Previous posts in this series:
- Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 1: Historical Facts and Probability
- Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History
- Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 3: Prediction and History
* For an excellent introduction to Bayes‘ approach to problem solving read Sharon McGrayne’s The Theory That Would Not Die: How
Next, he devised a thought experiment, a 1700s version of a computer simulation. Stripping the problem to its basics, Bayes imagined a square table so level that a ball thrown on it would have the same chance of landing on one spot as on any other. Subsequent generations would call his construction a billiard table, but as a Dissenting minister Bayes would have disapproved of such games, and his experiment did not involve balls bouncing off table edges or colliding with one another. As he envisioned it, a ball rolled randomly on the table could stop with equal probability anywhere.
We can imagine him sitting with his back to the table so he cannot see anything on it. On a piece of paper he draws a square to represent the surface of the table. He begins by having an associate toss an imaginary cue ball onto the pretend tabletop. Because his back is turned, Bayes does not know where the cue ball has landed.
Next, we picture him asking his colleague to throw a second ball onto the table and report whether it landed to the right or left of the cue ball. If to the left, Bayes realizes that the cue ball is more likely to sit toward the right side of the table. Again Bayes’ friend throws the ball and reports only whether it lands to the right or left of the cue ball. If to the right, Bayes realizes that the cue can’t be on the far right-hand edge of the table.
He asks his colleague to make throw after throw after throw; gamblers and mathematicians already knew that the more times they tossed a coin, the more trustworthy their conclusions would be. What Bayes discovered is that, as more and more balls were thrown, each new piece of information made his imaginary cue ball wobble back and forth within a more limited area.
As an extreme case, if all the subsequent tosses fell to the right of the first ball, Bayes would have to conclude that it probably sat on the far left-hand margin of his table. By contrast, if all the tosses landed to the left of the first ball, it probably sat on the far right. Eventually, given enough tosses of the ball, Bayes could narrow the range of places where the cue ball was apt to be.
Bayes’ genius was to take the idea of narrowing down the range of positions for the cue ball and—based on this meager information—infer that it had landed somewhere between two bounds. This approach could not produce a right answer. Bayes could never know precisely where the cue ball landed, but he could tell with increasing confidence that it was most probably within a particular range. Bayes’ simple, limited system thus moved from observations about the world back to their probable origin or cause. Using his knowledge of the present (the left and right positions of the tossed balls), Bayes had figured out how to say something about the past (the position of the first ball). He could even judge how confident he could be about his conclusion. (p. 7)
In the late 1990s Earl Doherty revitalized public interest in the question of whether Jesus had been a historical figure with the Jesus Puzzle website (a new version is now available here) and book, The Jesus Puzzle (link is to a publicly available version — though Doherty subsequently published a much more detailed volume a few years later). In the wake of that controversy Richard Carrier undertook to examine the arguments for and against the existence of Jesus with the authority of a doctorate in ancient history behind him. To this end, Carrier initially published two works, the first, Proving History, laying the groundwork of the method he would be using to address the question of Jesus’ historicity, and then On the Historicity of Jesus, the volume in which he applied his Bayesian probability* approach to the question. In that second volume Carrier concluded that the odds against Jesus having existed were significantly higher than the opposing view.
Carrier regularly argued that the evidence to be found in the New Testament was predicted or could well have been predicted by the hypothesis that Jesus did not exist. As noted in my previous post, the term he used most often was “expected”, but he made clear in Proving History by “expectation” in this context he meant “predicted”.
Prediction or Circularity?
It would have been more accurate to have simply said that the evidence cited is consistent with the view that Jesus did not exist. The hypothesis did not “predict” any evidence. Indeed, one might even say that the hypothesis was drawn from the sources in the first place, so it is circular logic to then say that the hypothesis predicted the evidence that gave rise to that hypothesis.
Carrier’s stated aim is to form a
hypotheses that make[s] … substantial predictions. This will give us in each case a minimal theory, one that does not entail any ambitious or questionable claims . . . a theory substantial enough to test. (On the Historicity [henceforth = OHJ], 30 – bolding is my own in all quotations)
I argue, rather, that all Carrier has been able to accomplish is to show that a hypothesis is consistent with the data that it was created to explain. Historical research, as I have been attempting to show in the previous posts, cannot “predict” in the ways Carrier asserts.
Carrier begins with a “minimal Jesus myth theory”:
. . . the basic thesis of every competent mythicist, then and now, has always been that Jesus was originally a god, just like any other god (properly speaking, a demigod in pagan terms; an archangel in Jewish terms; in either sense, a deity), who was later historicized, just as countless other gods were, and that the Gospel of Mark (or Mark’s source) originated the Christian myth familiar to us by building up an edifying and symbolically meaningful tale for Jesus, drawing on passages from the Old Testament and popular literature, coupled with elements of revelation and pious inspiration. The manner in which Osiris came to be historicized, moving from being just a cosmic god to being given a whole narrative biography set in Egypt during a specific historical period, complete with collections of wisdom sayings he supposedly uttered, is still an apt model, if not by any means an exact one. Which is to say, it establishes a proof of concept. It is in essence what all mythicists are saying happened to Jesus.
Distilling all of this down to its most basic principles we get the following set of propositions:
1. At the origin of Christianity, Jesus Christ was thought to be a celestial deity much like any other.
2. Like many other celestial deities, this Jesus ‘communicated’ with his subjects only through dreams, visions and other forms of divine inspiration (such as prophecy, past and present).
3. Like some other celestial deities, this Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in a supernatural realm.
4. As for many other celestial deities, an allegorical story of this same Jesus was then composed and told within the sacred community, which placed him on earth, in history, as a divine man, with an earthly family, companions, and enemies, complete with deeds and sayings, and an earthly depiction of his ordeals.
5. Subsequent communities of worshipers believed (or at least taught) that this invented sacred story was real (and either not allegorical or only ‘additionally’ allegorical).
That all five propositions are true shall be my minimal Jesus myth theory. (OHJ 52f)
By explaining that his “minimal myth theory” consists of the core of what Jesus myth exponents themselves have claimed, Carrier in fact is conceding that his “minimal” points are based on the information available in the sources that he will proceed to say he will “expect” to find, or to “predict” will be in the sources. (Earl Doherty, in particular, was Carrier’s source for the interpretation that Jesus was originally understood to be a deity in heaven rather than a man on earth.)
