Two academic reviews of On the Historicity of Jesus now exist: one positive by Raphael Lataster published in the Journal of Religious History (38.4, 2014, pp. 614-16); and one negative by Daniel Gullotta published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (15.2-3, 2017, pp. 310-46). I’ve already discussed the Lataster review. Here is my coverage of the Gullotta review. I will compose a brief summary later for submission to the same journal. (Christina Petterson’s weird review in Relegere doesn’t even address the actual content of the book so I’m not counting it here.)
- Summary of the Positive
- Summary of the Negative
- The Archangel Jesus?
- Paul’s Celestial Jesus?
- Who Killed Jesus?
- Is a Crucifixion Too Political to Invent?
- Did Jesus Have Actual Brothers?
- Why Are We Talking about Homer?
- Is Rank-Raglan Indicative?
- Conclusion
Summary of the Positive
Gullotta agrees OHJ is “a rigorous and thorough academic treatise that will no doubt be held up as the standard by which the Jesus Myth theory can be measured.” He concludes it’s ultimately still implausible and at times tendentious, of course. But it should still be addressed. Not ignored.
Gullotta’s article cites a lot of useful history and references covering the centuries-old historicity debate. Although most of it (as Gullotta admits) is garbage (or addresses only the garbage), those interested in studying or debunking the weirder fringe of mythicism can benefit from his short bibliography. He also provides some good references and links for catching up on the debate of late, such as my critiques of Ehrman and Casey and theirs of me, and more. The only thing it could benefit from on this account is a link to my “List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus,” which you might want to bookmark; it belongs in his footnote 28, as it solves what he asks for there, and would fix omissions in his footnotes 29 and 31. Combined with the critique that ensues, I would call his article the most useful response to mythicism yet published. It’s full of fatal flaws (which I’ll cover), but it has some merits as well (and what I don’t take it to task for here, I probably agree with, other than in wording).
There are other positive points.
Method is an issue Gullotta brackets as a valid concern. He agrees, “The confidence that historians once displayed within historical Jesus studies has been eroded due to previous excesses and flaws in older methodologies,” but he still holds confidence that they can get to a historical Jesus. Though he concedes “many of Carrier’s concerns and criticisms have been long noted and echoed by other historical Jesus scholars,” and indeed encapsulate a trend in the field (which of course I demonstrated by citing a lot of those scholars myself, in both OHJ and Proving History; Gullotta adds more)—indeed all I do is collect the best of it in one place—Gullotta’s still sure these problems can be surmounted. He concurs with Chris Keith that the “historical Jesus … is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized” in ways that can gain (I assume) a balance of probability.
Gullotta then says:
Paradoxically, Carrier’s main contribution may wind up being seen not as an advancement of mythicism, but as a criticism of current methodologies employed by scholars of the historical Jesus. Because of this, Carrier’s work is an ironic contribution to the quest for the historical Jesus.
A note to a fellow writer: that’s neither paradoxical or ironic. If indeed that’s the ultimate value of my work, that’s precisely what I asked for. The last paragraph of OHJ literally begins (bold type hereafter indicates emphasis added): “But it is the method I want my fellow historians to correct, replace or perfect above all else” (p. 618) even if they don’t change their position on historicity; and the paragraph immediately preceding that concluded:
I want to see a helpful critique of this book by objective, qualified experts who could live with the conclusion that Jesus didn’t exist, but just don’t think the case can be made, or made well enough to credit. And what I want from my critics is not useless hole punching but an alternative proposal: if my method is invalid, then what method is the correct one for resolving questions of historicity? And if you know of none, how can you justify any claim to historicity for any person, if you don’t even know how such a claim can be justified or falsified at all? Also correct any facts I get wrong, point out what I missed, and if my method then produces a different conclusion when those emendations are included, we will have progress. Even if the conclusion is the same, it will nevertheless have been improved.
In other words, the goal of my book explicitly included the production of a future successful defense of historicity, through the reform of facts and assumptions. Thus, if it does so, it would not be ironic (which means contrary to expectation) nor paradoxical (which means seemingly self-contradictory). Gullotta even admits (in a footnote) that I began my book by asking historians to produce a better defense of the historicity of Jesus, and to use my book as a roadmap for doing that. He even there quotes my preface, where I say, right at the start: “a better refutation is needed, and a better theory of historicity, which, actually, credibly explains all the oddities in the evidence. If this book inspires nothing else, I’ll be happy if it’s that” (p. xi). I am eagerly awaiting that outcome. Why it hasn’t come is what worries me. And should worry you.
Summary of the Negative
Roughly half the article is merely descriptive. Critique really only begins on page 325. It starts with Gullotta declaring sixth grade math is beyond him and therefore should be ignored. To the contrary, historians need to start learning the mathematical logic they all depend on in every argument they make. “Sixth grade math is hard” is not a valid rebuttal to that point. If he wishes to insist a historical Jesus is probable, he needs to explain what “probable” means and how he arrives at that probability. Saying “I refuse to do math, but will assert a mathematical conclusion at you anyway because I just feel it in my gut” is not a commendable response. If you have no actual understanding of how you can arrive at any logically valid conclusion, your expertise doesn’t count for anything. “Feeling it in my gut” is a dubious alternative, too easily hijacked by bias, and impossible to critique. Historians need to do better. They need to explain to us why their assertions of probability are valid. And “I feel it in my gut,” isn’t an explanation.
Likewise, as if to demonstrate exactly my point, Gullotta thinks Swinburne’s abuse of Bayes’ Theorem demonstrates it doesn’t work. As if William Lane Craig’s abuse of standard logic demonstrates even logic doesn’t work. If you refuse to understand the math, you can’t produce a valid analogy by citing someone who fakes the math, as evidence against math. This is akin to saying that because a political think-tank can abuse statistics to argue bogus or misleading claims, that therefore none of the sciences should ever use statistics. Whereas if Gullotta would brush back up on his sixth grade math, he’d be able to tell why Swinburne’s use of Bayes’ Theorem is a scam, and mine does not commit the same follies. In fact, I wrote a whole book on how not to do that. That Gullotta can’t tell the difference is bad. History is about reaching conclusions in probability. That requires competence in understanding probability.
Gullotta also does occasionally deceive his readers, a little. For example:
- In his conclusion Gullotta only mentions my lower bound probability of “1 in 12,000” but not my upper bound, which is a “1 in 3” odds Jesus existed, the actual conclusion of the book (he mentions the “33%” only in passing mid-article). By altering his conclusion to hide that fact conceals from casual or inattentive readers what my actual conclusion was: that the probability Jesus existed could not reasonably be higher than 1 in 3. That’s far more favorable to historicity than he represents. This looks like a well poisoning fallacy: pretending I didn’t control for bias by readjusting my personal conclusion of 1 in 12,000 to 1 in 3, thus making my conclusion appear far more ridiculous than it is.
- Gullotta says “Carrier’s imagined historical Jesus of the academy has ceased to exist,” but the only “imagined historical Jesus” I test in OHJ is: “an actual man at some point named Jesus acquired followers in life, who continued as an identifiable movement after his death,” “the same Jesus who was claimed by some of his followers to have been executed by the Jewish or Roman authorities” and “some of whose followers soon began worshiping as a living god (or demigod).” I actually repeatedly exclude from consideration any of the fancier historical Jesuses Gullotta is talking about (quite explicitly: read pp. 31-35, and pp. 24-27). He thus misrepresents my book as arguing against some set of already-rejected versions of a historical Jesus, rather than allowing for a mere “gist” of a Jesus (as Gullotta puts it). But only testing that “gist” of a Jesus is what my book actually does. Exactly the opposite of what Gullotta says.
But these are fairly minor, and reflect I think more an unthinking bias than conscious efforts to deceive. He “forgot” my conclusion was actually 1 in 3 and not 1 in 12,000 because the latter shocked him as unreasonable; and so it’s only that “unreasonable” lower bound he remembers come his conclusion. Not the actual conclusion of the book, which was necessarily the upper bound (the whole logical point of an error margin). Likewise, come his conclusion, he “forgot” I tested only a very basic Jesus no scholar would deem “rejected” in academia (even though he correctly quotes my doing this mid-article), and is just “sure” I must have somehow been writing the whole time about some other more elaborate Jesus Gullotta thinks has been abandoned by everyone already (that it actually hasn’t, is a separate problem one could school him on; but I suspect his colleagues will remind him, each of whom is “sure” some rather elaborate version of a historical Jesus is true, and thus has not “ceased to exist” … e.g. look at Chilton: OHJ, pp. 24-25).
Apart from those things, Gullotta ignores nearly the whole book and instead only addresses six points made in it:
The focus of my response will center on Carrier’s claim that [1] a pre-Christian angel named Jesus existed, [2] his understanding of Jesus as a nonhuman and celestial figure within the Pauline corpus, [3] his argument that Paul understood Jesus to be crucified by demons and not by earthly forces, [4] his claim that James, the brother of the Lord, was not a relative of Jesus but just a generic Christian within the Jerusalem community, [5] his assertion that the Gospels represent Homeric myths, and [6] his employment of the Rank-Raglan heroic archetype as a means of comparison.
In every case, his arguments are illogical, and sometimes show he didn’t even read the book.
The Archangel Jesus?
Rejecting the whole of [1] might affect the estimated probability of the content of the Epistles by making an available archangel to imagine all this of more unexpected. But Gullotta never explains how much that affects it; he never even suggests, much less—more importantly—defends a lower probability of the Epistles’ content when requiring that as a supposition rather than already having it in evidence. He just “feels in his gut” that it must be lower. How much lower? And how much does that increase the probability of historicity? History itself still doesn’t know. And that’s the problem. The lesson that’s not being learned here.
But Gullotta also here confuses [1] as a whole with merely one detail of it, the name “Jesus.” The archangel’s pre-Christian existence is undeniable (OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 40). He only contests what it was named. So how much does merely adding that the Christians chose to rename it “Savior” (like per Philippians 2:9-11) reduce the probability of the Epistles’ content? Given that the angel already existed for them to imagine this of, and in fact clearly did imagine Jesus was that angel, descended and incarnate—even if Jesus was indeed also a historical person they were imagining this of. And given that all personal savior gods were named Savior (among the many names and titles each was always given; as likewise was Jesus).
I’ve already covered this confusion before (and much of the evidence pro and con), in my discussion of Hurtado’s more incompetent treatment of the question. Gulotta’s argument is weirder than Hurtado’s, though it at least does not commit the factual errors. It’s just illogical. Gullotta strangely says “the most damning argument against Carrier’s claim” that such an angel existed in Jewish thought “is that there is no literary or archeological evidence within the entirety of the Mediterranean world and Second Temple period that validates [its] existence.” Philo says the angel existed. He wrote before Christianity. That’s literary evidence. So how can there be “no” evidence when there is very clear and indisputable evidence? I must assume he means only with respect to being named Jesus, and not that the angel as described didn’t exist. Gullotta seems consistently to confuse those two facts. And only gives evidence against the name, not the angel.
Gullotta’s argument against the name is weird, too. He starts by arguing all angels had names ending in el. But I quote Philo saying this archangel had “many names.” Gullotta can’t claim to know what all of them were. Philo doesn’t tell us. The only name he ever mentions this angel having, is Anatole (Rising One). Notably, not ending in el. So we can’t get anywhere with an argument like this. Philo clearly says it was an angel. So “he can’t have said that, because he didn’t give it a name ending in el” is simply not logical. Many angels had non-el names (even if they also had such names): Satan, Laylah, Apollyon, Armaros, Samyaza, Sandalphon, Temeluchus, and (in the Revelation of Esdras) Gabuthelon, Beburos, Zebuleon, Aker, and Arphugitonos. But even beyond that logic fail, one might wonder why Matthew thinks Jesus is supposed to be named Emmanu-el. From prophecy; but why that prophecy?
After all, it’s clear, as I and even Bart Ehrman argue (and others, whom we both cite), the first Christians were already sure Jesus was an incarnated archangel…so which one? One could just as easily note that the same figure Christians identified Jesus as (the one with all the same weird properties as the angel Philo is talking about) was the High Priest of God’s celestial temple (e.g. Hebrews 4-9)…otherwise known in Jewish angelology as Michael (and Michael in turn, like Jesus, was equated with the angelic Melchizedek: OHJ, index). Modern sects have adduced more evidence Jesus and Michael were imagined the same. I don’t have a position on the matter. But as we neither know all the names of Jesus, nor all the names of the angel Philo speaks of, we don’t know what names either Jesus or Philo’s angel didn’t have. So we can’t argue from such a premise. That’s illogical.
Gullotta also weirdly argues “Carrier’s argument does not adequately explain why” this angel would be named Jesus. Maybe because he was God’s Savior? The very meaning of the name Jesus. As indeed I do adequately explain: OHJ, pp. 239-42. It’s no weirder than Philo thinking this angel was also named Anatole. Or Matthew thinking Jesus was also named Emmanuel—an actually angelic-formed name. And since Philo interprets the Jesus in Zechariah 6 as this angel, he clearly believed this angel wasn’t just named Anatole but also Jesus. Gullotta gives no argument against this obvious point. In fact, Philo identifies him as Jesus “the son of God.” His firstborn son, even. And likewise he was named Adam—as Philo explains this archangel was one of the Adams referred to in Genesis. Lots of names (as Philo says) were given to this archangel. And again, Gullotta can’t claim to know what they all were, and thus can’t claim to know what none of them could be. I would concur with his reasoning if the name weren’t so peculiarly apposite (“God’s Savior”), if instead Jesus were named Matthias or Dositheus or something, and Philo never identified anyone of such name as the archangel the Christians identified their figure as. Then we’d have to say on balance the name is more probable on historicity—the Christians just assigning the identity of Philo’s archangel to some historical person they revered. But that’s not the way the evidence went.
Apart from being illogical on this point, Gullotta also sometimes just gets the arguments wrong. For example he says “Carrier’s correlation between Jesus and Moroni is not accurate” because Moroni was an ancient historical personage who became an angel, but I never used Moroni as an analogy of historicization (he’s not even mentioned anywhere in OHJ; at all, much less in my designated Element on the point, e.g. OHJ, p. 222, nor anywhere else I discuss the invention of legendary persons, e.g. pp. 8-11; 235-38; 222-34, 159-63). I used it in an article as an example of how the Christian religion originally looked (that an angel was talking to them; and therefore Christianity’s actual founder was Peter, not Jesus; just as it was Joseph Smith, not Moroni, even as the Mormons would insist Moroni was its founder). For how and why its founding angel was historicized, I never use Mormonism (or Islam, another “angelically founded” religion) as an analog to Christianity. Thus, Gullotta is here criticizing an argument I never made. One similarly needs to get right how I use the analogs I do use for that, because each evinces a different kind of analog (Ned Ludd and the Cargo Cults; Osiris and Dionysus; Betty Crocker and Aesop; etc.).
What remains is fact: Philo’s angel is the same being the first Christians thought their Jesus was. Which is equally weird, and thus equally likely, on either historicity or mythicism. And even apart from that (which Gullotta advances no arguments against), the evidence looks pretty strong that Philo also believed this angel had “Jesus the Son of God” among its many names. The coincidence seems unlikely. Indeed, very unlikely. But whatever the case, this point has little effect on the probability of historicity, as we already have a likely source for the name (it being peculiarly apposite that a worshiped savior of God be named Savior of God), so the name hardly matters. Refuting the name, doesn’t refute that. Of any name (or indeed if he was renamed Jesus, as Philippians 2:9-11 could be telling us), the angel Christians identified their Jesus as definitely came from Jewish angelology. So why is Gullotta trying so illogically hard to deny it?
