Antonio Piñero, the Spanish language clone of Bart Ehrman, has tried taking a stab at critiquing my book Jesus from Outer Space, after still never having read On the Historicity of Jesus. I don’t think I’ll bother addressing the monotonous entirety of his entire series on the subject, but rather just focus on enough illustrative examples to demonstrate why it isn’t worth anyone’s bother to. As we well know. I already demonstrated this twice in respect to OHJ, in Antonio Piñero: Raving Historicist and Piñero Returns. As I noted and extensively documented at the recent GCRR conference, historicists have a serious honesty problem when it comes to this issue. To date none who critique my work in historicity have told the truth about what I actually argue and what evidence and arguments I present and address. Few seem even to have actually read my books on the subject, despite dishonestly claiming to have done so. This is so peculiar, it deserves continued remark. Why do historians have to act like this? If they had a case, they should be able to make it honestly. So why don’t they?

As before I am working from an English translation of Piñero’s articles provided me by David Cáceres González whose translation services in Spanish I highly recommend hiring him for (he can be reached by email). I also recommend a website he maintains of translations into Spanish of select articles on my blog, Mitos o Historia, which is a good place to send Spanish-speaking friends and peers who are in need of such material. For reference, in the present case I’ll be discussing the following of Piñero’s articles (each fairly brief):

• La discusión interminable sobre la existencia de Jesús continúa: el nuevo libro de Richard Carrier, “Jesus from the outer space” (“Jesús desde el espacio exterior”) (29 October 2020)
• La llamada “cristología angélica”. Pregunta: ¿Pensaban los primeros cristianos que Jesús no era un hombre, sino un ángel? (5 November 2020)
• ¿Hay en verdad una “cristología angélica” detrás de Filipenses 2? (9 November 2020)
• ¿De qué Jesús estamos hablando exactamente? (19 November 2020)
• Un argumento aparentemente serio de Richard Carrier sobre la no existencia de Jesús (10 December 2020).
• La invención de Jesús. Más argumentos de R. Carrier (17 December 2020).
• La imposible explicación de R. Carrier sobre el nombre de Jesús como “salvador y mesías” (24 December 2020).
• ¿De qué Jesús estamos hablando? III. La hipótesis de Carrier del origen mítico de la creencia en un Jesús realmente vivo no es en absoluto plausible (14 January 2021).
• “Elija Usted su Jesús mítico” (21 January 2021).
• ¿De qué Jesús estamos hablando exactamente? La propuesta de Carrier sobre el nacimiento del mito “Jesús” (1 July 2021)
• ¿De qué Jesús estamos hablando exactamente? Mi comentario a la propuesta de Carrier (1 August 2021).

I won’t go into them all in detail, nor reference any specifically. I’ll just go into the arguments, for anyone who has already read his articles, or wants to, or doesn’t want to but just wants to get a gist of them.

Introduction

Mostly I’ll focus on our disagreements, of course. To be clear, Piñero says the peer reviewed monograph that JFOS summarizes, On the Historicity of Jesus, “is a serious book” that “is worth paying attention to.” And he acknowledges that JFOS is intentionally brief and colloquial; and that I only approach the subject of historicity as a matter of probability, not certainty (he affirms he does likewise). He also concurs with my point about ancient cosmology and its importance to understanding early Christianity: a lot of what Christians are talking about is stuff they believed was coming from or going on in outer space. And he has a lot else to say in agreement besides, including some supporting context here and there (e.g. he gives more examples than I have refuting James McGrath’s ignorant assertion that no one thought angels could also have been, become, or be called “men”).