Now those mythicists such as Earl Doherty arrived at their concept of a mythical Jesus in large measure as a result of analysing and drawing conclusions directly from the New Testament itself as well as from extra-biblical sources. So when Carrier declares that the evidence in the New Testament is what his “minimal Jesus myth theory” “expected” or “predicted”, he is in effect reasoning in a circle. The mythicist view of Doherty (and of many other earlier mythicists) was based on his reading of the New Testament. So the passages in the New Testament can hardly have been what would be “expected” according to mythicism; rather, they were the beginning of the “theory”, not its expected conclusion.
The approach as Carrier sets it out sounds scientific enough ….
We have to ask of each piece of evidence:
1. How likely is it that we would have this evidence if our hypothesis is true? (Is this evidence expected? How expected?)
2. How likely is it that the evidence would look like it does if our hypothesis is true? (Instead of looking differently; having a different content, for example.)
3. Conversely, how likely is it that we would have this evidence if the other hypothesis is true? (Again, is this evidence expected? How expected?)
4. And how likely is it that the evidence would look like it does if that other hypothesis is true? (Instead of looking differently; having a different content, for example.)
And when asking these questions, the ‘evidence’ includes not just what we have, but also what we don’t have. Does the evidence—what we have and what we don’t, what it says and what it doesn’t—make more sense on one hypothesis than the other? How much more? That’s the question. (OHJ, 278)
But the problem is that all of those questions were raised and fully addressed by Earl Doherty and others when they formulated their view that, on the basis of their answers to those questions, Jesus was a mythical creation and not a historical figure. So to turn around and begin with the conclusions of mythicists to say that the evidence we find in the New Testament is exactly what we would expect according to mythicism, is to simply work backwards from what the mythicists have done in the first place.
In other words, there is no prediction of what one might find in the evidence. There is no “expectation” that we might find such and such sort of idea. Rather, the sources themselves have long raised the kinds of questions that have led to the mythicist theory in the first place.
Example 1: Clement’s Letter
Look at the example of Carrier’s reference to the letter of 1 Clement:
The fact that this lengthy document fully agrees with the expectations of minimal mythicism, but looks very strange on any version of historicity, makes this evidence for the former against the latter. . . . [O]n minimal mythicism this is exactly the kind of letter we would expect to be written in the first century entails that its consequent probability on mythicism is 100% (or near enough). (OHJ, 314f – italics in the original in all quotations)
But Doherty’s mythicist view was shaped by such evidence. So the characteristics of Clement’s letter are what lay behind the mythicist view, so it is erroneous to say that the letter is what we would expect if mythicism were true. Doherty, for example, notes
Clement must be unfamiliar with Jesus’ thoughts in the same vein, as presented in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Clement also shows himself to be unfamiliar with the Gospel teachings of Jesus on many other topics discussed in his letter.
When Clement comes to describe Jesus’ suffering (ch.16) we must assume that he has no Gospel account to paraphrase or quote from memory, for he simply reproduces Isaiah 53. His knowledge of Jesus’ passion comes from scripture. Clement’s ignorance on other Gospel elements has been noted at earlier points in this book. . . .
Since Clement knows so little of oral traditions about Jesus . . . .
We have seen in the Pauline letters that the heavenly Christ was regarded as giving instructions to prophets through revelation. Clement shares in the outlook that sees Christ’s voice as residing in scripture. . . .
In Clement’s world, these things have come to be associated with revelations from the spiritual Christ. . . (Jesus Puzzle, 261f)
The oddities in the letter of Clement have piqued the curiosity of those who have seen in them support for the mythicist view of Jesus. The mythicist view of Jesus does not “predict” that such a letter would exist. It is the other way around.
Example 2: Extra-Biblical Sources
Notice another instance of this circularity.
When it came to the pervasive silence in other external documents (Christian and non-Christian), and the lack of many otherwise expected documents, I assigned no effect either way (although sterner skeptics might think that far too generous to minimal historicity). . . .
The probabilities here estimated assume that nothing about the extrabiblical evidence is unexpected on minimal mythicism. So the consequent probability of all this extrabiblical evidence on … (minimal mythicism) can be treated as 100% across the board . . . . Either way, as a whole, the extrabiblical evidence argues against a historical Jesus. It’s simply hard to explain all its oddities on minimal historicity, but not hard at all on minimal mythicism. (OHJ, 356, 358)
On the contrary, it is the extra-biblical sources that have been in part responsible for generating doubts about the historicity of Jesus ever since at least the early nineteenth century. If the extra-biblical evidence were different then the question of Jesus’ historicity is unlikely to have arisen in the first place.
I have no quibble with Carrier’s last two sentences in the above quotation if they are taken alone, without the context of “expectation/prediction”. What they are really confirming is that the available evidence is consistent with the mythicist view, not that it is predicted by mythicism.
Example 3: Expected Fiction?
In discussing one particular miraculous event in the life of Jesus Carrier concludes:
As history, all this entails an improbable plethora of coincidences; but as historical fiction, it’s exactly what we’d expect. (OHJ, 487)
In this case what is said to be “expected” is nothing more than a definition of the nature of fiction. The unbelievable coincidences define the story as fiction. They are not the expected observation of something already known to be fiction. They are the fiction.
Example 4: Paul’s Letters
The foundation of all Jesus myth views from Arthur Drews and Paul-Louis Couchoud to George Albert Wells and Earl Doherty has been the epistles of Paul. The questions raised by what Paul does not say and the ways he speaks in what he has to say have raised perennial questions among theologians so there is no surprise to find many passages becoming bedrock among mythicist arguments. So to say that those passages in Paul are what might be predicted by mythicism is getting everything back to front. Those passages are largely the foundation of the mythicist views, the port from which mythicism sailed, not the new continent of evidence it discovered or “expected”.
