When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different than defending Atlantis. Or Moroni. Or women descending from Adam’s rib.
No. We aren’t interested in that.
When it comes to Jesus, just as with anyone else, real history is about trying to figure out what, if anything, we can really know about the man depicted in the New Testament (his actual life and teachings), through untold layers of distortion and mythmaking; and what, if anything, we can know about his role in starting the Christian movement that spread after his death. Consequently, I will here disregard fundamentalists and apologists as having no honest part in this debate, any more than they do on evolution or cosmology or anything else they cannot be honest about even to themselves.
Here I will summarize the best arguments for historicity and the logic behind the best case for it. And this only means mundane historicity; not the Gospel Jesus, but the Jesus of honest mainstream scholarship. I am most interested in finding out if I have left any good arguments out. So please add more in comments, if any you think remain that aren’t ridiculous and can be taken seriously by mainstream experts. Likewise if you think the logic of any argument I do present can be better formulated.
The Honest Framework
Of the experts who remain to be counted, two things are agreed by both sides of the debate:
- (1) We don’t really know how much of early Christianity actually comes from a historical Jesus (there are only diverse, contradictory, and unresolved opinions about this in the scholarly community); and
- (2) The cosmo-theological Jesus of the Epistles (wherein Jesus is a godman who lives in and speaks from heaven) and the mytho-heroic Jesus of the Gospels (where Jesus is more or less the central character in a set of parables about how each author believes good Christians should conduct themselves, made to issue statements supporting views the author wants his readers to regard as authoritative) is far more shibboleth than actual founder.
And that remains the most likely fact of the matter no matter how historical this Jesus actually is; and regardless of what if anything he may have actually done to get the religion started.
In its broadest sense, a shibboleth is a characteristic cultural touchstone by which insiders distinguish themselves from outsiders. Jesus was constructed by different authors (both inside and outside the canon) to represent their own (or their community’s) ideal of what they wanted or needed Jesus to have been and done, so they could teach their worldview through the fabricated authority of “their” founder (who by this point was more a construct of the imagination, than the actual founder himself) and so they could test someone’s commitment to their view of things by testing their commitment to “their” account of Jesus. The Jesus of the NT is therefore not the founder of the Christian religion, but the fictional founder of one or another version of the Christian religion. The debate consuming academia now is whether from this we can reconstruct the actual founder, the real historical Jesus “behind” these various shibboleths. You will find that any (non-fundamentalist) expert on Jesus or early Christianity will agree that this is the top question still occupying their field. (For a list and discussion of several other big questions still vexing the field, see Burton Mack’s The Christian Myth.)
The mythic and rhetorical structure of the Gospels renders them, at best, extremely problematic as sources. In contrast, if we order the evidence from most to least reliable, we must start with the authentic letters of Paul. These most scholars agree are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and maybe Philemon. From these it is apparent that before Paul “had a revelation” (i.e. in modern scientific likelihood: hallucinated, or pretended to have hallucinated, the Christ Jesus preaching a new teaching to him from beyond the grave) the Christian “community” was wholly Jewish (this is evident in Galatians 2, for example), obeying Torah laws (including dietary restrictions and circumcision), and thus Christianity was just another Jewish sect. Not uncommon in deviating from the mainstream; I survey the evidence of some ten to thirty other known sects of Judaism at the time in The Empty Tomb (pp. 107-13), almost all of which deviated from what modern observers consider “mainstream” Judaism of the time. This new sect’s “pillars” Paul says were widely recognized as being Cephas (“Peter”), James, and John, who were possibly thus called because they were its actual founders. For “pillars” would suggest it was their testimony on which the sect stood, and Paul’s evident need to “get their approval” to maintain his mission suggests all Christians everywhere looked to them as the final authorities on legitimacy.
The earliest evidence concerning the creed’s origin is in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which is also questioned, but however meddled with it may be, odds are it confirms at least that the movement began (as is even more plainly claimed in Romans 16:25-26) from a combination of finding “secrets” in “scripture” and recent “revelations” (i.e. dreams or hallucinations, actual or pretended) of a resurrected Jesus by the church’s first devotees. It notably does not say these revelations occurred “on the third day” but that the resurrection was said in scripture to have then occurred, and then Jesus later appeared to confirm this, which appearance may have occurred at any time; Paul doesn’t specify when.
Paul similarly says, in 1 Cor. 11:23-27 (compare 1 Cor. 15:1 and Gal. 1:11-12) that he learned of the Eucharist blessing and ritual (now called “the last supper,” but not so called by Paul) directly from Jesus (which means, by dream or hallucination, since Paul did not know Jesus alive), rather than historical or eyewitness testimony. Paul also says he introduced the version of Christianity that we now know as something distinct from Judaism (Gal. 1-2), abandoning Jewish law. It follows that a historical Jesus never taught that in life. Thus modern Christianity (being no longer “kosher,” i.e. observantly Jewish) is not based on the teachings of a historical Jesus, even if there was a historical Jesus. It is based on the pious dreams or hallucinations of Paul (or Paul’s lies thereof). The original Christian religion, a sect of Jews, continually shrank and died out within a few centuries. The “new” Christian religion, essentially founded by Paul and not Jesus, then evolved and survived to become what we now call “Christianity” (on its continual evolution and fragmentation, see David Eller’s survey in The End of Christianity). Perversely, Islam may be the only surviving fragment of the original Torah-observant Christianity (halal being an evolution of “kosher”).
This creates an even greater problem for reconstructing what role Jesus may have played in founding Christianity: how much of what is later claimed about Jesus (things he did, things he taught) is an evolution of Paul’s ideas about Jesus (or even dreams or hallucinations by Paul, or even by his congregations or successors) rather than deriving from Jesus originally? Or the ideas of other thought leaders in Christianity besides Paul? Because of data like this, attempting to reconstruct the real origins of Christianity from the Gospels (or even Acts) is next to impossible. Hence the pervasive and unresolved disagreements over this in the scholarly community, from Bart Ehrman’s “apocalyptic Jesus” to Reza Aslan’s “zealot Jesus” and everything in between, and beyond.
