An interesting exchange just occurred at MerionWest. Peter Clarke wrote a decent essay on why it is becoming more acceptable to doubt the historicity of Jesus than scholars tend to let on, which Paul Krause answered with “In Reply to ‘Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream’.” Unfortunately, Krause didn’t do any research on the question, but only read Clarke’s essay and maybe skimmed one or two casual video conversations about it, rather than reading the peer reviewed literature on the point (not good behavior for a scholar). The result is predictable scholarly mistakes. But Krause did catch me in one myself that I will correct here, as well as his.
I’ll start with mine. In a video conversation recently I was asked to think of examples of heroes who came from obscure places, and I gave the incorrect example of Romulus hailing from Alba Longa. Krause is right. Though Alba Longa was an obscure and trivial town when the Romulus myth originated, it was in legend an important origin of past kings long before. This makes it actually more comparable to Bethlehem for Jesus, which was also an obscure and unimportant town when the Gospels were written, but had been in legend an important origin of past kings. So this was a bad example that didn’t address what I was asked to produce. This doesn’t appear anywhere in my peer reviewed scholarship on mythicism, however. It was just a casual mistake that came up in an open conversation. A better example would have been Dionysus being born in the obscure town of Ikaria, or Theseus, mythical founder of Athens, being born in the (then) obscure city-state of Troezen (not even in Attica), or Osiris’s birth in the otherwise (at the time) obscure town of Rosetau, instead of the nearby prestigious cities of Memphis or Abydos. Prestige of city wasn’t the criterion for assigning heroes hometowns. As I noted in that same conversation, Jesus was only assigned to Nazareth because scripture said he should be.
Beyond that, everything Krause says is false. Even in his first paragraph, his assertion that “no one in any historical-critical religious studies department reads” mythicist arguments, a well-poisoning fallacy (“if no expert takes this seriously, neither should you,” move along, nothing to see here)—except, to this day some twenty experts do take this seriously (probably more; those are just the ones documented), and most definitely do read things written on this. Krause might do well to listen to them. Even the half or so who still conclude Jesus existed agree it is not implausible to doubt it, and that any peer reviewed cases for doing so are worth taking seriously. Of which there are now at least two, my publication with Sheffield-Phoenix in 2014, On the Historicity of Jesus, and Raphael Lataster’s publication with Brill in 2019, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. By contrast, there has yet to be any dedicated peer reviewed monograph defending the historicity of Jesus for almost a hundred years now. That’s not even one, much less the “thousands” Krause goes on to falsely claim (so, of course, he names none). So far, all we get are books presuming historicity and arguing over different models of it, with at best a few paragraphs on the question of historicity itself; or mere review articles that ignore the actual case now made against it (I maintain a catalogue). This does not make Krause’s position look particularly good. It seems more an ostrich position than one well-founded. Again, notice that well-poisoning fallacy: it is an excuse not to examine the case; not an actual response to that case. That this typifies the behavior of academia is not to its credit. Nor to the credit of its case.
Krause exemplifies this head-in-sand approach throughout his article, where not even once does he ever reference the content of either Carrier 2014 or Lataster 2019. He simply avoided it. Yet he then claims to be able to produce a response to it. This is not the kind of scholarship whose opinion anyone should trust. Krause does even worse than that, though, as he litters his article with emotional fallacies instead, dishonest manipulation from top to bottom. For example, in his very first paragraph he includes not just one, but two well-poisoning fallacies, falsely accusing any doubting the historicity of Jesus of having an “anti-Semitic origin” by “seeking to divorce Jesus from his Jewish context.” Uhem. If he had read either of the peer reviewed cases against historicity now in print, he’d find neither of them “divorce Jesus from his Jewish context” but extensively situate him in that context. So Krause both lies (claiming to know a thing about our work that is in fact false) and deploys those lies into outrageous ad hominem (calling us anti-Semites).
