the Historicity of Jesus, on results), and now a third (The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus, which in all honesty actually passed factual peer review as well), updating on all the events and findings since. Including how the preceding studies spawned about a dozen other studies by other scholars, albeit of varying honesty and value. For example, almost all formal attempts to rebut our work literally ignored or lied about its content; and the few that were honest ended up supporting our work, as shown in chapter six of Paradigm.

Where We Are Now

That the trend has been to lie about our arguments and evidence, and never even mention them much less respond to them—and thus never actually defend the assumption of a historical Jesus—I also document with a thorough review of the evidence of that in chapter three of Paradigm. I don’t just insist or claim, but prove, that all academic responses to our studies (with minor exceptions discussed in chapter six) have combined three dishonest tactics of avoidance rather than legitimate scholarship: (1) they ignore our actual arguments and evidence; (2) they invent arguments we didn’t make; (3) and they simply repeat arguments we refuted without even mentioning (much less rebutting so as to recover from) our refutations. This is dishonest. And it is field wide.

The end result is that to this day there is still no relevant scholarly response to either Lataster’s 2019 study or my 2014 study—as in, a critique that acknowledges either study’s actual argument (and its corresponding evidence), and addresses it in any meaningful way. This is inexplicable for a position that is supposed to be easily defended. The truth would not require such tactics. Yet after being given ten years to produce a real defense, and failing, the guild seems to have implicitly conceded that historicity is a dogma whose doubtfulness is only to be made to go away, rather than actually disproved. As a rule, refutable propositions get refuted; but ten years of evasion across an entire field of study can only mean one thing: there is no refutation. And this is now the strongest evidence that the historicity of Jesus is no longer genuinely credible. It’s a shibboleth, not a finding.

The irony is that the field is moving our way anyway—while apologetics like McGrath’s is moving away from even mainstream scholarship, becoming ever more gullible and ridiculous, while real scholarship becomes ever more skeptical. I’ll illustrate with some examples:

• The first battleground going our way is Oral Lore vs. Literary Mythography. In Historicity I made an extensive case citing dozens of scholars and hundreds of studies across over 120 pages that the Gospels are not preserves of oral lore but are constructed works of literature. The evidence is vast and devastating. And already then countless experts agreed with me. In the ten years since, as documented in Paradigm, the field has moved in that direction with even more pervasion (26–34: eight pages, citing almost a hundred studies besides my own, a mere sample of publications pertaining), with the result that:

[T]he traditional dogma of the field regarding the supposed existence of an ‘oral lore’ concerning a historical Jesus, preserved under layers of literary and legendary embellishment in the Gospels, has come under more concerted attack as not only unevidenced but even implausible. 

My position is becoming the norm. As just one example, see Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature; but again, I cited near a hundred. That’s the direction the mainstream is going in. Resistance comes only from Christian apologists, not objective scholars. While Christian apologists are increasingly moving in the opposite direction, abandoning the common sense of even the previous consensus (as we see with the rise of things like the new Maximal Facts apologetic and the tinfoil hat of Undesigned Coincidences).

• Related to that is the example of Mark’s use of Paul’s Epistles. That used to be dismissed out of hand. Now if you count all the studies specifically examining the question in detail, almost all of them are finding it’s true—in fact, they are now presenting extensive converging evidence proving it (see Paradigm 34–35 for summary and bibliography and Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles for some examples), while remaining doubts have no evidence to cite, instead relying on fallacious reasoning about possibilities rather than probabilities. But by count, almost all studies are a yes. That means the majority consensus of actual experts who have examined the question enough to have an informed opinion is that the Gospel of Mark is based on the Epistles of Paul, reifying stories about Jesus to convey what were really, originally, ideas and teachings of Paul. In Historicity I only mentioned this as a possibility. Now it is arguably fact.