There are also some trivial disagreements. For example, Piñero says he thinks ancient authors believed the Earth was flat, but as I have documented (for example, in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire, pp. 495-96; and in respect to literary education generally, in Science Education in the Early Roman Empire) no one educated to the level of literary composition (in short, every author of any book in the New Testament) was at that time unaware of the discovery that the Earth was a sphere and the evidence for it. Formal cosmology, in result, was everywhere explicitly spherical, and everyday public astronomy classes employed spheres to illustrate it. Only illiterate masses might still have thought the Earth was flat; not the leaders of sects dependent on advanced literacy (as exemplified by the authors of the NT). Even the occasional antiscientific flat-Earther among the literate elite (e.g. Lactantius) well knew the elite had come to understand the Earth was a sphere, and sought to argue against them. And those fellows were a rarity. Meanwhile, there is no evidence anyone in the first century thought the cosmos was composed of “half-spheres” as Piñero contends (he is conflating pre-Hellenistic Judaism, i.e. the authors of the Old Testament and old Babylonian texts, with the state of culture after centuries of Greek influence). Even the illiterate masses had absorbed the common knowledge of a fully spherical cosmos. It was so represented everywhere in public art. For example, statues of the Goddess of Fortune sometimes show her “steering” a tiller attached to a spherical universe, a famous second century statue of Atlas depicts him holding up the spherical universe (see image above), and depictions of the universal sphere appeared on countless public buildings (even the Roman baths in the aptly named city of Bath, all the way out in the hinterlands of Britain—as I have personally confirmed). The most “popular” view thus was of a disc Earth within a spherical universe. Added evidence for this is the fact that the literate only made fun of hicks for thinking the Earth was flat, not for thinking the universe was. Though there might have been some who still did. We have a quotation of Posidonius mentioning yokels in 1st century Spain reporting to him an old myth that the sun sinks and dissolves into the sea and is regenerated each morning at the horizon; but Posidonius does not actually say they believe this anymore. And there is no indication any Christian authors thought this. It is not likely the sort of thing Paul would have taught his congregations, or what their educated members would have tolerated any fellow congregants affirming. The elegance of a spherical creation was too compelling by then.

There are numerous trivial errors and disagreements like this, which actually don’t affect anything I argue, so they aren’t important. For some examples:

• Piñero incorrectly implies I regard Hebrews and Philippians and Revelation to be forgeries, though he makes nothing of this. Still, I cannot fathom how he thinks so. I explicitly declare all of them genuine documents as presented. Philippians was written by Paul and is our earliest evidence for Christian Christology and cosmology. Hebrews never claims to be written by Paul, so it is not a “forgery,” and in fact I establish in OHJ that it must date to the 60s A.D. and thus is one of the earliest sources we have on Christian beliefs outside Paul (I discuss its date and value for the question of historicity in OHJ 11.5, “The Gospel in Hebrews”). And Revelation nowhere says it was written by the Apostle John (that was a later urban legend) nor overtly claims any date of composition. Scholars pretty much agree it dates to the 80s A.D. or so; and it could well have been written by a John of Patmos as it claims. I never challenge either. But since Piñero doesn’t do anything with this point, I can let it slide, now corrected.
• Piñero will often lead into interpretations of texts, like for example Hebrews, that I sometimes don’t find plausible or provable (mixed in with points I fully concur with), but his bad conclusions here often make no difference to anything I have argued, so I won’t trouble myself with responding to them.
• Piñero argues that the credal phrase “even [the] death of a cross” in Philippians 2:8 entails Jesus died on the cross, not before; though that is a weak argument (there being no verb, that phrase can mean his corpse was placed on a cross, i.e. where the dead man ended up, using the same Genitive of Direction or Destination as Paul employs to say “sheep destined for slaughter” in Romans 8:36), it doesn’t matter, because it affects nothing I argue, as my thesis is that his execution occurred in the Firmament at the hands of the Archons of this Aeon, so it could have followed any procedure.
• Piñero falsely claims that in Acts 13:27-29 “Paul is presented saying that it was not Joseph of Arimathea who brought Jesus down from the cross, but minions of the Jewish authorities.” Mark and Luke both concur Joseph of Arimathea was a minion of the Jewish authorities. So there is no such thing as Paul denying that here. But again, as errors like this make no difference to anything I argue, I won’t mention them further.
• Piñero likewise says “the apostles and many others…witnessed the death of Jesus in person.” Even though that’s incredible (the Synoptic Gospels uniformly establish no apostles were present to see it “in person,” and Paul mentions no witnesses to it; while John places only one there, the one he invented: OHJ, Ch. 10.7), it also isn’t relevant. Whether they had any reliable data as to a real man’s death is not what is in evidence but the very hypothesis we are testing the probability of. I fully allow they could have. But we want to know if that’s the most probable explanation of the evidence we do have.
• Piñero implies that my saying the omission of the name of Jesus in some versions of the Talmud is a later scribal erasure is something I argue alone, when in fact I am following the peer reviewed literature on this by multiple scholars whom I cite. But since Piñero doesn’t do much with this misleading statement, I won’t bother addressing anything else like it (as anyone who actually reads OHJ will see clearly the truth of the matter).
• Piñero wants to argue against my early dating of Hebrews, 1 Clement, 1 Peter, James, and Jude, but he never even mentions, much less responds to my arguments as to their date, rendering his remarks on this useless; but even that is moot, as my arguments regarding historicity never require my dating of them to be correct.
• Piñero often makes arguments from the Gospels to conclusions I already agree with. Even though I think his method is bankrupt (using the Gospel mythologies to prove historical points is hopelessly fallacious, as I explain in detail in Proving History, Ch. 5, and OHJ, Ch. 10), if he ends up in the same place I do using a more sound methodology, I won’t waste time here digressing on his faulty method there. In other cases, where he gullibly tries to prove historicity from the Gospels using methods all dedicated peer reviewed studies have invalidated, one need only review the same material I just cited. It fully and directly refutes him.