His second paragraph continues these dishonest and disgraceful tactics, disparaging me personally (and likewise Robert Price, and our popularizer David Fitzgerald) without giving a single example of anything he claims about me (or them). Never once does he address any argument in my peer reviewed book on this subject, or even cite any challenge to it (or even bring up anything they’ve argued, either). Which he could have done, yet that would then lay upon him the responsibility of honestly evaluating whether it was valid—which would require pulling his head out of the sand and actually reading my book. Which he is clearly terrified of doing. Why?
His third paragraph then makes false claims about the nature and evidence of archetypal structure shared across countless pagan myths that are also shared across the myths composed of Jesus. As also, of course, are archetypal structures borrowed from Jewish myths (especially of Moses and Elijah, primary models of emulation in Gospel tales about Jesus, a fact on which all mainstream scholars agree); the Gospel Jesus, after all, being an amalgam of both, as all studies of syncretism show is the normal process by which new religions are formed, particularly within imperial power systems (see OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 29, and Ch. 4, Element 11). In other words, Krause simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He isn’t responding to the evidence and argument we’ve presented. He’s just gainsaying it without even knowing what it is.
His fourth paragraph then pauses to repeat the false ad hominem and well-poisoning fallacies that doubting the historicity of Jesus is anti-Semitic, based now on the genetic fallacy, that it must be if that’s how the idea started over a hundred years ago. It’s not. But never mind that. It doesn’t matter if some anti-Semite somewhere has pushed an anti-Semitic version of mythicism (whether now or in the long gone annals of history), as that has nothing whatever to do with the version that has actually passed peer review by respectable biblical studies publishers today. This is an excuse not to examine that. Not an argument that it is incorrect. (Need I list all the anti-Semitic defenses of historicity here?) Krause is arguing for going full apocryphal ostrich on this. This is a behavior of fear, not reason.
In his fifth paragraph Krause deploys the rather lame fallacy that Jesus had to be real because his teachings were special. They aren’t. (No seriously, they really aren’t.) But never mind that all savior cults predating Christianity also had ethical teachings at their core (OHJ, p. 100, n. 79). Even were that not true, it is still not logically valid to argue that Jesus had to be real because his teachings were impressive. Any human being (indeed, any whole community) can have originated those teachings, and then placed them in the voice of a beloved character. Just as happened with Moses. No mainstream scholar today believes Moses existed. And none would be such a fool as to argue “Moses had to have existed, because look at how special the 613 commandments are that he brought down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai!” This can’t be described any more honestly than, quite simply, stupid. Why deploy such a stupid argument? (Other than that you’re a Christian apologist, and not even attempting to do any real scholarship here?)
Krause’s sixth paragraph circles back to his prior point and goes on about the differences between Osiris and Jesus myth, and though he gets some facts wrong (for example, in the form of the cult Christians would have been emulating— consciously or not—Osiris ascends to heaven after his resurrection, he does not descend to live in the underworld: OHJ, pp. 118 & 186), nothing he says in this paragraph is even relevant to any peer reviewed case for Christian syncretism. To see what I mean, just take an example accepted across all mainstream scholarship: the Nativity narrative of Matthew is an emulation of nativity myths of Moses (not only in the OT, but it draws on Jewish apocrypha as well). You’d look like a stone cold idiot if you stood up at an SBL conference and tried to argue that that can’t be because “look at all the differences!” Why, Herod isn’t even a Pharaoh! And there’s no basket of reeds! Um. No. That’s not how even literary emulation works, much less religious syncretism.
This shows us that Krause really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He knows nothing of the relevant literary studies (or any of the literature on mimesis and literary dependence), nor anything of the relevant religious studies (or any of the literature on syncretism or the study of new religions). And yet he would, if he would just actually read the book he is supposed to be responding to. Trust me. I cover all this in OHJ. In more than adequate detail. With a decent and up-to-date bibliography (as of 2014; even more excellent work has published since). Because I don’t just make shit up from the armchair like Krause does. I actually do scholarship. Krause could start doing that too. The question is why he won’t.