Paul’s Celestial Jesus?
Gullotta here ignores all other facts (such as that Paul never says Jesus was on earth and only ever refers to him being in outer space) and focuses solely on whether Paul said Jesus had human parents. In reality, it’s ambiguous. Gullotta seems to think I argue that Paul definitely did not mean Jesus had human parents; when in fact on the a fortiori side of my error margin, the upper bound of my probability (that 1 in 3 chance Jesus existed that is the actual conclusion of my book), I only argue we can’t tell (on the scant and ambiguous evidence we have). Maybe that’s what Paul meant. Maybe not. It’s unclear. That it’s unclear is itself weird (why should Paul speak so weirdly, evasively, and unclearly about the parentage of Jesus?). But Gullotta ignores that point as well. He tries instead to “rescue the text” and restore it to traditional Christian faith assumptions.
First up is Paul talking about Jesus being born “of a woman.” A woman unnamed. And who has no obvious reason even to be mentioned, on Gullotta’s reading. I argue that this occurs in a speech that, following ancient canons of rhetoric, is building an argument to a conclusion, about how Jesus’s incarnation saves us, by taking us out of one realm (of flesh) and anchoring us in another (of heaven). Key to Paul’s entire argument is that Jesus had to be brought into the world of flesh, just as we are. It’s our commonality on that one fact that is the linchpin of Paul’s argument. Gullotta says Paul can’t mean Jesus was, as Paul says we were, born to an “allegorical” woman (Hagar, the world of flesh: Galatians 4:19-31), because “Paul clearly focuses on his audience.” Um. Yes. And his argument is that Jesus and his audience are identical on this one specific fact. That’s literally Paul’s entire argument. Look how the argument started: Galatians 3:29-4:7. Compare to how it climaxes. Get it? The reason we must attach ourselves to Jesus, the reason this will work and save us, is because Jesus was, like us, “born of a woman.” What woman? The allegorical Hagar: the world of flesh. At no point is actually being born to an actual woman ever made relevant to Paul’s argument.
And that’s why Jesus’s atoning death frees us from Torah observance. Because we are now “heirs according to the promise,” meaning sons of the allegorical Sarah. How did we become heirs to the promise? By joining ourselves spiritually to the Heir to the Promise, Jesus. Through baptism we are adopted as sons of God and thus share this privilege with Jesus, and so cry “Abba! Father!” Seriously. Read Paul’s argument. It’s pretty darned clear. Someone might then say, “But, Paul, what does being born of a woman have to do with any of that? You’re not making sense!” So Paul answers that question. What’s the answer? “I’m talking about allegorical mothers.” Literally. That’s what he says. He is talking about being born into the world of flesh (our fate); then being born into the world of heaven (the promise). Hence he transitions by bringing up the problem he’s trying to address again. His argument surrounds this, as a chiasmus (A:B:A): he starts by explaining his soteriology, then he explains the problem, then he explains how his soteriology solves the problem. In no way does “being born of a woman” have anything actually to do with it. The logic of his argument only makes sense because he means what world order we and (briefly) Jesus were subject to. Not that he like we passed into it through a vagina. That’s not his point at all. And he makes clear to explain that’s not his point.
At the least this leaves us uncertain what Paul means about Jesus. Maybe he means a real woman for Jesus and an allegorical one for us (though that would destroy the point and symmetry of his argument and introduce a detail irrelevant to his entire thesis). Or maybe he means the same of Jesus as he means for us. And he could believe Jesus was born to a human mother, while also not referring to that fact here. Even at best we just don’t know.
It gets even more uncertain when we notice Paul uses peculiar vocabulary for Jesus: he chooses the word he uses for manufacturing bodies (Adam; and our resurrection bodies awaiting us in heaven), not the word he uses for human birth. A fact so disturbing to later Christians they tried doctoring the text of Paul to switch those very words. Gullotta tries to reinterpret Paul by saying the word Paul always uses for manufactured bodies but never for born bodies was used for “human births in other pieces of ancient literature” (a fact I even mention in OHJ). But that violates a basic principle of literary interpretation: what other authors’ idioms were, is irrelevant to what Paul’s was. And we can establish Paul’s idiom: everywhere else, he never uses that word of birth, always of divinely manufactured bodies; and he always uses a different word for birth. You can’t say “Paul would have used some other author’s style here.” [See also my Supplementary Note in comments below.]
Maybe Paul scrambled his idiom (conveniently, precisely where the historicist needs him to have). But you can’t know he did without a circular argument. This is the same principle by which we identify different authors of texts: by looking at how they differ in the way they use words. So appealing to how different authors used words, cannot help us argue Paul used words the same way. The only way to argue Paul used words the same way (and thus that his idiom was the same as theirs) is to find evidence of Paul doing that. And he doesn’t. Unless you assume the conclusion you are trying to prove. Which is a fallacy.
Gullotta also makes the illogical argument that “Paul claims that Jesus was ‘descended from David according to the flesh’ (Rom 1.3), and thus, contra Carrier, this would mean that Jesus, for Paul, was a descendant of Sarah, and not Hagar.” Holy Moses. Paul was not so lousy a thinker as to confuse allegory with fundamentalist literalism. Paul explicitly says the Sarah he means is not a real mother, but a figure for abandoning the body of flesh and inheriting a heavenly existence (he is painfully explicit on that point). So why would Paul think being literally descended from David, which made one “literally” a descendant of an actual Sarah, have anything at all to do with being born of the allegorical Sarah in Galatians 4, the only Sarah Paul ever mentions there? Gullotta is making a total hash of Paul’s argument here. Sarah is not the mother of David in Galatians 4. She is the mother of all celestially reborn Christians (including the risen Jesus). Whether Paul also thought there was a historical Sarah is unknown (he might not have; Philo often didn’t think the historical figures in the OT were real people), but it wouldn’t be relevant to the “Sarah” he is talking about in Galatians.
So, Gullotta having totally failed to even look at what Paul’s argument in Galatians 4 was and thus not understanding any of it and consequently making no logical argument about whether he meant a real woman as opposed to an allegorical one, he moves on to what he calls the “clearest declaration of Jesus’ earthly humanity”: the fact that Paul calls him a man. Um. What’s Gullotta’s argument here? I don’t even see one. This entails Paul believed Jesus was (briefly) human—but we already agree on that. That’s already entailed by mythicism. The question is not whether Paul thought Jesus wore a human body. It’s whether he wore it on earth. And Paul never says he did. Plain and simple.
Gullotta really drops the ball here. He must have skipped the dozens of pages in OHJ where I painstakingly explain that mythicism also entails Jesus was briefly a man. Indeed a Jewish man. And Gullotta earlier in this same article even says so! (Mythicism proposes Jesus underwent “an incarnation made of Davidic flesh,” p. 323.) So how does showing Paul said Jesus was a man, at all argue against this thesis? Gullotta illogically never says. I’ve already covered how fallacious this argument is when McGrath embarrassingly got his foot in his mouth over it (in that case even lying about the evidence, e.g. falsely claiming nonhuman angels were never called anthrôpoi); and I can only assume Gullotta got manipulated by McGrath here (whom he cites in a title note as an advisor on this article; and Gullotta uses almost identical wording to McGrath, so it’s entirely possible McGrath even wrote some of this paragraph). And then just didn’t think through the obvious errors in this reasoning. “Mythicism says God manufactured a human body for Jesus so he could die.” “Ah! But Paul says Jesus had a human body! So your theory is false!” What??
Which gets me to another weird thing here. When Gullotta briefly references the passage in Romans about Jesus being of David’s sperm, it seems like something was cut for space. Because when he mentions it (to make that illogical argument earlier), he just “assumes” Paul means Jesus was literally a descendant of David (and thus had a father). Gullotta never makes any argument for that assumption. Even though I present in OHJ an extensive case for doubting it. The Romans passage, again, does not even say that Jesus was born (instead, that same word again, for divine manufacture). Literally Paul says Jesus was made from the seed of David. Does Paul mean literally? As in directly, from the very seed God took from David’s belly, as the prophecy he is referencing seems plainly to say, and had to be read as saying, in order to be historically true by Paul’s time? (See The Cosmic Seed of David.) Or does he mean figuratively, as was also common? We can’t tell. There just isn’t enough evidence by which to know. So as far as I can tell, it’s 50/50. And that’s even when I’m being the most generous to mythicism.
Because actually…
What remains is the opposite: By ignoring my probability arguments (owing to his shameless mathphobia) Gullotta never mentions to his readers that I actually count these passages as evidence for historicity! That’s right. I weigh them as increasing the odds of historicity fourfold. In other words, these passages about a potential mother and father I deem to be four times more likely if historicity is true, than if mythicism is true. Even after documenting all that uncertainty and ambiguity in them I just mentioned. That Gullotta thinks I argue for mythicism with these passages is therefore evidence he doesn’t understand what I even argued. And accordingly, he never responds to my actual argument. I say these passages are four times more likely on historicity than mythicism. Does he think it should be eight times? Twenty? Why? Let’s hear him make the case for why he thinks they should increase the probability of historicity even more than I already let them increase it. And how much more he thinks they should increase it. No such case is in this article. He doesn’t even know I used these passages as evidence for historicity! Much less grasp how my case for their ambiguity affects our probability judgment.
Who Killed Jesus?
Paul doesn’t say. That’s pretty much the end of any argument possibly to be had here. He doesn’t say. So we don’t know.
But historicists have to invent evidence where there is none. So let’s see how that goes.
First, Gullotta says Paul must be referring to demonic possession of the Roman and Jewish authorities. Maybe. How do we know? We don’t. That’s just another speculation. But what’s illogical here is that Gullotta thinks that because Paul might mean that, therefore my conclusion that he doesn’t, can be rejected. But wait a minute. What about my actual argument that that’s not what Paul meant? You can’t claim to have rebutted an argument for a conclusion, by simply asserting a contrary conclusion. You have to rebut the argument. And for Gullotta’s theory, he can adduce no evidence in Paul that that’s how he was using his language or what he ever meant. So he has no argument. It’s just an assertion that maybe that’s what Paul meant, because that was a live concept at the time, even though we have no evidence of Paul adopting it—at all, much less intending it here.
So what was my argument? Well, from OHJ, pp. 564-70:
- First, that Paul’s language (“rulers of this eon”) is bizarre and matches no other examples of the period for earthly authorities, neither in Paul nor elsewhere. But he does use terms and concepts that did reference demonic powers, both in Paul, and Deutero-Paul, and in other literature (e.g. 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2; OHJ, pp. 184-93), particularly the Ascension of Isaiah. So unlike Gullotta, who has no evidence in Paul or the NT that Paul meant demonically possessed Romans, I present in OHJ an assortment of evidence in Paul and the NT that he was referring directly to the cosmic powers of the age. Not one iota of which evidence does Gullotta even mention, much less address. This is not how you rebut an argument. Similarly, it is illogical to cite centuries-later historicist Christian assertions that Paul meant what they wanted him to mean, as evidence that’s what Paul actually meant. That’s another fallacy of circular argument. Is there any evidence they knew what Paul really meant, rather than just read him the way they wanted? No. So much for that.
- Second, that Paul says in 1 Cor. 2:6 that these “authorities” are “being destroyed” (present tense), which can’t have meant the Roman and Jewish authorities when he was writing (they were at the height of their power). But it certainly could mean the demons Christians were now expelling in exorcisms with the power of the name of Christ. As well it could mean the powers whom Christ’s death really defeated: because his death gave everyone an escape from corruption and death; and only demonic forces controlled those powers of nature, not the Jews or Romans (hence exactly what Paul argues in Galatians 4:8-11, lest we forget).
- Third, that in 1 Cor. 2:6-9 Paul says the “authorities” who kill Jesus would not have killed him had they known killing him would magically save the world. Literally, he says they’d have let him go, and not crucified him, if they knew what cosmic effects his death would have. Why would the Romans or Jews even know that his death would have cosmic effects on the natural order? That seems highly implausible. But not for Satan and his demons; they certainly would know, and indeed that would be the very reason God needed to hide it from them, exactly as the Ascension of Isaiah says. Moreover, why would the Jews want to thwart God’s promises to them? Why would the Romans want to keep death in the world? We can imagine convoluted reasons, but we would just be speculating. Whereas we don’t have to speculate for why the demons would want to thwart God’s doing this, as their very stranglehold on the world would be defeated by such a change in the cosmos.
- Fourth, that in Romans 13 Paul argues vociferously that the earthly authorities would never contravene God’s will. So how can he contradict himself in 1 Corinthians 2 and say they intended to contravene God’s will? In fact, they were so set on doing so, God had to trick them by hiding who Jesus was and what their killing him would do. This is, incidentally, exactly what transpires in the earliest redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah we can reconstruct: God has to hide who Jesus was from Satan and his demons, so as to trick them into killing him, so that he could thereby overthrow their power over death. Weird coincidence, don’t you think? What is Gullotta’s rebuttal to this? He doesn’t have one.
That last is the weirdest thing here. Gullotta argues that Paul must mean “the Romans” in 1 Corinthians 2 because Paul uses the same word (archons, “rulers”) in Romans 13, where he clearly is speaking of the Romans. Which is really funny for two reasons:
- First, Romans 13 is where Paul says the Roman authorities, the very archons he mentions there, would never disobey God. Which means he can’t mean the same people in 1 Cor. 2. How did Gullotta not read Romans 13? How did he not know my argument from Romans 13? Why does he have no rebuttal to my argument? Clearly, he did not actually read much of my chapter on this. Ehrman at least acknowledged the problem; and argued Paul was simply contradicting himself. Which doesn’t make sense.
- Second, in accord with that hypothesis (that Gullotta didn’t actually read this part of OHJ), I am also very clear in explaining that Paul uses the phrase “rulers of this age” (literally archons of this eon) in 1 Cor. 2 but not in Romans 13. Or anywhere else of human rulers. And that this phrase is very unusual. This “eon” generally means the whole period of creation under which Satan has held sway, encompassing thousands of years. That would be a strange way to refer to relatively recent and entirely mortal authorities. What is Gullotta’s rebuttal to that point? Nothing. Because he didn’t actually read my argument. Apparently.
Once again we are left not knowing. Did Paul mean demonic authorities? Or earthly human authorities possessed by demons? Or some combination of celestial and earthly authorities? Even at best, we literally can’t tell from the data available. But what data we do have, is sufficiently weird on Gullotta’s theory to be doubtful of it; whereas there is nothing at all weird about it on my theory. That means the evidence is actually more likely on my theory than his (literally what it means to say Paul’s wording is weird on his theory and not weird on mine). Paul doesn’t say the execution took place anywhere on earth. He doesn’t say who the archons were. He doesn’t even explain why they would try to thwart God’s plan of salvation by not killing Jesus. We can’t tell if Paul is here describing a cosmic read on a historical death, or a cosmic death. His strange and cagey wording is at best equally likely on either theory. So it supports neither. Because it fits both equally. And at worst, it fits the cosmic interpretation perfectly, whereas it’s kind of strange on a convoluted earthly reading.