Again Carrier phrases the problem in terms of “prediction” of what one will find in the sources:
So even if, for example, a passage is 90% expected on history (and thus very probable in that case), if that same passage is 100% expected on myth, then that evidence argues for myth . . . . This is often hard for historians to grasp, because they typically have not studied logic and don’t usually know the logical basis for any of their modes of reasoning . . . .
I have to conclude the evidence of the Epistles, on all we presently know, is simply improbable on h (minimal historicity), but almost exactly what we expect on -h (minimal mythicism). . . .
Paul claimed these things came to him by revelation, another thing we expect on mythicism. . . .
On the [mythicism] theory, this is pretty much exactly what we’d expect Paul to write. . . .
This passage in Romans is therefore improbable on minimal historicity, but exactly what we could expect on minimal mythicism. . . .
Whereas this is all 100% expected on minimal mythicism.
The evidence of the Epistles is exactly 100% expected on minimal mythicism. . . In fact, these are pretty much exactly the kind of letters we should expect to now have from Paul (and the other authors as well) if minimal mythicism is true. (OHJ, 513, 528, 536, 566, 573, 574, 595)
Predicting or Matching the Evidence?
So Carrier is able to conclude,
All the evidence is effectively 100%, what we could expect if Jesus didn’t exist and minimal mythicism, as defined [above], is true. (OHJ, 597)
On the contrary, I suggest that many readers have noticed that the sources contain difficulties if we assume Jesus to have lived in the real world outside the gospels. It is from those “difficulties” that are apparently inconsistent with a historical figure that the Jesus myth view has arisen. By proposing to “test” the mythicist view by setting up “expectations” of what we will find in the sources really comes down to merely confirming the problematic passages in the sources that gave rise to the myth view in the first place.
What Carrier is doing, I suggest, is simply describing the sources that have given rise to doubts about the existence of Jesus. There is no prediction involved at all. He is describing the state of the evidence and showing how it is consistent with his “minimal Jesus myth theory”, something all other Jesus myth scholars before him have done — only without the veneer of scientific assurance.
Historians as a rule cannot predict what will be found in the available sources that might test their hypotheses. They usually do no more than point to what they believe to be consistent with their hypotheses.
The Rank-Raglan Hero Class and Prediction Therefrom
In the opening post of this series I addressed Carrier’s use of the Rank-Raglan “hero class” as a conceptual framework for certain types of persons in ancient myths and legends. There I noted that it is misleading to apply a percentage probability figure to Jesus (or anyone) being a member of that class because the total number of persons sharing the features of that class are well below 100. This is more than a pedantic point. The numbers of characters are not only limited, but they belong to distinctively unique cultural settings. This is the nature of all historical events. No two events are ever alike and no events are ever repeated except in the most general sense. Yes, there have been wars forever, but no two wars are ever alike. Each has had its own causes that are unrepeatable.
Here are the twenty-one names studied by Raglan as sharing a features (born from a virgin, nothing of his childhood is known, etc) from a second list of random length (Raglan said he could have added many more common features — see the earlier post):
- Oedipus
- Theseus
- Romulus
- Heracles
- Perseus
- Jason
- Bellerophon
- Pelops
- Asclepios
- Dionysos
- Apollo
- Zeus
- Joseph
- Moses
- Elijah
- Watu Gunung
- Nyikang
- Sigurd or Siegfried
- Llew Llawgyffes
- Arthur
- Robin Hood
We know that historical persons have been associated with mythical stories overlapping with the lives of those in the above list: Sargon, Cyrus, Alexander the Great, even Plato was said to have been born from a virgin mother, fathered by the god Apollo. But those mythical or “hero class” features of Cyrus and Alexander are quite distinct from the actual historical person; that fantastical myths have been told about real people makes no difference to the reality of those historical persons. As Raglan himself declared:
If, however, we take any really historical person, and make a clear distinction between what history tells us of him and what tradition tells us, we shall find that tradition, far from being supplementary to history, is totally unconnected with it, and that the hero of history and the hero of tradition are really two quite different persons, though they may bear the same name. (The Hero, 165)
If historical persons are known to have accrued mythical features of the Rank-Raglan type, then it does not follow that any person about whom such tales are told is likely to have not existed in reality. Simply counting up so many features (e.g. born of a virgin, attempt on his life as a child, etc) and saying “real myths” had more of those features than historical persons does not make any difference. Adding up more “hero class” labels to apply to any one person would be nothing more than evidence of more highly creative composers. Moreover, such fanciful tales appear to be born from the minds of the literate at a specific time and are not haphazard accretions of illiterate storytelling:
It should . . . be noted that this association of myths with historical characters is literary and not popular. There is no evidence that illiterates ever attach myths to real persons. The mythical stories told of English kings and queens—Alfred and the cakes, Richard I and Blondel, Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund, Queen Margaret and the robber, and so on—seem to have been deliberately composed; a well-known character and an old story were considered more interesting when combined. . . .
“From the researchers of J. Bedier upon the epic personages of William of Orange, Girard de Rousillon, Ogier the Dane, Raoul de Cambrai, Roland, and many other worthies, it emerges that they do not correspond in any way with what historical documents teach us of their alleged real prototypes.” (The Hero, 172, 174 — the latter citing A. van Gennep)
The conclusion we must draw is that the miraculous tales told about Jesus are at most evidence of the creative imaginations of literate classes. Whether a Jesus existed historically behind these tales is still quite possible and the mythical tales about him make no difference to that possibility. Tales are indeed told of historical persons that “do not correspond in any way” with the true historical figure. The only aspect in common seems to have been their name. If Jesus has more and more amazing tales told about him than others it follows that literate story tellers were more abundant or creative than for other figures. Such tales tell us nothing about the likelihood of his historicity.
I conclude that it is erroneous to use the Rank-Raglan hero class to indicate a prior probability of whether Jesus existed or not. Every situation in history is different. If the Greeks had many heroes of a certain type, and if the tales told about Jesus shared many tropes of those Greek heroes, it might mean nothing more than that very fanciful tales were told about Jesus that caused the “real Jesus” to be lost behind the world of myth. Many theologians would agree. In other words, the historian cannot make predictions based on probabilities to determine how likely any historical event or person might have been. Historical events and persons are contingent. They are all distinctive and unrepeatable. They either happen or exist or they do not. Or the researcher simply does not know if they did or not. Probability does not enter the discussion.