The Best That Can Be Done
When the evidence is looked at in this way, it is so easily explicable without a historical Jesus at all, that one ought to wonder if there indeed even was one. A case for that conclusion I lay out in On the Historicity of Jesus. And as I explain there, I do not find much merit in any other approaches to doubting the historicity of Jesus than is proposed in OHJ, from grandiose astrotheological theories to bizarre conspiracy theories, which often rest on a deeply inaccurate accounting of the facts, and deeply flawed logic. The only plausible explanation for the origins of Christianity without a historical Jesus is what I call the Doherty Thesis (first laid out by Earl Doherty in The Jesus Puzzle), stripped down to its humblest essentials. Chapters 3.3 and 12.3 of OHJ lay that out in outline (see also my article How Did Christianity Switch?).
But what is the alternative? Many expert defenders of historicity agree no evidence outside the Bible is useful. Because it all ultimately just comes from late Christian reporting, which ultimately just goes back to the content of the Gospels. I detail this in Chapters 7 and 8 of OHJ, but I consider it too obviously a dead end for historicity to even produce a charitable case from. Any scholar who hasn’t accepted this by now just needs to get over it and move on. Because it’s all a dead end, from Josephus to Thallus and Tacitus. We are left with the Gospels (including Acts) and the Epistles (including Revelation). Acts is too dependent on the Gospels to get us anywhere. Nothing in Acts about a historical Jesus is really different from anything already declared in the Gospels, so Acts adds nothing new. So if the Gospels cannot get us to Jesus, neither can Acts. Likewise Revelation, which is patently fabricated.
So that leaves the Gospels and the Epistles (of which, the late forgeries we must also discard). What is the best case that can be made from them? The Epistles are really the only valid battleground for this debate. Those are the only documents that have any chance of supporting the historicity of Jesus. I tackle that question last and in detail, in chapter 11 of OHJ. But there is still a continuing attempt to defend historicity from the Gospels, by attempting to show that something said in them couldn’t have been said unless there were a real historical Jesus. I tackle that question in chapter 10 of OHJ and, importantly, in chapter 5 of Proving History. There are also attempts to defend historicity from general arguments of probability, which don’t hold up when we take an honest look at the parallels and background (as I show in the first five chapters of OHJ). Some still try to argue even from Acts, which I show is implausible in chapter 9 of OHJ. Everything else is Christian apologetics.
Argument from the Gospels
The standard “best case” for historicity from the Gospels looks something like this:
- P01. It can be proved that the Gospels used early, eyewitness, Palestinian Aramaic sources for some of their historical claims about Jesus.
- P02. If there were early, eyewitness, Palestinian Aramaic sources attesting to a historical Jesus, then some of what they said must be true.
- P03. Therefore, some historical claims about Jesus are true.
- P04. Historical claims about a man can be true only if that man existed.
- C01. Therefore, there was a historical Jesus.
And:
- P05. Some claim about Jesus, i.e. [X], in the Gospels would not be in the Gospels unless it actually happened.
- P06. If [X] actually happened, there was a historical Jesus.
- C02. Therefore, there was a historical Jesus.
The top candidates for [X] are:
- Jesus was from Nazareth.
- Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
- Jesus was betrayed by one of his followers.
- Jesus was crucified by the Romans.
In each case, the argument is the same: no one would have invented that; therefore it must be true. Remaining examples are too much weaker and more widely disputed. Of course, neither argument I find to be sound. They’re valid. At least as I’ve formulated them here. But as I argue in Proving History and On the Historicity of Jesus, P01 and P05 can never actually be established, not even as on balance probable.
For more examples of the Argument from the Gospels see the corresponding section of A Few More Attempts to Rescue Jesus.
Argument from General Probability
Historicity defenders also rely on arguments from prior probability: arguments about the likelihood of Christianity originating with or without a historical Jesus based on background evidence alone.
The standard “best case” for historicity from prior probability looks something like this:
- P07. Jews would never invent a messiah because they needed their messiah to be a real historical conqueror.
- P08. If they would never invent a man for that, then there must have been an actual man for it.
- P09. Therefore, only a real candidate for a historical conqueror could have stirred up a belief that he was the messiah.
- P10. A real candidate for a historical conqueror can only be a real historical man.
- C03. Therefore, there must have been a real historical Jesus.
And:
- P11. Jews would never consider a savior who is killed to be the messiah, because the messiah by definition had to be victorious.
- P12. If someone would never do something, they will only do it if they are forced to.
- P13. Therefore, the only way Jews would invent a claim that a savior who is killed was the messiah is if they were forced to.
- P14. The only thing that could force them to is a real historical candidate getting himself unexpectedly killed.
- C04. Therefore, there must have been a real historical Jesus.
Of course, neither argument I find to be sound. They might be valid. At least as I’ve formulated them here. But as I argue in On the Historicity of Jesus, P07 and P11 can never actually be established. Not even as probable. Certainly not for all Jews whatever.
The internal reasoning simply doesn’t hold. Jesus is a real historical conqueror, and “really victorious” as such—in Christian imagination, both spiritually and in future fact. Thus, a real person was clearly not needed for either. To the contrary, only an imaginary person could be a “real” messiah on those terms in practice: because all others will by definition fail, and did (see Elements 23 to 29 in chapter 4 of OHJ).
In short, the messiah the Christians invented is a military conquerer (he is coming with his army of angels any day now), and was successful in saving the world (by overthrowing the powers of darkness and making eternal life possible). That his invention solved some seemingly insurmountable problems in Jewish society (like the violence and corruption inherent in the temple system, and in military messianism itself) is actually suspiciously convenient. Indeed, it’s an argument for his invention; not his reality. It just makes far too much sense (e.g. Hebrews 9) to have needed a real messianic pretender to inspire it. To the contrary, it’s much easier to invent this convenient messiah, if you don’t have a real one you are trying to change the story of.
Someone who at least admits this, might then fall back on two other arguments from prior probability:
- P15. The idea of a messiah who would become victorious by dying, would never occur to a Jew, unless confronted by an actual candidate (like Jesus) being killed.
- P16. If some idea [y] would never occur to someone unless some [x] happened, and [y] occurred, then [x] must have happened.
- C05. Therefore, there must have been a real historical Jesus (who was killed).
And:
- P17. Like all religions, Christianity must have had a founder.
- P18. All sources claim Jesus founded Christianity.
- P19. If all sources say someone founded a religion, they probably did.
- C06. Therefore, Jesus probably existed.
Here of course, again the arguments might be valid, but do not appear to be sound. P19 and P15 cannot be established.
Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Moses (for Biblical Judaism), Moroni (for Mormonism), Gabriel (for Islam), Ned Ludd (for the Luddites), Ras Tafari (for the Rastafarians), and John Frum and Tom Navy and even Prince Phillip (for various Cargo Cults), are all credited as founding their respective religions. Yet they most certainly did not (see the subject index in OHJ for each of these). Our best and earliest sources in fact say Jesus “founded” Christianity only by mystical communications from heaven (1 Cor. 15:1-8; Gal. 1:11-12; Rom. 16:25-26; indeed even 1 Cor. 11:23-25 and, less directly, 2 Cor. 12). Just like Moroni and Gabriel did. And much like the Cargo Cults. Those same sources even tell us the inspiration for a dying-and-thus-victorious messiah came from scripture (ibid.), and internal logic (e.g. Hebrews 9); and in context it is very likely that it did, requiring no actual death (see not only Elements 23 to 29 in chapter 5, but elements 5 to 9 and 15 to 18 in chapter 4, of OHJ). So neither P19, nor P15, hold up.
There is another argument of the general type, yet which is more a general argument from evidence rather than an argument to prior probability (though it can be framed either way; the effect is the same):
- P22. A person mentioned many times within decades of his alleged life is more likely historical than mythical.
- P23. Jesus is mentioned many times within decades of his alleged life.
- C08. Therefore, Jesus is more likely historical.
Here P22 cannot be established. P23 is true, but not in as clear a sense as the argument implies. Jesus is not actually mentioned in the first entire lifetime after his alleged death in any way that clearly places him as a person on earth (e.g. the first time even the founding creed mentions anyone ever seeing him is after his death: 1 Cor. 15:3-5). In other words, it is not established that Paul or the first generation of Christians even believed (much less mentioned) Jesus as an earthly person. That first appears in the Gospels, but they are written half a century and more after the fact. Precisely as much time as is needed for myth to easily overtake fact as I’ve shown happened for Ned Ludd and the Cargo Cults, as well as the Roswell myth (see the index of OHJ). So there is a potential equivocation fallacy in combining P22 and P23: if P22 means “within the first generation,” then P23 is false; if P22 means “within the first century,” then P22 is false.
Moreover, context matters. As I explain in Chapter 6 of On the Historicity of Jesus and now also in Jesus from Outer Space, you can’t just treat Jesus as “just any person.” At all, much less in sub-groups like “recently mentioned ordinary people.” That’s the wrong reference class. When Jesus is placed in his actual reference class, a celestial man only mentioned as known by revelation in the first generation of texts, then placed on earth only in the second generation of texts, it is no longer the case that such a person is “more likely” to be historical. There are no other examples of that on record to judge by, except the closest comparands (like the Cargo Cults), which point in the opposite direction. Indeed, it appears that after you’ve passed the forty year mark (or even thirty), it can no longer be determined which is more likely, from chronology alone. As I discuss in my article on Spartacus: Jesus does not belong to the reference class of just anyone in antiquity who might tend to be historical. He instead belongs to several reference classes that tend not to be historical.
And mythical men can be invented instantaneously. Moroni meets Joseph Smith, and that is instantly portrayed and consistently maintained thereafter to be a historical encounter, when in fact of course we know Moroni is a mythical man. Likewise Gabriel to Mohammed. And so on. Like Moroni and Gabriel, Jesus had existed since the beginning of the world as an angelic being (e.g. Philippians 2:5-11; Galatians 4:14), and is “historically encountered” within the first generation of a religion they each founded (Mormonism, Islam, and Christianity). All other savior deities of Christ’s time were likewise mythical, yet portrayed as historical persons, acting in human history. It cannot be argued that Jesus is the lone exception because he was mythologized too quickly. Apart from that being a directly self-contradictory argument (see OHJ, Ch. 6.7), it also relies on an unknown assumption: that none of those other savior Lords were mythologized as rapidly. We don’t actually know that, for want of precise records. And the Cargo Cult analogy (likewise Ned Ludd and Roswell) disproves any absolute assertion of such a claim. Myths can arise instantly and eclipse historical fact entirely (Moroni, Gabriel). Give it a whole average lifetime (as we observe for Jesus), and this is practically assured.
For more examples of the Argument from General Probability see the corresponding section of A Few More Attempts to Rescue Jesus.
Argument from the Epistles
When it comes to the Epistles, the standard arguments include “Paul refers to Jesus becoming flesh and being crucified and buried” and “Paul refers to teachings learned from Jesus,” but since those are actually irrelevant to the debate (the Doherty Thesis already proposes that Christians believed Jesus became flesh and was crucified and buried…in the heavens, not on earth; and that Christians received teachings from Jesus…by revelation), they should be discarded out of hand. The Doherty Thesis entails the first Christians believed Jesus was an actual historical person…just not in the sense we now accept. They considered Jesus historical the same way they considered Satan and the Angel Gabriel to be historical. But honest historians would not cite Christians attesting to the existence of (and deeds and teachings of) Satan and Gabriel as evidence Satan and Gabriel existed. So they shouldn’t be using that argument for Jesus, either. It’s just illogical.
The standard “best case” for historicity from the Epistles looks instead something like this:
- P20. An epistle author said something, i.e. [Z], that he would not have said unless there was a real historical Jesus.
- P21. If an epistle author would not say [Z] unless there was a real historical Jesus, then if an epistle author said [Z], there was a real historical Jesus.
- C07. Therefore, there was a real historical Jesus.
The top candidates for [Z] are:
- Jesus was born of the seed of David (Rom. 1:3).
- Jesus was born of a woman (Gal. 4:4).
- Paul knew people called Brothers of the Lord (1 Cor. 9:5 & Gal. 1:19).
- On “the night” before he died Jesus handled bread and wine and taught Christians the theological ritual of the Lord’s supper (1 Cor. 11:23).
- In “the days of his flesh” Jesus cried and prayed to God to save him (Heb. 5:7).
And that’s pretty much it, every other candidate being far weaker an example (e.g. see Desperately Searching the Epistles for Anything That Attests a Historical Jesus).
This is what the best case for the historicity of Jesus rests on. So far.
Of course, I argue in OHJ that key premises in all these arguments are faulty. But that is where the debate now lies. I contend there is no P20 we can reliably establish. Not even to a probability. All the candidate passages are actually so ambiguous in context, that they have no better than even a 50/50 chance of meaning a real historical fact, as opposed to an imagined cultic fact. But that debate is explored in detail in chapter 11 of OHJ.