What remains is undecidable: Yes, Gullotta can assert his own contrary theory for what Paul meant when he ambiguously says the “rulers of this eon” killed Jesus and wouldn’t have if they’d known what God was cosmically up to. As can I. But what’s the evidence that Paul meant what Gullotta proposes, and not what I propose? There isn’t any. Both fit what Paul says exactly. So we can’t use this as evidence he meant one thing over the other. It’s simply inconclusive. And Gullotta presents no argument for it being otherwise. All he does is articulate a contrary theory and give it context, just as I did. He never argues for his theory being true. Which means: he never argues for it being what Paul actually meant. He argues for it being something Paul could have meant. But I argue for something else being what Paul could have meant. And there is no evidence to decide between us. That’s how cagey and vague Paul is. And that he is so cagey and vague—that he uses such bizarre phrases and nonspecific and mysterious formulations—is weird. Gullotta simply has no response to any of this. He doesn’t respond to anything my book argues here. He just asserts a contrary theory. Which is not a rebuttal.
Is a Crucifixion Too Political to Invent?
Gullotta also makes a strange argument about how Jews couldn’t have imagined Satan crucifying Jesus. I demonstrate in OHJ (as Gullotta is begrudgingly forced to admit) that many mythical gods had revolting and embarrassing deaths or fates, so we can’t appeal to a crucifixion as evidence one of them was real. Inanna was murdered and hung naked from a nail (before rising from the dead triumphant on the third day: OHJ, pp. 45-47). Does that then mean there must have been a real Inanna actually crucified in hell, because no one would make that up? It’s an illogical argument that I dispatch quite thoroughly in OHJ (pp. 610-16). Gullotta’s response is to say that I do “not reckon with the normality of crucifixion within ancient Palestine” and that that “depoliticizes early Christianity.” It actually doesn’t. I fully center Christianity in its political context (OHJ, pp. 153-63).
It’s not as if humiliating people by crucifying them, stripping them naked and publicly hanging up their corpses, was not just as common and just as “political” in other ancient kingdoms such as the Sumeria that Inanna’s myth was born in. That’s in fact why that happens to her: it was the most humiliating form of death then known to the Sumerians. So her triumph can be elevated by the depths of her seeming defeat. And that’s why both Hebrews and the Ascension of Isaiah say everything on earth has copies in the firmament: Satan would use in the sky the same worst form of execution then known on earth. It is precisely because that was the worst form of death then known, that it would be the very death imagined for Jesus to suffer. That doesn’t get us to evidence it happened. Any more than it does for Inanna.
But more importantly, Gullotta evidently missed this: on pp. 61-62 of OHJ, I cite and summarize Gunnar Samuelsson’s Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), who demonstrates that in fact our understanding of “crucifixion” does not exist in ancient Greek vocabulary. The words Paul uses for the crucifixion of Jesus also referred to Jewish execution (as also demonstrated by D.J. Halperin and J.A. Fitzmyer, whom I also cite on this point), and many other forms and methods of death under several known kingdoms of the time, and are identical to the words used even for executions referenced and performed in the Old Testament. In other words, Gullotta is anachronistically assuming Paul and his Christians meant a Roman crucifixion. He is arbitrarily politicizing what Paul says. There actually is no clear evidence that that even occurred to them at the time. Their language and descriptions are never so specific. And to the contrary, Romans 13 suggests Paul could not have even imagined the Romans crucifying Jesus. That would have refuted his entire argument in Romans 13! (So had that been true, he either would have had to make a completely different argument in Romans 13, or else have anticipated and answered this rather obvious rebuttal to it that the letter’s recipients would have leveled at him.)
So, again, Gullotta’s argument here makes no logical sense.
Gullotta similarly spirals into the most illogical reasoning when he argues that “Jesus’ crucifixion by Romans is depicted in every one of the earliest narrations of his death” and subsequently we see “a widespread reception of Jesus as a crucified man.” Um. There is only one source for Jesus being crucified by Romans: the Gospel according to Mark. All other references to his being so killed derive from that Gospel. Citing a thousand xeroxes of an urban legend is not evidence that legend is true. Citing people who read one of those xeroxes is not evidence that legend is true. Citing people who wrote a new version of the legend after reading one of those xeroxes is not evidence that legend is true. What Gullotta is doing is simply insane as a historical method. It has no place in history. It is so illogical an argument it only belongs to apologetics (“there are thousands of manuscripts of the Bible, and thousands of people quote it, therefore what the Bible says is true!”). I cannot fathom how Gullotta, who is supposed to be getting a Ph.D. in history, can have written such an argument without vomiting. At any rate, I dispatched it already in OHJ, Ch. 7.1.
Ultimately, Gullotta concludes that “Given our sources concerning Jesus’ death and knowledge about his executed contemporaries, the reality of a crucified Jesus as another failed messianic pretender from Palestine is remarkably more likely than a demonic crucifixion in outer space.” But he never explains why it’s more likely. Much less why it’s “remarkably more likely”; assuming he thinks that means something different from “merely more likely,” which then gets us to asking what then does he mean by remarkably more likely, which again gets us to that realization I started with: Gullotta really needs to buckle down and learn some math, before he can even understand what his own words mean. Much less why they are true. His evidence doesn’t increase the probability of his proposal in any discernible way. “Everyone borrowed, learned of, and riffed on Mark’s tale of a Roman execution” does not increase the probability of the crucifixion any more than the resurrection, or Mark’s account of the blotting out of the sun, or rending of the temple curtain, or literally any other claim in Mark. That everyone copied and expanded on it, is not evidence it’s true. Not even a little bit. Likewise all his other arguments here, which simply make no sense. How do they raise the probability of historicity? I cannot see any logical way they could.
Now, I could do his job for him, and actually convert all his arguments into one that’s actually logically coherent at least: he should be asking why, within a century, Mark’s fable eclipsed all others that may have existed. Like, for example, the version that appears to have been in the original Ascension of Isaiah, where Satan kills Jesus. Or whatever version the Christians who called Mark’s version a “cleverly devised myth” were advocating in its place, whom 2 Peter was forged to “refute” by fabricating an eyewitness encounter with a historical Jesus. That’s at least getting to a coherent argument. I can’t understand why it never occurs to Gullotta to attempt it. Because it’s the only sensible version of the arguments he clumsily does attempt here instead. It’s especially mysterious that he didn’t think of it because…it’s in my book! That’s right, I devote an entire section to describing and answering exactly this argument: OHJ, pp. 349-56 (and see also: pp. 275-77).
What remains is a fact: We have no reason to believe Jesus’s execution by Satan wouldn’t be imagined a crucifixion; and we have no more reason to believe it had to be historical because it was a crucifixion, than we have to believe Inanna’s death must be historical because it was a crucifixion. And the fact that all references to Inanna’s death evoked her crucifixion, would not increase the probability that it really happened, even by a single fraction of a percent. These just aren’t logical arguments. So why is historicity being defended with them? In a peer reviewed journal no less? If this really is the best there is to defend historicity with…isn’t historicity doomed?
Did Jesus Have Actual Brothers?
I’ve long said this is the best evidence there is for historicity. Indeed I assign it 2:1 in favor of historicity. Just 2:1, only because it’s more problematic than even the references to parentage. Because unlike those cases, Paul explicitly says all baptized Christians are brothers of the Lord (Romans 8:29), which should require him to make a distinction if ever he meant brother of the Lord biologically rather than through baptism, yet Paul never shows any sign of there being such a distinction to make. So his use of the phrase (on two occasions) looks like a pleonasm for his usually abbreviated “brother” for fellow Christians (as it would be tedious to use the full phrase most of the time). He calls them brothers because they were all brothers of each other; and they were all brothers of each other because they were all adopted as the sons of God (as numerous verses confirm: OHJ, Ch. 4, Element 12); they were therefore all brothers of the Son of God. Who was distinguished from them only in being the firstborn. In fact, Brothers of the Lord may have been the name the Christians were then using for themselves. Paul appears to use it in just such a way: as a term for rank-and-file Christians.
As usual, it’s possible Paul just forgot all this and referred to biological brothers of the Lord and cultic brothers of the Lord without distinction in terms. But we don’t know. The data are insufficient to tell. It’s ambiguous. And that’s the problem. Nevertheless, I still count this as evidence for historicity (a fact, again, Gullotta overlooks and makes no account of).
Gullotta makes some mistakes here that again show he didn’t actually read my section on this (OHJ, Ch. 11.10). Which is particularly shocking as this is singularly the most important evidence to discuss, yet he was at his most incompetent in addressing my book on this point (by not even reading what it says). That is an interesting phenomenon. It suggests historicity is a dogma he needs to defend from the armchair; and that he need not even review what my arguments on the point even are. This is exactly the kind of behavior that needs to stop in this field. You need to actually address the arguments. Otherwise you are just defending a dogma.
Gullotta argues, for instance, that “it is also important to note James’ significance within Paul’s letters,” “the James with whom Paul met in Jerusalem carries enough influence to be recognized as a ‘pillar’,” for example, and was powerful in Antioch, and “this evokes a significant authoritative distinction between” this James and other Christians; and “Paul give[s] James a special distinction when listing those who have had a Christophany” in 1 Corinthians 15. This is a weird argument for Gullotta to make. Because he actually mentions my reliance on Trudinger. As if Trudinger argued James was not a biological brother of Jesus. No. Trudinger argued that this brother of Jesus was not the apostle. Which in my first draft of this critique I mistakenly equated with arguing that the James in Galatians 1 was not the apostolic James in Galatians 2; rather, Trudinger’s argument opens up that possibility, as I actually argued in OHJ. Ignorant of that, Gullotta just assumes, as if it weren’t challenged in the very book he claims to be critiquing (a challenge that Trudinger’s conclusion supports), that these are the same James. He gives no argument for that assumption. Yet the bulk of my argument is that they are not the same James. And as long as that holds, citing the status of the other James is a non sequitur.
Even with respect to 1 Corinthians 15:7, Paul does not there identify that James as the Brother of the Lord. Nor does he explain which James he means there, or why he’s being mentioned at that point in the sequence. I actually suspect this is an interpolation; but even authentic (and I just assume so in OHJ), it’s simply ambiguous and thus can’t be used to determine anything. We can’t tell who Paul is talking about there. Because Paul doesn’t say. We can’t even tell if Paul means that was the first appearance to this James; so it may even be, again, James the Pillar. After all, that verse says “after that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,” even though many apostles had already received the revelation: Cephas and the twelve in verse 5; and indeed “over 500 brethren” in verse 6, who can hardly have excluded all the apostles—which phrase necessarily included James the Pillar, who would be among the twelve receiving their first revelation in verse 5. So Paul is clearly not listing only first timers. That it’s unclear what Paul is talking about is indeed a problem for affirming the verse authentic. But if authentic, it simply doesn’t help us figure out which James he means.
Meanwhile, the James of Galatians 2, the pillar who pulled weight in Antioch, is an apostle, the brother of John. Hence the three pillars are Peter, James and John, exactly as reproduced in the Gospels and Acts. And the James in this trio is never the brother of Jesus. Indeed, Acts never portrays any brother of Jesus as ever taking any role of significance or leadership in the church. In fact all his brothers completely vanish from history the instant Christianity goes public in Acts 2 (OHJ, Ch. 9.3). Notably the letter of James in the NT does not identify even that James as the brother of Jesus. There is in fact no clear reference to any James being the biological brother of Jesus until Mark invents a family for Jesus and rattles off a bunch of common Jewish names for them. Which family the Gospel then portrays Jesus renouncing. With no evident knowledge any of them would become power figures in the church. And indeed Acts demonstrates, no one knew of any such thing—even by the 90s A.D., the earliest Acts can have been written. Nor has the author of 1 Clement ever heard of any such thing. The first we hear of that idea, is the later second century, in completely unsourced and patently absurd legends (e.g. OHJ, Ch. 8.8).
Also weirdly, and demonstrating Gullotta did not read my section on this, he argues “if James was not the brother of Jesus, why does Paul highlight his encounter with him in Gal 1.19?” As if I didn’t answer that question in OHJ: check it out, pp. 589-91 (yes: that’s three pages of answer). What is Gullotta’s reply? He gives none. He doesn’t even know he is supposed to. This doesn’t make him look good. I also answer why Paul only twice uses the full pleonasm (Brothers of the Lord). And much else besides. Gullotta is completely unaware of all of it.
We see this even when Gullotta argues that Paul only once identifies anyone by name as a Brother of the Lord, yet occasionally refers to named persons as apostles or “fellow workers” in Christ or the Lord (and often as “brothers”). But this does not have any logical relevance to the problem. It is actually counter to expectation that Paul would write the ponderous “Brother of the Lord” every time he calls Christians “brother” (and he calls Christians brothers a lot). He would need a reason to use the expansive phrase rather than its ready abbreviation. And when we look at the only two places where he does write out the whole phrase, it’s always to distinguish apostolic from non-apostolic Christians (OHJ, p. 589; cf. pp. 582-87). Hence, we know why.
Once again I’ll do Gullotta’s job for him and mention two other arguments (that apparently didn’t occur to him) that are based on actually reading what I argued:
- If Brother of the Lord just meant Christian, why doesn’t Paul also call Cephas a Brother of the Lord in the same passage? I’ve answered this many times already. But as Nicholas Covington puts it, Peter “was clearly a high-ranking leader of the church,” in fact an apostle, whom Paul identifies as the highest available rank in the church (1 Cor. 12:28), “so calling him a ‘brother of the Lord’ would be like a talk show host introducing the pope as merely a ‘Christian’.” Everyone knows an apostle is a Brother of the Lord. So when anyone contrasted an apostle with a Brother of the Lord, it would be self-evident what is meant: merely a Christian. Just as one might say, “I met the Pope yesterday, and this Christian named John.” One would not respond to that with “Why didn’t you call the Pope a Christian!?” Because we already know the Pope is a Christian. A Pope is a Christian by definition. And calling John a Christian next to the Pope is clear in its meaning: you mean not a Pope, nor even a cardinal or bishop or priest. You mean, John is another Christian like the Pope, but one of no rank (beyond that of having undergone baptism, which then might have followed some initial trial period, so there may have been many as-yet-unbaptized congregants…but being thus uninitiated into the Christian mysteries, they would be less informed, and not yet “of the brethren”).
- The James of Galatians 2 can’t be the brother of John (and therefore must instead be the James named in Galatians 1), because Acts says he was dead by then. This was attempted by Craig Evans on the fly in our Kennesaw debate (for which Evans demonstrably did not prepare; he was given, but apparently never read my book, even though he was paid quite a lot of money to debate the content of that book; the irony of Gullotta also not reading the book he claims to be responding to on this point is not lost on me). I’ve already explained what’s wrong with that argument. Basically, Acts is unreliable. Especially in chronology. When Acts contradicts Paul, sound historical method requires us to side with Paul. Because unlike the author of Acts, Paul is an eyewitness to what he reports.
The fact remains: What Paul means on the two occasions he uses the pleonasm “Brother of the Lord” is unclear. We can’t tell if he means biological brother rather than cultic, because he doesn’t say. Nevertheless, I still count this as evidence for historicity, a fact Gullotta never mentions or addresses. How much more does he think this should raise the probability Jesus existed than I already allow it to? And why? He never says. Instead, Gullotta made false statements about my book. He claims that the things he mentions are “not adequately explained by Carrier.” In fact they are, in detail. Meanwhile, my explanations, Gullotta makes no reply to. He doesn’t even know what they are. Which means he didn’t read the book here. And that makes his claim to have read it at least a little dishonest.
