I don't prefer spending my time on Jesus mythicism, but when media decides to take on religious subjects with misleading information, I can revise my policy. Last week, Peter Clarke of MerionWest (and of "Jokes Review") published an article arguing that mythicism is about to go mainstream. This article calls for correction on several points
To start off:
"according to a Church of England poll, only 60% of the English hold that view [that Jesus existed]."
This is quite concerning. I believe this reflects the tendency of our modern world to not research topics that matter and have eternal consequences. Instead video games, sports and partying take up all of the free time.
Continuing:
"It stands to reason that as the United States becomes less Christian, it will become less tied to the historicity of Jesus."
Perhaps, but there is, as far as I am aware, no data to suggest this, other than perhaps the secularization of America.
Continuing:
"While Christians need Jesus to be historical, non-Christians do not have any particular reason to care either way."
For the sake of seeking truth alone, they should care. They should also care about researching the individual responsible for undergirding western culture as we know it today.
Back to the Clarke:
"Notably, for people who have not had much exposure to Christian history, Jesus seems like a fictional character. For example, I have a friend who has never once gone to church and more or less lives her life entirely oblivious to the existence of any world religion. I told her recently that I am starting to come around to the idea that Jesus was entirely fictional. “No kidding!” she responded. “I could have told you that!”
Um, so what? Unfortunately, your friend's intuitions aren't proper historical analysis. I hope this is Clarke merely giving us an anecdote--and not giving it as an argument!
Back to Clarke,
"Meanwhile, his story (we often hear) parallels those of other mythical figures who offer salvation after dying and coming back, such as Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, and Inanna."
For someone that is seeking to probe scholarly consensus, Clarke sure is out of touch. To quote T.N.D Mettinger:
“There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religion.” The Riddle of Resurrection, p. 221
Continuing:
"This point is important because more and more people are growing up like my friend, with next-to-no exposure to the Jesus story beyond the mythical bits. To these people, the mythicist view will be the default view."
According to Clarke's one off experience with a friend.
Clarke then says,
"Then, he rose up into the sky and conveniently never came back down."
Continuing:
Since time doesn't permit me to review 3 books at the moment, I'll just link some of what the scholars have to say about Carrier. See here, here and here. As for the Fitzgerald and Price books, I strongly encourage the reader to (1) look at the publishers and (2) look at the "scholarly" endorsements. Not all too good for them.
Clarke then states,
"The list of legitimate scholars who openly doubt the historicity of Jesus has grown rapidly during the past decade."
Given the comments of the scholars I linked up above, this seems quite unlikely. It's not as if the mythical position hasn't been given a fair hearing amongst scholars.
Back to Clarke:
Anyone else seeing a pattern? Over-reliance on Richard Carrier and a lack of any original research on the scholarship from Clarke himself.
Now, let's take discuss Clar...I mean Carrier's 3 points that suggest mythicism.
1: Paul doesn't place Jesus on earth.
- Paul knew Jesus was born and raised as a Jew (Gal. 4:4) and that he descended from Abraham and David (Gal. 3:16; Rom. 1:3). Paul was in contact with Jesus' brother, James (Gal. 1:19). He knew Jesus' disciples, and even knew that the apostle Peter was married (1 Cor. 9:5)! I could go on and on, but I'll stop here.
2: Jesus only appears as a real person in texts that are highly mythological, i.e., the Gospels.
-Except the genre of the Gospels is that of Ancient biography. Ancient biographers investigated events, examined witnesses, and travelled to various sites in question. For citations and more in-depth study, see Craig Keener, Christobiography.
2a: This basically means we only have one book that talks about Jesus as a real person, which is the book of Mark. The other gospels were written after Mark by authors who embellished the story while clearly lifting significant portions directly from Mark. And Mark is written by an unknown author who cites no sources for his information.
I've done several posts discussing these objections. See here and here.
2b: Notably, a lot of ancient mythical characters were also given elaborate biographies that placed them in history with parents, siblings, birth-places, etc. This includes characters like Moses, Romulus, and Dionysus. In contrast, figures in history who are known to be real people either did not begin as revelatory beings, or we have clear evidence of their historicity.