Where We Go from Here (and Why This Matters)
The question of the historicity of Jesus isn’t really just about the trivia of whether Jesus existed or not. It’s actually a far more fundamental question about how Christianity as a world religion began. Was it a misguided cult of personality inspired by some guy named Jesus? Or was it an apocalyptic cult inspired by visions of a heavenly being (like Mormonism and Islam were), which then simply historicized its celestial savior to better sell its desired message against competitors? (As other savior cults competing with it at the time were doing, and as Judaism itself did, in a sense, with Moses.)
And this relates to how we understand all the literature (the New Testament) that Christians now appeal to as foundational to their faith. Were the Gospels garbled and fancified memories of an actual man and events? Or are they literary constructs manufactured deliberately out of whole cloth to communicate specific points about the gospel? Was Paul transforming what had been a cult of personality and just erasing the historical Jesus (and his very personality) from it, or was he just another revelator and exegete among many, the first simply being Peter, the foundational “Rock” on whose visions and interpretations of scripture the new sect was founded?
How we read the text is also transformed. If Jesus was never baptized by John the Baptist, then what actually is the point of that story? We can only correctly understand the point of the story by answering that question. Likewise, who were the Brothers of the Lord and why did they matter? The meaning of what Paul is saying changes depending on how you answer that question. So the entire history of Christianity, its origins, and the origins and original meaning of its scriptures, entirely depends on the question of historicity. That is beyond trivial.
So how do we proceed? We should start by examining the best case for both sides. And see which side has the sounder premises and logic, when everything is added up, nothing straw-manned, nothing swept under the rug. When all fallacies and falsehoods removed, from both sides, what remains? This essay will help get you started with answering that. OHJ will fill in the rest. We may end up simply not knowing whether Jesus really existed or not. But I put it to you, that an honest and unbiased inquiry, will not end up in certainty that he did.
Bonjour Dr Carrier !
You have maybe already mentioned this possibility in one of your book. I’ve never heard that one in any debates I’ve watched so far.
Paul was persecuting Jesus’ followers, isn’t he historically ?
If Jesus was only an angel, hallucinated or having giving them Revelation from the three pillars Cephas, James and John, then why there was a need to persecute them ?
Especially if they were just another sect amongst the Jewish community in 1st century Palestine ?
Wouldn’t be because there was a Jesus that did chase the money changers from the Temple (or anything causing unrest), which lead him to his crucifixion for sedition.
Otherwise why would any power, would seek to eradicate such a sect, that was teaching to forgive their enemies, etc, unless these people were creating some unrest of their own (angel Jesus tell them so or a real Jesus decided so), within some parts of Palestine ?
There wouldn’t be any reason to persecute them for those reasons, either. They didn’t overturn tables or do any of that stuff. So there would be no crime to pursue them for. There is no evidence anyone ever did this, persecuted a faction after its leader is killed and the faction stops doing things to prosecute. But a faction that keeps doing things to prosecute, would be prosecutable whether Jesus existed or not. Because they are being persecuted for the things they are doing, not the things he did.
Note Paul never mentions Romans persecuting anyone. It’s always Jewish leaders, or their allies (e.g. Paul is hunted by Aretas in Damascus). So it was clearly some matter of Jewish law being violated, not Roman. The Jews had a treaty with Rome that permitted them their own laws (kind of like countries that have religious courts today, whose jurisdiction only holds for members of that religion). So this kind of thing happened (e.g. adulterers get stoned; sorcerers hung; etc.). Paul never says what blasphemies or religious crimes the Christians were being prosecuted for. And frankly, Acts never describes any credible charge either (so the author either didn’t know, or deliberately erased the real reason from history). The Talmud sort of vaguely says the Christians were guilty of sorcery (witchcraft). But that’s not really a reliable source on the point.
Whatever it was, it was some action or claim the Christians were making. Which they would have made anyway, whether Jesus existed or not. Because, if he existed, he was dead, so there could be no reason to prosecute them for anything on his account. And if he didn’t exist, they were making the illegal claim our doing the illegal thing on account of his “revelations” to them.
So we can’t ascertain historicity this way.
Much later, Romans started prosecuting Christians for the political crime of illegal assembly (see my discussion of Pliny in OHJ). But in Paul’s day that would not have applied, as Jews had proper licenses by treaty to assemble for religious purposes, and Christianity was not yet a separate religion from Judaism. Indeed, they hadn’t even started abandoning Torah law until Paul converted, because he is the one who invented that innovation. So he can’t have been persecuting them even for that.
The Yazidi believe that the world is governed by seven archangels (under the supreme God). No such archangels are likely to exist. The Yazidi have nevertheless been severely persecuted. Even though they have not caused anyone any trouble at all. Religious persecution frequently happens for no other reason than some group refusing to swear loyalty to the prevailing doctrines.
Have you seen a significant shift in the scholarly community in regards to taking the Christ myth seriously (not necessarily accepting it but rather seeing that it has meritable points).
Too soon to tell. For Moses, it took decades. The first peer reviewed thesis was only just published in 2014. But there are signs of a slow shift. Despite intense pressure against scholars not to admit this thesis is even plausible. Check out the list so far.
Hey are there any parallels between Jesus and Mithras?
Sort of. But not direct. Mithraism as a mystery religion began around the same time Christianity did. So their early similarities come not from each other but the same earlier mold of mystery religions they were copying and building upon. I discuss this in much detail, with sources and examples, in my book On the Historicity of Jesus; check the index for “mystery religions” and “mithraism”. See also my discussion of Mithras in my article on dying gods (of which Mithras is not one).
Paul says Jesus was “made” from the seed of David, using the same word used to say how Adam was created, so you puts forth the argument that God attained some sperm from David, held it in a cosmic sperm bank, and created Jesus from it (even though Paul never mentions God going through this fantastic process). That may be right, but I think there is a simpler explanation. Language about making or forming by God in the conception/generation of people was used in the Hebrew scripture to indicate how people came to be. We read, for instance:
“Isaiah 44:24
24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
who FORMED you from the womb:
“I am the Lord, who made all things,
who alone stretched out the heavens,
who spread out the earth by myself,”
But even more than this, the idea of God taking special interest in someone and “forming” babies is used in the Hebrew scripture to indicate God setting aside someone to be a special person with a special task in life. Regarding this understanding of God “forming” a person, we read:
“Jeremiah 1:5
5 “Before I FORMED you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.””
