Thank you so much for your brilliant academic and undeniable response, Richard! It was the last doubt I had, which you answered perfectly. I’ll be checking the links you shared and the references you pointed out. Your work brings a profound relief for those who like me have fallen for the trap before! Endless thanx, and all the best to you from this Brazilian definitely huge fan and reader from then on of yours!

This was a standard trope in Jewish heroic literature. It may have begun with the Maccabean martyrs tradition (the first time we get “they won by suffering and dying, and now they and we will all be redeemed in the end” storyline) but even that might have evolved from the national legend (that this is true of Israelites generally, thus originating their entire downtrodden losers who will get resurrected and their enemies burned alive for it, e.g. Isaiah 53, Daniel 9–12).

So, in context, this is normal Jewish fiction, not something unusual. In OHJ I cite studies by major scholars documenting the “suffering righteous hero” genre of Jewish fiction as particularly popular exactly by the time Christianity began.

But the idea was not unknown in pagan literature: tragic ends for heroes were normal, yet their victorious deification afterward a matter of course; and the savior cults turned this into a marketable narrative for followers who could share in the storyline; and “pagan martyrs” and “martyred philosophers” traditions abounded, and they even had philosophical explorations of this, e.g. the crucified man parable in Plato, also cited and discussed in OHJ, in my section on human sacrifice as a power-theme in ancient literature.

So the idea that “we must repent and remain stalwart even though we’ll get beaten and mistreated and killed for it, but no worries God is coming to set it all right” was actually the national mytho-character of Jews generally (e.g. Wisdom 2 and 5). Christianity did not invent that. It simply used it.

Meanwhile, the Christian model is not even a deviation from a commonly attested narrative in Judaism: that the first messiah would come and fail and die (Dan. 9) while the second messiah will come and resurrect him and the elect and melt all our enemies after (Dan. 12). See my bibliography on the pre-Christian dying messiah tradition. So Christians were also expecting a warrior messiah. Just, in the future still, and marching armies down from heaven, just like the Qumran sect expected (indeed the Christian model likely stems from that one, which included the “suffering messiah/messenger followed by a warrior messiah from heaven” narrative).

It’s also worth noting that persecution narratives (“suffer for the faith and you will gain the glory of martyrdom and future spiritual victory”) are highly successful psychologically for oppressed cults (it’s really the only way to retain membership under oppression). I discuss this (and the language and rhetoric used to capitalize on it) all over Not the Impossible Faith.

Dear Richard, just asking: and regarding the fact that in the case of Jesus and his disciples the story goes contrary to what’s usually the outcoming in fictional stories? I.e., in the world view — as they live not for this world — they’re all defeated: persecuted, beaten etc and killed. Wouldn’t a fictional story tend to end with them being victorious or something in that sense, and not as the losers so to speak? The Jews did (and still do) expect a kind of warrior Messiah, who would lead them to victory, but Jesus comes the other way round, preaching to return good for evil and to convince the evil doers to repent and so on, that’s said to be aligned with Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9, for example. What’s your take on this?

Yeah, like all apologists (whatever ideology they are apologetically defending), he relies on false statements (like that I ever called myself a “professor”) and fallacies (that I am not a professor has no epistemic relevance to whether my conclusions follow from the evidence or even the quality of my work—that is functionally an ad hominem fallacy, attacking the man rather than the argument, and a fallacy of Argument from Prestige, believing that prestige reliably correlates with expertise or being correct), and then never actually replies to any relevant thing I have said (e.g. ignoring my List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously and On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus). All to build endless excuses to not examine any of my evidence and arguments relating to Jesus.

Anyone who takes that kind of arguing seriously has already dismissed themselves as having anything relevant to say. We can safely ignore them.

He claims to be a university professor, but otherwise has no particular expertise. Small, new channel, small number of views. I mixed it up with him in the comments. The only thing of interest is just how much stake he puts in “consensus”, repeatedly challenging me to find a single scholar in the field that agrees with your position. I told him it was an argument by authority, and had zero interest in that line of argument. He has some other counter-arguments, but very shallow.

As an aside, do you know what happened to your presentation to Atheist United on YouTube? In particular, why it was made private: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U

That’s how I got my introduction to your argument, and I have referenced it often over the years. I’ve looked for other presentations by you on YouTube, but that really is the best one I’ve found as an introduction to the idea.

The idea that Docetism is a modern construct like Gnosticism and did not exist in antiquity and therefore all the texts claimed to be Docetist need to be completely re-explained is not new to me. It has actually been the majority trend in Docetism studies over the last ten years. So once again my thinking was arrived at independently by nearly every specialist in it at the same time. Which is a good sign we’re right. I cite and quote and discuss all that scholarship in the new book.

But what is supposed to explain these texts has reached no agreement. Docetism specialists are mostly throwing their hands up with no definite results as to what lies behind the texts that used to be mistakenly identified as Docetist. The easiest ones to solve are the ones that are the least Docetic (like why you’d have Jesus teleport out of a womb rather than touch a vagina). The “most” Docetic (like Ignatius or 1 John) remain “a mystery” in the new studies. Some proposals exist, but are tentative, and IMO, actually just one inference away from mythicism (I make this point by analyzing the leading theories).

So, what is new is for me to go that extra step and say that we can actually explain all these texts with mythicism, and indeed that fits better than any other proposal so far, and even subsumes all other proposals so far (since those proposals are just variants of mythicism that keep historicity in only as a nod to consensus and not because it actually performs any needed explanatory function in the model).

All that said, many a mythicist before me has suspected this. Which is why the idea is already in OHJ. But I think this is the first time anyone has proved it, much less with abundant independent peer-reviewed support.

Thank you. I knew that but it never hurts to ask.

You can see my general view of Schmidt’s study under my article on Josephus.

“Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ” (Oxford University Press 2025)

The full text of the book is available as a free download:

https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/

I was aware, but always appreciate the heads up in case I hadn’t been. So thank you.

I’m swamped with work and family at present but will definitely get to them next week. At a glance, they appear to ignore my responses already made to the exact same kinds of arguments in OHJ (see the final sections of Chapter 6). But maybe there’s something in them more substantial or that actually tackles those responses.