Similarly:

• Docetism didn’t exist (with the effect that texts mistaken for it allow for the possible existence of early mythicist Christians). I had suggested this might be the case in Historicity. Then a dozen studies came out proving it. All Docetism experts, every study of the question now, is in agreement on this: there was never any such dispute as modern Docetism claimed, and all previously-alleged Docetist texts are about something more in line with mythicism. This is the new mainstream consensus. I document this, and cite all the scholarship, and advance on it from primary evidence analysis, in chapter seven of Paradigm. The field has again moved in my direction.
• The conclusion that all Christians considered themselves Brothers of the Lord. I argued this extensively in Historicity. Then some ten studies since mine now concur. All cited and covered in chapter ten of Paradigm.
• The conclusion that dying and rising gods were already a popular fad that Christian Judaism simply built into. Since my study, numerous others have confirmed this, refuting all challenges to it (Paradigm, 70).
• The conclusion that Paul is describing not a historical last supper but his own private vision of Jesus inaugurating the eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:23. Numerous experts have since concurred and extensively argued the point (Paradigm, 44–49).
• The conclusion that Paul said demons killed Jesus in 1 Corinthians 2:6. Now a common position in the field (Paradigm, 39–44).

And many more. Paradigm documents dozens of these shifts. All in my direction. None against.

But for Doublespeak, Mythicism Already Won

The effect of all this now has even become a trend in the field, often called the Fourth Quest of the Historical Jesus: the view that we cannot know anything about Jesus, we can only study his context to understand that. This was starkly exemplified in what should have been the first ever peer reviewed study defending the historicity of Jesus in a century: James Crossley and Chris Keith’s 2024 anthology of cutting edge research, The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus. In which not a single argument is made that Jesus existed. Nor does it even say a debate exists in the peer reviewed literature about it. Neither my work nor Lataster’s is ever cited, much less answered or rebutted. In only one of its final chapters (on page 508), Justin Meggitt devotes a couple of sentences to vaguely mentioning that something like that exists and needs more attention (even chastising the field for ignoring it), but cites none of it, and gives it no attention.

Instead, Next Quest just assumes Jesus existed—ironically, given that McGrath abhors things you assert but do not prove—yet that describes the historicity of Jesus, not the doubting of it. Because Next agrees we can’t know anything about Jesus, since (for example) the Gospels are so thoroughly mythical that if any truth is in them we cannot locate it now, it argues the “Third Quest” should be abandoned (no more using criteria to try and extract a historical Jesus), and a new Fourth Quest begun, which consists of studying ancillary subjects like ancient rhetoric and literary techniques, the culture and economy of Galilee, Jewish diversity, urban legends, and so on.

Which means the strategy in the Fourth Quest for the historical Jesus is to simply ignore the only peer reviewed literature relevant to the question of whether Jesus even existed, and instead just “assume” he did, while simultaneously—and contradictorily—insisting nothing can be known about him. But if nothing can be known of him, how can we claim to know he existed? The effect of this twisted knot of reasoning is witnessed in C.J. Cornthwaite’s delightfully mainstream yet critically liberal Christian YouTube show. About two weeks ago, he published “Each historical Jesus search has failed. Here’s why they always will.” There he says the quiet part out loud, giving voice to what a lot of other scholars have already said (just like Crossley and Keith and all their contributors): Cornthwaite admits there is no valid method by which to derive any knowledge about the historical Jesus, the sources are so theologized and mythologized and silent or fake, and therefore every attempt to discover a historical Jesus not only has failed, but always will fail. He shies away from concluding it’s just as likely then that Jesus didn’t exist. But that leaves the unspoken contradiction: you can’t admit nothing can be known about Jesus, and then claim you know Jesus existed. Yet this is where the mainstream consensus is already concertedly going: toward this “politically safe” position of all but admitting mythicism without actually saying so.

And this is stalling the field out in false beliefs. We are still wasting time trying to answer questions about Jesus, rather than answering questions about what the early authors meant with the things they chose to say about him (for a stark example of this stall still happening, see my discussion of Luke in chapter six of Paradigm), and why Christianity began and grew, regardless of who started it (where we are not looking for some charismatic “great man” founder but the ideological motives and scriptural inspirations of the actual founders). This is already starting to be admitted by mainstream scholars now. Cornthwaite lays it out. In the Crossley and Keith volume, they also say it. In their introduction they admit how they’ve become “disillusioned” by the previous three quests for a historical Jesus, and that we must move on from “the rubble of some failed enterprises,” including the failed method of criteria that drove the last quest. You might recognize that method from Bart Ehrman still using the “criteria of authenticity” method with total confidence. But Ehrman is behind the curve. The consensus has already left him behind.