So Paul’s language about God “making” Jesus from David’s sperm doesn’t need the elaborate explanation of God using a cosmic sperm bank and making Jesus the way he made Adam, but might simply mean Paul thought God had set aside Jesus to be a great prophet from birth and formed him in the womb in this way.
That might be plausible.
I mention metaphor as a possibility; and that’s what this would be, David’s sperm being not literally meant, but symbolically meant.
Much like calling Jesus “the anointed” (Christ), even though no actual physical ointment (much less an anointing with it) is meant by that designation. It’s simply a metaphor for “chosen.” “David’s sperm” can mean “kingly Judaic flesh” by fiat, rather than literally. Though Prophecy does state it literally (and not as descent, but directly from David). That too can be read as symbolism. So someone could have seen the texts relating to each other in that way. That is well within the realm of how many Jews interpreted their scriptures of the time.
There is a line of argument that I think has little merit, but that nevertheless seems quite popular. I would phrase it thus:
P30: Core followers of early Christianity would not have accepted central claims about Jesus that they knew were false.
P31: The claim that Jesus was executed under Pilate was a central claim of Christianity.
P32: If Jesus had been claimed to be executed under Pilate but was not, this would have been exposed.
P32: Therefore, Jesus must have been executed under Pilate.
C10: Therefore, Jesus was historical.
I don’t accept P31. It was a central claim that Jesus had been executed, but it need not have been a central claim that Pilate was involved.
I also do not accept P32. Consider someone claiming that a charismatic cult leader Ji Xu was executed in China in 1980. It does not seem improbable at all to me that this claim would gain followers even if Ji Xu never existed. It is nearly impossible to prove that someone was not executed in China in 1980 – and this would have been even harder in Palestine 2000 years ago.
I don’t even accept P30, because it depends on what we mean by ‘false’. Early Christians may very well have accepted and promoted claims that they knew were not literally true. They may have considered such claims to convey a higher, allegorical truth. It is a mistake to think that every deliberate invention in the Gospels was a dishonest lie. There has always been an abundance of pious fiction, honestly intended to elucidate deep religious mysteries.
Good example.
All your points are correct.
I may think of a tighter version of this to add to the article. It’s basically just another variant of P05, so as such doesn’t need adding (it’s already there, in principle), except for the element of your P32, which could be more centered as an Argument from There Would Be Evidence (which I address in general in OHJ, Ch. 8.12 (cf. also 7.7). I don’t have that explicitly in the article and it could do with inclusion.
P30 could be valid as part of an argument to a probability, since there would need to be a reason we are to conclude it’s likely they accepted and promoted this specific falsehood. Not merely that it’s possible. I discuss in OHJ, Ch. 4, Elements 13 through 15, how and why certain Christians would have lied about certain things (even Mark 4 pretty much says Jesus lied about a lot of things, on purpose; and he seems to be talking about his own Gospel there).
But P30 is moot for the Pilate statement without P32 or P31.
And we know P31 is not established. The Epistles conspicuously never even say Romans killed Jesus, much less Pilate; it’s in none of the creeds there; yet is mysteriously in the creed a century later, which begs explanation (see my treatment of that point here). So this can only be an Argument from the Gospels. Hence, P05.
So that leaves the bit about “but we would know.” Which is a straightforward Argument from Silence: if it were false, we would expect evidence of it, therefore our not having evidence of it is improbable, therefore any theory requiring it is improbable. So the question is whether “we would expect evidence of it.” We wouldn’t, actually. But one does have to show that (as I do in my book).
Here’s another argument for historicity I often hear. It has to do with how much literature mentions Jesus and was written relatively shortly after his supposed life, especially when compared to other characters from Greco-Roman literature who we consider historical. Formally, it would be something along these lines:
P1. It is more likely that a character who appears multiple times in literature written relatively shortly after his supposed life is based on a historical person rather than completely fictional.
P2. The character of Jesus appears multiple times in literature written shortly after his supposed life (at minimum in the four canonical gospels and the authentic epistles, all written within 90 years after his supposed death).
C. Therefore, it is more likely that the character of Jesus is based on a historical person rather than completely fictional.
What do you think about this? My thoughts:
I don’t consider passages mentioning Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus authentic.
I think we can discard the epistles as well. Since the authentic epistles don’t mention anything specific about Jesus’ earthly life, we would have to presuppose their character of Jesus is identical with the character of Jesus in the gospels. The same goes for Pliny (he mentions Christ but not Jesus).
The quantity and quality of the surviving literature is obviously biased in favor of Jesus compared to other characters in Greco-Roman literature because it was Christians (and to a lesser extent Muslims) who monopolized its transmission later.
The gospels dating Jesus’ life to recent past (as opposed to distant or unspecified past) is at least somewhat plausible on mythicism because 1/ the authors of the gospels were reacting to recent events (a general expectation of the Messiah, previous unsuccessful military revolts and the destruction of the temple) and 2/ the authors of gospels were working with the “prophetic” timeline in the Book of Daniel and the dating of Jesus’ life in the gospels fits one of the possible interpretations of when the Messiah is killed.
Cheers!
That’s something to work up I think. I’ll see if I can develop it. You are right that it doesn’t work with the Epistles except as a circular argument. And the extrabiblical evidence likewise is as weak as ever (even apart from its ambiguity or falsity, it simply uncritically just repeats the Gospels; there is no evidence any of it is based on any checking of facts). So it’s really only an Argument from the Gospels.
The response is that there is no usable set to argue this from. When we look at anything comparable, we find plenty of examples of it being false (Ned Ludd, John Frum, etc.). And many of the examples we’d want to argue from, we don’t have the requisite data (exactly when were Hercules or Dionysus made “historical”?). And what we have left, might get us a usable prior, but it immediately gets updated back to 1 in 3 as soon as we subset it to “characters who were that mythologized that quickly.”