And so on.

Now to the more significant mistakes and disagreements.

Piñero Contradicts Himself

Piñero ironically makes the strange statement that “it seems to me simply impossible that a Jew from the first century of our era could become a follower of some Messiah who is not known to be a concrete, real, absolutely proven human being” after himself proving Jews believed readily in just such figures: the Metatron, Satan, and other angelic beings, whose existence they did not doubt, and whose status they unquestioningly revered (or feared), and whose communications they always trusted (apart from Satan and his legions, of course). It is amusing when historians contradict themselves in the course of two paragraphs. Obviously first century Jews routinely believed in the existence and authority of dozens of mythical beings whom they “believed” real. So there would be nothing stopping them from believing the same of Jesus. Paul, after all, never once says Jesus was anything else but an angelic being in outer space just like Satan and Gabriel, whom anyone only ever met in visions or dreams. He does not ever say Jesus assumed human flesh and died and was buried, or was even seen, anywhere else. Just as Paul and his congregants believed Satan lived in castles and gardens in the sky and once conducted a war there, so they could just as readily believe Jesus was killed and buried there. The evidence is clear these are the kinds of things readily believed then. I document this extensively in OHJ, which I cite on the point in the concordance at the end of JFOS, so Piñero has no excuse here. Yet he never mentions any of this—the first sign that he does not actually read these things. And accordingly, he never has any response to any of the actual evidence I’ve presented.

Piñero then expounds a half-dubious exegesis of Hebrews that only affirms what I already say: that early Christians believed Jesus was an angelic being who descended into the form of a mortal man, in which he died and was buried. Piñero gives no evidence at all regarding where they thought this happened, and fully exhibits in his own examples the fact that their only source for it was scripture and revelation, both of which he admits they regarded as unquestionably authoritative. So when he gets to concluding “the unknown author of Hebrews was thinking not of a mythical man…but a real human being who by divine will, and after his actual death, became superior to angels” Piñero seems to think he has argued against me, when in fact, he has simply restated my thesis. I, too, argue that the author of Hebrews thought this was all true of a real being. The only question is where he thought this happened, and how he thinks anyone came to know it happened. And it is nowhere stated in Hebrews that it happened “on Earth” and was seen by passers by. Indeed, the author goes on to imply the opposite (as I explain in OHJ, 11.5). But the point here is that Piñero appears to have done such a careless job of reading even my brief colloquial book that he has already mistaken what I even argue there: he seems to think that by calling Jesus mythical, I am saying even the earliest Christians regarded him as a myth; when I explicitly say the opposite: they believed he was a real person, who really did these things, just not on Earth. It is we, now, who know this means he was imaginary and never real, and hence a myth. It is not them who thought this. Consequently it can never argue against my thesis that the first Christians believed Jesus was real. That’s already what I argue!