In paragraph seven, Krause argues that Jesus, unlike all other savior and culture heroes, “is a figure situated in history.” Um. Dude. Literally every single ancient savior and culture hero was situated in history (see the works cited in OHJ across Ch. 5, especially Elements 31 and 45-48). He claims I “ignore actual academic scholarship.” The bibliography of peer reviewed scholarship I cite and rely on in OHJ extends to over fifty pages. Krause cites almost nothing, and not even anything published since 1985. And none of it relevant to any argument in OHJ. Who, then, is “ignoring actual academic scholarship”? Like, you know, the latest peer reviewed scholarship on this subject? Or the hundreds of studies since 1985 that I rely on in my bibliography?
If Krause had caught up on mainstream scholarship he would know his claim that “the gospels are not ‘mythological’ in nature but biographical” has been thoroughly refuted and is no longer the consensus. Quite the contrary, that’s now recognized to be a false dichotomy, and the mainstream view now is that the Gospels are indeed mythographies. And that shift in opinion across the field happened well before I published. I summarize all the latest findings and conclusions regarding that, with endless examples, in OHJ, Ch. 10. Krause might want to stop sticking his head in the sand and go read that before falsely claiming it doesn’t exist. Or making any other false claims about the state of mainstream scholarship today. “Mark’s source material is widely accepted as having come from many witnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry.” False. “[T]he Q-source … is hardly ‘a contested source’.” False. “[T]he gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke are widely accepted as having come from independent witness sources.” Also false—no one “witnessed” the Nativity, for example, so even if Matthew and Luke used any “sources” for that, it is widely agreed they were not “witness” sources. Krause even goes on to gullibly believe the authors of John when they claim “many other stories … exist from the many who knew Jesus of Nazareth.” Pro tip: hardly any mainstream scholar today believes even “John’s” Unnamed Beloved really existed, much less that the authors of John really had access to any accounts from anyone “who knew Jesus of Nazareth” (see my discussion in OHJ, Ch. 10.7). Krause is here aping Christian apologetics, not scholarship; likewise in his eighth paragraph, where he continues the same completely inaccurate claims about modern scholarly opinion.
Krause then closes his article with a few paragraphs devoid of any relevant content on this issue, so I can conclude with what I’ve already illustrated. Historicists need to stop acting like this guy. They are only making their position look ridiculous. Which reminds the rest of us that, evidently, real Jesus mythicism must have a formidable case. Why else would these fellows so ardently avoid ever finding out what it really is? Why would they instead try to dissuade you from finding out either, with litanies of well-poisoning and ad hominem and lies? Really. Think about it.
I hadn’t thought about but yes, there is no scholarly asserting the historical case. Proponents seem to just assert this is the case.
“Jesus was only assigned to Nazareth because scripture said he should be.” It really makes me chuckle when people say that one of the facts we can know about Jesus, is that he was born in Nazareth. They forget about the part where it was just another one of Matthew’s “prophecy fulfilments”.
Your first link goes to the Clarke essay, not the response.
Thanks. Fixed.
“Beyond that, everything Krause says is false.”
Wait… a Christian LIED??? Color me surprised!
Antisemitic, eh? Well, if he was crucified by demons somewhere in the heavens, then the Jews can’t well be blamed, and that would remove the oldest antisemitic charge around.
Honestly? I suspect that actually may be a big part of why historicity has survived. Needing to blame Jews in specific and humanity in general for rejecting Jesus is just too useful.
“some twenty experts do take this seriously”
looks like the link you have for this is going to the wrong place (I’m guessing you wanted the URL fragment to be “#22”, not “#20”, i.e., https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/1794#22)
Yes. Thank you! Fixed.
Richard, like you, I am fascinated by the historicity arguments that are a frequent topic of debate with the like of Bart Erman and David Litwa on one side, you and Robert Price on the other and the rest of them [Derek-Mythvision, Neal–Gnostic Informant, Jacob-History Valley, etc.] swimming around somewhere in the middle.
What particularly interests me is not whether there was a guy or not. As Robert Price points out, even if there was, he’s not the Jesus of the gospels and wouldn’t recognise himself to the extent that his existence is a moot point. We all agree whatever the case he wasn’t or didn’t become God and would have been little more than a decidedly average man.
What does interest me is how different “academics” use and understand information to arrive at conclusions or rather how some readily believe things without sufficient evidence.