Yes, there are plenty of fictional biographies in the Greco-Roman world. However, this isn't the type of biography the Gospels are, rather, they are closer to those written about real, historical figures when much information about the figures were available. Again, see Keener's Christobiography, as he states “…My interest is primarily in information-based biographies” p. 33.
3: "Attempts to get around these two points do not hold up. For example, there is an argument that Jesus must have really come from Nazareth because there is no other reason to attribute such an unlikely origin to him (Christopher Hitchens, for instance, finds this argument convincing). But the premise of this argument is false because there are many good reasons why that specific town would have been contrived for a mythical messiah. Also, many mythical figures were given obscure towns as their origin. For example, Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, were given the birthplace of Alba Longa, an ancient city in Central Italy."
Can Clarke cite anything for me to work with here? All I have is assertion. As for Nazareth, I'd invite Clarke to consult John 1:46. Hardly mythmakers trying to make their subject seem like a mighty ruler.
Returning to Clarke:
Slate, for instance, provides five reasons for questioning the historicity of Jesus.
Slate is not a reputable academic institution, unfortunately. Also, take a look at who authored it. Valerie Tarico of the Center for Inquiry. You'll notice her PhD is not in a field remotely relevant to the academic Biblical studies.
Clarke goes on to cite Carrier's book, but see the links I provided earlier, wherein scholars discuss Carrier's work.
Returning to Clarke:
"As mythicist author Earl Doherty shows in a survey, historians rely on the consensus view to brush aside the mythicist theory rather than to examine it."
I think this happens with several topics in Biblical studies, such as authorship of the Gospels (although that certainly has more adherents than mythicism in contemporary New Testament studies.), so, fair enough.
Continuing:
"Carrier has also observed that most scholars who study Jesus are biased against the mythicist view because they are essentially trained to presuppose that Jesus existed as a real person."
Could this not just be to due to the fact that scholars are aware of the evidence and find mythicism wanting? Furthermore, if scholars found the evidence for mythicism compelling, who's to say that they wouldn't just begin treating the New Testament as a classicist does with, say, The Odyssey or The Iliad?
Clarke then cites a talk by Carrier:
"In a 2017 talk, Carrier explained, “Even secular experts in this field have been trained with a body of Christian faith assumptions that are this lens through which you look at this evidence and select which evidence to look at.”
This is just patently untrue. It's not as if public universities have faith commitments. Isn't the story of the Christian going off to college and returning an atheist all too common? Relevant here, again, is my response to the previous point by Carrier.
He goes on to discuss a quote by Ehrman, but that is an in-house debate for the anti-apologists and Ehrmanites. I'll let them hash that out so I can refute whatever final product they come out with.
Continuing:
"When Carrier recently debated Dennis R. MacDonald on the question of mythicism, no one in the comments section was laughing at Carrier (as Ehrman might have worried). Rather, I am seeing highly engaged comments that lean skeptically against historicity."
Given that the channel is mythvision, and the channel hosts many prominent mythicist that have a following, it's not at all surprising that you would find a large number of mythicists there.
Back to Clarke:
"It only makes sense that Jesus mythicism would find a growing audience online: The Internet loves a good contrarian view! And unlike many contrarian views that are potentially harmful to society (such as anti-vax conspiracies), I do not see any practical harm from speculating about whether or not a character from the first century was a real person or not."
1: This, however, cuts both ways. Internet access also gives people an opportunity to see how strong the evidence for Jesus is. People can access primary sources, academic books and responses to their favorite mythicists.
2: There are potential spiritual consequences, though. For Christians, Jesus is the foundation of their faith and for atheists, if Christ is indeed who the Gospels say he is, wouldn't you want to know? I can't see why self-proclaimed truth seekers wouldn't want to know.
Continuing:
"For the rest of us, Jesus mythicism is a harmless YouTube rabbit hole to venture down."
Notice a theme? For Clarke (and many of his fellow online atheists) this isn't a process of reading primary sources, scholarship and thinking through the data, it's mere leisure time on Youtube.