Why Are We Talking about Homer?
It’s really weird that Gullotta spends a whole section attacking Dennis MacDonald’s thesis that Mark is a transvaluation of Homer. Because I barely even reference it. In fact, almost none of my conclusions about the content of the Gospels are based on it, and none rely on it. Gullotta gives the false impression that that’s the whole of my argument for the Gospels being mythical, that they “copy Homer.” That’s literally less than 5% of my argument for that conclusion. Gullotta has thus erased the dozens of peer reviewed books and articles I rely on and the hundred plus pages of analysis, wholly unconnected with the Homeric thesis, that demonstrate my conclusion quite decisively. This seems a little dishonest to me. I can only conclude he has some vendetta against MacDonald. And seeing red at the mere mention of him, literally “hallucinated away” over a hundred pages of text in my book.
Indeed, in my 122 page chapter demonstrating the mythic nature of the Gospels, MacDonald’s Homeric thesis is merely listed in passing in a footnote on page 396 (buried among many other scholars with non-Homeric arguments to the same conclusion); one line on page 399 (in a sentence listing numerous non-Homeric arguments to the same conclusion); buried again in a footnote each on pages 417, 422, and 396; one single line in respect to Luke’s use of Homer (on p. 474), amidst an extended argument that in fact Luke mostly used the Septuagint; and a mere five pages where actually I argue Mark, too, is riffing on the Septuagint more than Homer (pp. 436-40, 442). That’s it. That’s the extent of my reliance on MacDonald’s thesis.
So what’s going on here? Why is Gullotta pretending 95% of my arguments don’t exist, and only picking on my super occasional reference to MacDonald’s Homeric thesis, which never in any case does my conclusion rest on (as I always pair it with other arguments unrelated to the Homeric thesis), as if that’s the only thing I based my conclusion on? This looks like another well poisoning fallacy. MacDonald’s thesis is considered fringe and ridiculous by his peers. So associating me with him is a convenient way to throw that shade onto me. Never mind the actual merits of MacDonald’s thesis or that it’s been multiply peer reviewed and comes from a bona fide expert in every sense of the term. But worse, never mind what my actual arguments are in Chapter 10 for the Gospels being myth, literally none of which rest on MacDonald’s thesis.
This is, at my most charitable, another example of Gullotta being illogical. If you strip away all my mentions of the Homeric thesis (literally, black them out with a marker), it has no effect on the argument of Chapter 10. You wouldn’t even notice they were missing. For every conclusion I reach, numerous arguments remain that hold them up. I only add references to MacDonald’s thesis because they are true. I don’t need them. Not understanding how to logically diagram an argument, Gullotta never notices that removing the Homeric premises has no effect on my conclusion that the Gospels are myth. Therefore, attacking the Homeric thesis can be an interesting digression, but it is a complete non sequitur for the debate over the historicity of Jesus or the mythical character of the Gospels. It has no effect on the probability Jesus existed even as argued in OHJ. And Gullotta shows no such effect.
The fact remains: This is why it’s important for historians to learn logic, and how to construct and analyze the logic of an argument. You can’t ignore all the premises of an argument, rebut a supplemental point not logically necessary to the conclusion, and then declare the argument for that conclusion has been rebutted. As for the arguments Gullotta deploys against MacDonald (including the one he incorrectly lays against me on p. 339), I would encourage you to actually find and read MacDonald’s refutations of them. Because it’s not like any of this is new to him. Gullotta, notably, never mentions MacDonald’s rebuttals. Worse, Gullotta deceives his readers again by arguing it’s obvious Mark relies on the Jewish Scriptures more—a fact that I myself argue in OHJ, and vastly more extensively than my scant few references to the role of Homer. Gullotta gives the impression he is schooling me on the point. When in fact, it’s 90% of my argument! And to which, again, Gullotta gives no reply.
Is Rank-Raglan Indicative?
Finally, Gullotta takes aim at the Rank-Raglan argument that freaks out everyone else like him. I’ve already rebutted their frightened obsession with this in my response to Christian fundamentalist David Marshall (whom Gullotta did not consult, contrary to my prior assumption, here corrected; he merely references him as an opponent of mythicism).
Gullotta doesn’t do his homework very well here. Again. He asks, rhetorically, “why the Rank-Raglan hero-type?” As if I don’t answer that in OHJ. Seriously, check it out: pp. 239-44, a section literally titled “Using the Rank-Raglan Reference Class.” I explain in detail over several pages that the RR class is the best reference class to look at, of in fact a great many that Jesus belongs to that are peculiarly myth-heavy (see, again, my reply to Marshall), because “we don’t have any clear or statistically solid data about the frequency of historical to nonhistorical persons” in any other class, whereas we do for the RR class (or at least, we do, significantly more so than for any other class). Gullotta shows no signs of having read that section. He seems to think I did not explain why that’s the class to start with; and accordingly, he never gives any response to my stated reasons for it.
I have since explained even more precisely why the RR class is the best one to start with:
The best reference class for formulating a prior [probability] always lies at the nexus of two properties: (1) it’s specific enough to be certain of a connection other than coincidence; and (2) it has a lot of members. The best conjunction of those two properties, gives you the most authoritative prior probability (which you then must moderate with appropriate margins of error, and those margins might be wide, if even the best available reference class only poorly satisfies (1) and (2), as is often the case for ancient history, where surviving data is scarce).
I then show how the RR class meets those two conditions better than any other class to which Jesus belongs (that isn’t already mooted when conditioned on Jesus belonging to other classes like the RR; e.g. Jesus belongs to both the class of “all claimed historical persons” and “all claimed historical persons who are RR heroes,” and the rule of greater knowledge requires us to take the latter class, because to disregard it is to leave information out when conditioning your probabilities, which is a violation of the basic logic of probability: all of which I explain in OHJ, Ch. 6).
Gullotta says “it is clear that Carrier has modified Raglan’s qualifications in order to make this archetypal hero model better fit the Jesus tradition,” but in fact I modified it to combine the two into one test, and actually fit the data of the other heroes as claimed by Rank and Raglan, since their counts didn’t actually match the exact wording of their own criteria (and even after I improved the wording, I got different counts than they did, as I note in OHJ: pp. 230-31, n. 191). And once again Gullotta fails at logic here. I explain (on p. 231) that by making the criteria even broader than Gullotta thinks Rank and Raglan had applied them, this should have increased the number of historical persons who score above half. In other words, I set each criteria more general than specified. Thus, it should be easier for someone who really existed to score. That they don’t, actually makes what I did a stronger argument for my conclusion, not a weaker one as Gullotta mistakenly claims.
Indeed, logically, it doesn’t matter. We could make up our own complete list, unconnected with anything Rank or Raglan ever said or did. If it still matched fifteen people, none of whom we have any reason to believe existed, that’s remarkable. And thereby a proven correlation. It can’t be a coincidence that so many fit; and it can’t be a coincidence that none of them are historical persons. This is how you verify a set is demonstrating a correlation. A correlation applicable to all that set’s members. Though again, Gullotta’s refusal to learn sixth grade math, perhaps prevents him from understanding how probability works. His arguments here are thus non sequiturs. They do nothing to change the fact of the matter: members of the RR set tend not to have existed. That can’t be by my design (because I can’t have made fifteen ancient persons fit a dozen peculiar criteria, nor can I have made them all not exist); nor can it be by accident that none of them existed (because a random selection of fifteen ancient persons should contain mostly historical persons, exactly as I explain in OHJ, Ch. 6).
Gullotta also deploys the illogical argument that Paul doesn’t score Jesus above a handful of criteria on the RR list. That’s a really weird thing to say. First, because it’s illogical of Gullotta to assume Paul laid out for us the entire story of Jesus; while simultaneously admitting Paul never gives us any details of Jesus’s life narrative at all. You can only pick one to believe. And only the latter is true. So clearly, Paul has left out numerous details about the life of Jesus, the very details we would need to test Jesus’s fit to the RR scale. He therefore cannot be used the way Gullotta wants. I can’t even fathom why Gullotta would even think this was a logical way to argue—even before we get to the real problem with Gullotta’s argument:
I explain in OHJ that Jesus was probably made into an RR hero after Paul. It’s precisely what indicates he’s mythical: when the very first narrative of him is ever written (Mark), immediately Jesus is a 14-point RR hero (besides many other typically mythical types: see OHJ, pp. 222-29) and rapidly expanded into a 20-point RR hero (in just a decade or two). In other words, there was no mythical Jesus when Paul lived…that figure hadn’t been invented yet. That’s why Paul never mentions it. As far as Paul ever seems to know, Jesus had no life or ministry, did no deeds when alive (only surrounding the drama of his death, which Paul never narrates or places anywhere). As far as we can tell, in Paul’s day, there were no tales of Jesus as an earthly hero, only as a cosmic one. So he hadn’t been crafted into an RR hero yet.
That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been. We just don’t have any evidence he was. The correlation holds regardless of causation. It doesn’t matter if Jesus began an RR hero or became one; just as that doesn’t matter for any of the other RR heroes. What matters is simply what we observe: people who become RR heroes, tend not to have existed. I discuss why that’s probably so in OHJ, Ch. 6.4. Persons that massively mythologized (at all, much less that rapidly: OHJ, Ch. 6.7), tend not to have existed. Historical persons who get mythologized, tend not to get that massively mythologized (not even Alexander the Great was, nor, contrary to erroneous claims, Mithridates: OHJ, pp. 231-32, n. 193). Not that that can’t have happened. And in OHJ I allow that for as many as 1 in 3 people, it did (meaning, 1 out of every 3 persons who score above half on the RR scale, did indeed exist…which odds include Jesus).
Which is another point Gullotta never addresses. He instead completely misses the logic of my own argument when he concludes “the traditions of Jesus conforming to these legendary patterns does not negate his historicity any more than the legends connected with Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, and Apollonius of Tyana denies theirs.” I never argue in OHJ that being a Rank-Raglan hero “negates historicity.” To the contrary, I say as many as 1 in 3 such heroes may indeed be historical. Hence the prior is 1 in 3. Gullotta seems incapable of grasping probability as a concept. He sees only “exists or doesn’t exist,” probability 1 or 0. Nothing in between. History doesn’t work that way.
First, of course, none of those figures he names score higher than half on the RR scale. So the frequency with which persons made to score more than half the RR criteria are historical, doesn’t apply to them. Gullotta is like someone arguing that the frequency of Republicanism among the poor tells us the frequency of Republicanism among the rich. That’s not how statistics works. The frequency of being a thing, among persons in a given set, only applies to persons in that set. If you want to ask what the frequency is for someone in another set, you have to look at the set they do belong to. And as far as I know, neither Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, nor Apollonius of Tyana belong to any myth-dominated sets. Apollonius might (indeed, his historicity I consider questionable; it’s secured only by a single reference in Lucian, that a man he met tutored under him, a thing I think unlikely of Lucian to make up or get wrong). But I doubt Caesar or Alexander do.
But more importantly, Gullotta is now confusing prior with posterior probability. My 1 in 3 prior probability for the historicity of Jesus is not the probability of the historicity of Jesus. This is explained clearly and repeatedly in OHJ, so for him to screw this up is astonishing. And indeed, a 1 in 3 prior, is super easy to reverse with evidence. You just need a body of evidence that in sum is (say) only four times more likely on historicity than myth, to reverse that 1 in 3 to above 50/50, and thus turn a “probably not” into a “probably did.” Just as I explain in the conclusion of my chapter on the prior (OHJ, pp. 252-53):
Therefore, the prior probability…that Jesus was historical can be no more than 1 in 3 or 33%. … That does not mean the probability that Jesus was historical is 33%. For we still have to look at all the evidence pertaining to the various hypotheses for how Jesus became a member of both the Rank–Raglan hero class and the set of all other celestial savior deities. And when we do, we could find that the evidence is so improbable, unless Jesus really existed, that even a prior probability as low as 1 in 16, or 6.25% (which entails prior odds against h of 15 to 1), would be more than overcome.
For example, even if Caesar Augustus had a Rank–Raglan score of 20, we also have a vast array of evidence supporting his existence, each piece of which is highly improbable unless there really was a Caesar Augustus, and all of it combined would be even more improbable. So if ¬h is any variation of ‘Caesar Augustus did not really exist’, then the actual evidence we have of his existence would entail a…consequent probability of the evidence [on his non-existence] hundreds if not thousands or millions of times less than 6%, yet with a corresponding [probability of the evidence on his existence] very nearly equal to 1. Such a combination would produce a [posterior probability], the probability that Caesar Augustus didn’t exist, of very well near zero. So we would still be fully justified believing in his historicity—even with a prior probability of it of only 6%.
That’s why we need to look at the evidence for the existence of Jesus. Is it as strong as the evidence for the existence of Caesar Augustus? And even if not that strong (and we already know it isn’t …), is it still strong enough to make historicity more probable than ahistoricity, no matter what Rank-Raglan score Jesus has? To that question we now turn.
In other words, even if “Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar” were high scoring RR heroes and thus had a 1 in 3 prior chance of existing, the evidence for their existence vastly overwhelms that prior, rendering it moot. That’s the point—and effect—of having evidence. The fact that we lack that evidence for Jesus, is precisely the problem. Citing persons for whom we have that vast evidence, does not answer that problem. Note Gullotta seems completely unaware that I give exactly the same examples he does, and discuss why they don’t help his case: Augustus, just above; and Alexander, on pp. 21-24. Why doesn’t Gullotta know this? Why does he keep repeating the mistakes my book warns him not to?
It’s similarly illogical of Gullotta to cite later “additional” legends of Jesus (like the Infancy Gospels) as “refuting” the claim that Jesus was a Rank-Raglan hero when constructed in the first century. That he was changed into a different kind of hero later (e.g. stories invented of him as a child) has no effect on what we observe he was imagined by the first authors narrating his life (such as Mark and Matthew, who conspicuously tell us nothing of his childhood, despite that being a common feature of ancient biography). As if Mark and Matthew “knew” about the Infancy Gospel tales. Please. Those stories didn’t exist when Mark and Matthew wrote. Nor would Mark or Matthew have contrived them…which is why they didn’t. They probably would have regarded them as preposterous and abhorrent. And certainly wholly contrary to the story they actually wanted to tell. At any rate, I already addressed this point in OHJ (pp. 233-34), so for Gullotta again to pretend I didn’t, is disturbing.
The fact remains: Jesus belongs to a set of persons who are rarely historical; and he can’t belong to it by my design or by accident. That’s true regardless of who designed the set or how the set is constructed or how Jesus came to belong to the set. That means Jesus looks like a non-historical person. As much as everyone else in that same set does. So we need some evidence to establish Jesus is an exception. And presumption is not evidence. “Maybe Jesus is like Alexander the Great” is not a logically valid argument to the conclusion that “Jesus is like Alexander the Great.” Gullotta and his colleagues really need to stop using the possibiliter fallacy (Proving History, pp. 26-29).
Conclusion
Gullotta is at least honest. Unlike most critics of OHJ, he actually did read at least some of OHJ as he claimed (though he clearly skipped parts, which resulted in some humorous errors in his review), and he didn’t resort to outright lies about what the book says or any of the pertinent facts. Indeed, apart from some errors in reading my arguments—where he didn’t read the book, or gets my arguments wrong, or forgets what they were (and thus does mildly deceive some readers)—his only failing, top to bottom, is in being phenomenally illogical. Every argument he makes, makes no logical sense. He never explains why anything he says should increase the probability of historicity. He does not even seem to know how one increases the probability of a historical claim at all. We are left with no idea why anything he says should alter my conclusion that the odds Jesus existed are at best 1 in 3.
