Chris Hansen has claimed for years now to be composing a book for peer review that debunks my peer-reviewed monograph On the Historicity of Jesus. I have been waiting for that. But since it seems to not be forthcoming anytime soon, I may as well start addressing their side-work. Instead of reviewing my peer-reviewed book on this subject, for example, Hansen published an academic review of my colloquial summary, Jesus from Outer Space, in the McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry (volume 22, representing submission years 2020-2021). This is a strange thing for an academic to do. But it’s what they did. So we may as well answer.

The Problem with Hansen

Hansen’s gross incompetence (and here I’ll charitably allow it might be that and not gross lying) has already been on display elsewhere. You can see several of my own examples in Tim O’Neill & the Biblical History Skeptics on Mythicism; but as a different example, Vridar has documented Hansen pretending to be someone else defending, drum roll please … Chris Hansen—and with slander, lies and childish remarks to boot, illustrating what sort of person we are dealing with here. They are, demonstrably, not beneath deception. Many others have remarked on this behavior. I won’t link them all in here, but as an example, Hansen’s childish and incompetent discourse has gotten them banned from academic subreddits—and if you know how hard it is for garbage to get banned on reddit (reddit is pretty much a bottomless sesspit), you’ll know what an accomplishment this is. So when Hansen replied to my own critique by literally ignoring all the evidence I presented refuting them and instead just repeated the same errors I demonstrated they made, without blush, what are we to conclude from this? Is Hansen insane—or a liar? It’s hard to tell; but neither evokes confidence. Like a Russian counter-intelligence operative, Hansen even likes to repeat this accusation against every one of their critics (we are all liars who can’t read), but when you look for their evidence of this, you notice, they never have any; but when you look for ours, you notice we have quite a lot. Make your judgment.

I preface with this so you understand why it is hard for me—and many other academics I know—to take Hansen seriously. But I’m going to try really hard to be charitable and allow the possibility that their academic journal review of my book is just a litany of incompetent mistakes, and not a deliberate campaign of lies.

A Study in Tactics

Still, to illustrate Hansen’s dishonest “style,” you might call it, I’ll offer one example that really is just pointless pap—it has no relevance to my case for historicity, which renders this example even more telling of Hansen’s character; because there was no actual academic reason to have included this. Yet for no legitimate reason, they do it anyway, like a lunatic who can’t help themselves, bespeaking an emotional irrationality—and either a wanton dishonesty, or a fully disqualifying incompetence in reading comprehension. The example I’m speaking of is this:

Hansen leads their review with a poisoning-the-well fallacy, falsely telling their readers that in my introduction to JFOS I said “conservative Christian scholars are ‘fanatics’.” Here is the actual statement from my book that they are referring to:

Of course, all mainstream experts agree the Gospel Jesus is mythical. Only fanatics and fundamentalists think otherwise. But the mainstream consensus still holds that there must have been some real man buried underneath all that legend and mythology.

Notice the difference between what Hansen claimed, and what I actually said. I said fanatics and fundamentalists. Not just “fanatics.” Also notice what Hansen leaves out: that I said this only of people who believe the Gospels are literally true, and contain no mythology about Jesus. Which does not describe any mainstream scholars, but also doesn’t describe all conservative Christians either, many of whom, especially scholars (like, say, Raymond Brown), have long been on board with what I actually said: that the Gospel Jesus is (or at least credibly might be) a mythical construct. Hansen has deceived their audience into thinking I said something I didn’t. Or are their readings skills so far below second grade that they don’t know what the word “and” means? Take your pick.

Hansen also has deceived their audience into thinking they said something they didn’t. Or is Hansen so incompetent they forgot that they actually agree with me? Because to avoid poisoning their own well, Hansen carefully avoids providing any information about my actual statement that would out the fact that Hansen just admitted they are a literalist and an inerrantist—a fundamentalist Christian; not some objective mainstream scholar. Unless, of course, they aren’t, and Hansen actually agrees with me (and all mainstream scholars in the world) that the Gospel depictions of Jesus are substantially mythical, and that the only plausible historical Jesus has to be reconstructed by scholars, it can’t simply be found in the Gospels. But if Hansen agrees with what I actually said, why do they present it as something they disagree with? Either way you cut it, this looks like lying.