Later Piñero seems further confused, because he keeps insisting (on no evidence he ever presents) that angels cannot rise from the dead. Lack of evidence aside, I can even grant that statement, because my thesis plainly stated is that Jesus assumed a mortal body precisely so he could die and rise. In other words, in Philippians 2, Paul is explicitly telling us how an angel can die and thus rise: by taking on a mortal body. It’s not “an angel dies and on the third day rises from the dead,” it’s “an angel goes into a mortal body made for him, uses it to die in, and on the third day rises from the dead.” That they could do this is explicitly affirmed by Jewish and pagan authors of the time (OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 37). Thus Paul could well agree angels don’t die; that’s why he has to believe this one went into a mortal body first. That’s the whole point of the incarnation (that, and the need to conform to scripture). Piñero tries to spin us an implausible exegesis of Philippians 2 in which this isn’t what is happening, but his interpretation directly contradicts the words of Paul: “being in the form [morphê] of God, [Jesus] did not think being equal to God was something to grasp for, but instead emptied himself, taking the form [morphê] of a servant, being made [genomenos] into the likeness of men [anthrôpôn), and in appearance being found as a man [anthrôpos],” and then humbled himself unto death. This unmistakably says Jesus was not a man, but had to choose to become one, by “taking” and “being made into” the appearance of a man; it also clearly says he chose this option instead of trying to seize the celestial power of God, so he clearly pre-existed his human state and had realistic superhuman options. This is a reversal of the narrative of Satan, who did attempt to seize the power of God, and was cast down, and brought sin and death into the world; Paul is saying Jesus reversed this narrative by doing the opposite of Satan, and thus undoing all that Satan did.

Piñero admits that what I am saying, essentially, is traditionally accepted, and thus he is the one begging the question with an implausible rewrite of what Paul said. That’s a curious way to argue. It’s only the worse because I (and abundant peer reviewed, mainstream scholars) do not rest our conclusion on this verse alone. Numerous other passages in Paul (and other texts in the NT) clearly establish Jesus was uniformly believed to have preexisted his incarnation: e.g. Paul says Jesus was around to carry out the task of creating the universe for God (confirmed by the author of Hebrews; and confirmed by the later author of Colossians); Paul says Jesus was around to help Moses; and Paul says God sent his son in the “likeness of flesh,” which entails there was already a son to send and enflesh (in a direct allusion to the Philippians hymn). And Paul never has to argue this point; which means, all Christians then agreed with it. There is a reason major scholars concur with me here (including Bart Ehrman, Andrew Chester, Sean McDonough, Charles Gieschen, Susan Garrett, and beyond). Indeed, we know which son Paul and the first Christians thought this to be: the Angel of Many Names, whom Paul’s contemporary Philo establishes had all the same attributes Paul and the author of Hebrews says Jesus did; both were the “firstborn son” of God, the “image” of God, God’s agent of creation, and the “high priest” of God’s celestial temple. So the earliest Christians clearly thought Jesus was that very angel, incarnated. (And whether that angel was already known by the name Jesus, as one of its “Many Names,” is not necessary to my point here.)

Piñero Reading Failure

One of the strangest criticisms I keep getting from Piñero is his argument that “would it not then be possible to understand” all the texts I reference as showing us that Christians were adding these cosmic interpretations onto a historical man, i.e. that, yes, they believed he was an eternal being come to Earth, but that belief being false does not mean there wasn’t an actual man they believed this of. This is a strange criticism because it isn’t one. I am explicit in both JFOS and OHJ that this is indeed possible and even has a respectable probability (as much as 1 in 3: JFOS, p. 52; cf. p. 214). So Piñero is not responding to my argument here; he’s just repeating it! The question is not whether this is possible, or even plausible. It certainly is. The question is whether it is the most probable explanation of all the evidence we have. And answering that question requires actually answering it: what probabilities do you assign, and to where, to get what result? Historicists never want to address this, even though it is the only way they can establish the historicity of Jesus as probable. I have laid out (in OHJ) which probabilities need estimating, and how to determine the effect of one’s estimates, and how to justify one’s estimates, and even how to add new ones (if you think I’ve left some out). The only way to get a different conclusion than mine is to actually do this: tell us which probabilities in my tables need to be changed (or even added), and show us why your replacement probabilities are more warranted than mine. That’s it. Yet never do any historicists ever do this. They therefore have no logical argument to show us. Instead, all they do is obfuscate and avoid.