As Crossley and Keith explain, “the era of the hard version of the criteria of authenticity is over.” That’s right: it’s over. They explain that it didn’t get anywhere but reconstruct a loose chronology of the development of ideas about Jesus, and not any actual facts about Jesus. Therefore, they conclude “the Next Quest [sic] should move beyond searching for an uninterpreted reality ‘behind’ the texts” That’s right: we’re done with that now. These are mainstream historians admitting this. So much for that being ludicrous. They conclude we can only “reconstruct imaginatively a historical Jesus” (my emphasis), and we can only do that by “reconstructing the social world and themes associated with Jesus” (my emphasis).

Then comes the kicker (my emphasis again):

Are we ultimately going to be in touch with the historical Jesus? We may never know, but reconstructing ideas present in Galilee and Judea around the time of Jesus tells us something about the social world of the historical Jesus and thus something about Jesus himself.

In other words, if we just assume Jesus lived then, then we can at least establish what could and couldn’t be true of him if we understand the time and place. Which is true—but is giving up on establishing whether he even existed then in the first place. That is supposedly no longer anything they need prove or defend, even though they just admitted there is no way to prove or defend it. So why keep assuming it? In the end they agree with those who accuse them of saying “we can’t do historical Jesus study because the data won’t allow a reasonable biographical picture.” And that’s that. They are basically saying we can’t know anything about any actual person. So we need to move on…and just imaginatively assume there was one.

But what justifies moving on when you haven’t established the underlying premise of this entire new quest: that there was such a man? All previous quests failed. By their own admission. So why are we assuming they succeeded when we are admitting we have to build an entirely new quest on the rubble of the old? This is inconsistent. It is illogical. Yet it is where the field is now. They have admitted to everything mythicism established (and across literature published since my original study, that includes even particulars, like who killed Jesus, what Paul claimed, who Brothers of the Lord included, and so on)—without actually saying the one thing that that entails: that we’ve given up knowing whether Jesus actually existed.
 They will instead simply affirm a phantom Jesus because they have to, because they are not allowed to question it, because that would offend, and evoke harassment, and dismissal of their work—saving themselves from the slanderous clownery of McGrath’s review in JSNT.

All I am now arguing is that this has to end. We need to stop assuming a Jesus existed and start asking what the origins of Christianity looked like without one. That paradigm shift is the only way to move forward in understanding early Christianity. And I don’t just assert this. I prove it. I present detailed examples of how real progress can be made when we abandon the old paradigm, and how the old paradigm is forcing scholars into convoluted knots and embarrassing errors (this is the whole occupation and outcome of Paradigm chapters three through ten).

In essence this mainstream vanguard are now acting like we should just assume Hercules existed, but we can’t know anything about him because it’s all buried under myth and error and fancy, so we can only know things about Hercules by studying early Peloponnesian pottery and economics. We would all recognize that’s a broken paradigm. But no one will admit this for Jesus because of Christian elite capture of the field and its resulting peer pressure and commitment to prestige economics. Obviously the correct paradigm is to explore why Hercules was invented, the circumstances of his evolution as a demigod, the purpose and meanings intended by the stories invented about him, the uses made of his myth to push religious, social, and political agendas, and so on. So, too, for Jesus.

As I conclude in my book:

All the evidence of the previous ten chapters leans in one direction: Christianity began with revelations (just like Islam and Mormonism), and the Gospels are later literary mythologizations of their savior—which subsequent Christians historicized, expelling and condemning any remaining Christians who did not go along, even adding explicit assertions of historicity into the creed to ensure compliance.

Christians who objected were explicitly shunned (as Ignatius and 2 Peter admit) and their teachings and writings not preserved (as is evident by their absence now, despite knowledge of them then). Which means our understanding of the origins of Christianity needs to be reconstructed from the ground up. And the content of the early Epistles needs to be reinterpreted in light of their authors’ not knowing of a Gospel Jesus. And the content of the Gospels needs to be reinterpreted in light of their authors’ inventing him.

The field of Jesus studies needs to reckon with these facts and address them. Continuing to ignore or evade them only leaves its collective head in the sand, pursuing the wrong avenues of inquiry for understanding how and why Christianity began and developed in its early generations, and the wrong avenues of inquiry for understanding the Gospels and the letters of Paul—and other literature as well.

This is what McGrath doesn’t want you to know, what he wants to hide from his peers, behind slanders and lies meant to dissuade them from discovering it, and finally having to address it. He is a symptom of the very problem I document.

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I gave a lengthier talk and Q&A on all this for the Atlanta Freethought Society just last week. This is not a transcript, but is the gist of my presentation. An archived video of that will exist eventually. I’ll link it here.