That this is a typical tactic of Christian apologists—to fallaciously pretend that mainstream scholars endorsing historicity warrants the conclusion that they endorse the Gospels as literally and inerrant accounts of Jesus, which is false—is why this is so telling (see, for example, my recent analysis of this fallacy in the work of Justin Brierley). Hansen is either revealing here that they are a Christian fundamentalist, and thus not an objective or empirical scholar, or they are deceitfully pretending to be a fundamentalist, by covertly denouncing my actually innocuous point that mainstream scholars reject fundamentalist accounts of the Gospels. Or does Hansen hope no one reads JFOS and thus doesn’t notice I did not say what Hansen claims about conservative Christian scholars but something in fact Hansen agrees with? That would make them worse than a liar; it would make them an outright grifter, running a manipulative con on their readers.

The Summary

In a real academic book review (as opposed to popular reviews, such as in blogs and magazines), there should never be anything inaccurate or argumentative in its initial summary of the book being reviewed. That section should be a neutral and accurate description of the contents of the book (and good peer reviewers would have insisted on this; which calls into question the peer-review quality of this journal). Critique is supposed to follow the summary. This is similar to Dennett’s principle of debate, that one should always start with a restatement of your opponent’s position so accurate even they would agree with it. So you know you are reading only disingenuous and emotional apologetics, and not rational, honest scholarship, when you see an inaccurate and polemical summary of the book substituted instead. And that’s just what we get here.

Indeed, the next deception—or incompetent failure at reading comprehension—starts at the very first moment Hansen says anything actually relevant about the case I make for doubting historicity in JFOS, that “Carrier states that Philo of Alexandria had a celestial Jesus as his Logos” (a point Hansen later even belabors, so this wasn’t a mere typo). Actually, I conspiciously don’t say that in JFOS. Here is what I actually say there (emphasis now added):

The evidence is amply secure that the original story the Christians taught was that Jesus was God’s supreme archangel, eternal high priest of God’s celestial temple, his firstborn creation and adopted son, viceroy of the universe, and the original superbeing who carried out all of God’s other acts of creation and that he ruled the resulting cosmos on God’s behalf. A being whom Philo reveals Jews already believed in. Which means we already have a mythical “Jesus” at the very dawn of the religion. The first Christians simply added the belief that recently this starlord descended from his extraterrestrial seat of power to wear a body of royal Jewish flesh just to sacrificially die and thereby effect God’s secret plan (and maybe was then named “Jesus,” thus being called “God’s Savior,” if this archangel hadn’t already shared that moniker before).

Notice I don’t affirm as an established fact that Philo knew this archangel as named Jesus. Elsewhere I make a case that he did; but I never mention that in JFOS. Instead, everything I do say there is indisputably true: before Christianity arose, Philo did describe an archangel (and even calls it an archangel) with all those listed attributes, which were also all assigned to Jesus by the first Christians. This is a fact, not a conjecture. Hansen has thus made a false statement about the book they are reviewing. Did Hansen do that because they’re a liar? Or because they’re too incompetent to read sentences in a book? Take your pick. But does either incline you to trust anything else Hansen says?

A more glaring example of this is when Hansen says “Chapters 4 and 5” of JFOS “make the dubious argument from silence that is often found in mythicist works.” In actual fact, Chapters 4 and 5 argue that there is no valid argument from silence against historicity. Which is exactly the opposite of what Hansen claims. Indeed, I have two entire pages there (pp. 80-81) explaining in detail how the absence of evidence for Jesus cannot establish or even increase the probability that Jesus didn’t exist. So is Hansen lying? Or did they not understand anything in those chapters? (Or perhaps in fact not even read them?) It is a common error mode in Christian apologists to confuse having no evidence for something, with having evidence against something. They thus seem to have a hard time grasping even the most rudimentary logic of evidence. To say “you don’t have evidence for that” is not saying “I have evidence against that.” Failing to grasp the difference is incompetent. Unless Hansen knows the difference, and is choosing instead to lie about the content of my book. Gross incompetence, or lying? Take your pick. But again, neither makes it likely anything else Hansen says about my book is going to be accurate.