It seems here as if Piñero literally did not read even Jesus from Outer Space. He clearly has no idea what its actual thesis is or what it actually says. He appears only to have flipped through it and cherry-picked some sentences to critique, wholly oblivious to what surrounds them. As a good example of this, at one point he rhetorically asks, “how does Carrier explain” what Paul says in Romans 1:1-3, where “Paul affirms that Jesus—not Jesus Christ, who only exists after the resurrection—was born of the lineage of David according to the flesh.” Um. Dr. Piñero. There is literally an entire chapter in JFOS detailing my response to that. How do you not know this? Why do you have no reply to what I say there? Even if Piñero is live blogging, and thus at this point hasn’t gotten to that chapter, it is clearly stated to be there in the Table of Contents, so he knows I have a whole chapter on it. Yet he acts like I have nothing to say on the matter. This is irresponsible scholarship. Of course, what I expose in that chapter is that Piñero is using an inaccurate translation and ignoring the context of the terminology and concepts in that verse. Moreover, while Piñero wants to draw a distinction here between Jesus the man and the cosmic Christ he was merely believed to be, had he actually read JFOS, he would know I in no way make that distinction any differently than he does: I too argue that this Jesus figure was assigned the status of Christ only after his death; that has no bearing on the question of whether they thought this Jesus figure was nevertheless still a cosmic being before that—and as Paul makes clear, they clearly did (as I showed above). Piñero is thus again agreeing with me; yet confusedly thinks he is making an argument against me. Bizarre.

Another example of this bizarre way of arguing by ignoring is when Piñero complains that the account Epiphanius and the Talmud give of some Christians dating the appearance of Jesus to near the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (a hundred years earlier than our Gospels do) is “almost always questioned” so I cannot trust it. If he had actually read my argument on this, he would know I do not trust it. I nowhere argue Christianity “really did” arise a hundred years earlier than the Gospels claim. My argument is that somehow some Christians came to believe this. So the question is, how could that have happened? In other words, what we need to explain is how Christians could diverge so enormously on when Jesus lived. Piñero has no answer to offer us. And that proves my point—a point you can discern by actually reading what I wrote on this, rather than ignoring it like Piñero did (see OHJ, Ch. 8.1; JFOS, pp. 12-13). Piñero also falsely represents this as something I adduce as “proving” Jesus did not exist. That’s incorrect. It actually could not do so, as I assign too small a weight to it. If you checked the tables in Chapters 8.13 and 12.1 of OHJ, you’d see, if we relied on this datum against historicity alone, ceteris paribus, we’d still end up concluding Jesus was more probably historical than not; indeed, on the a fortiori side, it barely changes that probability at all. This is clear even in JFOS, where I allow that it is wholly inaccurate, and we thus simply can’t trust sources this mistaken, and so it proves nothing. But Piñero is ignoring what I actually say.

