At around 28 mins Tim says those opposed to the consensus are mythicists most of whom are not scholars and least qualified to assess this stuff.
Point 1: Tim is not a scholar either so he presumably includes himself among those who are ‘least qualified to assess this stuff’. Yet he seems to argue against mythicists from the “stuff” with a confidence that suggests he does have a superior quality to “assess this stuff”. He does not make clear why his own competence is more than enough to match those of his non-scholarly peers.
Point 2: Unfortunately I don’t know of many scholars who have actually explicitly addressed the question of the historicity of Jesus. Recall Ehrman’s claim to be the very first to do so in any comprehensive fashion. The mythicists’ complaint is that on the whole the “scholars” do not argue for the historicity of Jesus but work on other questions on the assumption that he existed. When asked to justify that assumption the responses are, too often unfortunately, logically invalid, question begging, divorced from normative scholarly approaches to sources, misrepresenting the questions posed, and…. condescending, abusive. On the principle that all authorities ought to be held to account, such responses deserve to be set aside and the question should be pursued.
About 30 mins Tim says that all of the earliest sources speak of a historical figure of Jesus and none say otherwise, so it’s reasonable to think that they say this because that’s how it started. To say otherwise is to give oneself an uphill battle. All speak of a Jesus ‘on earth’. Ebionites and Docetics.
Point 1: (I’m a bit tired this evening. I can think of three or four quite different fallacies or misconceptions with this argument that I may fill in another day. Meanwhile…. do feel free to comment with your own. Thanks.)
Point 2:
Point 3:
Neil Godfrey
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Tim O’Neill, despite being an arrogant, became a mythicist himself because he believed in something that has such fragile foundations and holds on to it so strongly that it resembles an uncritical religious faith. Perhaps he knows only biblical scholars from English-speaking circles and he thinks that they all share faith in historical Jesus. It convinces the interlocutors like a mantra.
I will omit the important question like this: What does it mean to historical Jesus? How much would it have to be similar to the form described in the gospels, so that you can assign him the role of someone who evolved from the evangelists? Where to get any source evidence for this? How do you explain the fact that any Christian artifacts from Palestine come from the period of the late Empire, in principle from the time of Constantine? Is this not a reason to consider whether Christianity, at least in the Catholic formula, was not imported there from Rome or Greece? I’m sorry, for my crippled English.
A man who met the following conditions would, in my judgment, be the historical Jesus if he were proven to have existed:
1. He was an itinerant first-century Galilean preacher with a group of disciples;
2. He was executed on orders of a Roman official; and
3. After his execution, some of his disciples founded a religious cult that evolved into historically orthodox Christianity.
Biblical scholars like McGrath and Hurtado heap praise on Tim O’Neill. One might conclude he has therefore every reason to believe they are entirely without theological or apologetic interest in any of their work.
Bob Price? And that blows O’Neill’s assertion out the water.
Tim concedes exceptions to his generalizations (such as Bob Price) but he continues to push the generalization as if it is without exception, and then if pushed denigrates the exception invalid because it is an exception, and therefore there are no exceptions. It’s kind of similar to Sam Harris logic.
Tim says that all of the earliest sources speak of a historical figure of Jesus and none say otherwise, so it’s reasonable to think that they say this because that’s how it started. To say otherwise is to give oneself an uphill battle. All speak of a Jesus ‘on earth’. Ebionites and Docetics.
Tim O’Neill ap. “Jesus, What A Question!“. YouTube. The NonSequitur Show. 19 October 2018.
Frank Zindler asks the question:
• See Neil Godfrey (26 October 2016). “That Second Question Frank Zindler Wanted to Ask Bart Ehrman“. Vridar.
• O’Neill notes that per variant forms of early Christianity: “We’ve mainly got the books written by other people who were arguing against them, because they won the argument, so they got to decide whose books got copied.”
•Carrier also notes a thirty-year dark age in the history of the church.
Per Carrier [now bolded], “How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?“. Richard Carrier Blogs. 9 November 2017.
• Carrier asserts that Docetism as described by its opponents in the second century is not mythicism.
Comment by Richard Carrier—31 December 2012—per “The Goodacre Debate”. Richard Carrier Blogs. 20 December 2012.
• Some of the so-called “Docetism” refutations (of early date) from the “massive corpus of apologetic literature” noted by O’Neill are more likely to be refutations of “this original form—the belief in a non-historical Jesus”.