Before looking at the evidence it is worth spending a moment considering what evidence is and how one should apply it to questions. There is no universal, cross-discipline consensus on this. There is no systematic and codified general rule that all must follow. This is problematic because different individuals and groups seem to be applying different rules in arriving at their own position and, then, debate with each other often at cross-purposes without having first agreed the rules of engagement.
The most accessible and easily described system of evidence and proof [argument establishing a fact or the truth of a statement] in common use is the various state “legal systems”.
The Anglo-American tradition is that a person who asserts a particular fact or circumstance must prove that to be true by leading evidence. In civil law [which decides disputes between persons] the burden of proof rests with the person offering up the evidence, “he who asserts must prove”, and the standard of proof is the “balance of probabilities”.
Whilst the law does not generally like to deal in terms of % probabilities of things, the “balance of probabilities” concept can be best described as it being 51% or more likely that something is true rather than not true. This is not a very high bar by any standard. In fact, it is as low a bar as you could get.
The law does not say that something is 30% true. It is a binary system. A particular fact or statement is either true or false, yes or no, and returns a value of 1 or 0. Facts do not start off from an equal footing of being both true and false [50%/50%]. The default position is that any fact or statement is false unless sufficient evidence is led to reach the required “balance of probabilities” bar and prove otherwise.
This evidence does not then go into a giant soup-pot or witch’s cauldron, hubble, bubble, boil and trouble, and then get tasted to see if it’s true or false. The rule applies separately to each and every piece of evidence that is produced. Each is either true or false. You cannot take 3 pieces of evidence that are 20% probable and add them together to get 60%. Each is considered false, returns a value of 0 and, therefore, they all add up to nothing.
Now, this legal standard is not imposed on people generally in their daily lives but if you want to settle a dispute between two persons or groups using the facilities that society has provided for this purpose [the courts], then, it becomes the required standard. It is the lowest standard that you could reasonably be required to meet, with medical and scientific reasoning necessarily requiring much higher standards of proof. It is therefore worth looking at the historicity arguments in this framework to see if it can meet the legal test.
So how, then, do we apply this system of analysis to the historicity debate and what evidence do we have?
Interestingly, the most vociferous proponents of historicity cite precious little evidence. Those such as Bart Erman and David Litwa when challenged on this issue, as they have been on various platforms [Mythvision, Gnostic Informant, History Valley etc.], provide somewhat vague responses and babble about multiple attestation and scholarly consensus and resort to attacking the intellect and scholarly ability of those confounded “MYTHICISTS”. Their obvious anger that anyone would dare question their belief is somewhat telling and perhaps betrays a deep seated self-doubt in their minds.
Contrast that with your and Robert Price’s calm positions based on reasoning and a challenge to what evidence there might otherwise be. While I don’t agree with your 30% probability conclusion [for the reasons set out above, I would argue that 30% equals NOT TRUE], one cannot doubt the integrity of your own scholarly approach and for the likes of Bart and David Litwa to put all Mythicists in the same box and dismiss the arguments without even having regard to the actual points being made is unimpressive.
So what evidence could be led in favour of historicity. You go through this in detail in your peer reviewed works and Robert Price is similarly articulate in his position which, although not entirely aligned with you, nonetheless arrives at the same conclusion.
There are the Christian writings; the gospels and the epistles. These are obviously full of fantastic ideas and the argument goes that if you strip out all the miraculous and improbable, then, what’s left must be true or, at least, based on truth. This is a non-sequitur. The idea that you can mine a real Jesus out of the gospels [as Denis MacDonald suggests] is readily falsifiable. If you walk into any bookstore the fictional section is enormous and the history section is at the back of the basement. The vast majority of writings throughout history have been stories produced from the imagination of the authors. JK Rowling did not base her works on a real boy called Harry and you cannot “mine” one from her novels.
Boys exist but Harry Potter did not.
Bart Erman argues something similar [see his debate with Robert Price etc.,] in regard to the crucifixion. He argues that the Romans crucified people so the story about Jesus being crucified must be true. This is a logical fallacy and a non-sequitur. Boys go to school and Harry Potter goes to school, so Harry Potter must be a real boy. No!