Another example of this reading failure occurs when Piñero says, as if arguing against me, that he does not think it “possible” that “Jesus” was a name later assigned to the man even if he existed. But if he had actually read the paragraph in question, he’d know I never argue that’s what happened. I only allow that it is possible Jesus was a later name assigned, and therefore we cannot require him to have that name to establish his historicity. In other words, I am throwing a bone to historicity by eliminating an argument against it: it cannot be argued that Jesus didn’t exist “because” that wasn’t his name when he died. Piñero confuses me as saying the exact opposite. This is important, because he makes the same mistake when arguing a historical Jesus could also have been called (or called himself) Christ while alive, again as if I ever said the contrary. Far from it. I think it’s entirely plausible that, if Jesus existed, he did claim to be the messiah when he was alive. I have even presented my own argument for this conclusion: that this appears to be what all the messianic claimants Josephus records had done, and Jesus fits that same pattern (OHJ, Ch. 4, Element 4; cf. Ch. 6.5). That Piñero does not know this, shows us he is not actually reading my books. And in result, he is not even responding to what they actually said. If he would actually read the books he claims to, he’d know I am comparing all plausible theories of historicity—including his—with the most defensible alternative, that stories later told of Jesus reify by allegory the cosmic truths Christians wished to promote, which explains all the same evidence (e.g. why the Gospels extensively construct stories establishing Jesus as the expected royal and priestly messiah). What Jesus’s real name was doesn’t matter.

We run into this even more bizarrely when Piñero tries to argue against me by declaring that “Paul did not invent the human, historical, verifiable figure of Jesus.” I never argue he did. To the contrary, my entire book’s thesis is that Paul and Christians of his day had never heard of that Jesus; they were all talking about a celestial being known only through revelations and hidden messages planted in ancient scripture. The “historical” Jesus would not be invented until after they were dead. The idea first appears in Christian history in the Gospel according to Mark, composed no earlier than the 70s A.D., to reify the teachings of Paul with a suitable allegorical mythology. There is no possible way Piñero could not know this is what I argue if he’d actually read the book, so it is indisputably the case that he isn’t actually reading it. The more so as he then advances arguments refuted in that book, without any evident knowledge of that fact (he never responds to any of those refutations, even though there is an entire chapter on the point in JFOS). For example, Piñero falsely claims Paul said Jesus was “descended” from David in Romans 1. That’s not true. The word “descended” isn’t there. What Paul actually says is much more unusual and in demonstrable agreement with an entirely different sense, as I prove in JFOS, Ch. 8. Likewise Piñero seems to think that if he can prove Paul thought Jesus had been human, he has refuted my thesis. In fact my thesis plainly states that Paul thought Jesus had been human. This means Piñero doesn’t even know what my thesis is. So how can he have any relevant argument against it?

Piñero likewise evidently did not read p. 43 of JFOS, which states, “2 Corinthians 5:16 declar[es] that all Christians, particularly the distant Corinthians, once ‘knew Christ according to the flesh’, which is not about witnessing the ministry of Jesus but the present spiritual condition of the believer, who is the one ‘in the flesh’ meant, not Jesus. The Corinthians never met Jesus.” Piñero is blithely unaware that I thus already refuted his claim that this verse might refer to Jesus’s life on Earth (it never refers to any such thing). He does this again when he cites sayings of Jesus known to Paul as evidence for historicity. If he had actually read JFOS he’d know I already refuted that argument:

1 Thessalonians only mentions revelations of Jesus (such as Paul’s knowledge of the apocalypse in 1 Thessalonians 4:15–18). But such revelations did not come from a historical Jesus even had there been one. They therefore cannot be evidence of one. Likewise all other passages in other letters where Paul cites teachings of Jesus: Paul himself says those all came by revelation, or hidden messages planted in ancient scriptures (Romans 16:25–26). So we cannot establish from Paul that any of those teachings came to the apostles in any other way. Indeed, in Romans 10:14–16, Paul appears to say those teachings were preached to no one but apostles, that the only way any Jews can ever have heard Jesus is by apostles communicating what has been mystically revealed to them. Which rules out a real ministry.

Jesus from Outer Space (2020), p. 44

Instead of responding to what I argue in JFOS, Piñero ignorantly just repeats arguments I already refuted there. He evidently doesn’t even know I already refuted him. And as he presents no response to this refutation, much less one of any merit, he remains refuted—by the very book he falsely claims to have read. It’s worse even than that, because as I show, Paul explicitly says the teachings of Jesus (both preaching and gospel, not just the mystery as Piñero falsely claims) come “by revelation,” and even explicitly mentions talking to Jesus in his imagination (2 Corinthians 12), whereas Paul never says any of this information came from people who met and heard Jesus in life. Piñero is thus going against the text. I am simply listening to what Paul actually said. This illustrates how historicity is only defended with errors rather than facts. The case for historicity goes against what our earliest texts actually say. That’s my point. Piñero has no reply.