Hansen makes the same mistake (if it is a mistake, and not deliberate) when they misreport that “Chapter 8” of JFOS “argues that Rom 1:3 indicates that Jesus was not historical but was made through use of the ‘cosmic seed hypothesis’.” Actually, I don’t argue any of that there. First, I argue for either the cosmic seed hypothesis or an allegorical reading of prophecy, and I have several pages on each. Second, I actually make very clear I am arguing the converse position: that we cannot know whether Romans 1 refers to biological or cosmic descent. In other words, I do not use Romans 1 as evidence against historicity. I merely point out that it isn’t strong evidence for historicity (remember, in OHJ, my peer reviewed study on this, I count this as evidence for historicity—a fact Hansen will never tell you, because it fucks their false narrative). This is again that same distinction, between claiming we lack enough evidene for something and claiming we have evidence against something, that Hansen is too incompetent to grasp—or that they are deliberately concealing from their readers.

So once again, Hansen is either too incompetent to tell the difference; or they are pretending not to tell the difference, i.e. they’re lying. You decide. But as you decide, consider the fact that after I there demonstrated even the Gospels imagine a divine manufacture of Jesus and not biological descent (Joseph imparts no seed to Mary; only the Holy Spirit does, per Matt. 1:20), I literally conclude Chapter 7 with the following statement:

Whether they thought God manufacturing a body for Jesus in Mary’s womb fulfilled that seed prophecy literally or allegorically, it’s still God manufacturing that body, not biological descent. And that’s why seeing this same seed prophecy affirmed in the letters of Paul should have no effect on the probability of Jesus having ever been real. We can’t tell where Paul thought this happened. Therefore that Paul said it did can’t really be used as evidence Jesus existed.

In that Chapter I present abundant evidence for both theories, allegory and cosmic sperm-banking, including evidence from many other passages in Paul. Hansen dare not tell you any of that is in there, because it might actually convince you. This implies deceit. But if it isn’t a deliberate deception, it can only demonstrate incompetence as a scholar.

Hansen shows the same hand when they claim “Carrier speculates (without any evidence) that” certain “vegetative and cyclical god concepts could have been syncretized into Judaism and then turned into a one-time, non-vegetative, non-seasonal event.” I actually present extensive evidence of this (JFOS informs every reader from the start that its concordance to OHJ at the end references all evidence of claims made in JFOS). So this looks, again, like lying. Several of my examples were never “vegetative and cyclical god concepts” (Romulus, Zalmoxis, Asclepius, Herclues-Melqart; and numerous heroes), so Hansen appears to be lying even about that. But even those gods that were ever “vegetative and cyclical” had long ceased to occupy only that role—by the Roman period they had also been transformed into the personal savior gods of numerous baptismal mystery cults (indisputably in the case of Osiris and Bacchus; arguably in many others). Hansen is thus deceiving their readers by making a false statement about these gods and the evidence for the evolution of their cults leading to an eventual Jewish adoption of their most popular shared features. Or maybe Hansen is so catastrophically incompetent that they don’t know half the gods I mentioned were never “vegetative and cyclical,” and the other half had become the focus of personal savior cults instead of communal agricultural cults, and that I presented dozens of pages of evidence for all this, under peer-review—and cite that fact in JFOS. What do you think?

Hansen also uses deceptively loaded wording—for example, claiming Chapter 7 of JFOS argues for “a complicated process of euhemerization,” when in fact the process described there is quite simple, and every element of it is backed by evidence. Ironically (or, if Hansen is lying, perhaps not ironically) Chapter 7 shows that the process of evolution for other Christian myths—such as the Nativity and Resurrection tales of Jesus—had to have been no less complicated (likewise, I point out in an earlier chapter, for Moses, Osiris, King Arthur, Ned Ludd, John Frum, Tom Navy). So I actually refute the “it’s complicated” apologetic in the very chapter Hansen deploys it on. Hmm. Remember that other example I mentioned, of Hansen ignoring evidence refuting them and just repeating the same refuted statements in their defense? We see that same pattern replicated here. This is either dishonest or incompetent; or maybe batshit crazy. But the one thing it isn’t, is legitimate. No honest and competent scholar does this.