There is no place in scholarly debate for bad logic. It serves no purpose other than to argue the indefensible. An elephant has four legs and a table has four legs but an elephant is not a table!
Derek-Mythvision’s recent assertion that those arguing Mark is entirely fictional are essentially pedalling a conspiracy theory assumes that the work can be held out to be a record of fact unless otherwise proven which I don’t accept as an underlying presumption. If Mark is a work of fiction, and there is no good reason to suppose it is not, then, accepting Marcon priority, the other gospels are too and do not attest to each other but are merely copies of that one fiction. The canon does not and cannot internally corroborate, so there is no multiple attestation there.
As an aside, I do think that the “Mythicist” tag is somewhat unfortunate as it suggests crankery, however, the idea that something is just a story, a work of fiction, is quite normal and reasonable and not some far out conspiracy theory.
I have heard Neal-Gnostic Informant say that he is convinced of historicity by the Hitchens’ argument about Nazareth. Whilst Hitchens was a brilliant mind, he failed to do his research here and as you pointed out in a recent Gnostic Informant podcast, the gospel writers themselves tell us why Nazareth – it’s to fulfil scripture, so nothing surprising there. Hopefully, Neal is now firmly back in the Mythicist camp!
What about the epistles and the so-called 7 authentic letters of Paul? Was there even a Paul? He is not independently attested to [not by Josephus nor Pliny nor Tacitus]. Is the canonical Paul a fictional character loosely based on the Josephine Saul or is he a re-imagining of Simon Magus as Robert Price argues. The letters are probably little more than a second century literary device setting out some group’s position on various issues and maybe he was even Marcion himself who was battling with internal doctrinal disputes amongst his followers and with other groups of competing Christians. The use of letters as a way of telling a story is commonplace and, in fact, there is currently a TV series in the UK called “Ladies of Letters” which does exactly that by narrating correspondences between two elderly ladies to tell a story to comic effect.
Much is argued about what the letters do or do not say but little time is spent questioning their authenticity. The mere fact of their preservation is somewhat surprising. How did a collection of letters by a near eastern, first century preacher get preserved? Did he Xerox them for safekeeping? Did the various unnamed recipients [not individuals but churches} spread around the Hellenist world keep them secure for years before handing them over to church authorities for publishing? Why are there no copies of the responses? All questions that cannot be answered and all of which casts doubt on their origin.
As Robert points out, the epistles are internally inconsistent and fragmented and are more likely than not different documents stitched together and probably not the work of one man. They will in all probability have been multiply interpolated over the years as such documents invariably are. The fact that they sit within the Marcion canon suggests that in their original form these documents supported a Gnostic / Mythicist position.
Even if you could get past the authenticity and interpolation positions [interpolation is not a conspiracy theory – as a matter of course such documents will have been massively altered as the Christian creed developed; and as Eusebius blatantly admits to doing] you’ve then got to ask does any of what’s there definitively describe a real man? Born of a woman, under the law, brother of the Lord, executed by the archons of this age, etc. this is all tenuous and vague with the possibility of double meanings. Not really the stuff you want to base your reputation on.
Dragons in Genesis provides some solid arguments as to why Paul doesn’t attest to a historical person. His #55 podcast sets out a number of issues with Paul’s writings including the absence of any reference to the man himself, his life, his ministry and teachings and the people that would have known him. Not even Peter and James are said to have known him. To the contrary Peter is said to be an apostle – so only received his knowledge by revelation as Paul himself had done. There is no mention either of Mary or Joseph or Pilate [the man who killed him]. This is weirdly inexplicable. If the letters had made such a reference the early Christians would surely have preserved those parts.
Paul makes it clear that he only has knowledge of Christ through revelation. He isn’t an eye-witness to Jesus’ existence and he doesn’t even provide hearsay evidence of him either.
He also makes it clear that the higher calling is based on blind faith not evidence. He doesn’t want you to ask those questions.