This is why historians need to stop thumbing their nose at the study of logic—and actually learn logic. They won’t be able to construct, much less vet, a logically valid argument if they never study how to tell when an argument is logically valid. If they don’t know what fallacies are, they will keep using them, oblivious to the fact. Because they can’t detect them. If they don’t know how evidence increases the probability of a theory, how can they claim some item of evidence does increase it? And how can they know how probable something is, if they refuse to learn any numerical language of probability? There is no way to defend a conclusion without this knowledge. What happens instead is that illogical rationalizations get dressed up with neatly edited margin-justified text and copious footnotes to create the appearance of being reliable historical reasoning.
This needs to stop. Historians need to start taking logic seriously. And stop using illogical arguments to reach conclusions they desire, and instead use logic (and competently) to identify when their beliefs are false. Because it is only by failing to prove your beliefs false, that you can verify they are probably true. See my past advice on this point. Plus, to Gullotta and all would-be critics: Please actually read the book. It’s embarrassing, and a waste of time and words, when you don’t even address what my arguments and evidence are. You can’t advance the subject, or defend historicity successfully, unless you actually do that. And that requires moving the ball forward. Not ignoring where the ball is.
It really doesn’t matter who crucified Jesus. Crucifixion is from Psalm 22.16 and Zechariah 12.10, as you point out in OHJ. You should mention these passages in your formal response.
Gullotta is an expert. He knows the NT fashions its crucifixion story and understanding from those verses. So there isn’t any need to mention them here. And I already mention them in OHJ.
Our debate is not whether Christians fashioned their crucifixion story or understanding from OT verses (and beyond). We agree they did. Our debate is whether they were using those verses to color and understand a real event, or to discover an event God had hidden prophetically in the scriptures and then revealed to them (Romans 16:25-26).
I have read Dr. Carrier’s Proving History and OHJ (twice), and I was pleased to read Mr (Dr.?) Gullotto’s criticism, particularly as there is little by way of rebuttal coming from the historicist community of scholars. I was somewhat disappointed by some of the points he raised, in that they seemed rather feeble. I refer to I) the point about whether Jesus was known as an archangel and the issue of his name (which could have been added later) and ii) The brother of Christ debate in Paul, extensive discussed in OHJ and given due credence there and iii) that Paul referred to Jesus as a man (which is expected in mythicism). I am not a historian or a scholar and found these weaknesses purely from familiarity with OHJ. Dr. Carrier’s rebuttal here removes any lingering effectiveness of the criticism of OHJ. I am left wondering when and where are we going to see arguements that counter OHJ from the historicist community? Can it really be that no effective defence can be raised? Surely someone can make a better fist of historicism than we have seen so far? If not, has the battle been won and lost already, and we need now only wait a generation or two for mythicism to become the new orthodoxy?
Dear Richard,
From the specific content of Christina Petterson’s review of your book, I wonder what evidence you have for calling it “highly evangelical”, and (elsewhere) what evidence you have for calling her “fawningly Christian”? If there is evidence of this in her review, I am sure that, like any good historian, you will not fail to produce it.
I eagerly wait to see your evidence.
Yours,
Deane Galbraith
You can see for yourself. I link to her article. It’s open access, so anyone can read it. Clues include her disparagement of the Jesus Seminar, and praise for James McGrath; her review in general reads like a James McGrath style poohpoohing of any challenge to orthodoxy, and never engages with the actual arguments of the book, which only a believing Christian would think to do. She’s defending orthodoxy. And assuming she need do no work to do it. While never once conceding the actual orthodoxy is that the Gospel Jesus is a myth (and the historical Jesus not like him). That’s all you need to know her agenda is defending Christianity, not scholarship (her Christian belief is likewise evident from her other writings).
Although I think it’s fair to cut the word “evangelical” here, since it’s true, she doesn’t evangelize a kerygma in that article. So I’ve made that correction. I’ve gone back to its main descriptor: weird.
Looks like you messed up, Richard. https://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/2017/12/18/richard-carriers-reading-problems-an-example/
If she is saying she is an atheist, I’ll correct the record. Where does she say she’s an atheist?
I don’t see any indication she is a devout Christian. To me she seems like a post-modern capital-M Marxist. She gives a fair summary of the book and offers some highly subjective personal reasons why she does not like it, such as her not liking math or people who are (too?) interested in the truth(!). Fair enough.
“[4] his claim that James, the brother of the Lord, was not a relative of Jesus but just a generic Christian within the Jerusalem community”
Volumes could be written about ‘just’.
“Evolution is ‘just’ a theory.”
Always be suspect of your own use of ‘just’ and other’s. It’s usually the weakest argument they have.
Of course, when you word it without the ‘just’, it means something almost entirely different and reasonable. When ‘just’ is added, it implies it’s wildly unreasonable.
[4] his claim that James, the brother of the Lord, was not a relative of Jesus but a generic Christian within the Jerusalem community…
The argument against this theory sounds much less unreasonable after removing ‘just’.
If we go further and remove ‘just’ and ‘generic’, which is just another motivator for bias, we arrive at a pretty reasonable notion:
[4] his claim that James, the brother of the Lord, was not a relative of Jesus but a Christian within the Jerusalem community
That’s what he didn’t want to write. Whether it was conscious or subconscious. Although, a writer should always check for these obvious tracks of bias in their work- eliminating the excuse for subconscious bias.
I don’t get the logic of “just” you are advancing here, Andrew. It makes no difference to the sentence’s meaning if it’s there or not. It’s a redundant term for emphasis, that means the same thing as “generic.” While removing both terms would eliminate the point of comparison being made. Both Peter and James are Christians within the Jerusalem community. What distinguishes them is that one is an Apostolic Christian and one is just a Christian. Which is what the grammar of the passage in Greek effectively states. So it’s unclear to me what you are trying to argue here.
Hi Richard. Thank you for this excellent response to Gullotta. I think your point about probability illustrates the key problem, that for believers, belief in Jesus of Nazareth is purely and entirely a matter of spiritual faith, and therefore is outside the realm of factual probabilistic mathematics or scientific testing.
You say Gullotta argues that all sources show Jesus was killed by Rome. That attitude is apologetics, not history, what you rightly call “a dogma he needs to defend from the armchair; [meaning] that he need not even review what my arguments on the point even are.”
Recognition of the anti-scientific nature of belief in Jesus is itself an important finding regarding the effective anathema that Gullotta appears to pronounce upon the basic methods of evidence that you employ, with his rejection of probabilistic analysis. Not quite the traditional ‘I believe because it is absurd’, but close. Heresiologists only ever use their opponents’ texts to cherry pick things to distort.
Your writing style reminds me of a cat playing with a mouse, with the background knowledge that the mouse will not get away. That mouse is the status of the piled anomalies of Christ historicism. To your key question “If this really is the best there is to defend historicity with…isn’t historicity doomed?”, the answer is yes.
Your explication of the ‘born of a woman’ argument here is the clearest I can recall reading, so thank you. The fact this verse upon which historicists hang so much weight occurs in the same chapter as the allegorical women Hagar and Sarah makes it probable that the ‘mother’ referred to for Jesus is equally allegorical. And if not probable (my view is that other factors make it compelling), then at least this co-location with allegorical mothers makes it possible the mother of Jesus as mentioned by Paul is symbolic. Again, even that bare possibility must be rejected by the literalist faithful as heretical anathema, rejecting the apparent ambiguity in the text. The weighty shadow of the anathemas of Christendom hangs heavy on the thinking of apologists.
The key myth in Christianity, and the source of its innovative power, was the claim that it all actually happened in history as described. That myth is depraved and corrupt, and will die a slow death.
On “Jesus was a man”, so too was Hercules. But Hercules was a fictional man, and that is the lens we should apply to see if Paul is also describing Jesus as an imaginary man. He is.
I have some criticisms of your argument. You say “in 1 Cor. 2:6-9 Paul says the “authorities” who kill Jesus would not have killed him had they known killing him would magically save the world. Literally, he says they’d have let him go, and not crucified him, if they knew what cosmic effects his death would have. Why would the Romans or Jews even know that his death would have cosmic effects on the natural order?”
The point of the text “if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” is just that the powers that crucified Jesus (Roman and Jewish in the literalist Gospel myth, archons ἀρχόντων for Paul) did not know he was the Christ. So your question, ‘why would they know?’, avoids the very point that they did not know. Paul’s point here is that the world has fallen from grace and knowledge into corruption and ignorance, to such an extreme extent that when the messiah appears the response is to nail him to the cross, symbolically at least. Your speculative question ‘Why would the Romans want to keep death in the world?’ misses the point that Paul is just saying, from the literalist reading, that Jesus was crucified due to ignorance. If they had understood, as Paul says if they had gnosis – ἔγνωσαν – then Christ would have been recognised by the world as the king of glory instead of being despised and rejected. Despite that, I completely agree with your view that the archons were viewed as spiritual rather than political powers as per Ephesians.
You say “both Hebrews and the Ascension of Isaiah say everything on earth has copies in the firmament.” That is your colloquial simplification, which I think distorts their intent. The texts mentioning copying in Hebrews are 8:4-5 “there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law; who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” and 9:23 “the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed”. In both cases, the things in heaven are universally good, which does not accord with your claim that the crucifixion happened in the heavens, an idea that works more as astral allegory than as actual suffering in the heavens.
As I have previously argued, I disagree with your overly materialistic language of “outer space”, which Gullotta tries to mock. “Outer space” is a phrase invented by HG Wells, so it is anachronistic for you to apply it to the ancient world. Their ideas, in my view, were more in line with how myths use constellations as mnemonic devices, not claims of entities existing physically in the heavens.
True. Although some corrections:
“You say Gullotta argues that all sources show Jesus was killed by Rome.” He doesn’t exactly say that. Had he, he’d be making a false statement: not only because many sources, e.g. Paul, Hebrews, 1 Clement, don’t say who killed Jesus, but also because the Christians east of the Empire were preaching Jesus was killed by the Hasmoneans, eighty years before Rome even annexed Judea: OHJ, Ch. 8.1. One thing Gullotta does better than other critics, is that he words himself carefully, and thus doesn’t say embarrassing false things like that. What he says as to the facts is, strictly read, correct. He may leave facts out, but he doesn’t assert they don’t exist. Which is an important distinction. That’s what makes his arguments merely illogical, rather than already false on the facts.
“But Hercules was a fictional man, and that is the lens we should apply to see if Paul is also describing Jesus as an imaginary man.” But Paul didn’t think Jesus was imaginary. Any more than he thought Satan was. Gullotta’s (actually, it’s McGrath’s) argument is that, let’s say, Paul would never call Satan a “man,” so that he calls Jesus one, means he thought he was on earth at some point. Hercules began life as a solar deity, not some earthly hero; he got transposed into earthly stories set in a specific time and place later (conquering the Peloponnesus right before the Trojan War). Gullotta-McGrath would say “and before that, no one would have called Hercules a man” (because no one calls solar deities “men”). Etc. It almost sounds reasonable. Except, in context, it doesn’t. Not only because in Jewish angelology, angels could in fact be called men (as I prove from Philo; a fact McGrath didn’t check and thus got caught making false assertions about to his readers; Gullotta smartly avoided that mistake), but more importantly, because the mythicist thesis is precisely that Jesus became a man, specifically to die. The question is only where he became a man: in the firmament (as the Ascension of Isaiah originally said), or on earth (as Gullotta wants)? So Gullotta’s argument isn’t so much unfactual, as illogical. It is not a rebuttal to a theory that Jesus became a man in the sky, that “Paul says Jesus became a man.” That’s a non sequitur. Factually true, but logically invalid.
“So your question, ‘why would they know?’, avoids the very point that they did not know.” No, you’ve misread the sentence. I said, why would they know the magical facts of the matter; not whether Jesus would trigger them. Of course they didn’t know Jesus would trigger them because God hid that from them. But even if God revealed that Jesus’s death would have supernatural effects, why would the Jews and Romans have any idea what those magical effects would be? It’s not like they had any arcane wizard’s knowledge of the cosmic laws of supernatural death magic.
If God told them: “This is the Logos you are killing! He’ll just rise up after you kill him and fly away with newly acquired power over demonic forces!” To which the Jews and Romans would reply, “Okay. So? We’re still going to kill him. And if all he’s going to do is fly away and trouble demons, then good riddens. Sounds like a win-win for both of us. What’s your problem?” To which God would then have to argue, “No, no, no. You are missing the point. If you kill the Logos, he will acquire power over life and death and be able to undue Satan’s stranglehold on the lower sphere of reality and thus be able to help people escape into eternal life in the future because the Angel of Death won’t be able to keep them dead anymore, owing to the blood magic of a god-sacrifice being so powerful.” To which the Jews and Romans would reply, “What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t know about any of that weird cosmic magic stuff. I just know this guy is annoying, I’m going to kill him, and all you’re telling me is that nothing but good will result if we do, both for you and us. So why are we supposed to have a problem with it again? You aren’t making any sense.” To which God would conclude, “Oh, right. I forgot. You aren’t supernaturally controlling death in the lower sphere and neither know anything nor care about magical soteriological physics. What was I thinking. I needed to go tell this to the demons, who do know all that stuff. Oh wait, no. If I tell them that, then they won’t kill Jesus, just to thwart my plan and stay in power. I guess I better keep that hidden then.”
See the point?
“Christ would have been recognised by the world as the king of glory instead of being despised and rejected.” No. That’s not what Paul says. He doesn’t say they would recognize he was wonderful and like him. He says they would stop the crucifixion to prevent the good effects of it. Paul is saying God’s plan was to kill the messiah, specifically to save the world. So if the Romans and Jews knew that, and recognized Jesus was awesome and great, then they’d have killed Jesus anyway, specifically to save the world. In other words, if they actually knew God’s plan and believed it was real, they would happily kill Jesus precisely because that was God’s plan: Jesus needed to be killed to effect the resulting blood magic that the entirety of the Christian gospel is marketing.
By analogy, I discuss in OHJ the Roman blood magic ritual of devotio, whereby a Roman general casts a spell on himself and charges to his death into the enemy ranks, the effect of which causes the gods to ensure his army is then victorious. Imagine that’s what we were talking about, and the general’s attendant said, “Don’t tell the enemy army that the general’s death will guarantee our army’s victory because of a magical spell; if they know that, they will refuse to kill him, so as to prevent the spell from working.” Get it? Conversely, it wouldn’t make sense for the general’s attendant to say, “Don’t tell our army that the general’s death will guarantee the army’s victory because of a magical spell; if they know that, they will refuse to kill him, so as to prevent the spell from working.” Because why would his own army stop his death? If his death is going to guarantee their victory, and his death is voluntary, then no matter how much they like him and acknowledge him as awesome and great and all, they’d want to help him achieve their victory. That’s his plan, after all; and they think he’s awesome, so they’d back his plan. Not because they thought he was scum; but precisely because they knew he was thereby their savior.
