That is always worth checking, I agree. Though I think Th.D.’s can do history well if they get trained in it well or train themselves in it well, that is not always an inherent feature of such graduate programs, however, so presuming it is shaky ground; and of course, for a theologian to claim an actual trained historian is the one between them who can’t do history is always the kettle calling the tile black.

In Mason’s case, U. Groningen has an abbreviated cv (the non-abbreviated cv is the thing to look for; serious scholars always have one, and sometimes you can find it online, like mine), though all the abbreviated one says is he completed his PhD with a specialization in ancient Judaism at “Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College,” not what his degree field there was. But he’s a widely respected professor who has enjoyed several prestigious university appointments and has a large, quality, peer-reviewed publication record, and his dissertation put history-skills forward. There isn’t any reason to doubt his bona fides.

He also is among the historians now who consider mythicism at least plausible enough to take seriously.

I’ve been trying to find Mason’s bona fides, and am not having any luck. Neither his Wikipedia page nor his biography page on his former university’s website list his degrees. It’s all very hush-hush. I’m looking into the education of scholars who have come out against mythicism. He often presents himself as an historian, and I just wanted to check into whether he is a legitimate historian with a Ph.D. from an actual Department of History, or if he’s pulling a Bart Ehrmin and just styling himself as a historian, while in reality, having degrees in theology, or in the case of Mason theology, religion, New Testament, or some other related field. You referred to him as an historian in this article, I’m just wondering if you were able to confirm that for sure? Thanks!!

Anna

I assume you mean the same claim I already here explain, and refute, in my article above, to wit:

It is “not unusual,” Mason says, for Josephus “to identify a person or place and then add a second name with legomenos: ‘called X’.” Mason then gives four examples from the Antiquities. But every one of those examples illustrates why Josephus can’t have done that here…

Or do you mean Mason made a different claim on MythVision, that this passage wasn’t about the Christian Jesus, but some other random person who just happened to have a similar nickname? That would be a new take. But still quite implausible.

Josephus would not be unaware of the fact that that “nickname” means messiah, a word he assiduously avoids everywhere else in his histories (even when he talks about messiahs, which is often). The same word is in the Septuagint text of the Daniel prophecy about the messiah (and in many other messianic passages in the OT), which Josephus comments on, so he would not act like this was just some obscure nickname no one cared about, even if he didn’t know anything about Christians or their claims. But half the time Mason insists he does know, so Mason can’t claim Josephus here acted like this nickname didn’t connect to any prior point he made about that very same man—unless he finally admits the TF is entirely forged and Josephus never mentioned Christ. So is this more incoherence from Mason? I confess I don’t follow his logic if that’s the case.

But regardless, whether the claim I discuss in this article or this new bizarre claim (?), the same holds against it: Josephus would not just throw in an unexplained nickname here, as I already demonstrated in this very article you are commenting on. Such a behavior would multiply violate his discourse style, even with nicknames (per above), but in several other ways as well: see Reading Josephus on James: On Valliant Flunking Literary Theory.

Fixed. Thanks.

Acts is revisionist history, mostly fiction (often directly contradicting eyewitness sources, like Paul). So it wouldn’t really matter all that much what the author of Acts wanted us to believe any particular James to be, as we couldn’t necessarily trust that to be historical. But, notably, the author of Acts clearly has no knowledge of any family of Jesus being involved in church history (from Acts 2 on; I suspect because the idea of that hadn’t been invented yet, or at least not yet in circles known to that author). They only know (per Acts 1) of James the brother of John (the sons of Zebedee; the “Pillars”), and James ben Alphaeus; neither of whom, by that time, had ever been imagined kin of Jesus (as Acts 1 makes clear by listing Jesus’s brothers separately, and without naming any).

Before Jesus Puzzle, no, not really.

Prior to that there were two kinds of publications arguing the point: crankery (which constututed the most widely read and popular work); and methodologically outdated and insufficient work (which was mostly so obscure hardly anyone has even heard of it).

The latter category includes the works of G.A. Wells starting in the 1980s, which wasn’t crank, but wasn’t up to snuff either: he never developed (much less empirically defended) a coherent alternative theory of the origins of Christianity and he relied variously on several fallacies (such as conflating “Gospel Jesus” with “Historical Jesus”). Hence he never got anything published past peer review, which is perhaps to be expected because he wasn’t an expert but an amateur. His work is largely of no use to Jesus studies.

Wells’ genuine expertise was in modern German literature, which is where he learned of Jesus mythicism, from early 20th century German scholars and their Continental peers. He was more or less trying to update such really old work by Drews or Couchoud and the like, but didn’t have the chops to succeed at that. Those works were legitimate scholarship but are woefully obsolete, predating what are today considered sound methods in historical study, and consequently would never pass peer review today (generally, all history published before 1950 is simply unreliable, across the board; this was not a defect particular to Jesus mythicism, but universal to all historical fields). So they have only limited utility, as nothing more than a source of ideas to then test with current and more reliable methods, or to independently fact-check and more accurately describe, and the like.

That old wave of Jesus mythicism was “answered” by the peer reviewed study of Shirley Jackson Case in 1912 (2nd ed. 1928), which was the last peer reviewed book specifically on the question of the historicity of Jesus until mine in 2014 and Lataster’s in 2019. It was assumed Case had refuted all challenges and so the subject was largely ignored ever since, until Wells. I address Case in Ch. 12 of On the Historicity of Jesus.

Case is more or less just summarized in a few pages by Van Voorst, whose book is not about historicity but just spends a few pages on it, explaining why he won’t discuss that debate further (see author index for where I cover these pages in OHJ). In the same fashion, you get hints of historicity agnosticism, but no systematic defense of mythicism, in other like authors (e.g. Jean Magne argues for the Gospel Jesus being a myth, which is the mainstream consensus now so not even controversial, but punts as to minimal historicity by merely spending a page or two only on how it’s a possibility there was no Jesus, name-dropping Wells et al.; he neither advances, nor defends, any alternative theory of Christian origins, much less tests it against any kind of plausible theories of historicity).

WOW, thank you very much for actually taking your time to answer my comment, and so early. I just recently finished reading “On The Historicity of Jesus”, one the best books I ever red. I intent to get “Proving History” soon, as well as a book written by Fernando Bermejo-Rubio – a historicist that you spoke very positively about in the past.

I will get this opportunity in order to just ask one more question: is there any work written before Doherty´s “The Jesus Puzzle” that you consider to be equally or almost as credible of a defense of the mythicist position?