The Evidence: Expected or Known in Advance?
What Carrier calls “expected evidence” is, rather, a description of what has been with us (and Jesus myth researchers) from the beginning. The state of evidence gave rise to certain questions that led to suspicions that Jesus was not a historical figure. So returning to that evidence and saying that the myth notion “predicted” the state of that evidence is a misplaced project.
Try to imagine, if you can, that you have never heard of Christianity. Try to imagine what a new ancient religion would look like if it combined features of Greco-Roman mystery cults and some form of Judaism. If you had never heard of Christianity would you really imagine a religion that turned out to be very much like Christianity? I doubt it. You might postulate a series of angelic beings or just one of them, or a translated Enoch, in the distant mythical past turned into saviour deities in some fashion. You would surely see little reason to introduce a human deity in recent times. Yet Carrier concludes his major study on the historicity of Jesus with the conviction that his hypothesis predicted (or “could have predicted”) the beginnings of Christianity:
So we should actually have expected Jewish culture to find a way to integrate the same idea; after all, every other national culture was doing so. And this is where we have to look at the possibilities in light of what we now know. Had I been born in the year 1 and was asked as a young educated man what a Jewish mystery religion would look like, based on what I knew of the common features of mystery cult and the strongest features of Judaism, I could have described Christianity to you in almost every relevant particular—before it was even invented. It would involve the worship of a mythical-yet-historicized personal savior, a son of god, who suffered a death and resurrection, by which he obtained salvation for those who communed with his spirit, thereby becoming a fictive brotherhood, through baptism and the sharing of sacred meals. How likely is it that I could predict that if that wasn’t in fact how it came to pass? Influence is the only credible explanation. To propose it was a coincidence is absurd. (OHJ, 611)
It is very easy to predict the current state of the evidence that has been with us from the beginning. Prediction in hindsight is easy. It is so easy to know what to have expected after the event. We only have to compare the many predictions that the recent US elections would be a tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. After the election it was easy to look back and see what we “should have expected” and why.
Jesus either existed or he did not. If he existed it was not with a probability of less than 1. If he existed he existed 100%. If we can’t be sure he existed then we are not sure or we cannot know. If we cannot know we cannot say he may have existed at a 30% probability. That would make no sense if he existed. If the historian does not know for sure then the historian does not know. The historian may say it is likely or not likely he existed, but that still leaves the question unanswered. Those are the fundamental options with respect to any historical event — it either happened or it didn’t or we have no evidence or at best ambiguous evidence for it happening.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Bayes’ theorem. It is a brilliant tool at doing what it was designed to do. But historical research is not a science and few historians, maybe a few die-hard stubborn empiricist historians, would claim it is a science that can predict what will be found in the sources or even sometimes what will happen in the future. Historical events are unique. The justified historical approach to the question of Jesus is to study the Jesus bequeathed to us in the surviving sources. Whether a historical figure behind the myth and theology historically existed is an unknown and unknowable question, and, I think, ultimately irrelevant.
Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix, 2014.
Doherty, Earl. The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999.
Rank, Otto, Raglan, and Alan Dundes. In Quest of the Hero. Mythos. Princeton University Press, 1990.
Neil Godfrey
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Jesus was definitely a character in the New Testament. Was he also a real person? That is debatable, but if we assume he was, so what? Can it be proved that he was god in a meat suit? Most definitely not. In order for this to be done, one must first establish that the god in question exists, and that has been an open question for millennia and there does not seem to be a way to answer it. Once the existence of such a god is established, the ability of that god to masquerade as a human being needs to be established, and then that only determines that it was possible, not that it happened.
This topic is clouded by the conflation of a person being alive in the first century and that person being a god incarnate. The first aspect of the question might be solved, the probability of the second aspect being solved is so close to zero that it effectively is zero.
Did Jesus really Exist? It depends on whether we are literalists or not. If we define Jesus as somebody who LITERALLY walked on water, changed water to wine, and fed 5,000 families with a single lunch, then NO, THAT JESUS NEVER EXISTED.
But if we take a more intelligent approach, and interpret the miracles attributed to Jesus in RATIONALIST terms, then yes, we can make a strong case for Jesus the Magician, as defined by Morton Smith in his classic book, “Jesus the Magician” (1977).
Although the Jesus of Morton Smith is unlike the Orthodox account of Jesus, still, Smith’s portrait is scientific, and RATIONAL, and after reading his book, I doubt that ANYONE could doubt the existence of the Real Man, Jesus of Nazareth.
I have read Smith’s Jesus the Magician and have responded to your reference to him the same way as now — Smith is naturally immersed in the standard methods of biblical scholars of his day and they are most definitely not “scientific”. He works with assumptions that are untested and unverifiable. His methods, like those of most researchers of the historical Jesus, are as unlike those of other historians as chalk is from cheese.
If you like I could do a post addressing why Smith’s book is methodologically flawed.
Added after original posting…..
I am not singling out Smith, by the way, but the same applies to most studies of the historical Jesus that I have read, employing form criticism, criteria of authenticity and now memory theory.
Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!
Neil, thank you for your excellent analysis!
Thanks for this breakdown. I had similar issues with and reservations about Carrier’s approach when I first read/heard about it, but you’ve clarified it way more than my own vague “now hang on a moment” feelings. Then again, never actually read the books myself. I think I was mostly put off by having to read entire book about technique (with a name that rubbed me the wrong way) before reading the second book about the topic that actually interested me.
This analysis only requires a single sentence to refute: the word “predict” simply means “makes probable,” and a prediction becomes “evidence for” a theory when that theory makes the predicted outcome probable and no other (plausible) theory makes it as probable (i.e. when the other theory does not predict that outcome, or not well).
Questions of exact instantiation (like, exactly what words Mark used to assemble his Gospel or what documents got written or survived) don’t matter, because they are dissolved under the coefficient of contingency (see Proving History, index). In other words, prediction does not mean “we expect a man named Clement to exist and write a specific letter,” but “we expect that IF a man named Clement existed and wrote a specific letter, THEN it would have the general characteristics it does, whereas the alternative explanation does not make those characteristics likely.”