“In both cases, the things in heaven are universally good, which does not accord with your claim that the crucifixion happened in the heavens.” That’s actually not correct. You’re right I’m compressing to simplicity what’s carefully argued in the book. You should read the book. I explain there (and document with abundant evidence) that the lowest level of heaven (called “the firmament”) was of corruption and death, and that there were copies of earthly things there as well—and in fact again in every level of heaven above that: at each level, the copies are more perfect; so, e.g., there is a temple on earth, a corrupt temple in the sky, an incorruptable temple in the first heaven; a more glorious incorruptable temple in the second heaven; and so on all the way to the most glorious incorruptable temple in the seventh heaven, in which God himself resides, and which is attended by God’s own High Priest (Jesus-Christ in Christian lore; Michael-Melchizedek in Rabbinical lore; the Adamic Logos in Philonic lore; all in fact described as the same entity, just by different names, with some different beliefs about them). Jesus descended to the sky-temple region to be killed and buried there (as the Ascension of Isaiah originally described). So it is not the case that the copies were always good. The first set of copies (in the firmament) had been corrupted by Satan and his demons, and were inhabited by them. Only the copies at higher levels were good.
And as to my use of outer space, you’re wrong. Read my paragraph on the point in OHJ. There is no astrological constellation lore here. Constellations are stars and only occupy the seventh heaven. They therefore are nowhere near the power base of the demons and cannot be the locus of Jesus’s death. The ancient worldview (and I document this extensively) was of a series of concentric spheres, starting with the earth, surrounded by the atmosphere, which they believed extended all the way to the moon (we now know it doesn’t; but they didn’t know that…or at least, religious cosmologists didn’t; some scientists suspected otherwise, and estimated the height of the air at about forty miles, but they were atomists so their views were rejected by religionists as too atheistic). That region they knew was about 200,000 miles deep, and was filled with terrifying things, including sky castles and demonic gardens and all manner of things, where demons and Satan held rule and warred with each other. This was the lowest level of the heavens, called the firmament, because it held up the other spheres. The moon rides just at the top of it, but thereby occupies the “first heaven,” meaning the first sphere that is immune to corruption and death (then more heavens ride on top of that; all filled with a breathable alien gas called ether; again, some scientists suspected it was actually a vacuum, but that was rejected by religionists as too atheistic).
Which is why I don’t say Jesus was killed “in heaven,” because that usually means the upper spheres. You can mean by “the heavens” all seven numbered heavens and the firmament. But the heavens only get numbered after the firmament, so in most cases “earth-firmament-heavens” are all distinguished (and “heavens” means the spheres above the firmament). But sometimes the word “heavens” includes the firmament. This can all get very confusing. So I just say outer space. Because that’s factually accurate and always correct: when they are talking about events just below the orbit of the moon, they are talking about what we mean by
“outer space.” We differ only in that we now know it’s a vacuum out there. But they didn’t. Likewise, the heavens are all “outer space” too (the moon all the way to the planets and stars, each known planet, including moon and sun, occupying its own sphere of heaven).
It is perhaps unclear where Jesus is buried; it may have been in the third heaven (where the Garden of Eden was located, as many sources, including Paul, tell us), given that that’s where Adam’s corpse was taken to be buried in Jewish lore (which lore is even referenced in the Epistle of Jude). But the Ascension of Isaiah appears to indicate Jesus’s burial was in the firmament (the section that would have said, was destroyed; but immediately after that excised section, Jesus is ascending into the first heaven, so we can assume…which also of course means, he can’t have been buried with the stars, as they are all already in the seventh heaven, so he would have nowhere to ascend to).
The point being, this is all in outer space as we understand it. As distinct from on earth.
Richard,
For some of us, all of the arguments here are just too much to keep track of. However, there is one topic that I feel would be a good proxy for many lay bystanders like me to judge which side is being the most responsible/careful with the evidence here. The topic is whether Philo thinks the Logos is an archangel in the sense of being a separate ontological being in the following passage that you cite: “his firstborn Logos, the eldest of his angels, the ruling archangel of many names” (found in “On the confusion of tongues”, http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book15.html; cited by Carrier at https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13541).
You say, “Hurtado now claims Philo doesn’t identify the Logos as an archangel. Yet Philo explicitly does” (https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13541).
Hurtado says, “…In Philo’s thought (which, it appears, Carrier hasn’t researched adequately in the six years he devoted to his project), the Logos is not really a separate ontological being, not really an ‘archangel’” (https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/page/2/).
Who is right, or are you both saying the same thing, or are you both not being careful enough or nuanced in your claims? I feel a dedicated post on this topic might help a lot of people.
Thank you.
Philo never says the Logos isn’t a distinct created being that enacts God’s will. Any more than Paul says that of Jesus.
Philo says the Adam in Genesis 1 is this being, he calls this being an archangel and a man (indeed, literally, “the real man”), says he has many names, that he was the first thing God created, his firstborn son; and that he belongs to a different race and species than mortal men, that he governs the universe like God’s viceroy, attends the celestial temple of God in heaven as its High Priest, actually carried out the rest of creation at God’s behest, acts as God’s intermediary for us, is the true virtuous man that we should all imitate, and that he petitions God for the forgiving of our sins.
I document this with passages and quotes from Philo in OHJ, as well as peer reviewed scholarship on the matter; so you can check all of them and their context yourself (OHJ, Elements 39 and 40, pp. 197-205: note that’s a lot of pages of documentation).
What evidence has Hurtado adduced otherwise? What passages that say otherwise? What articles? Still waiting. So maybe you should ask him this question. I’ve already done due diligence here. My research is published. Easy for anyone to consult and check. Where’s his?
Your theory doesn’t actually depend on Jesus living and dying in the firmament.
Your actual point is that the Jesus info is coming from the LXX and dreams.
Paul could have believed Jesus died on Earth, but still having the info come from the LXX and dreams.
True. I mention that possibility: OHJ, p. 563, n. 67:
The outer space location is simply more supported by the evidence (e.g. the Ascension of Isaiah; Hebrews; the lack of mention of earthly location anywhere in Paul but repeated placing of Jesus and other important events in space, e.g. 2 Cor. 5, 2 Cor. 12; etc.).
re 1 cor 11. Duz ‘night’ uccur in outer space?
Yes. It does. When the sun is behind the earth in the geocentric system they believed in. The same reason it’s dark on earth, it’s dark above it. Particularly in the atmosphere, where the firmament was. If you’ve ever flown in a jetliner at 40,000 feet, you’ll maybe have noticed night is a thing there, too.
One could ask why he’d be rousted by demons above Jerusalem instead of above Beijing, but the answer would be pretty obvious. And irrelevant. As Paul never says where. He may well have been rousted above Beijing. When the sun was set below it. Although surely he was entangled with the copies of things below, above. And he was entangled with the fate of the Holy Land. Not Beijing.
At any rate, the role of the night for his abandonment is already suggested in scripture (as I point out in OHJ).
I think that you are missing a valid argument from Gullotta when you reply with this: “..I set each criteria more general than specified. Thus, it should be easier for someone who really existed to score. That they don’t, actually makes what I did a stronger argument for my conclusion..”
Let’s ponder that Cinderella’s helpers have modified the shoe by filing it off in a very specific place above one toe, which makes the shoe fit Cinderella much better. Her helpers could say the same as you do: that this does not help Cinderella at all, because if it did, it would help everyone, not just Cinderella. But although there could be another woman who needed more space for that toe in exactly the same place, we should expect other women’s feet to differ from the shoe in other ways. And in this case, we know the shoe was modified specifically to fit Cinderella.
Now, Cinderella’s helpers may claim that they really did not modify the shoe in order to give her an advantage, but because they thought it made the shoe better in some absolute sense. But we know how well the shoe fit before and after the modification. So this claim is not very believable.
Differences don’t affect qualifying. One only counts in. No criteria counts someone out (except insofar as it counts fewer out when widened). So widening the criteria always increases the number of qualifying members. It can never reduce it.
You are confusing narrowing qualifiers (to Procrustean Bed someone into a fit) with widening qualifiers (e.g. making the shoe of adjustable size rather than one unique specific size).
There is nothing about counting anyone out in my post. Your reply is completely irrelevant to my post.
I am struggling to understand Gullota’s contention that you are creating an “artificial distinction between earthly and other-earthly powers” not seen in Judaism. You point us to pp.184-193 in OHJ. I can see how Eph 2:2 provides evidence for the indepedent activity of the other-earthly powers. Do passages like Job 1:6, 2 Chron 18:18-21 and Rev 17:7-12 also show a clear belief in a realm of activity (not on earth) for the other-earthly powers?
Aren’t all Gullota’s efforts to show non-distinction just another way of descibing the “meddle in the affairs of man” (OHJ p184) part of their activity?
I think Gullotta is right that there is no such clear distinction, but that is moot since Carrier never claimed there is. I think Gullotta believes that Carrier is making the argument ‘demons never act through humans, so if Paul says demons were involved, that means humans were not involved’. But unless I’m completely mistaken, that is not Carrier’s argument at all. In my opinion the argument is rather “Paul says demons were involved, and never says humans were involved, so although humans could have been involved according to Paul, that means we need other evidence to justify making a less straightforward interpretation of Paul’s statements”.
We could also interpret Gullotta as making the argument that demons always acted through humans, but that is probably not what he means, because that would be an absurd argument.
Yes. What Johan said is correct.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your question.
Correction: I incorrectly said Gullotta had listed fundamentalist David Marshall as a consultant in his opening note; in fact he referenced him as only an example of an opponent of mythicism in a later note, and disavows having consulted him. I’ve emended the text of my article to reflect this.
Note: Gullotta would like readers of his article to know that two corrections will be issued, one updating his description of Raphael Lataster (who has since received his Ph.D. in religious studies); another correcting a quotation listed in the article as of Suetonius (c. 118 AD), as in fact a quotation of Lucian (c. 160 AD). I was aware of both corrections so didn’t comment on them. But that information should be made available to you as well.
“Gullotta and his colleagues really need to stop using the possibiliter fallacy.”
I’ve long suspected that most of the people who criticize the argument in OHJ think (incorrectly) that that argument is nothing but a long possibiliter fallacy. I wonder if that’s why so many of the reviewers and debaters fall back on the same fallacy. If they think all you’ve done is propose a possible interpretation, then proposing an alternative interpretation makes sense as a response.
That suspicion on my part doesn’t explain why they see the OHJ argument that way, of course, since the book could hardly be more clear about exactly what its argument actually is.
Update: Neil Godfrey has produced an ongoing series analyzing the Gullotta review at Vridar.
Carrier critic, NT expert Christoph Heilig, just posted an interesting analysis on Vridar of Carrier’s OHJ, and why he thinks Carrier is not to be trusted or taken seriously as an expert on NT studies:
” – I should probably not made the comment on Carrier’s “horrible” analysis, because I completely understand that this automatically causes the wish for further elaboration, something I have consciously not offered so far in my writing. I will mention, but not discuss in detail, a single example that everybody who’s interested in the matter can look at for him- or herself. Carrier translates Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ κυρίου as “a certain ‘brother James.’” To say that this wording might actually “favor” the myth-hypothesis must be very surprising to anybody who has a working knowledge of Greek and knows the texts in question. (Again, it’s not that I would not “permit” the hypothesis to be considered – discussions about the identity of people with the same names in antiquity are common, also among biblical scholars, btw.) It is in any case completely beyond me how anybody who’s familiar with Bayes’s theorem might come up with the likelihoods he suggests. There is absolutely no other context, in which Bayesian reasoning is used, where anybody would be willing to use a data set of 2 (!) items to give a likelihood without specifying the uncertainty. If Carrier actually wanted to use actual numbers, fine. Just go through the early Christian literature and see how often the phrase is used for physical relatives on the one hand and believers on the other – and how often other formulations are used for both concepts! It’s just completely wrong to make any claim about how “expected” a certain word choice for a given meaning is if alternative lexical realisations of that meaning are not even taken into account. To say: “So my most sceptical estimate is that this is just what we’d expect on mythicism (for Paul to occasionally, and in contexts most demanding it, refers to other Christians as ‘brothers of the Lord’).” How often Paul used this phrase or not for other Christians unfortunately does not tell one at all whether you’d “expect” this wording if the author wanted to refer to other/another Christian/s. That’s just not how we estimate likelihoods. Period. I don’t know what else to say about that. It’s demonstrably wrong and I actually still can’t really believe that Carrier is serious about that. Plus, the whole discussion of course displays astonishing ignorance concerning the secondary literature – Carrier even seems to assume that since/if James of 1:19 is the same as the one in chapter 2, he must be the brother of the apostle John (who, of course, had been executed in 44 CE), etc. There’s just so much wrong in this short discussion, such a disregard for Greek syntax and semantics, relevant secondary literature, even very foundational historical information that can be found in every encyclopaedia, and of course an utter misunderstand of how likelihoods are to be determined that I don’t think the work deserved to be taken seriously at all. In any case, I didn’t feel comfortable that what I was trying to establish – paying attention to Bayes’s theorem – might have been discredited among some of my colleagues, who by any chance might have come across Carrier’s strange meanderings. -“(Christoph Heilig)
That response does not address anything I actually argue in OHJ.
I read most of Carrier’s OHJ, probably about 75% of it, and spent alot time checking into many of his footnotes. I consistently found Carrier (at least in his book OHJ), to be quite dubious in his use and interpretation of sources, references and texts. Since I have a fairy large library of biblical studies books myself, it was pretty easy to double check many things he claimed. Suffice it to say, it didn’t check out, over and over and over again. While I do agree with the idea that we have plenty of reason to doubt the magical Jesus of the gospel stories, I also have discovered reason to doubt Carrier’s scholarship. Even the more basic works of G.A. Wells (his most recent books) are more solid than Carrier’s OHJ. Still for my money, the best one source book on the nature of the “new testament” and the claims therein, I would go with veteran biblical scholar and professor of religion Arthur Bellinzoni’s The New Testament An Introduction to Biblical Scholarship.
Please give an example of a dubious use of sources in OHJ.
I got rid of the book 2 years ago, and I used to have a fairly detailed review on amazon.com, but it got deleted by amazon.com, as my entire profile was deleted because I had too many negative comments and reviews towards christians. (yes amazon.com will do this believe it or not). So I no longer have the book to dredge up the examples from, and I didn’t keep my notes from when I trudged through it. But I do remember one thing right off the top of my head. I remember that very quickly into your book, you had mentioned something about how Ed Sanders brags about having better sources for Jesus than for Alexander the Great. I remember reading that and thinking hmmmmm?? So I went to my copy of Sander’s book on Jesus, and while it is true that he does say that, he ALSO goes on, like only 1 page later, to labor the point that the sources for Jesus are problematic. And of course, when he gets into the sources later in his book, he makes constant note of the problems with the sources and many of the claims/anecdotes therein. My point is that you seem to have MISrepresented Sanders view on the sources. As you took his ONE statement, all by itself, and hoisted it up as if he were making the same sort of assessment about the sources as fundamentalists do, which, of course, continued reading in Sanders book shows that he does not at all. Anyone who ONLY took your one line assessment of Sander’s one line as you put it, wouldn’t know that Sanders finds all sorts of problems with trying to use the sources. At any rate, perhaps I will get another copy of your book back from interlibrary loan and dig back up more examples. I’m definitely not going to spend the money on buying another copy. So in a few weeks when it comes in from the library, I will post more on this. Having said all that, I still DO AGREE in general, that we have TONS of reasons to doubt the magical jewish genie of the gospel fairy tales. You are absolutely correct on that. And I do applaud your efforts in trying to bring this to attention. Perhaps you could write a scaled down new version of what you trying to do in OHJ, and leave out all that BAyes crap, and just stick the issues of historiography with sources in a more generalized sense, and really tackle the main claims of the gospel fairy tales (and the christianity from it), and could reach a wider reading audience. Arthur Bellinzoni’s New Testament Intro to Biblical Scholarship is a great source showing the historiographical analysis of the early christian writings (and how much of it is legend/myth/fiction). His smaller book Christianity Can It Survive is also a great little book showing the bunk nature of the bible in general and christianity in particular.