In other words, this argument wants to argue from prior probability, that most persons historicized within forty years are historical (ergo, the prior is high). But Jesus doesn’t belong to almost any of those sets, e.g. most persons historicized within forty years aren’t worshipped savior deities, communicating by revelation, with a full Rank-Raglan type. When we look at the subsets Jesus does belong to, we see mostly mythical persons. Regardless of timeline. The closer someone is to him in both construct and timeline (Ludd, Frum), the less likely they are to be historical. Not the other way around.
So this argument trades on a fallacy: it pretends Jesus started in history as a mundane person (recorded in regular memoirs etc.) and then became mythologized. But that’s not the data we have. Jesus appears as a historical person immediately as a highly mythologized person, with no intermediary step we can establish (non-circularly at any rate).
Yes, persons for whom we have that pattern (e.g. Alexander the Great, Alexander of Abonuteichus, maybe Apollonius of Tyana if we count the earliest mention as in Lucian, etc.), we believe most likely historical. But we believe that precisely because the evidence shows that pattern. It doesn’t in the case of Jesus. Saying “well, it did, but the early stuff was lost” is circular argument again (because it presumes what is not in evidence: that there was earlier mundane attestation that we lost).
The line in ‘The Honest Framework’ section of this post that reads “…we don’t really know how much of early Christianity actually comes from a historical Jesus…” is well taken. I had an online forum-based discussion with someone, and the general topic wandered into how much Christians were obligated to follow Jewish law. I brought up the book of Matthew, and the person who became my opponent in this online debate essentially argued that Jesus himself abolished Torah observance, based on events from other Gospels but especially in the book of Acts.
For the sake of this argument I was assuming at least some historicity for Jesus, and I was astonished how confidently he assumed that the abolishment of Torah observance in Acts had a historical basis that I had to take some time and mull over my response.
Eventually, I made the argument something along the following lines. We have to consider why Paul reported in Galatians that the idea of abandoning Torah observance for new converts to Christianity originated with him. Essentially there are only two plausible theories that could account for this assuming a historical Jesus.
Theory J
1. Jesus preached a message of Jewish salvation to the Jewish people.
2. The early Christian community did not widely diverge from Torah observance until:
3. Paul converted to the faith and worked to convert non-Jews to Christianity, coming up with the idea (however he came up with the idea) that Torah observance was no longer necessary.
4. Paul initially faced resistance to this version of Christianity but his success in converting, building churches, and bringing in money convinced the Pillars to allow him to continue on.
5. Paul’s branch of Christianity became so successful that they “outvoted” or outlasted the original Torah observing sect, and wrote sacred literature to later explain that there never had been conflict between Paul and Peter.
Theory G:
1. Jesus preached a message of inclusivity and Torah abandonment.
2. The early Christian community immediately forgot and neglected to pass on this teaching and returned to strict Torah observance until:
3. Paul converted to the faith and worked to convert non-Jews to Christianity, coming up with the idea (however he came up with the idea) that Torah observance was no longer necessary. The intervening 20 years of Christian development had diverged so far from what Jesus taught that even thought Paul taught what Jesus originally preached, no one remembered it despite the fact that Paul worked to build the church decades across three continents and in dozens of cities.
4. Peter and the other Pillars remembered that Jesus had taught Torah observance all along, their branch of Christianity merged seamlessly with Paul’s, and later sacred literature correctly remembered the briefly forgotten teachings of Jesus.
Even without assigning formal numbers to any prior probabilities of these two theories, it seems painfully obvious to me that theory J is many times more plausible than Thoery G. The point I was originally going for was to argue that, if Jesus existed at all, the more probable explanation for who he was and what he taught was a Jewish method that urged obedience to the commandments of the Torah, and not some kind of “but that was just the Old Testament just kidding you can eat shellfish after all” abandonment of it.
I don’t think I was successful in arguing the point, but maybe I don’t understand the sequence of events quite perfectly, or failed to explain it.
I’d say stop looking for historicity of Jesus Christ, the man. Start looking for the historicity of Jesus Christ, the syndicate.
Jesus Christ, Inc.
The group of “pesher”ists that got the ball rolling.
Maybe there’s some unexplored data proving the existence of that Jesus Christ.
There isn’t. That’s the frustrating bit. Yes, there certainly was such a crew (and that’s true whether Jesus existed or not). But we have exactly zero information from them (unless 1 Peter is authentic, but it doesn’t help much), and almost zero information about them (only, really, what few terse mentions we have in Paul). The data is just lost. Gone. Completely. So we can’t recover it. Alas.
So, if you think that there is zero evidence for the historicity of Jesus Christ then what is your approach for other historical characters such as Julius Ceasar, Alexander, Ashoka or Gautum Buddha. Well, watched your debate but you did not throw light on 1st century historian who claim that Jesus existed nor did you touch on early church fathers.
Um. Dude. Try using the search engine on my blog. I did a whole article on Julius Caesar. Others on Spartacus, Hannibal, and so on (see the first paragraph of my Spartacus article for a longer list).
Alexander the Great, and also Socrates, I treat in On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 21-24 and pp. 289-93, respectively).
Buddha I discuss in my treatment of Hannibal: I can’t assess him for the same reason I can’t Mohammed. Ashoka, I likewise have no opinion on, for the same reasons. But the debate is illustrated here and here.
As for 1st century historians on Jesus, there are none. I can only assume you mean the forged and interpolated entries in Josephus. You need to get up to date on that then. And no church father cites any evidence for Jesus other than the Gospels and absurd legends not attested in the 1st century (not even in the Gospels); so they have no usable evidence that isn’t already being discussed (the Gospels; nevertheless, I discuss church father evidence in Ch. 8 of On the Historicity of Jesus). And no church father of the 2nd century even mentions any pagan historian mentioning Jesus (neither Josephus nor even Tacitus or Suetonius or Pliny!). In short, there is no usable extrabiblical evidence. It all just goes back to the Gospels. I do in fact mention that in the article you are commenting on.
Ever since reading Doherty’s book I’ve been intrigued by Paul’s line that “we preach Christ crucified”. I’ve been wondering if that and other “tantalizing hints” suggest that there were early Christians for which the savior god was not crucified but perhaps died some other way. No way to know this now, of course.
No.
Check the line in context and you’ll see Paul does not imagine any Christian disagrees with him. The opponents he is contrasting that belief with are Greeks (pagans) and Jews (who aren’t buying the Christian claim that the messiah was crucified…remember, Christ just means The Messiah). They all think the notion absurd; but he admits some Greeks and Jews nevertheless are convinced (and thereby become Christians).