We see this again when Piñero bizarrely says that I argue, “1 Clement, 1 Peter, and the epistles of James and Jude are chronologically prior to the composition of the Gospel of Mark, and that is why they do not speak of the crucifixion of Jesus.” Um. Nowhere have I ever argued that. To the contrary, I explain (in OHJ, Ch. 11.3) Jude and James say and omit other things in a peculiar fashion, as do the others (Piñero shows no knowledge of what), while those others all do refer to the crucifixion of Jesus! How could Piñero not know this? For example, 1 Peter has an elaborate section on the crucifixion—all explicitly derived from scripture. My actual argument is that if this letter is authentic (I fully allow it might not be, and I assume Piñero thinks it’s not), then it is inexplicable why Peter has to cite scripture as his source of knowledge about the crucifixion. The fact that Peter can speak on all this in detail, yet never mention any personal knowledge pertaining to the matter—he never once says he ever met Jesus in life or saw or knew anyone who saw his crucifixion or that he had personal knowledge of it by public report or anything the like—is not all that probable on Piñero’s thesis. But it is entirely probable on mine. That may be why he needs this letter to be a forgery, though even as such it remains hard to explain. Just compare it to 2 Peter, which does indeed do what we expect (which by definition means that which is probable): it invents an eyewitness testimony to Jesus (OHJ, p. 351). The complete absence of this in 1 Peter is thus not expected—which means, it is not wholly probable. Whereas it is entirely 100% expected if the author of 1 Peter had no knowledge of a historical Jesus in our sense; if, instead, that author, like Paul and his Christians, only knew of all this from hidden messages in scripture. Of course, because Piñero never actually reads anything I write, he also doesn’t know I nevertheless accord this fact very little weight toward the conclusion (OHJ, p. 531; cf. p. 594). It is not, I argue, a strong proof of anything.

Piñero goes on to claim that if they were fiction the Gospels would have to be too “clumsy” a parable, in which it is completely clear he did not read any of the chapters in JFOS refuting that claim (e.g. Chs. 3 & 6), nor the detailed chapter, citing dozens of scholars concurring with me, in OHJ (Ch. 10) that documents extensively the elegance and ingenious purpose of that parable. Piñero simply doesn’t know anything, and is completely uninterested in knowing anything, and instead just wants to spew rhetoric already extensively refuted, and never even mention, much less answer, those refutations. This is a bankrupt methodology. And yet, evidently, it’s the only way historicity can be defended. Which itself disproves historicity. Sound conclusions need no such tactics to defend.

More Subtle Oversights

Piñero at one point lays out his own hypothesis, whereby Paul “invented” all the stuff about the apostles being receivers of revelation. The problem with his hypothesis is that this is in the creeds scholars agree precede Paul and that Paul confirms everyone knew to be the case. Just read 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 and Galatians 1-2 and Romans 16:25-26. Had it been the case that Paul was lying about all this, and was in fact trying to pose his revelations as superseding actual in-person witnessing and discipleship, and even forging fake creeds claiming the apostles also received the same revelations, he could not have done such things without having to confront and address all the arguments against him this would produce. Yet Paul is never confronted with these arguments. His audience always simply agrees with him on this point—and he knows they will. Indeed, in Galatians 1, Paul is desperately responding to the argument of fellow Christians that he scandalously learned the gospel by oral transmission rather than by revelation. His entire argument in response to this accusation entails all Christians agreed revelation is the only way the gospel could ever have been legitimately learned—which entails this is exactly what all the other apostles were claiming. There are many respects in which this is quite clear from the Epistles of Paul (see my complete survey in OHJ, Ch. 11; cf. Ch. 4, Elements 15 and 16). So Piñero’s thesis is essentially impossible. Had it been the case, this would have to be all over the Epistles of Paul, as it would be the number one argument against his legitimacy he would everywhere confront. But we can plainly see, over a twenty year career, he never was faced with it.