I see. So you can’t remember a real example.
You admit Sanders said the sources were better for Jesus than for Alexander. And you only wish it be mentioned that Saunders nevertheless agrees they are also problematic. But that is logically irrelevant to the point. He still actually said and actually believed and actually argued the sources were better than for Alexander.
That is not a misrepresentation on my part. It’s a true statement of fact. To which your objections have no relevance.
Re-read my previous comment, and try to actually comprehend the point (s) I made, and then respond accordingly….. And you are still MISrepresenting Sanders’ views on the gospel sources. You don’t get to make up his views to suit yours. I read his book, and he does NOT think the sources are better than those for ATG. You can’t just take his one statement and ignore the rest of what he says in the rest of his book. Nice try but it won’t work with me. I am educated. But still, please note that I DO agree with the idea that we have TONS of reason to doubt the jesus fairy tale. I will post more when I attain a copy of your book again in a week or two.
Since I never said Sanders claimed the sources for Jesus were perfect, you have not identified any instance in which I misrepresented him.
Ummm, nice DIShonest tactic there “dr” but I NEVER said that you said Sanders claimed the sources for Jesus were “perfect”. When did I say that you said Sanders claimed they were “perfect”? I NEVER said that. Sanders NEVER said it, I NEVER said it, and I NEVER said that you claimed he said it.
And the main problem still stands. Now read
c a r e f u l l y: In your book OHJ, by quoting just one sentence from him, and by FAILING to note the rest of how he views the sources (that the sources are indeed problematic), you MISrepresent Sander’s view. IF you would have stated in your book, that Sanders ALSO says of the sources for Jesus that they are “tainted by the fact that they were written by people who intended to glorify their hero”, or “our sources leave alot to be desired”, that would be a matter of fact as well, since Sanders EXPLICITLY says it. And it brings into focus for the reader, a bit more of an accurate sampling of Sander’s views on the sources. Funny you didn’t bother to inform the reader of Sanders saying those sorts of things. By your one quote mine of him, to the neglect of a few other things he says such as I just pointed out, you MISrepresent his point of view on the sources. Your reading comprehension seems a bit jaded, as is your ability to accurately grasp what someone has CURRENTLY said to you, as I NEVER said you claimed Sander’s said the sources were “perfect”. Sorry “dr”, you’ve goofed on that too. When I get another copy of your book, I will be glad to point out more goofs.
I never quote-mined Sanders. The quote I used was correct, reflects what he really meant, and is not affected by any of the context you are talking about.
For some reason you seem stalwartly unable to understand this.
“And you only wish it be mentioned that Saunders nevertheless agrees they are also problematic”. Umm, hello, wish is IRRELEVANT, as it is and would be a STATEMENT OF FACT that Sanders views the gospel sources as problematic. He says so. Funny you don’t mention him saying that. There is a thing in scholarship where one should qoute mine others in a way commensurate with the gist and tenor of the other’s actual position and view. Are you aware of this or do you just wish it away ? You single out just one statement of Sanders to the neglect of mentioning at least one or two other statements of his that shows the balance of his views on the sources, and thus you cherry pick, ( which ends up MISrepresenting) just like the christTards do. Not ok man, not ok.
I never said anything to which that is relevant.
Whatever problems Sanders thinks the sources for Jesus have does not change the fact that he thinks the sources are nevertheless still better for Jesus than for Alexander. Which is false. And outrageously so.
That’s the only pertinent fact I addressed.
Or are you incapable of understanding the difference between “better” and “perfect” and mistook me for saying Sanders said the sources for Jesus were perfect? Other than such a mistake (which would be unfathomable as I never said or implied any such thing), I cannot fathom why you think you have any relevant objection here.
In some ways, on some things, you seem INcapable of understanding the simplest of things “dr” Carrier. So one more time, and do read slooooooooowly……… Your FAILURE to ALSO mention a few other things Sanders said about the sources, as you ONLY quote mine him on JUST ONE aspect of his views, leaves the reader with a JADED and false impression of Sander’s views on the sources. You do this on all sorts of things throughout your book. As tons of people have noticed. I will post more of your goofs, when I get your book again in a week or so. BUT……….. please do note, I AGREE that we have plenty of reason to doubt the jesus fairy tale. It would be great if you’d write another book on it, but tidy up your scholarship.
That’s not quote mining. Those details aren’t relevant to the point I made. Therefore there was no reason to mention them. They have no effect on my argument.
Unless you can show Sanders didn’t believe the evidence for Jesus was better than for Alexander, you have no relevant point here. I nowhere said Sanders said the evidence for Jesus wasn’t problematic, nor did I ever imply or give any impression that he did, nor did his saying it was make any difference to what I did argue.
You have no valid grievance here.
So your argument that some sort of mere mortal jesus never existed, is because he was an astronaut as per your MISunderstanding of Paul’s ancient mythic cultic rhetoric ? HILARIOUS !!!!!!!
Actually, that Jesus was “an astronaut” (as in, an angel who flew around in space like every other) is a wide mainstream consensus fact now (see Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God, and for example Philippians 2, Galatians 4:14, and 1 Thessalonians 4; likewise, though pseudo-Paul, nevertheless Hebrews 9). Whether there was a mundane Jesus this was claimed of or not. So I think you’ve got your wires crossed somewhere.
Maybe you should try reading the actual peer reviewed thesis you are targeting instead of mocking even mainstream scholarship in confusion for it.
Since I never said you said that, it is not the issue and hence is IRRELEVANT. But nice dodge attempt at the points I made before. My previous points still stand unrefuted. By the way, you argue just like a buyBULLtard: dishonestly with dodges, red herrings and strawmen. Oh well, my fault for expecting anything better. After all, your book is full of twisted logic. ?
You have not made any points relevant to anything I ever actually argued.
Your points require no further refutation than that.
That’s how logic works.
By failing to inform the reader of some other things he says about the nature of the sources, you MISrepresent Sanders’ view. Sorry you can’t handle having your sloppy scholarship corrected. ?
You do not appear to have any credible grasp of what “sloppy scholarship” means. I never made any argument to which Sanders’ other statements were relevant. I only quoted what was relevant to what I did argue, and I represented the quote correctly. That’s efficient scholarship. The opposite of sloppy scholarship.
You are incapable of grasping how scholarship actually works. For some emotional reasons that escape me.
By quoting ONLY ONE of Sanders’ statements about the sources, and by FAILING to give the reader the balance of his views on the sources, you MISrepresent Sanders’ views on the sources. Curious how you don’t bother to tell the reader where Sanders’ makes it pretty clear that there are some pretty serious problems with the sources ( Sanders points out and says the sources are TAINTED with the writers desire to praise their hero). Amusing, how you leave that out. Sanders says it, and it is just a matter of fact that he does. The reader of your book, just reading the one quote you give from Sanders, would never know that Sanders thinks that. When quoting another person, especially in scholarship, it is the goal of RESPONSIBLE scholarship to use the quote in a way that does not shortchange or miss the gist of that person’s views. In other words, use the quote in a way that accurately reflects the view of the person. If you would have simply made a quick note of the rest of Sanders’ views on the sources, how he CLEARLY states they are problematic, then you would have done your job. Your book mostly reads like polemic and apologetics for your cause really, rather than an irenic scholarly study through the issues to fairly inform the reader. The reading public is FED UP with apologetics, whether from the dumb christTards, or from the other side of the fence. We want scholars to INFORM us, evenhandedly, of the facts and the issues. PERIOD.
I am certain you could do so if you wanted to. Perhaps you would aim more for this in the future.
That is, again, not what quote mining is. None of Sanders’ other statements about the sources are relevant to any argument I make.
You are just ranting for some emotional and nonlogical reasons I do not understand. You do not seem to even care what I argued or what is relevant to it.
Supplementary Note: Gullotta also claims:
He cites the same “examples” in his footnote as Gathercole did, when I responded thus:
Gullotta thus did the same thing: he incorrectly claims “this convention” makes “Paul’s expression…certainly not exceptional.” To the contrary, it illustrates precisely how exceptional it is: Paul changes the expression substantially, in precisely the respects I point out, thus establishing my conclusion, not Gullotta’s.
• Comment by Dr Sarah—26 January 2020—per “‘Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed’ review: Intro/Chapter One”. Geeky Humanist. 3 December 2019. [NOW BOLDED, FORMATTED and with EMPAHSIS]:
Neil Godfrey responds to Dr Sarah:
• “Comment by Neil Godfrey—26 January 2020”—per “A Response to Dr Sarah, Geeky Humanist, on the Jesus Question”. Vridar. 26 November 2018
I don’t see any arguments there. All those questions are answered in Chapter 11 of On the Historicity of Jesus. They don’t seem to know that. Or that I still count these passages as evidence for historicity! (So how can I be taking the point “too far”?)
Dr Carrier –
I’ve read about half of OHJ (and am still reading), but I have one question – and it’s sort of a “big picture” question:
Paul says he persecuted the “church” – indicating that the church was (of course) already in existence.
If we grant that there was no real, “earthbound” Jesus, then who was the genius that came up with the idea that there was this whole celestial “game of thrones” being played out, with an angelic character named “Jesus (ben Kenobi?”, and that there were demons and crucifixions and resurrections going on “out there” somewhere past Jupiter? Because Paul was persecuting this bunch that had some well-formed beliefs about an Outer Space Jesus – at least, well-formed enough such that it made the cult “recognizable” – and he himself became a “believer” in the Heavenly Jesus.
So, who was the guy that came up with this whole Shakespearean Celestial Drama in the first place? Paul might expound on it, but clearly, he didn’t invent it. So who did?
Peter.
As Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 15: Peter (Cephas) is the first to learn that Jesus died for sins and rose from the dead (getting the information from scripture and revelation), thus initiating the creed that defined Christianity as a separate Jewish sect at the time. All others learned of it after he did (“the twelve” get the message next, probably under his inspiration; then there is some sort of verifying sign to “the brethren” as a whole, and then to miscellaneous apostles, of which Paul says he’s the “last”).
It’s possible Peter didn’t come up with the idea alone. The Gospels seem to know of a triad of leaders who founded the cult that is reflected as well in Paul’s knowledge in Gal. 2: Peter, James and John (the latter two brothers of each other according to the Gospels). But we lack sufficient data to be sure of this. We can only definitely say Peter was (at least one of) the creative founders.
Since 1 Cor. 15 says there was already a council of 12 under Peter at the time, likely Peter was already running a fringe messiah cult before this innovation. We know these councils were a thing among fringe anti-temple cults like Christianity (Qumran had one); the idea likely being that they represented proxies for the twelve tribes and thereby could claim to be the “true” Israel, so the councils will lead the reconstitution of Israel in the future life. In fact, there are so many similarities between early Christian teachings and Qumran, the only discernible difference is the Corinthian creed.
The gospel is also clearly a pesher construct, just like the celestial messiah peshers discovered at Qumran. In other words, whoever came up with it “found” secret messages hidden in the Bible by interconnecting disparate passages to create a new kind of “Bible code” revealing God’s secret plans (hence only someone “inspired by the Holy Spirit” could “find” these secret “books” in the existing scriptures).
All that remained for them to launch their discovery successfully was to claim a revelation confirming it. Which is what Paul seems to be describing in 1 Cor. 15 (and probably 2 Cor. 12; though scholars debate who Paul is talking about there, even if he’s talking about himself, he’s describing the kind of thing Peter would have been selling his new creed with from the start).
So it would appear Peter “had a revelation” that revealed or validated the secret gospel he found in the scriptures via his obsessive pesher reading, and with this he moved whatever fringe counter-cultural sect he was already leading to adopt and mission that new creed. Which had an apocalyptic motive: Jesus is the “firstfruits of the general resurrection,” meaning this revelation was an announcement that the world was going to end post haste. So Peter is here the apocalyptic prophet launching this new variant of Judaism.
All of this is covered, with examples and scholarship cited, in On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 4, esp. e.g. Elements 8-9 and 16-20.
Thank you for your response. I confess, when I asked the question I had been reading your book and believe it or not, had just stopped at about Element 2…
(I’ve since continued re-reading; my apologies for not reading the whole thing first, then asking questions… But, I do very much appreciate that you answered!)
And I see your other comments in the queue, as well. It may take me some time to get through my backlogged comments to post those, but I eventually will!
Dr Carrier –
On pg 610 of OHJ, you write – in regard to the argument that ‘the Jews’ would never conceive of a dying messiah (Element 3), much less a dying messiah who would become a celestial Lord” – that
“If Jews would never conceive of it, Christianity would never have happened-because Christianity obviously began within sectarian Judaism”
IF (capital “IF”) Jesus had truly been resurrection in an historical even — “this-world, this-time-and-space” – then it would nothing to do what anyone “conceived”, would it?
In other words – I’d agree that “no Jew would ever conceive of a dying messiah who would become a celestial Lord” may be an over-statement, but the fact that Christianity began within Judaism does not mean it necessarily began as something “conceived of”. IF Jesus were raised from the dead in an historical resurrection, then that’s how it could have begun, even in Judaism.
What I’m saying is that you seem to be drawing an odd conclusion here, making the foregone conclusion that the “dying messiah / celestial Lord” idea had to first be “conceived” – rather than acknowledging that there was no requirement whatsoever for anyone to “conceive” of anything of the sort – IF an historical resurrection took place. In that particular case, there was someone who died and who was raised from the dead – and therefore – it was seen as confirmation that he was messiah and lord.
Unless, maybe, I’m missing something in your argument (in case you’d like to comment)
Continuing my backlog:
I am not sure what you mean.
It sounds like you are saying “if Jesus was actually resurrected, then that more likely happened on Earth.” That isn’t necessarily true (it “could” be that the Doherty thesis is true, as in, Jesus really was resurrected…in outer space; that it wasn’t just a belief they had).
But that doesn’t matter to OHJ’s thesis, because as I explain in chapter 2, I rule out of court all supernaturalist, triumphalist narratives for Christianity. They are too wildly improbable to have any credible chance of being true. The supernatural simply doesn’t exist. People don’t get resurrected. Hence I only take seriously mainstream historical Jesus theories.
If you want to tackle that question, you are no longer in the mainstream of history, but in apologetics. Then what you need to read is not OHJ, but Not the Impossible Faith and Why I Am Not a Christian and Sense and Goodness without God.
Why are you bothering taking one statement out of my message, ignoring the rest of it, and treating it – totally out of it’s context – as if it were the question at hand????
Your response doesn’t address any concern (at all) that I tried to express.
But, thanks for the response.
Your comment was wordy but only made one point. I responded to the single point it made. There is no other point there to answer.
Maybe you miswrote what you meant to ask. Feel free to try again.