On mythicism, he is referring to the difficulty of convincing Greek philosophers or Jewish messianists that the messiah was secretly crucified in outer space (and secretly it appears to have been, as pretty much admitted in Romans 16:25-26, with 1 Corinthians 2 as an example) and thereby supplanted the annual temple atonement magic. Greeks laughed at such silly superstitious nonsense (because they usually rejected revelations and bible codes as sources of knowledge). And mainstream Jews harrumphed at its presumptuousness (as they did to all their fringe sects).
Also, note “crucified,” contrary to what you often hear, is not so specific a word. It does not actually distinguish modes of execution, at least not very clearly. Jewish executions also were followed by hanging the body, which is also called crucifixion in the words Paul employs (you’d otherwise have to specifically say “killed by crucifixion” or something to get any more specific, and Paul never does). All nations “crucified” criminals (and rebels and war captives) in some form or other. It wasn’t distinctively Roman. And I cite several recent scholars demonstrating the use of the same terms for Jewish executions, for example, in OHJ (Ch. 4.3).
How come you are interested in writing against the Christina faith but not a word against Islam, because both the religion has the same people like Jesus, Moses and so on. Are you intermediate by Muslims or just like to attack Christianity.
I’ve written several critiques of Islam and Islamic claims. So your “not a word” claim is baloney.
Most are redundant though. There is no relevant difference between Islam and Christianity in respect to arguments for or against God. So Islam is pretty much superfluous. Especially in America where only Christians actually dominate the culture and control legislatures and governments. Hence I’m mostly concerned with them. My arguments against theism work equally well against Muslims, so I don’t need to do I anything more there. Yet nevertheless I have (see “Islam” in my categories drop down menu).
I have also developed my Ph.D. in Christian history and languages, not Islamic. And I primarily publish what I’m expert in. See my article on Mohammed for further explanation on that point.
I think Keith Douglas may be asking: Other than Paul’s sect, what might another different Jewish sect inspired by Philo’s Mysticism look like and would they challenge Paul’s “Christ crucified” in competition for new converts.
The distinguishing characteristic of a Christian sect would be the archangel Jesus having died. There is no evidence Paul knew of any Christian sect preaching “another kind of death.”
Though I should have qualified by noting Paul is never clear on what sort of death is meant. The words he uses also referred to standard Jewish executions (as for example by stoning). I cite scholarship and evidence of that in OHJ (pp. 61-62). So, for example, the sect outside the Roman Empire that preached Christ was stoned and then crucified, by the Jews (OHJ, Ch. 8.1; which Paul could be referring to, as he is sufficiently vague) could be more original than the souped up version invented possibly by Mark that has the Romans do it in collusion with the Jews.
Other than that, there probably were pre-Christian sects (one of which probably became Christian, by novel revelation) that did revere the archangel Jesus and probably even taught he would be the coming messiah, but had not yet come to the conclusion that he’d died to effect his plans, thus had already initiated the end times timetable. There are hints in the Dead Sea Scrolls that the sect(s) represented there did have some such view (and may even have written up pesher prophecies of that angel’s future planned death). But we don’t know that for sure, we don’t know if the only such sect simply became Christianity, we don’t know if any members of that sect protested the revelation and stuck to the original timetable and thus broke away, we don’t know if there were other sects never impacted by the revelation who continued preaching their own thing. Paul does say there were sects preaching “another Jesus” whom the Christians should shun. So those could have been any of the above, for example.
Another way to look at it is: the manner of death was too trivial to have a schism over at that point, especially as Paul is so vague about it—and you don’t go vague on a point that’s creating schisms; that’s what creeds are for: to demarcate what’s valid and what’s anathema. So clearly there were no anathemas regarding means of the killing; vagueness would at best mean an intent to “big tent” the movement and unite schisms. Notice that by the time we get to Ignatius, now the manner of death is a schism point built into the creed, indicating that by then there certainly were sects disagreeing (though exactly what they were disagreeing on or why we can only speculate). But that’s almost a hundred years later. But there could well have been sects still revering or expecting the Jesus angel as not having died, and who (like possibly Philo) thought it absurd that he would ever do so, and/or who (like possibly the Qumran sect) thought it was not time yet for it to happen, who were competing with Christian sects. They could be the “other Jesus’s” Paul talks about. But we sadly just don’t know.
Can we trully rely on Paul’s writting to know anything about Jesus’ historicity ? He was literate, so he could have decided to go on his own, after meeting with the three pillars, Cephas, John and James.
And my understanding is these three were illiterate, so it would be so easy and convenient for Paul to write down on a Jesus whatever he wanted, especially if he was preaching away from Jerusalem and Galilee.
An example of that, is that wacko sect Raelians here in Quebec, Canada. You have probably heard of Rael (ClonAid in the early 2000, about cloning humans), that French woo woo guy that had claim that in the 70′ was abducted by Aliens and then met with none the less: Jesus, Buddha, and all the great leaders of different religions and faiths throughout centuries…
(And why not Superman then !!!)
Can we get any real fact from such pathological liars and manipulative people, regarding the historicity of those leaders… Here things are too obvious to give any kind of credit to such.
But Paul, didn’t some communities were not accept him as a disciple, why ? Could there be in the 1st century, knowledge that Paul went on his own, preaching on a Jesus that he had knowledge of, but like that woo woo Rael, came by with that story of celestial revelations of a non-Earthly Jesus ?
I know it is speculative, but my questionning since I was in my early 20′, was always to question Catholic Faith (born in that Faith…), about any credibility of Paul, who could have made up every thing to gain a personal popularity.
His interest would have been to distray from the facts over the passing years and especially if he knew that the Pillars were dead or killed, he could have distance himself from the known tradition of the early followers.
In the ways I do, yes. Because Paul’s letters are all defenses and controls: he is facing challenges and arguments from his congregations, some of them spawned by Cephas and other apostles. He also uses those apostles as examples. So the way Paul talks about them in his rhetoric tells us things about what his congregations knew and believed (e.g. he could not use an argument his congregations knew to be false; he could not ignore an argument his congregations were making at him; his arguments clue us in to what was being claimed against him and what wasn’t; etc.). We still have to remember it’s rhetoric. But rhetoric is constrained by objective realities, otherwise it doesn’t work. And it is by looking at what those constraints have to have been, that we learn as much about the truth of what was going on as we can.