At another point Piñero foolishly claims that the Gospels must tell the truth about women discovering the empty tomb because such a “tradition is unlikely to be invented for the simple reason that women as witnesses had practically no validity in both the Jewish and the Greco-Roman world.” He evidently does not know this is false in literally every single respect (see N.T. Wright Demonstrates the Bankruptcy of Christian Apologetics in Under Nine Minutes). Piñero thus has not been doing his homework, and he does not know what he is talking about. Here we have him concluding for historicity on a basis of a falsehood and a fallacy (women were often trusted as witnesses in antiquity; the Gospels never cite them as witnesses anyway; and women were more obviously placed in the story for symbolical and allegorical reasons to illustrate the gospel, not as evidence the story was true), thus demonstrating his belief in historicity is unfounded, and is based largely on the gullible and dubious rhetoric of Christian fundamentalists rather than genuine scholarship. Which is precisely what I argue is a major problem with defenses of historicity today. (If Piñero wants the full breakdown on why this claim about ancient women is both false and fallacious, he can consult Ch. 11 in Not the Impossible Faith.)

Similarly, Piñero on one occasion argues that Jesus must have been dishonorably buried, as if he was arguing against something I’d said. In fact, I agree with him: if Jesus existed, he must have been dishonorably interred; indeed, specifically in the graveyard reserved by the Sanhedrin for the condemned (see my chapter on the burial of Jesus in The Empty Tomb). There is no evidence in Paul, however, of any such thing occurring. When Paul says we learn “from scripture” that Jesus was buried, we are given no further information. But even on my thesis we can assume that Paul would have considered it a dishonorable burial—as any burial by demons in their sinister sky-gardens would be. So again Piñero is presenting no argument against anything I’ve said. Piñero demonstrates this on another occasion when he tries arguing that stories in the Gospels, such as depicting the baptism, must be historical: he seems completely unaware of the fact that I already refuted this way of arguing in JFOS. He has no reply at all to my entire chapter on this there. Instead, he seems to think I argued that these stories were invented by Peter and were a part of the gospel preached by Paul, thus demonstrating Piñero has no actual idea what my argument is in JFOS. Which means he didn’t actually read it. He does this over and over again. He claims “no Jews” would think such things; that we’d surely have texts now arguing Jesus didn’t exist; that new material in Gospels after Mark must have come from reliable sources; and so on: all refuted in my books; yet he has no response to any of my refutations—he doesn’t even know they exist. He even claims I assert that Mark conspired with Peter to invent a historical Jesus; I never argue any such thing, but in fact explicitly argue the opposite, that Mark is reifying the teachings of Paul, not Peter, and not in collaboration with Paul; Paul was long dead by then. So Piñero is even inventing things I didn’t say, and arguing against his own fiction.

This is most ironic as Piñero tries to scold me by insisting we “must rely on all the data, not a portion of it.” In actual fact I am the one who is taking into account all the data: I cover every single significant passage and argument relating to historicity in On the Historicity of Jesus; which even has a subject and scripture index you can check by! Whereas by not reading and thus not taking into account almost all the data I present for my case, Piñero is the one violating his own rule, trying to argue to his conclusion with a tiny selection of cherry-picked data, and ignoring all the rest. This is indeed how we know historicity cannot be honestly defended anymore.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it so far. There are some claims Piñero makes that I have no idea what he could be referring to. For example, he asserts that “there is also another tradition—mainly among the Judeo-Christians—that made James the recipient of the first appearance of the risen Jesus, not Peter.” He gives no evidence of this. He cites no sources. I am unaware of any source from the first three centuries of Christianity that makes any such claim. Other times Piñero makes irrelevant or even supporting remarks. But when he does try to argue against something I’ve argued, he always fails to correctly read what my argument even is, and in consequence never responds to any of my actual arguments. This renders his criticisms useless. Maybe some day he will actually read what I wrote. Until then, he evidently is uninterested in even knowing what that is. So his opinion on it has no value.