This is because both theories make “a man named Clement existed and wrote a specific letter” equally likely, and so that isn’t the thing either is “predicting” (it’s a contingency and so has a low probability either way) nor is that evidence for either theory (being the same probability on either theory, its being improbable on both has no effect on either theory’s probability).
I trust nothing I wrote suggests I was implying you were ever making specific and detailed predictions such as the example you cite about Clement. Far from it. On the contrary, I quoted your explanation that indeed you were predicting the general characteristics, not a specific letter:
But is not your response only a repeat of the point I was critiquing? I have explained in some detail in more than one post in this series that your term “expect” does indeed mean “predict” on the “probabilities” so it is unclear why you are reminding us of that fact. And I certainly have never suggested what would be the absurd idea that you were claiming to predict specific details.
As for the circularity, does not the minimal mythical view of Jesus arise from collating all of that evidence about the kind of letter we find from Clement? It is from an examination of all of that evidence that the Jesus myth theory has arisen. So the myth theory can hardly “predict” the kind of evidence one encounters, meaning it cannot predict the general characteristics of the evidence. The general characteristics of the evidence gave rise to the theory in the first place, did they not?
As for the Rank-Raglan reference class, you have misconstrued its relevance.
The question we need to answer is how often are heavily mythologized persons historical. Because that entails the prior probability that any one of them we pick at random will be historical. It is obvious that mundanely-reported persons are going to turn out to be historical more often than fantastically-reported persons. So the only question is by how much. How often do mundanely-reported persons turn out to be historical? (That observed frequency is quite high) And how often do fantastically-reported persons turn out to be historical? (That observed frequency is significantly lower)
The only reason my study uses the Rank-Raglan set (rather than others I documented, like the Socrates-Aesop set, the Translated Heroes set, and so on) as a proxy for all heavily mythologized persons is that it is a clearly defined set with (a) a lot of members (fourteen is remarkable; no other consistent mythotype has that many instantiations in antiquity) and (b) who are very unlikely to belong accidentally (because they must meet too many fantastical attributes for chance accident to include them, at least often). So we can do usable math with this set.
When I set the margins of error as very wide as I did, a frequency of historicity for heavily mythologized persons comes out as 1 in 3, which seems to track close to every other case (its within margins for the Socrates-Aesop set, the Translated Heroes set, and many others you could try, like the Resurrected Heroes set, the Savior Demigods set, even the Biblical Sages set). To argue that heavily mythologized persons are more often historical than that would require actually building a complete set with a relevant metric (demarcating heavy vs. mere mythologization) and observing a higher frequency of historical persons in the result. No one has done this. And I doubt they could. Any such set is very likely to end up close to my same margin (as my observations for other heavily mythologized sets indicates).
If I misconstrued its relevance I would appreciate being informed where and how I have misconstrued it. I believe I have understood and explained your point and my response in the first post in this series. If I have misstated or misrepresented anything I will make any necessary correction.
As I tried to make clear in my earlier posts, especially part 1, such a question is irrelevant to whether a person or event had a historical reality. Probability with respect to such a question does not get off the ground. To weave probability statements into such limited and contingent data is the empiricist mistake that was once found all too often among the social sciences and applies equally to historical events and sources.
It seems to me that you are only repeating the point I have critiqued without addressing my critique.
I had an essay exchange and reply with Dr. Carrier a few years ago on the historicity of Jesus. I just updated my essay with a new appendix at the end explaining where I stand on the issue today. Check out the new appendix at the end of the essay if you get a chance. The appendix is just short with a few links in the body of the text. I address the new anthology “The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus (2024).” . . . .
See the rules we posted for comments: https://vridar.org/about/comments-and-moderation/ (I deleted your link to your post for reasons you will find on that page.)
If you have something to contribute to the point of the posts then do so — but we do not welcome anyone coming here to promote their own tired responses to Carrier.
I am very glad that Richard Carrier (RC) is commenting here. I have tried hard to explain (in the discussion at Part 2) my opinion that this work of yours, Neil, is a big misunderstanding of what RC is doing. (I can quote myself
“I hope, Neil, that you can now see how I understand “predictions” and “expectations” at Carrier; I have no problem with his terminology.”
from the long discussion there, where I am now awaiting your answer.)
Of course, it is much, much better when RC himself is now commenting …
Sorry I missed your earlier comment to which I have now replied. It is Carrier’s terminology and declared method of making prediction that is erroneous, as I have tried to explain. I am well aware that Carrier never made any specific or detailed prediction but was speaking of general characteristics of the evidence. A claim to predict the general characteristic of the evidence is circular with the hypothesis being argued arose as a result of the general characteristic of the evidence.
I come from a science background – in particular geology, so I have borne some frustration over the characterisation of how science works.
I am of the opinion that if scientific methods are different to historical methods, then it is not a significant distinction any more than saying the methods geologists use are different to those used by physicists. Having the experience of doing geological field work, I am familiar with the issue of trying to put together a coherent ‘narrative’ out of evidence that is at times very ambiguous and extremely patchy. The one trick geologists do have up their sleeve is that at least they can contrive more evidence – if they are willing to pay for a drilling rig to turn up and core the rocks. In a sense, this is a bit like making a prediction – the geologist might say what they think will be found if they cored the formation.
If we consider the Chicxulub crater in the gulf of Mexico, this is exactly what happened. Maybe two decades after a strong iridium band was discovered world wide, coinciding with the extinction event of the dinosaurs, the Chicxulub crater was cored. The history of this event is now so well known, it could even be said to be proven, and yet when I was a student, we were debating as to whether this was caused by the Deccan volcanic traps (now in India) or some sort of Meteorite impact.
How this approach might apply to Mythicism, I am not sure, as unlike geologists, we cannot drill a core through the secret vaults of the Vatican to unearth the missing evidence.
One concern I have about this critique is the term ‘circular’. Which I think is a misuse here. Carrier and Doherty are using the same evidence and have a similar hypothesis (Doherty includes hypothetical Q sources, which Carrier would dismiss). The test of ‘circularity’ is not dependent on the logic direction, circularity is seen when an unspoken assumption is propped up by the hypothesis. ie we know that Deuteronomy was written at the time of Josiah!