As another example of Hansen’s failure at basic logic (if, again, we assume that’s what they’re doing) is when they say “Chapter 9” of JFOS “argues that early Christians were called ‘the brothers of the Lord’, although this title is unattested.” It actually is attested. Twice. That’s the point of the argument. You can’t take away the examples and then declare the theory has no examples. It would be a circular argument (an obvious fallacy) to insist those two instances were not attestations of the practice. You might notice circular arguments are typical of Christian apologetics. They aren’t legitimate scholarship. And of course this means it would also be a circular argument for me to simply insist those were attestations of the practice—hence I must indeed present independent evidence of that being the case. And I do. Hansen neither mentions nor addresses any of it. Once again, this is how Christian apologists act. It is not how honest and competent scholars act. (It’s only the worse that, again, this is evidence I counted under peer review as evidence for historicity anyway; Hansen is again confusing—incompetently or deliberately—having only weak evidence for a thing, and having evidence against a thing.)

If you cannot even correctly repeat what an author’s argument is, you cannot claim competence to critique that argument. Hansen repeatedly fails to correctly describe any argument in JFOS in their summary section. It is thus no surprise that their ensuing critique is just as incompetent and essentially useless to any serious scholar.

Misrepresenting the Relevance of the Talmud

For example, Hansen actually attempts this bizarre argument:

Much of the evidence that Carrier provides is, in fact, misconstrued or misread by the author. For example, [b.Talmud] Nid. 16 nowhere states in explicit terms that the “drops” of semen are ever taken up into heaven; it says they are taken “into the presence” of the Lord in some fashion.

Insert Silverman meme here; “Tide goes in, tide goes out; you can’t explain that.” Huh? What does Hansen think “the presence of the Lord” could ever have meant in ancient Judaism? God only ever resides in the seventh or upmost heaven. That is the whole ideological point of angels (they are intermediary beings that allow God to communicate and interact with the lower worlds). In any event, in On the Historicity of Jesus I have a whole section on this very point, extensively proving it (Element 36, Ch. 5; cf. Elements 34 through 38). So Hansen is either lying, or demonstrating their ignorance of ancient Jewish theology. If we are charitable, we have to conclude they have completely failed to comprehend the context of this account. Which is a fundamental failure as a historian.

But their argument is also moot, and therefore illogical. It does not matter where this angel takes the semen of men. The relevant fact is that taking semen somewhere else (and then taking it back) was readily believed without blush. Therefore, we cannot say there is anything “weird” about Christians thinking, for example, that this same angel took the semen of David somewhere else for God to examine it; in fact, this passage entails that is exactly what many Jews believed happened. Whether this meant taking it to God Himself in the heavens, or to a representative of His on Earth (like the Metatron; although the Talmud does not say that), the same conclusion follows. That’s the only point I aim to prove with this anecdote. So either Hansen didn’t understand the point (and thus is incompetent) or Hansen doesn’t want you to understand the point (and thus is a liar).

Similarly, Hansen complains that this story does not mention storing the semen—as if I didn’t already make that point in JFOS myself. Hansen is therefore misrepresenting again what my argument even is. My argument is explicitly that if semen can be transported this way, taken to and fro among divine beings, then there is nothing that would prevent a Jewish thinker from imagining that God could hold on to it for a secret divine purpose. Because with God, all things are possible. In other words, my argument is not that there are many examples of that happening; my argument is that this is the kind of unique idea that would be entirely expected within Judaism because it entirely fits the way they understood the world, and God, to work. Hansen is again confusing an argument against a presumption (that no one would think of this) with an argument for something definitely having happened. To the contrary, I am making a modal argument: I am not here arguing that this in fact happened; I am only arguing its plausibility, and I am doing that only to argue against claims that it isn’t plausible. And Hansen is either too incompetent to understand this, or is deliberately trying to hide it from their readers.