What’s left then. Josephus and the Testimonium Flavium and James passages? You are good on this and so was Ken Olson on the recent Mythvision podcast which was a well-informed deep dive into these issues. As you point out, even if these were authentic passages [which the evidence ways heavily against] these could be little more than the author’s re-telling of what he had heard said. So not an independent witness testimony but inadmissible hearsay.
What to me is the killer blow to the TF is that Origen doesn’t know about it meaning it can’t be original and authentic. That closes that argument. The James passage is 4 words. Even if authentic, I don’t see how you can base a positive position on this alone. It barely merits raising your head off the pillow never mind getting you out of bed and over the 51% hurdle.
I’m taking it for granted here that we all agree that other authors such as Tacitus are merely repeating what is otherwise written elsewhere. The Plinys’ silence is remarkable.
So having considered all the evidence before my court and sat in judgement what do I proclaim. If the opposing sides had presented their expert witnesses to me; on the one side the rambling and angry Bart Erman and David Litwa and on the other the calm and considered analysis provided by your good self and Robert Price, I would have little trouble declaring that I was persuaded by and find in favour of the latter. The case for the historical Jesus is dismissed as not proven.
Judge DEREK
That’s essentially the topic of my prequel book, Proving History (which cites others who have written books on this same question before; my favorite being Historians’ Fallacies by Fischer).
I covered this in Proving History of course (and its conclusions I summarize in On the Historicity of Jesus). TL;DR, “evidence” is any established fact whose existence is more likely on one theory or explanation of its existence than on any other theory or explanation in contention. And it is thereby “evidence for” that one theory of explanation; and is strong or weak evidence in proportion to how much more likely that evidence is on that one theory or explanation than any other in contention.
This definition is necessarily true. That evidence is a fact that increases the probability of a conclusion it is evidence for is tautologically what anyone ever means by the word; and the only logically demonstrable way to get evidence to have that effect is via the mechanism I just described. Hence it is not possible to talk about evidence and expect or intend it to mean anything other than this. Because any other definition of evidence would result in evidence never validly increasing the probability of anything; and at that point, you really aren’t talking about “evidence” anymore.
But yes, many historians only have a vague intuitive grasp of these concepts; they rarely study formal logic or probability theory, or even epistemology, so as to ground or check their intuitions.
Which amounts to people violating logic, and people conforming to logic. So all you have to do is ascertain and show which it is (example, example, example).
This is not very applicable in history, or any other science. Which is why no one uses it in those fields.
Thus the legal system’s standards don’t track any knowledge-prioritizing epistemology; they serve only in the one capacity they were engineered for, to protect the innocent by erring heavily in one direction rather than the other, whereas history needs to honestly simply confront what is likely, not “reject everything that can be doubted.”
Historicists have already prima facie met that burden. Mythicists now must meet the burden of proving they have been in error. That was the purpose of the peer reviewed cases now published, mine and Lataster’s. See Misunderstanding the Burden of Proof.
This is actually not the most typical standard of evidence at law. Only very few things, and those only in civil cases, can be admitted on so low a standard, or ruled on so low a standard. There are many other standards, which set higher bars, and they apply depending on what stage of a case you are talking about, what court you are in, and so on. This is why legal systems aren’t very applicable to history as a science. They set standards to achieve certain practical and civil rights objectives, not merely epistemic objectives. This is also why courts often avoid probability reasoning, and even outright reject it at many stages (e.g. as you note jury and court decisions must always be binary), which makes for no comparable parallel to doing history. History, like all systems that prioritize knowledge, is spectral, not binary. It aims at degrees of belief.
Also, when we deal with describing actual reality, not decisions at law, there are indeed valid ways to sum probabilities of evidence. I cover this in Proving History. That courts of law avoid doing this is yet one more reason their standards are not applicable to history as a science.
Correct. And this is where you have hit upon what I have been documenting for years: historicists fail at basic logic often enough to call out the entire field as in dire need of reform on the point.
You have the causal sequence backwards. The negative connotation was assigned afterwards, not before. This is how rhetoric works. Thus the same would have happened no matter what you called it: whatever word you choose will then get denigrated as signaling crankery, and then that will be the emotional baggage of that word. This cannot be avoided. Because it will always happen to any word describing anything “the mainstream” is scared of or despise. The only valid response is to oppose that rhetoric, not the naming of a thing.