IMO, that’s impossible.
It’s the same lie, I think, as that Mohammed was illiterate (in fact he was the son of one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated families in the region). The Gospels and Acts (really, only Acts) claims they were illiterate, so as to make their triumph and election miraculous, and appeal to the lower classes. The Gospels don’t ever actually say they are illiterate. It’s effectively impossible they weren’t themselves rabbis (and rabbis had to have working class occupations, so their being fishermen, if that were even true, would not tell us they weren’t rabbis). We know this because Paul could read the scriptures, and the creed was based on scripture (Rom. 16:15-26, 1 Cor. 15:3-4, etc.).
There is no possible way a scripure based religion could be founded and run by illiterates. And were that the case, Paul would have been using that argument at every turn: he could read the scriptures, they could not. That would have sealed his authority as above theirs. But he doesn’t. He never uses that argument, even when he struggles to establish himself against their authority (he has to confess he isn’t a good orator like them; which likewise implies they were schooled; whereas in this, he never thinks to defend himself by saying at least he can read the scriptures, for example). Instead he treats them as his social equals, indeed superiors, and never uses that argument. That’s impossible. Unless they were literate rabbis like him, using the scriptures to sell and construct their religion. As the pre-Pauline creeds all show was the case.
The rest is just myth and legend. All invented after they were all dead.
That’s an example of how the real world constraints and drives of rhetoric, allow us to glean facts even from rhetoric. Were they illiterate, Paul would have said so. Repeatedly. It would have been a key mantra in his own defense in every argument. The only way he could never have said that, is if it wasn’t true. QED. It doesn’t matter how dishonest Paul was. Liars need and use reality as much as anyone. (Remember, Paul was not writing letters to us. He was writing letters to people well aware of the facts, and attempting to convince them of things.)
Sort of. That’s why he had to get the seal of approval from the original founders (the whole point of Galatians 1-2). But Paul reveals he was trying to get along with them and not schism the church, hence he says Cephas factions should accept him, etc. And their only dispute was over the application of Torah (whether Gentiles had to convert to Judaism to join the sect). Had any other dispute existed, he would have had to address it, in his response to the Galatians (otherwise he’d automatically lose the argument; and rhetoricians don’t forfeit, they aim to win).
The Galatians were clearly accusing him of being a fake apostle on the belief (or accusation) that he just learned the gospel from someone else, and wasn’t actually contacted and appointed by Jesus (that’s how one became an apostle, Paul says: by having a revelation of Jesus, so Jesus himself can “send” you, the meaning of apostle). We know that, because Paul’s sole defense was that he met no one and received a revelation (he may be lying, but that’s not the interesting information: that this is the lie he had to tell, tells us a great deal about the truth).
On another occasion he faced the charge that he wasn’t a very good speaker, and that this somehow called his cred into question. How he defends himself against that accusation (and how he doesn’t) tells us a great deal about what was true as well. Regardless of how much he was lying. His lies are constrained by reality; merely to work. And that’s how we can glean reality even from his lies.
Note he could not just make “anything” up. Because his congregations kept writing to him with accusations and complaints he had to answer. He was forced to answer those. And we learn from that what was going on. Likewise what wasn’t (i.e. the accusations he never had to face, tell us what accusations reality did not permit anyone to make against him).
Illiteracy was not an obstacle. Any illiterate could get a scribe to write for them. (Though IMO, 1 Peter is probably authentic, and as such, indicates a highly schooled rhetorician’s work, and if so, Peter wrote it, and was as highly educated as Paul; but that’s a controversial thing to say these days, when everyone assumes 1 Peter was forged.)
Moreover, communities always had literates within them to scribe for them. Thus, Paul could not dodge accusations he was deviating from the founders’ gospel, because every congregation would still hear that, and get a letter written accusing him of it. Forcing him to respond. That’s why it matters what arguments he is never forced to respond to (yet was forced to respond to many). Reality constrains rhetoric.
We don’t have any letters that could plausibly have been written after all the pillars were dead. So I don’t know which letters you have in mind here. They are clearly still alive when he wrote the Corinthian correspondence and Galatians. Romans can be dated no more than a few years after that, and if the pillars had died so recently in that case, it’s hard to imagine how Romans could fail to mention it.
OHJ presents an extremely compelling case for mythicism. I didn’t follow the math (a very small part), but the information presented, just in the priors got my full attention! The evidence presented concerning Paul’s letters, the gospels, and non Christian sources really nailed it down.
The arguement makes sense on a logical level alone. Defenders of historicity appear to go through strange gyrations to make their points…from hypothetical evidence, to gross assumptions, and it doesn’t feel right in a logical sense.
It reminds me of a saying I was taught regarding fabrication in metal, but works with graphic design also… ” A curve is a curve is a curve, but a straight line is a straight line “. Translation is, if you build something curved, you can get away with a lot, and still have a finished product that looks good…But if you build something that is straight, has parallel straight lines, is perpendicular etc. , then it had damn well be straight parallel or perpendicular, or it will assault the senses, and people will see that something is wrong right away!
OHJ looks straight to me.
I’m curious what your take is on 1Cor.11:23-24. Even if Paul received this by a vision from Jesus it sets Jesus in history eating at a dinner party :).
Notice it doesn’t mention anyone present. Jesus is speaking to future Christians, not current dinner guests; no one else eats or drinks, comments, or interacts, and Jesus addresses no one other that future Christians. Mark is the one who adds people present. So it is actually, in Paul, more like the dinner vision of Peter in Acts 10. It is thus not a party. That is also why Paul never knows of it as a “last” supper, but the only one: the Lord’s supper. Full stop.
But Paul does suggest this was something Jesus communicated to him about what happened at his inaugural sacrifice (which was historical for Paul as much as Satan’s war in heaven; he makes clear it happened in his own lifetime at a particular time in 1 Cor 15, almost certainly determined by calculations from Daniel 9). This implies it was done in secret to be revealed later (and thus was one of the Christian mysteries Paul often references; or at least he was selling it that way, e.g. some scholars think Paul invented the entire Eucharist tradition).
I have a whole section on all these points in On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 11.7, “The Eucharist.” But I discuss more particular details in my article on Mark’s adaptation of material in Paul. In a later article I also mention a study arguing for the vision interpretation that I didn’t know about when I published.