To my mind this does look a lot like lying, though. Hansen leads their readers to think I gave no evidence for my conclusions, that I just “misread” Niddah 16. But that isn’t how I used Niddah 16; it is one piece of several premises building a whole argument. Hansen acts like there is no other evidence, no other argument, that I simply said “Niddah 16 demonstrates divine sperm-banking.” To think that’s what I said, after reading the actual pages in which I cite this example, is catastrophically incompetent. So either Hansen is catastrophically incompetent—or they well know this is not what or how I argued, and are therefore choosing to lie about it.

In similar fashion, Hansen complains that the Niddah story comes from a 3rd-4th century source, when in JFOS I already made clear its date is not relevant to my point. Of course, the first time an idea appears in the record is also rarely the first time it existed; a basic principle of history Hansen seems incompetently (or dishonestly) inclined to abandon. But I made no such claim anyway. My argument was simply that, quote, “If Jews could so readily come up with this bizarre idea,” then what I am proposing they came up with earlier is not surprising. Hansen therefore is making an irrelevant point, misleading their readers into thinking Hansen is answering something I said, but didn’t. Hansen never responds to my actual argument; they pretend, instead, that it didn’t exist.

As you’ll see from these and coming examples, you basically can count on nothing Hansen says about the arguments in JFOS to be accurate or honest. And this has usually been all that historicists seem able to do when confronted with my arguments: lie about them, misrepresent them, pretend they don’t exist. (The scant few who don’t do that, either agree my position is at least plausible, or can’t articulate a sound logical basis for the opposed conclusion; or both. See my List of Responses.)

Why do you think that is? Be honest now.

Misrepresenting the Relevance of Paul’s Style

Hansen does this several times. For example they remark on my reading of Paul’s choice of Greek words in Romans 1 as if I presented no arguments for my reading—Hansen simply acts to their readers as if I just “read” Paul a certain way without any basis. In actual fact, in OHJ I presented extensive evidence for my reading of Paul’s own choices of vocabulary, which evidence I reference in JFOS—but Hansen will never tell you that, nor ever attempt any rebuttal to it; which certainly looks dishonest to me. Likewise when Hansen says that Jews interpreted Nathan’s prophecy in various ways, as if this answers something I said, when in fact it is something I myself said. My argument was not that it had no other interpretation than the one that fits Christian doctrine. In every case, Hansen knows what my argument actually is; but instead of replying to it, their reply is to effectively declare that I made no argument. Now why, again, would that be?

We see the same thing where Hansen discusses Galatians 4, when they say this: “whether or not Gal 4:4 is allegorical, as Carrier argues, the best contextual reading is still ‘born of a woman’.” Of course I spend several pages in JFOS presenting evidence after evidence that this is not the best contextual reading; that when Paul says these women are allegorical, he does not mean actual women. Because this is what Paul explicitly says. It is not something I am conjecturing (see Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical; some of which I used in JFOS). Now notice what just happened here: my argument that Galatians 4 is allegorical is not some “separate” argument from the conclusion that Paul does not mean women literally; they are the exact same argument. Yet Hansen acts like they are separate arguments, such that they can “grant” that it is allegorical, yet still insist it’s literal.

This not only suggests an incompetence so profound it boggles the mind (Hansen literally does not understand the difference betweem “allegorical” and “literal”?), it also demonstrates intentional dishonesty. Because Hansen knows my argument is that “women” is meant allegorically here; that’s literally all my argument is. So when Hansen here pretends to their readers that that isn’t what my argument was—and thus, accordingly, offers no rebuttal to any of my arguments and evidence for that conclusion—there can only be one possible explanation: Hansen is lying. They are lying to their readers about what I argued. They are lying to their readers about what I did and didn’t say in support of that argument. And they are lying to their readers when they misrepresent their rebuttal as at all pertinent—it is not; it merely gainsays my conclusion without mentioning, much less addressing, any arguments for that conclusion. You might notice that this “pretending” that evidence and aguments don’t exist, such that mere gainsaying is proposed to suffice as a rebuttal, is a recurring pattern with Hansen. That is the behavior of a crank. Not a serious or honest scholar.