Dr Carrier –
On pg 148 of OHJ, you write “between 64 (the year of the Neronian persecutions as reported i n Tacitus and Suetonius) and 95 (the year that 1 Clement was
‘traditionally’ written). This is effectively a dark age i n the early church, a thirty-year black box i n which we can’t reconstruct what happened”.
On pg 148 you note “Even texts that may have been written in that thirty-year zone (like perhaps some of the Gospels) do not discuss any developments or events in that period”.
My Question: Doesn’t the fact that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were all written during that period tell us at least something of what was going on?
We’ve got (at least) four writers that are each writing to audiences, and they were writing about a very earthbound Jesus and things like empty tombs and such. And people like Pilate and Caiaphas and so on. So we know that at least that much – the writing itself – was going on.
But, Mark was written circa 70CE (as you note in OHJ). And if Mark did write his gospel based on Paul’s letters (as you mention in another blog post), then how is it that Mark had Paul’s letters – especially so soon after Paul died (if we figure between 60 and 66ce), and yet, knew nothing about the Outer Space Jesus? I mean, Marks Jesus is decidedly earthbound.
Mark is writing to an audience about an earthbound Jesus at the same time when there were still plenty of those that (presumably) knew of Paul’s Outer Space Jesus. So, Mark’s audience had to co-exist with Paul’ audience (if they were indeed two different audiences).
And Hebrews (although it’s not Pauline) – which was written circa 80ce – certainly claims Jesus’ humanity: “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things […] He had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect”.
So, what I’m getting at is that there’s not really quite the “black box” that you seem to insist on. The very fact that an earthbound Jesus was being written about within a matter of a scant few years after Paul’s death, and that there were other documents (ie, the canonical gospels and Hebrews) being written between ca 70 to ca 95 tells us that at least that much was going on.
What we DON’T have is any indication from Paul that he ever refuted the “historicists” — we see nothing like “how is it that some of you are saying that Jesus lived on earth?”, or “…that Jesus’ corpse vacated a tomb?”
This is really the part where I’m kinda finding your basic theory as a tad “shaky”. Is it really that Paul was talking about an Outer Space Jesus, and somehow that message was just lost? Or is it really that Paul was talking about an historical Jesus all along, and you’re just making up this Outer Space Jesus stuff because you want to put an end to the current Scholarly Consensus that Jesus existed?
Sorry for the delay in answering this. In future, keep in mind, lengthy comments take a long time to read and often to address, so they go to the bottom of the moderation queue. If you want faster replies here, you might want to post shorter comments.
That depends on what you mean by “tell” us things. We can learn or infer things, often with great uncertainty owing to the lack of direct material. But here I’m referring to direct histories and memoirs and letters, e.g. actual narratives or discussions about the writing of the Gospels, developments in the church, debates and conflicts, etc. We don’t even have an account of when any of those Gospels were written (much less where or by whom or even for whom). We have to guess; and only get to probable termini in a very wide range of dates.
There is, for example, no Book of Acts for the period from the 60s to the 130s (Christian “history” picks up in fragments again only in the 140s, e.g. with polemical histories of Marcion written decades later; there is no real narrative though until Eusebius, and everything he writes about that same earlier period is fabricated; so even he didn’t know of any records, letters, or histories for that period to get information from).
There are also no letters, like Paul’s or even Clement’s, which I assume a traditional date for in what you quote but you’ll notice I go on to argue that date is impossible: Clement wrote in the 60s. The first “letters” after Paul/Clement are those of Ignatius (the pre-redacted set), which were dated to the 110s but most experts now place them to…surprise…the 140s. There are no memoirs either. Or straight documents (like church records, which we have fragments of from the late second/early third century).
So, for instance, we can infer that Matthew was written by Jewish Christians who disagreed with Mark and wanted to rewrite it to be less Pauline; ergo there must have been some conflict still between those two factions of churches in that blackout period. Hence I mention these documents: I note they are the only exception we have, and that still isn’t much, because they only write explicitly about events half a century before.
For example, even regarding that one inference, neither Matthew nor Mark outright tell us anything about that conflict. Since everything they say is set in the 30s AD; they narrate nothing for any later decade; there are no digressions or asides commenting on events in the church in their own day; so we know next to nothing about this, just vague minimal things like “there were still Jewish Christians arguing with deutero-Pauline Christians” which is not very much to go on.
I discuss what is missing and the significance of that in Chapter eight of OHJ. You might want to review that.
This doesn’t make sense as a question. It’s obvious Mark is writing from the Pauline sect and reasonably soon after Paul’s death. Paul’s inherited corpus obviously was in his community. This is how it survived to even end up in the NT at all.
You are confusing different things here.
Mark conceals Paul’s cosmic Jesus (even the one the mainstream consensus agrees was central to the faith: the pre-existent creator Jesus and the celestial risen Jesus sending revelations from on high) in his allegory. So we don’t expect Mark to ever explicitly mention it; he’s creating an allegory for it, not a narrative of it. This is true even if Jesus existed (the pre-existent cosmic Jesus was already attached to the historical Jesus across all of Paul’s letters, and thus Mark well knew this, so its absence from his Gospel is deliberate, and we know why: just as with Osiris, this is how gospels got written about celestials).
And we don’t have Mark’s dossier of Paul’s letters. We have a heavily edited collection with tons missing in the NT several lifetimes later. For example, Paul refers in 1 Corinthians to a previous letter he wrote them (and that’s not the only example; this is discussed in OHJ). Mark probably had that letter. We don’t. Likewise, something was removed between the end of 1 Cor 8 and the beginning of 1 Cor 9 (the argument Paul is responding to in the latter would have been raised and briefed in that missing material). And so on.
So we can’t say what “wasn’t” in Mark’s copy of Paul’s letters. We don’t have it. We have something else, that has been edited by later post-Ignatian historicists, who wouldn’t of course keep material they didn’t like (as obviously they cut a lot and thus didn’t like a lot).
But also, there is no reason to expect it in Paul’s letters because no historical Jesus existed then for him to disprove. That was invented later. So the need for records documenting that that guy didn’t exist also didn’t exist before the Gospels, and Paul was long dead by then. He won’t have anticipated the need to combat a sectarian heresy he never foresaw even the possibility of (after all he expected the world to end in his own lifetime).
Maybe if we had the full original dossier we’d get lucky and some of the stuff cut by NT Christians would include clearer references to the specifics of their creed, but there is no particular reason to expect that—we already have numerous casual such references (everything I document in chapter eleven of OHJ)—other than the fact that historicists destroyed it (which indeed adds to the probability it contained some more explicit such references).
For example, maybe Paul went into more detail about the actual narrative content behind the creed in Philippians 2. But that would require some question about it to have come up, which would have to be a chance accident for us. No one would ask about it to combat a historicist heresy, because that didn’t exist yet. So there would have to have been some other occasional reason to ask about it.
This is unlike historicity which creates so many essential stories and questions that it is impossible no occasion ever came up to discuss any of it (as discussed in ch. 11). Mythicism is already occasionally mentioned many times by everything Paul says, e.g. it is only modern historicists who “read into” Phil. 2 anything historicizing; the hymn itself never mentions any earthly sojourn or ministry (and even denies any miracle working when Jesus was incarnate, by saying he became a slave to the world order, not a master of it). No one would think to ask, “wait, do you mean he was or wasn’t on earth?” There would never be an occasion for that to be in question then.
Mythicism also claims Jesus’s humanity. He not only became human to die, but assumed a human body of Jewish Davidic flesh. The only question is where.
This suggests you don’t understand the thesis. Re-read the last half of Ch. 3. Or read this.
As to the verses declaring this beyond those already covered in OHJ ch. 11, see here.
There can’t possibly have been historicists then. See my discussion of this at the end of Ch. 3, where I show why we have to assign that a near zero probability, such that in fact if we had evidence of such going on, that would be strong evidence for historicity.
So your concerns seem not to understand the historical facts or the theory. This is easily remedied by a more careful reading of OHJ (or its summary Jesus from Outer Space).
Trying one more time:
re: “If Jews would never conceive of it, Christianity would never have happened-because Christianity obviously began within sectarian Judaism”.
I fully understand that your theory is that the disciples of Jesus believed in an Outer Space Jesus, and a resurrection somewhere in the “heavenlies”. They weren’t proffering a “Witnessed Resurrection” (commonly called a “bodily” or “literal” resurrection). What they conceived of was something that had it’s roots somewhere in sectarian Judaism.
However, I commented that “IF (capital “IF”) Jesus had truly been resurrected [corrected spelling] in an historical event — “this-world, this-time-and-space” – then it would nothing to do what anyone “conceived”, would it?”
You evidently assumed I was talking about something “supernatural” or “miraculous”. I was not. I said nothing about those particular qualities.
According to Dr Tim Anderson, Principle Research Scientist at Georgia Tech, “Quantum scrambling could lead to resurrection of the dead”. He says “…it appears that the scrambling theory offers a genuine method for resurrection because it involves disassembly, scattering, and reconstruction of quantum information that could hypothetically constitute a person. While technology may not be able to achieve it, perhaps the universe can.”
My point in my original statement was that IF (even if via quantum scrambling) a resurrection had occurred as an historical event — THEN your comment that “If Jews would never conceive of it, Christianity would never have happened-because Christianity obviously began within sectarian Judaism” –was an overstatement.
Unless we can rule out the “quantum scrambling” idea altogether, then I’d stick with my assessment that you’re making an overstatement. IF Jesus was resurrected via (for example) quantum scrambling, THEN, that resurrection had no dependencies whatsoever on any “conceptions” they might have previously held.
And as I explained, this hypothetical is moot. The condition is false. So the consequent never matters to anything.
Yes you did. It’s stated in the condition (the protasis of your conditional). There is no “truly been resurrected” other than supernaturally/miraculously.
That is not quite what he said. He isn’t talking about the resurrection of Jesus, but Boltzmann resurrection (without calling it that) of people generally, which requires countless trillions of years passing between death and “resurrection” to have any chance of occurring (hence his point that “head death” might end the universe before that could happen) or an intelligent cause (his point about “the correct circumstances” being required, e.g. a teleporter, as he explains earlier on).
But that doesn’t matter. A random quantum resurrection, just like one produced by space aliens or time travelers, is the same thing as a miracle. Any thesis requiring a vastly improbable premise is itself vastly improbable. And the quantum event required here (or the required cause of it) is vastly improbable. That’s the whole point of rejecting the miraculous: it’s too improbable to credit. So we don’t credit it. Hence your conditional is moot. Exactly as I explained.
re: “truly been resurrected” and “There is no ‘truly been resurrected’ other than supernaturally/miraculously”.
I can see where “truly been resurrected” might imply (as I meant it to) to be a resurrection of a human corpse, such that it would no longer be confined to it’s final resting place.
Whether that’s a “miracle” (or not) is someone’s after-the-fact assessment of it. Just exactly like every miracle claim (if one decides to call this-or-that a miracle). Someone else might simply call it an “inexplicable anomaly of nature”, and say “we can’t explain it — yet” (we must always remember to tag on “yet”, exuding confidence that science will be able to explain it sooner or later).
Neither I nor you know how the universe works, and neither does anyone else. We know what we know, and it’s a tiny fraction of “all things knowable”. If I thought the universe was static, I might be inclined to agree with Hume, but alas… it is not.
So, I totally disagree with your assessment that a “true resurrection” (aka, “literal, bodily resurrection of a human being) HAS to be a miracle or involve a supernatural. Granted, if such a “literal, bodily” resurrection occurred, it would certainly be claimed a miracle by some. But, that doesn’t necessarily make it so,
I totally “get” your need to complete rule out any possibility of a “real resurrection” (“literal, bodily”). It MUST be that the “resurrection” (of Jesus) was one of some other type of resurrection apart from “bodily, literal resurrection of a human corpse”, but moreover, the claim itself of that resurrection had to be of something besides a “literal, bodily resurrection of a human corpse” in order for your theory to work. So, I appreciate all the work you’ve put into your concept.
I’ve read your book (OHJ) – or, at least, most of it – but remain unconvinced that Paul was talking about anything other than a literal, bodily resurrection of a human corpse. Note Carefully: I’m not saying that such a resurrection actually took place. I’m saying I’m still convinced that that’s what Paul was talking about.
If you wish, you may have the last word. I’m bowing out…
BTW – I’ve enjoyed reading your book….
The only thing that matters here is whether a theory has a vanishingly small probability and thus isn’t worth considering. Quantum resurrections qualify. Semantic games about what to call a “miracle” cannot escape that fact, the only fact relevant here.
I don’t understand why you say that to be born of an actual women is not relevant to Paul’s argument while on the other hand, as you said yourself, it is “our commonality on that one fact [i.e. being born in the world of flesh] that is the linchpin of Paul’s argument.” If Paul didn’t think of Jesus has having really toke on humanity all together, body and soul, if he didn’t think Jesus really came into our world, his argument does not sound conclusive. For how can sin be crucified in Jesus’s flesh, if he didn’t have a real human flesh, but only a symbolic or spiritual ‘flesh’? It seems that there would be no real commonality, rendering Jesus unable to really save us.
You must be new to this. You evidently don’t know what the thesis is. Only one theory of the origins of Christianity has passed peer review in a hundred years: the view that he was given a mortal (even, in some sense, Jewish and Davidic) body to die in—a real, actual, human body, not a “symbolic” or “spiritual” one—but that this was originally believed to have occurred in a supernatural realm (celestial or otherwise). He then acquired a spiritual body at his resurrection. So, I fully agree Paul understood Jesus to have temporarily become a mortal human. That is in fact Paul’s entire point about how Jesus worked his mojo (see Philippians 2:6-11). To catch up on what we are talking about, read Can Paul’s Human Jesus Not Be a Celestial Jesus?
The reason actually being born to a biological woman isn’t relevant is thus that Paul is not talking about women, but conceptual abodes. We are not born to Hagar or Sarah, either. He outright says these are allegorical women he is talking about, not real women. They represent modes of being: to enter existence with a mortal body, and thus be subject to corruption, temptation, and death, is to be “born of Hagar,” while relocating to a spiritual body immune to those things (per 1 Corinthians 15:35-55 and 2 Corinthians 5:1-10) is to be “born of Sarah.”
So this does not tell us how someone acquires a mortal body. Maybe Paul thought Jesus acquired his by being born; maybe he thought he acquired it by God simply making one for him (like God did for Adam, and will do for us at the resurrection). But we can’t tell from what he is saying here, because Paul isn’t talking about literal wombs and vaginas at all, but merely the figurative concept of coming to inhabit a mortal body.
This is why it is peculiar that when he speaks of Jesus, he says Jesus “came to be” (was made) from a woman, yet when speaking of the rest of us, he says “born to” (begotton of). See Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical and Empirical Logic and Romans 1:3. At worst this suggests Paul thinks Jesus came to be this way in some different way than we did. But even at best, it does not tell us what he thought either way.
So, either way, that means we can’t use this verse to prove Paul believed in a historical Jesus. It doesn’t say anything that would tell us what he thought about that.
Because Paul outright says he is speaking of mothers allegorically here, not literally. Which fact in itself is evidence against his believing in a Jesus born to a real mother; had he thought that, it’s hard to see why he would need this convoluted allegorical discourse about mothers (why not just talk about actual mothers?). But however one explains why Paul does that, the effect is the same: since he isn’t speaking literally, he is giving us no information about how he really thought Jesus was mechanically transported into a mortal body.
So this verse is unusable as evidence—for or against the historicity of Jesus.