All addressed in OHJ.

But in short, it can’t be random, because random attributes would generate a high frequency of historical members, when the set exceeds six. We have fifteen. The probability of so many factors corresponding to such a low probability of existing by arbitrary accident is astronomically low. Therefore, the set is indicative.

It is therefore evidence. It doesn’t matter how arbitrary the discoverers of the pattern think it is. The pattern is so weirdly predictive, it cannot be a chance accident. That’s why it’s useful. Had it not been that way, we wouldn’t be using it. Or if we did, there would be so many clearly historical members, it would give us a high prior of Jesus existing (just as the case with Spartacus, for example, who belongs to no low low-frequency historicity classes, but definitely belongs to at least one high frequency historicity class).

Random attribute assignment can either only generate few set members, or generate a large set most of whose members are historical. To get a set of fifteen none of whose members are likely historical, is effectively impossible. Unless having those attributes does indeed correspond to a low frequency of existing. Hence, that’s what it entails.

It is evidence supporting mythicism.

Because indeed: Moses is also a Rank Raglan hero. And also didn’t exist.

Hence, the more Jesus looks like non-existent persons, the higher the prior probability he was a non-existent person. Just like anyone else.

What that prior probability is, will equal how often persons who look just like Moses and Jesus and Osiris and so on, didn’t exist.

If you want to claim that frequency is higher than 1 in 3, you need evidence that it is higher than 1 in 3.

If Jesus’ portrayal is in fact imitating Oedipus, Jesus scoring high on the Rank Raglan scale is no more evidence of mythicism than is Matthew portraying Jesus as the New Moses.

For the Christian believer, similarities with hero and/or risen deity myths confirm the “universality” (in the west) of their Son of God beliefs. See e.g. Victor White OP on this.

One good point Carrier seems to makes is in pointing to Phil 2.5-11 and explaining that it paints a very different picture than the usual miracle performing Jesus we are used to:

“Have this mind [of humble love] in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not decide to seize equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and being discovered as a man in outward form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, a death of a cross. (Phil 2.5-11)”

Carrier comments on this passage that:

“Key things to notice here are that again no mention is made of Jesus having a ministry, teaching anything or performing any miracles. To the contrary, having ‘emptied’ himself of all he was and ‘humbling’ himself completely to the status of a ‘slave’ imply he would have had no supernatural powers at all (Richard Carrier, On The Historicity of Jesus, pg. 535).”

MCGRATH RESPONDED THAT: I am continually struck by the fact that the one point at which mythicists don’t question the scholarly consensus among conservatives is the the point at which their view is most open to criticism as reflecting undue influence of dogmatic doctrinal positions. The notion that we are dealing here with divine self-emptying is the stuff of what is known as “kenotic Christology” in the realm of systematic theology. But it is unfortunate – if unsurprising – that Carrier uncritically accepts the reading of that back into Philippians. Even Robert Gundry, a conservative Evangelical himself, sees in this language an echo of Isaiah 53:12 rather than a reference to incarnation (The Old Is Better, p.239 n.35 and p.284).

ANY THOUGHTS DR. CARRIER?