Carrier starts with the hypothesis and argues that it ‘predicts’ the type of evidence we see, better than other hypothesis might. I am not enamored of this method, it can only be used as a retrospective method of comparing two hypothesis’. The limitation is that the discarded hypothesis might be unfairly represented – ie a strawman.
If I apply the Carrier method to crop circles arguing they are caused by alien visitors I could say that an advanced interstellar civilization with an artistic and mischievous bent (think Banksy in a flying saucer) predicts very well the evidence of crop circles. Of course, I imagine Carrier will reply that that alien-Banksy in a flying saucer is a very unlikely scenario but I have no idea how we use Bayes theory to prove that? All I can say is that Alien-Banksy theory is absurd, while Mythicism is not!
Thanks, Gordon. Would not the geologists be seeking to arrive at a common understanding of a “narrative” about geological events? Would it be correct to say that geologists work on the assumption that with enough information their understanding will be, in effect, complete? I would think that is the case (but I am not a geologist like you) because scientific laws provide a framework that leads to a “correct” understanding as more and more data is collated, yes?
Historical narratives are quite different. There can be a different narrative for every historian, in theory, with some people finding meaning in each of them. The historian can never hope to reconstruct “what it actually was like” because, well, that’s impossible. It was “like” so many things to so many different people at the time the event happened.
As for the circularity, I admit I may not have used the term strictly correctly. Maybe begging the question would have been closer to what I was thinking? After all, if a hypothesis is the result of certain kinds of evidence (and Carrier acknowledges taking his hypothesis from mythicists and those mythicists produced the hypothesis because of their studies of the evidence), how can it “predict” those kinds of evidence?
“Would it be correct to say that geologists work on the assumption that with enough information their understanding will be, in effect, complete?”
I imagine geologist always seek more evidence to have a better understanding, but a complete understanding would not be a realistic goal or even desirable. Scientists do often start their research with a question, and the value of that question is subjective.
Why are we so interested in Dinosaurs?
A lot of science is human-centric, we study things that interest us, not things that we deem irrelevant. In a sense the outcome of science is we create narratives, like stories about ammonites swimming through warm oceans being hunted by reptilian monsters.
I am drawn to a documentary narrated by David Attenborough telling me about Protorezoic life in the Ediacaran, and then equally drawn to a documentary about the rise of the Vikings in the middle ages.
This is the difference between science and history, isn’t it. The scientist applies their knowledge of natural “laws” to explain events. Attempts in the past to apply “laws” to explain historical events have not been generally received over time among historians. Apologists and even many scholars can apply their notion of the historical Jesus narrative to the gospels — reading the gospels as if they were produced by something like the kind of narrative they describe in the first place.
The mythicist can argue that the evidence is consistent with mythicism but the historicist can argue the converse.
Hence my view: deal with the Jesus we have, not with the one for whom we have no account.
But what is the Jesus we have?
Having just read Doherty’s most recent book about the subject, it does give an overall picture of many disparate concepts getting woven together and evolving into the Jesus we have today.
Doherty does cover off a lot of the evidence, but I imagine that one can always accuse even the most thorough researchers of cherry picking because they miss something the critic believes is important.
I note that Doherty also weaves a coherent narrative and hypothesis that allows me to digest this evidence. I am left with further questions, but it is very difficult to separate the narrative from the evidence. I am left with a strong argument in my mind for a mythical origin for Jesus, and a way of understanding the evidence.
I guess for me mythicism is not an end goal, but a way to make sense of what we have until something better comes along – but that does actually sound like me being a physicist now!
Yes, and some have suggested that Doherty’s presentation (especially in his first volume but also in his second on the question) is superior to Carrier’s. Doherty demonstrates the questionable nature of the sources with respect Christian tradition and no more.
Neil, I have been an avid reader of Carrier’s for several decades and an equally avid reader of yours for over a decade and find much of your argumentation on this specific issue to be quite compelling. Needless to say this leads me back to Part 1 wherein you state “I agree with much of Carrier’s approach but I also disagree on some major points.” Might I ask what aspects of Carrier’s approach you agree with? Thank you for another thought-provoking series!
I have no problem in principle with the use of Bayes to evaluate different hypotheses. Bayes is, after all, only making explicit what the processes we would otherwise be working through in our thinking. If we approach the existence of Jesus as a hypothesis for the explanation of origin of Christianity then fine.
(Though as you know from my posts I would not begin with the Rank-Raglan hero types as a reference class for the reasons I stated there.)
Carrier in fact goes well beyond approaching Jesus as a hypothesis, however. Carrier is treating the existence of Jesus on the same conceptual level as all historical events by reframing all historical events as fundamentally hypothetical (all have a probability of less than 1 — even if it an infinitesimally small amount less than 1) and further by equating his process with that of scientific method.
Even as a hypothesis, however, I would say that the mere proposition about the existence of Jesus is not very useful or relevant. What Carrier means is that the Jesus who existed was responsible for kick-starting Christianity — or at least for giving pre-existing developments an added momentum to take on the shape of Christianity. A better framed hypothesis would be, for instance, that a historical Jesus best explains the existence of the narratives we find in the gospels or belief in a crucified saviour as per the epistles. Carrier in his discussion does go this route, of course, which is fine.
Carrier’s OHJ is useful insofar as it brings so many facets of the question together into one volume and setting these out systematically. As you probably know I disagree with some of Carrier’s discussion about specific points (e.g. the view that there were popular messianic hopes in the first century among Judeans) but the fact that such points are set out for discussion is helpful.
I find forming a hypothesis of the probability of an event after it has allegedly occurred or not occurred to be meaningless. There are plenty of interesting textual arguments that support a mythical view of Jesus; Bayes doesn’t add much other than a scientific veneer and a sense of overkill.
Imagine hitting a clear ground rule double, and then calling your lawyer to insist on submitting video and testimony to the umpire that has already made the call in your favor. Dude, you’re standing on second, in scoring position. It’s all good. Relax. Wait for the next batter.