Thus, as you’d expect, Hansen will also repeat standard Christian apologetics, like verbal legerdemain rather than honest replies to my arguments. For example, they repeat a face-palming argument of Jonathan McLatchie’s that I have already refuted: that Genesis only uses the verb γίνομαι to refer to Adam’s “change of state,” not the manufacture of his body. In fact they refer to the same thing. When Paul says, “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” and “so it is written” that “the first man, Adam, became a living being and the last Adam, [Jesus], a life-giving spirit,” and therefore “the first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven,” he is explicitly referring to the manufacture of their different bodies: “as was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.” So McLatchie and Hansen are making no relevant point here. Paul is simply referring to bodies that are made, not born. Full stop. There is no possible way to escape this.

Paul is even more clear about this in 2 Corinthians 5, which, contrary to Hansen’s fabricated assertions, does not refer to “future” bodies that “will” be built in heaven; it says they are already there waiting for us. Read the text. “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” These bodies are already in heaven; we have them waiting—not will have them, but already have them. They await us. More importantly, regardless of when, they are built. God made them (or “will” make them, if you want to buy into Hansen’s reading of the text), and “not with human hands,” like regular buildings, but divine. Paul could not be more clear. He is talking about bodies that are made—not bodies that are born. The undeniable fact is that when Paul refers to people and bodies that were not born, he uses γίνομαι; when Paul refers to people and bodies that were born, he never uses γίνομαι, but genaô; and medieval Christians understood this aspect of Paul’s style so well, they tried doctoring both Romans 1 and Galatians 4 to reverse these words to match what Hansen wants Paul to have said. Because they well knew, Paul didn’t say what Hansen wants him to have said. And Hansen has no legitimate argument that can avoid these facts.

And yet so illogical is Hansen’s attempt to avoid these facts, that they will even say crazy self-contradictory things, like “in context, 1 Cor 15:37 does not use γίνομαι to refer to bodies being ‘made,’ but bodies that ‘will be’.” Um. Chris Hansen. Poor dear. Those are the same thing. How do you think those “future bodies” will come into being? Are you proposing resurrection consists of crawling into some poor girl’s womb and gestating as a fetus for nine months and passing through her vagina as a baby, and that we will have to relive our childhoods growing back up into adults? I must have missed that in the Gospels. So, no. Paul explicitly says God will manufacture these bodies. They are buildings made by God. They aren’t born. And that is my point. So, what just happened here? Hansen literally admitted γίνομαι in Paul refers to bodies that are made not born—then insists he instead showed it refers to bodies born not made. This looks like lunacy to me. But whatever it is, it isn’t coherent or intelligible argument.

Misrepresenting the Gods

Hansen will never accept well-demonstrated facts that they cannot abide being true, like that quite a large number of gods, demigods, and heroes in the Roman era were understood by a lot of people as having literally died, been dead, and risen from the dead to be alive again (in JFOS I reproduce some of the material in Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It.). Jesus is actually a latecomer to that club. Hansen of course won’t tell you any of the extensive evidence of this referenced in JFOS. Like an apologist, rather than a scholar, they will ignore all pertinent evidence and arguments, and come up instead with completely irrelevant points that they can dress up to “sound like” they have made an argument against a conclusion they don’t like.

For example, Hansen argues that Romulus can’t have been a dying and rising god, because some people didn’t think he was. This of course is irrelevant. It does not rebut the thoroughly documented fact that many people did think he was. This is an example of standard illogical apologetics, game-playing with words, to produce only fallacious arguments to their desired conclusion. Which is fake scholarship. Yet they present the argument anyway. Is that dishonest, or incompetent? It’s one or the other. We see this even with Hansen’s claims about the content of Plutarch. They claim Plutarch presents three separate stories in none of which does Romulus both die and rise; but he doesn’t. Plutarch presents three separate accounts of his disappearence, and separately an account of his reappearance—and in that context goes on a long digression about resurrection stories in general. So…what do you think Plutarch understood himself to have said about Romulus? Why that digression, if Plutarch never said or imagined Romulus was believed risen from the dead? For Hansen not to grasp this about the text implies either extreme imcompetence, failing at even the most rudimentary reading comprehension, or else wanton dishonesty. You pick.