Per Carrier, “How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?“. Richard Carrier Blogs. 9 November 2017.
per Comment by Richard Carrier
That lacks nuance. Saying a ‘Jesus who [was] ‘interpreted’ to have been an illusion of some form’ was ‘historical’ is specious (regardless of whether or not it’s based on writing of opponents of Docetism and Docetists).
Docetism is the view that Jesus was a divine being who only seemed or appeared to be human: dokein (Greek) = to seem.
It is mythicist, so it’d be more than ‘possible’ that “the original Docetists were other-worlders and thus mythicists”.
The first use of dokein in a christological controversy may be Ignatius’s letters to the Trallians and Smyrnans (said to be c. 110-115 CE, but some suspect these are later). Ignatius mocks those who claim that Christ only seemed to suffer (to dokein auton peponthenai; Tral. 10:1; Smy 2; cf.4:2).
Basilides evidently taught that ”the Nous” took human form as Jesus in order to make the unborn, nameless Father known.
The word Δοκηταί (Dokētaí; “Illusionists”) is said to have been first used by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197–203)in a letter* referring to early groups who denied Jesus’s humanity (after he discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter).
In Clement of Alexandria’s time (early 3rd century) there were disputes over whether Christ assumed the “psychic” flesh of mankind as heirs to Adam, or the “spiritual” flesh of the resurrection. Clement referred to a group whose name derives from their doctrine (Stromateis VII.xvii). Clement also opined that the founder of docetism was Julius Cassian, but this assessment may have been grounded in Cassian’s belief that birth was an evil (Strom. III.xvii).
Photius felt the need to comment on Clement’s views in his Myriobiblon, writing that Clement’s views reflected a ‘quasi-docetic’ view of the nature of Christ, and that Clement “hallucinated that the Word was not incarnate but only seems to be” (ὀνειροπολεῖ καὶ μὴ σαρκωθῆναι τὸν λόγον ἀλλὰ δόξαι).
Recent perceptions about these terms have been fraught. Ernst Käsemann had, in a 1968 book, created controversy when he described the Christology of St John’s Gospel as “naïve docetism” (The Testament of Jesus, trans. Gerhard Krodel, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968).
Norbert Brox said in 1984 that “Docetism lies at hand where a christology claims: Jesus was different from what he seemed to be” (Brox, Norbert. “‘Doketismus’–eine Problemanzeige,” Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte 95 (1984):301-314, at p. 309).
Brox –concerned to differentiate ancient docetism from modern christological problems– has suggested that the term “docetism” be reserved for cases where a doctrine deliberately distinguishes Jesus’manifestation from ‘his essence’, but that still seems too vague.
Now it seems concepts about and of mythicism might be caught up in confusion about concepts about and of docetism.
* ‘Concerning the So-Called Gospel of St Peter’, alluded to in Eusebius’s Church History VI 12.3–6.
As per Mrhorse, I cannot agree with Carrier’s statement that “docetism is not mythicism”. Nor can I accept Carrier’s definition of minimal mythicism requiring a death in a supernatural realm. To me, a mythical Jesus is simply one who did not exist in history but only in story or dogma.
I think it was a mistake for Carrier to integrate mythicism with one particular hypothesis. Perhaps the mistake is comparable to tying a historical Jesus to just one particular view of the historical Jesus, say the Cynic philosopher model.
Tim has perpetuated the mistake by claiming that any reference to a Jesus in human form is evidence for a historical Jesus. That’s nonsense, of course. Literature and religions are riddled with mythical figures in human form and dwelling on earth. (But in one respect Carrier’s definition of minimal mythicism has opened the door for O’Neill’s nonsense.)
Regarding the historicity of Jesus, I have always been struck by its possible similarities with the story of Selassie vs Rastafari, and the imagined story of Brian as presented by Monty Python. As David Fitzgerald so rationally presents it in his second book on this, “Mything in Action”, what makes a historical Yeshua being considered “the historical Jesus”, while his real life would be so much disconnected by the gospels, and never mentioned by the historians of the day?
• New Freethought Blogs discussion.
Dr Sarah (25 November 2018). “[https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhumanist/2018/11/25/jesus-mythicism-vs-jesus-historicity-a-reply-to-r-g-price/ Jesus mythicism vs. Jesus historicity: a reply to R. G. Price]”. Freethought Blogs (FtB). Geeky Humanist.