All else being equal, yes. That’s the argument I conclude with in Chapter 10 of On the Historicity of Jesus. When the prior probability starts at 0.5, it’s 50/50 either way; we have no knowledge either way.

Until we have evidence a particular pericope is more or less likely to be historical or mythical. That’s why they invented “the criteria,” in an attempt to find “evidence” in a pericope that it comes from history and not mythic intentions. Every expert who has published a dedicated study of the merits of that method has concluded it doesn’t work. I cite and quote and expand on those findings, for every criterion attempted, in Proving History.

So far, no valid means of finding history in any pericope has worked. They all fail on either facts or logic. Or both.

That would leave us with the 0.5. Not knowing. Except for two things. First, the overall structure of the Gospels is mythical, not historical. Even at the most generous, they are so much more similar to myths than histories, that the prior probability of any pericope in them being historical is below 0.5. We should presume they are mythical until we have evidence otherwise. Second, many of them have such strong markers of mythmaking that we can be certain they are far more probably mythical than historical.

I give examples of and discuss both points in On the Historicity of Jesus.

(Also, formally, the question isn’t the probability of each pericope being history-based, but of any pericope being history based, which probability gets updated as we pass through every pericope. When the evidence is 50/50, that probability doesn’t change. When it’s a probability favoring myth, that overall probability goes down. Only when there is evidence for historicity does it go up. And if there is only weak such evidence, that doesn’t get us to historicity either, as the overall probability of myth remains high.)

It explains why our resurrection bodies already exist and are waiting for us in heaven (2 Cor. 5).

Correct, except xylon frequently meant plank, not tree. It more generally referred to worked wood. And accordingly the Mishnah describes using a plank prop not a tree for the purpose. The word also commonly referred to the upright post of a crucifix (the “crux”, the crossbeam being the “patibulum”, but by synechdoche crux often meant both, and so did xylon), or even an impaling pole.

See my discussion of the scholarship on crucifixion terminology and its connection to Jewish forms of execution in OHJ (index).

I discuss Allison in both Proving History and On the Historicity. But his primary scholarship. That book is a secondary popular market work (aimed at theology for believers, not history for historians). I can’t recall it mentioning mythicism or making a case for historicity; it just presumes historicity and asks what we are to do with the fact that no certain history can be extracted from the Gospels. And his result is vague, and ultimately theological (ironically), rather than what historians would recognize as historical. There isn’t anything to answer in that book. I’m doing history, not theology.

Because Scripture said the gospel would come from Galilee and the chosen one would be a Nazorian. The former is common knowledge (Isaiah 9). The latter is explicitly stated by Matthew (2:22-23). It happens not to mean from Nazareth. Matthew couldn’t find a town that matched the word exactly, so he chose the one that sounded close enough. I discuss this in both Proving History and On the Historicity (Nazareth and/or Nazorian are in the index of each).

The Gospels go out of their way to make their opponents look like fools who don’t know the Scriptures. It is not likely what real Jews actually argued.

No, it’s the same thing all myths do when they take celestial deities and make them into men walking around on earth and doing stuff. They all do stuff like this. It has a symbolic function. The message (the parable) is the point. Not the literal meaning.

These were attacks leveled at missionaries. So they give them stories to tell about how even the Son of God was likewise slandered.

Note the stories make sure to make clear that the people who say those things are the fools and don’t understand why the mission is taken to people who aren’t already superficially pure.

I was reading your article in Empty Tomb about spiritual resurrection. One thing came to my mind: What do you think are the questions that one-body-resurrection hypothesis can’t answer but the two-body-resurrection hypothesis can? For what I read, one question is that why Paul doesn’t simply say “this mortal body becomes immortal” (p. 138). Latter hypothesis answers that question well, but the former doesn’t. But is there some other things that would be hard to explain with one-body-resurrection hypothesis?

The New Testament uses the word “tree” five times to refer to Christ’s execution (Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29, Galatians 3:13 and 1 Peter 2:24). One of the five appearances of “tree” occurs in Galatians. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,” wrote Paul, “for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). Paul was quoting a phrase found in Deuteronomy 21:23. Since Christ’s death here in Paul fulfilled scripture (Deuteronomy 21:23), it served a theological purpose for Paul, and so there is no reason to think it actually happened, because Paul had reason to invent it. As Paul wrote, “Christ died for our sins ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES (1 Cor 15:3).”

Paul was referring to the Torah’s prescribed form of execution by stoning for blasphemy and idolatry. After being stoned to death, the person’s body was hung on a tree to show that the individual was under God’s curse. To the Jews, hanging on a tree had become a metaphor for an apostate, a blasphemer or a person under God’s curse. That’s how the Jews viewed Jesus (John 5:18; 10:33; Matthew 26:63-65).

Their attitude would explain why Peter and Paul sometimes used the Greek word for “tree” (xylon) to describe Jesus’ execution. Three times in the book of Acts the word tree is used to refer to Jesus’ crucifixion. In these cases, it appears in a Jewish context as well.