Hansen’s argument here might even border on academic fraud. Because they fail to mention that we have accounts not just from Plutarch, but Livy, Cicero, Ovid, Dionysius, and Dio. For example, before Christianity even existed, Cicero wrote in Laws 1.3 that “tradition tells us” that “Romulus after his death … met Proculus Julius and told him that he was a god.” This matches Ovid’s account (Fasti 2), also pre-Christian:

There was mourning, and the senators were falsely charged with murder, and haply that suspicion might have stuck in the popular mind. But Julius Proculus was coming from Alba Longa … when of a sudden the hedges on his left shook and trembled [and] … Romulus, fair of aspect, in stature more than human … stood there in the middle of the road and said, “Forbid the Quirites to mourn, let them not profane my divinity by their tears.”

The people regarded him as dead; then he appeared to report he was now a god. There is nothing here about the prior belief being altered or rebutted. It’s said the Senate was off the hook. But not that his apotheosis involved no death. Ascension after dying was, after all, the only kind of apotheosis understood to occur among Romans of the day—for example, as reported of Julius Caesar, and even joked about later by Vespasian, who when asked how he felt on his deathbed retorted, “I feel like I’m becoming a god.” Dio even reports that after Augustus died, “a certain Numerius Atticus … swore that he had seen Augustus ascending to heaven after the manner of which tradition tells concerning Proculus and Romulus,” illustrating that the popular understanding of this process was death and then ascension. We find this also in Dionysius (Roman Antiquities 2.63), again writing before Christianity, who relates the divine Romulus saying to Proculus, “announce to the Romans from me, that the genius to whom I was allotted at my birth is conducting me to the gods, now that I have finished my mortal life, and that I am [the god] Quirinus.”

It’s thus pretty clear many people held Romulus to have died and then been resurrected as a god, and didn’t think anything odd about it—they even tried claiming it of Caesar and Augustus; Vespasian made fun of the fact that they’d eventually claim it even of him. It is the moral responsibility of any scholar claiming there was no belief of Romulus dying and rising from the dead to account for all the evidence—and not to pretend none exists but one, and then try to “reinterpret” what that one source said against every marker of its meaning and intent. Plutarch’s digression on dying-and-rising heroes and gods demonstrates what he knew one popular understanding of the Romulus myth to be: another one of those. And numerous other authors confirm this. But Hansen pretends none of this evidence exists, and made no effort even to check it, which is incompetent—or they did, and deliberately concealed what they found, which is lying.

Another example of either lying or gross incompetence is what Hansen says about what egyptologist Stephen Thompson wrote in his book Ancient Egypt: Facts and Fiction, claiming that he “dismissed” my “argument that Osiris is a dying-rising god.” Thompson never mentions me or any argument resembling mine, and never responds to it. He debunks some absurd things claimed by various other people, like the movie Religulous. None of which I endorse. And in the one sentence where he claims that Osiris “going to the underworld” he does not consider “returning to life,” he fails to address the enormous amount of evidence I present, from Plutarch to ancient Pyramid Texts themselves, that refute this contention. This is typical from Hansen: they just gainsay arguments, as if there is no mountain of evidence for those arguments that they have to rebut. This is the opposite of scholarship. No real scholar would cite the useless text of Thompson, as it does not contain any discussion of the evidence presented that has to be answered. Neither does the book review by Mettinger that Hansen cites. Nor any of the scholars Hansen cites (for example, they cite Nicholas Wyatt on Baal—who also doesn’t discuss the evidence I present). The only scholars Hansen should be citing are scholars who do discuss that evidence. Because conclusions follow from the evidence—not from authority. Only apologists think mere arguments from authority count as evidence. Real scholars do not.