My apologies for the baseball metaphor, but that’s a larger biblical studies trope that I keep running into. I’ll never forget the book I once stumbled on that numerically listed all the reasons that the Last Supper was a Passover meal. It ended in the 60s or 70s and I tapped out around 25.
Ha! — while you were posting your comment I was replying to “freethoughtmonk” with exactly the same point — that the mere question of whether an event occurred is of itself meaningless.
I am kinda wanting at this point to write something up on the recent debate you, Aaron Adair, Jacob Berman, and Jack Bull had the other day specifically on this issue because… well… I think it encapsulated all of my general issues with this debate, and specifically showcases just how, in my opinion, liberal (in the ideological/economical) sense this entire debate is. It is merely “great man” theory in different forms.
At the very end, after you, Neil, make the (completely correct) comment that the only “Jesus” who mattered in history was the theological/literary figure in the NT, regardless of his historicity, Aaron Adair follows this by going on about what “model” best explains the data, and I am sitting here like… yeah but neither mythicism nor historicism actually explains any data in any meaningful way. It is a debate over whether a single dude existed, and it increasingly seems to me that both historicists and mythicists are both founded on this completely inaccurate idea that history is determined by great individuals and the gods they worship, and it becomes increasingly apparent that neither explains really much of anything about early Christianity in any way that should be considered satisfactory or even remotely credible to historians outside of this field. Like Aaron’s comments fundamentally do not agree with yours there, despite him saying “I agree” in the video, because frankly he is still invested in the individuality of Jesus and his role in shaping a cult, whether as a person or as a mythical figure. No matter how someone chooses to explain Jesus, the only thing a historical/mythical Jesus explains is Jesus. It doesn’t actually tell us how we got the literature we have (nor do I think that is a particularly important question to begin with), nor does it tell us anything about the sociological features and origins of Christianity as a movement rooted in its material world.
IMO, this entire debate is basically worthless. It adds nothing, it explains nothing worth knowing (again, explaining a historical/mythical Jesus is an entirely tautological process that only explains Jesus, who isn’t even relevant), and if we all agree that the only Jesus who matters is the literary figure, there seems to be no purpose in even wasting time on the issue, when we could just get on with our day and actually move our study toward something more progressive and rewarding for historical inquiry.
This applies equally to Jacob and Jack’s side, which I frankly found uncompelling as well (saying the whole “TF” is authentic is just absurd to me, as were Jack’s unconvincing tangents on persecution and such, especially when there was a much better and easier counter to Aaron’s claims available to him). Both sides routinely seemed unaware of key data also throughout the whole thing. Like Aaron’s claims that there are no accounts of John arriving from Heaven, or he had no Christology, or that his followers were driven out… all of that is wrong. The Mandaean Book of John in chp. 18 literally says he was “transferred” from the heavens and like Jesus is also symbolized as a star in the text. Likewise, Ps.-Clement, Recogitiones 1.54.8 says there were people actively worshiping John as a “Christ” (so he definitely had a Christology), and there are hints he was considered a messiah in the polemics in gJohn 1-2 as well. Aaaand, Adair’s claim they were driven out is completely unevidenced. Josephus only says that John was executed to prevent a potential rebellion. In fact, given that Pilate was recalled for discipline for executing the Samaritan prophet and many of his followers, it seems fairly evident that except when there was outright fear of rebellion that it was *not* standard practice for Romans to just commit wanton slaughter of cults in Judea and Galilee.
The whole debate kinda just summed up every reason why we should have nothing to do with this frankly worthless and cumbersome conversation on “did Jesus exist?” (or questing after reconstructing him). It gets nowhere, is hinged on inaccurate portrayals of data (on both sides), and the methods employed are pretty laughable from everyone.
IMO, Jesus should be more or less treated like Apollonius or Socrates or Pythagoras, and we should just be done with it. Done with the questing, done with the faux reconstructing, and done with the useless debates on who he was, what he taught, or if he lived. We should just focus on the impact, regardless of its origin as being from an actual dude or some myth. It wouldn’t really change anything to any noteworthy extent.
This is why I just gave up trying to write a book arguing in favor of a historical Jesus. Just realized that I am basically doing the same thing as Carrier in reverse: writing a long doorstop that will achieve nothing, and not really move the field anywhere, and then I’d be stuck writing a decade’s worth of blogposts defending the glorified paperweight from the criticism of obsessed enthusiasts, who are more interested in throwing Jesus under a microscope than doing real history. It would be a complete waste of time.
Hence, why I have moved on to other topics in the field, like early Christian martyrdom narratives, and authenticity studies. Feel like actual progress can be done there, whereas Jesus studies was, is, and always will be (regardless of who is right on the historicity question) a hole. The only reason it exists is because it makes money, imo.
Don’t get me started…. damn, you got me started! 😉 Never again. I was not aware that there was going to be anything approaching a formal debate structure. The guy I was for some reason teamed up with began by saying lots of stuff I had issues with and wanted to dispute. And I even stayed up way past my normal bed time — never again.
But I disagree about such debates being worthless. Let me explain. Group singing is good for the soul, I hear. And debating the Jesus myth is like group singing. We know the lines by heart and the chorus refrains. Someone leads by singing a well-known set of lines and then the others reply as expected with their sets of lines that everyone knows — and the whole session goes on like this, a nice repeat of a singing session with the same lyrics and tune that they have read, listened to, and sung many times before. At the end, everyone feels good about it and says, Hey, that was fun. We sure wish we could anticipate another verse to give us a new ending, but till then let’s do it again next fortnight. Makes us feel really good doing it over and over.
So I think there is something to be gained among those who enjoy the experience. But I hate it. It’s a waste of time trying to introduce a new riff — because the program they are singing has a standard and oft repeated response to those things, too.
Tell them modern historians discount evidence that only appears 20 or 30 years after the event and they say, Hey, but we can’t get rid of Apollonius of Tyana! How many times have I heard that same response — as if methods should be justified by their ability to give us our favourite teddy bears that we have for so long cherished. So I try to explain that Apollonius won’t die if we remove Philostratus because Ph and others also speak of earlier sources — and it’s back to business again. Good, we’ll keep the TF as of key explanatory relevance to events two generations earlier. After all — when we’re talking about two thousand years ago, hey, what’s a mere 60 years — now 60 years in modern times, hey, that has meaning, but after 2000 years? Nah — means nuthin’!