Probably. See The Historicity of Paul the Apostle and How Do We Know the Apostle Paul Wrote His Epistles in the 50s A.D.?
Not really. Letter collections are a well known genre of the era and we have many examples.
What is surprising (though not so much once we admit the context) is that the letters we have are demonstrably pastiches of smaller letters, with sections left out. That is abnormal. They are thus a deliberately edited collection, which appears first to be the product of Marcion (contrary to many attempts to claim otherwise, there is no evidence their text was altered in any substantive way when they were reissued in the anti-Marcionite edition a couple decades later; e.g. see Tertullian’s attempts to compare them). This has consequences to how we use and understand the letters, but it does not lead to the black-and-white result of rejecting them in whole. That is invalid binary thinking that has no place in any field of history.
The evidentially established rate of interpolation is between 1 in 200 verses and 1 in 1000 verses (see my discussion of this point in my chapter on Tacitus in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). So, rarely can you suspect interpolation. Therefore you need evidence for it. You cannot presume it. Any presumption of it reduces the probability of any theory requiring that presumption literally hundreds of times. So, obviously we can’t operate that way.
Marcion wasn’t a Mythicist. And Gnosticism didn’t exist.
Correct. The absence of such things for Jesus in Paul must effect some diminishment of the probability Jesus existed—in fact, precisely as much as the letters having contained those things would have increased that probability. And making excuses for all that silence, even when not refuted by the facts (as many such excuses are), still do not actually change this consequence mathematically. I discuss this in Chs. 11 and 12 of OHJ.
Likewise what you say about the TF: historicists start with assertions about it that are not logical (they do not follow from any premises; or follow only from premises that are demonstrably, factually false). Thus, to address the “impasse” about how to interpret the “evidence” one must first assess who is arriving at conclusions from the data without fallacy or falsehood. The fact that it appears, almost always, to be the historicists who are doing that, is enough to dismiss them as unreliable in this matter (see On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus and How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed (or Anything Else in the World)).
You may want to check the first link in this article. I think it should be the following:
https://merionwest.com/2022/01/18/in-reply-to-jesus-mythicism-is-about-to-go-mainstream/
You may also want to include the original article:
https://merionwest.com/2022/01/14/jesus-mythicism-is-about-to-go-mainstream/
Thanks. I thought I’d done that, but the code didn’t take at some stage of drafting. Fixed.
“Need I list all the anti-Semitic defenses of historicity here?”
Presumably you’re referring to actual defenses of historicity, not generic antisemitic screeds that merely assume it.
What would you consider a couple of the most egregious examples?
Any anti-semitic position that leans on or requires Jesus to have existed would count for my point, since that’s the same genetic fallacy being claimed in the converse (that anti-semitism motivates the position).
Positive Christianity (the Nazi sect) depended on Jesus being historically an Aryan (defending the polemic that Mary had sex with a Roman legionnaire as true, defending his denunciation of the Jews and their greed etc. as actually having happened, etc.).
But there are many more examples surveyed by James Crossley in articles and books: Jesus Beyond Nationalism; Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism; Jesus in an Age of Terror. All have substantial discussion of this point.
The field of historical Jesus studies began heavily anti-semitic (eliding, downplaying, or denying the Jewishness of Jesus and up-playing his anti-Jewish behaviors and remarks), yet has retained some elements of that trend even after it was overtly spurned (as Crossley documents, the move to up-play the Jewishness of Jesus sometimes still preserves anti-semitic undertones as well).
Note that, trivial cases aside (a few pages in a book or review), there have been no directed defenses of historicity itself in a century (Shirley Jackson Case produced the last ever monograph on the subject). There have only been defenses of particular historical Jesus models, in which doubt of any historicity has been dismissed or laughed off with minimal argument. Including by the anti-semitic historicists and in the quasi-anti-semitic argumentation (as Crossley has documented). And the more so the further back in time you go. For every Drews, there is a Bernhouf.