Continuing:
"This point is validated by the fact that many outlets discussing Jesus mythicism—such as the MythVision Podcast and the David C. Smalley Podcast—are responsible channels that do not feed off conspiracy theory hype."
I appreciate Clarke validating a former point of mine before my response was even written!
To anticipate an objection (already given to me by Clarke on Twitter); yes, I know the primary goal of his article was to demonstrate that mythicism can gain more adherents as time goes on. However, in doing so, he has presented a lot of misleading information, which unfamiliar readers of his column can fall prey to.
Re: "Can Clarke cite anything for me to work with here? All I have is assertion." Unfortunately, the entire enterprise of determining whether Jesus was a real person or not is a matter of assessing people's assertions. The gospels (written decades after Jesus supposedly walked the earth) did nothing but assert things about the life and times of Jesus (much of which nearly all historians take as mythological or at least historically inaccurate). It doesn't help matters that the gospel authors are anonymous. Aside from the gospels, we have Paul asserting things about the life and times of Jesus, and much (arguably all) refers to a Jesus figure who never walked the earth, but instead was a heavenly figure. There's really nothing else. There are a few other random references to Jesus in early history (always written many decades after Jesus supposedly lived), but they're often in texts that have been doctored by Christians after the fact. I don't know if Jesus was a myth or not, but neither does anyone. There are interesting reasons to argue either way. Those arguments, again unfortunately, rely on nothing more than assessing assertions.
ReplyDelete- Peter Clarke
Hi Peter, thanks for stopping by.
DeleteYou say, "Unfortunately, the entire enterprise of determining whether Jesus was a real person or not is a matter of assessing people's assertions."
1) Testimonial evidence isn't an "assertion"
2) As mentioned above, 1st century historians write about him. Although brief, I also highlighted that the Gospels are a type of Greco-Roman biography.
You add, "The gospels (written decades after Jesus supposedly walked the earth) did nothing but assert things about the life and times of Jesus (much of which nearly all historians take as mythological or at least historically inaccurate)."
1) Depends on your dating of the Gospels.
2) Even on the traditional dating of the Gospels, the authors are still writing in the time of oral history (which scholars distinguish from oral tradition.) A lot of witnesses would have been alive. We can get into the reliability of oral history if you'd like.
3) History is primarily reconstructed through written histories. Do you think we need archaeological confirmation for everything written in the Gospels? As a side note, archaeology has exonerated the Gospels, not the opposite. Also happy to go into this.
4) You have not interacted with any of my previous blog posts that make the case for the trustworthiness of the Gospels. Some are linked here, on this post.
Back to you, "It doesn't help matters that the gospel authors are anonymous."
I've addressed this on several occasions. See these links:
https://thinkchristiantheism.blogspot.com/2020/12/martin-hengel-gospel-titles.html
https://thinkchristiantheism.blogspot.com/2020/11/mcgrew-wipes-floor-with-ehrman-some.html
https://thinkchristiantheism.blogspot.com/2020/11/ferguson-fumbles.html
"Aside from the gospels, we have Paul asserting things about the life and times of Jesus, and much (arguably all) refers to a Jesus figure who never walked the earth, but instead was a heavenly figure."
In this very post, I have highlighted the contrary. Did you even bother to read this carefully?
"There are a few other random references to Jesus in early history (always written many decades after Jesus supposedly lived), but they're often in texts that have been doctored by Christians after the fact."
I would argue only parts of Josephus' Testimonium are doctored. But for the sake of discussion, I'll concede it. Provide reason to doubt Tacitus or Lucian's reference is doctored. Thanks.
"I don't know if Jesus was a myth or not, but neither does anyone."
History is assessing what what *probably* happened. Probability, not certainty.
Also, let us not get distracted from the context of Peter's reply. I asked Peter: "Can Clarke cite anything for me to work with here?" in reference to his claim that "...many mythical figures were given obscure towns as their origin. For example, Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, were given the birthplace of Alba Longa, an ancient city in Central Italy."
DeleteHe never cited such primary source texts. He brought up another issue entirely.