Hansen also falsely implies Tryggve Mettinger is “Carrier’s only major source on the issue” of Osiris’s resurrection. In fact I never rely on Mettinger for Osiris. What I present is primary evidence, from Plutarch and the Pyramid Texts. Hansen pretends this evidence doesn’t exist and never has to be discussed. Evidence is irrelevant to Hansen. All they want are quote mined authorities, and the semantic gaming of source material. Because that is all there is that they can appeal to. That’s apologetics; not scholarship. Real scholars don’t act like this. They address the evidence; or when citing authorities, they only cite authorities who address the evidence. Illustrating the difference, Hansen will say Mettinger expresses doubt over Osiris in a book review…a book review that asserts there is abundant evidence for numerous resurrected gods, and attests that this conclusion was confirmed by numerous scholars (the ones Mettinger is reviewing). But Hansen won’t tell you that. Hansen only cites authorities who say what they want. Authorities contradicting them magically don’t exist. You might recognize this as a very standard tactic in Christian apologetics—and that it is the exact opposite of a legitimate methodology in any academic field.

The same happens with Hansen’s citation of recent scholarship on the Ascension of Isaiah: they never explain what any of those cited articles say that is at all relevant to JFOS (or even OHJ), much less how they overcome the evidence presented for the claims I actually make. As we’ve seen, Hansen cannot be trusted to even correctly comprehend (or honestly relay) what my arguments even are; much less engage with any of the evidence presented for them. So when they throw up a nonsense sentence that doesn’t even mention either, we see apologetics at work, not competent scholarship. As yet another example of this, Hansen rebuts the idea that Kurt Noll is a mythicist by quoting an email from him saying so—but, news flash: I never said Kurt Noll is a mythicist. In JFOS I only listed him among “genuine experts [who] are starting to agree there is at least cause to doubt whether Jesus ever existed,” not that they themselves doubted it (and in OHJ, I only said Noll agreed a historical Jesus can’t be recovered from the Gospels, and that historicity is open to question). Hansen even uses this lie about what I said about Noll to compose a false generalization fallacy, claiming I have done this multiple times—but giving only one example, and that a non-example, as it only confirms, rather than rebuts, what I actually said about Noll. This is practically Kafkaesque.

Conclusion

I noted that Hansen often deploys the Trumpesque tactic of accusing those who catch them lying or being incompetent of themselves lying or being incompetent—but when you check, you find Hansen’s critics have the evidence backing up that claim, and Hansen does not. This is what happens here. Hansen concludes their review by declaring “almost every single argument” in JFOS “contains these errors, misreadings, misconstruals, and harmonizations, and shows a lack of interaction with scholarship.” That statement is completely false; and they have not demonstrated it in even a single case. Instead Hansen builds everything they say on errors, misreadings, misconstruals, and harmonizations—and one might strongly suspect, outright lies—to construct a fake version of what is argued in JFOS, and thus a fake assessment of its merits.

Of course the reason this dirty tactic works is because to tell who is the liar, who is getting everything wrong, the reader has to go on a time-consumung fact-checking mission. Hansen is counting on their readers being lazy. But do the work, and you’ll discover for yourself who’s really screwing the pooch here. The same can be said of all Hansen’s other peer-reviewed articles on side-issues in the historicity debate, but I’ll get to those later. It’s enough to know from this example: you cannot trust Hansen. They are so frequently misrepresenting the arguments they are responding to, the evidence presented for them, and the scholarship they are citing, that you simply have to re-do all their work: compare what they “claim” is (or isn’t) in JFOS (or OHJ), with what is actually argued in JFOS (or OHJ); and ascertain whether they are responding to the evidence presented there, or ignoring that evidence and merely gainsaying the conclusion instead, as if no evidence exists to rebut (and thus hoping you never find out there is).

That this is typically all that historicists can produce against my work is indicative of the bankruptcy of their position. Hansen would not have to resort to all of these errors or lies, if a real case against my thesis existed to be made.

-:-

For Hansen’s side-swiping at On the Historicity of Jesus without ever actually critiquing it see Chrissy Hansen on the Pre-Existent Jesus.