And I missed an early night for that. I’m studying full time again and need my sleep. Singalongs no longer interest me.
I think there is definitely merit to the idea of doing something for the experience and the positivity that comes from it, but… I’m going to be real… who actually enjoys this debate except edgelords who like trading polemics (which I think alone is a good argument not to continue this nonsense)? You don’t. I don’t. No academics that I am acquainted with like it. Most find it intolerably exhausting and thank me for writing on it because they don’t want to.
Eventually we need to just find another song to sing along to or some other way to entertain ourselves. Video games can be fun. Maybe I’m just too neurodivergent, but I can’t sit here singing the same song over and over and over. Something has to give eventually.
I dunno, maybe I’m cynical. But after watching this debate go in circles for years, and reading the literature and seeing that it has been going in this repetitive, aimless, unproductive circle for the past multiple hundreds of years, I think we can officially qualify the entire thing as just madness. As they say, insanity is “Doing the same thing and expecting different results.” Insanity, meet Jesus studies.
I recall the time — back in the 1990s — when I and others encountered Earl Doherty’s website and soon-to-follow first book, The Jesus Puzzle. Earl raised serious questions and re-ignited the old discussion. Earl was quite correct in pointing out that scholarship had, despite its protestations to the contrary, attempted to bury the debate through ad homina, misrepresentation, and so forth. — I understand that you and I disagree on that point, Chrissy — unlike you, I believe Earl was correct in pointing out that mainstream scholarship has never seriously engaged with the debate but always sought to bury it with some hostility. It was that hostility that drove Earl from the public scene. So it has not been amiss, I think, for “mythicists” to present the case afresh for the public in each new generation.
So now, after Earl Doherty re-opened the public debate, some of us have moved on since the 1990s and early 2000s. But the reality is that as long as institutional scholarship fails to recognize that its methods (criteriology, memory theory) are all built on sand (the circular assumption as pointed out by Philip Davies) then nothing will change in that quarter or the next generation of the public who will learn of the questions raised from a new source.
A better way to grope towards an understanding Christian origins is, as you point out, to set aside the “great man theory” of history that has been implicit in the historical Jesus research and to focus our reading on the Jesus we have IN (not hidden behind) our sources, along with insights from outside fields like anthropology etc.
I mean, criteriology and memory theory are both not fairing so well in recent scholarship, and while I think mythicists have poignantly argued against the usage of them, and are on point there, I don’t think a debate on “did this random dude exist?” is actually an effective way to argue against those troubled methods, nor does it end up having much benefit. It is taking a valid and legitimate series of criticisms, and then contextualizing them in a debate that scholars understandably don’t care about. I agree mainstream scholarship hasn’t seriously engaged the debate, but frankly… I don’t actually see the problem. If we want to produce metacriticism of the field, there are far more effective ways of doing so than engaging in a debate that doesn’t really change or mean anything, and said debate is also a toxic hellscape of edgelords waiting to go after anyone who dares have a contradictory opinion. There is value in the criticisms made in this debate, but they are mitigated by just how “not worth it” it is to even bother.
Additionally, all those most meaningful critiques of memory theory, criteriological approaches, and other methodological flaws, etc. can all be done just as well without debating unimportant things like “did Jesus exist.” I would also note that scholars are definitely becoming more accustomed to disregarding at least criteriological approaches to Jesus. So there is that. Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne’s edited volume, along with criticisms from other academics, have at the very least been rather effective (again, without having to waste time on the Christ Myth debate), and I know James Crossley announced specifically in his proclamation for a “Next Quest” in JSHJ that the criteria of authenticity are “demolished.”
I ultimately think that the Christ Myth Debate is just another recapitulation of “Great Man Theory” in which both sides formulate the origins of Christianity around the undue over-emphasis on a “Jesus” (historical or mythical). I do agree with critics like Doherty (and yourself) on a large chunk of things, including metacriticism of this field and its methods. But I don’t think a Christ Myth debate is an effective way of making those criticisms, nor does it undo the primary problem: everyone is obsessed with the great individual of Jesus, and now we just keep figuring out new ways to quest after him. Either through a historical one, and we develop a million fan fiction novels masquerading as academic biographies on who Jesus was; or, we go the mythical route and now we just do the same thing for a non-historical Jesus (astrotheology; Doherty-Carrier space Jesus; Christian Lindtner’s Buddhist myth; Wells’ wisdom personification; etc.). It doesn’t actually fix anything. Just creates a whole new mess of the same errors we’ve been arguing over for centuries and does not address the root problem: obsessing over Jesus as central to the origin of Christianity is bad method, no matter your stance on historicity.
Thus, relegating both Jesus questing and Christ Myth debates to the discard pile is, imo, for the greater good. Better to kill two birds with one stone and weed out the source of all our problems. If we want to critique the field for its errors, we can do so without creating a whole new mess of Jesus-myth questing, as if that will actually be any better (it won’t, and we’ve already seen hints that it will be a mess).
So like, I sympathize with Earl and others who rightfully noted the field ignored this debate. But, I also don’t think this debate is (a) worth having, or (b) addressing the central problem with the field, and is instead hinged on maintaining that same problem. The debate is an outcropping of obsession over Jesus, not a legitimate response to it.
The only way to demolish the “great man” Jesus, is to simply stop treating his historical figure (or mythical one) as having any relevance at all, and move on to reception history. Reading how Jesus was received in our sources, as you say. Which I think mythicists are probably ahead of the game on. But I think they delude the value of their own work by… again… obsessing over the great (mythical) man as central to the origin of Christianity. It simply doesn’t matter if Christianity began with a real or mythical person at all. Doesn’t make a difference in the end.
Yes, the primary interest in the Christ myth view is in addressing the public wisdom. And of course that runs up against the theological bias of the scholarship. And then we have everyone else’s biases joining in the fray. Hence the fireworks.
After the dawn has arrived and we see nothing but the ashes remaining from those fireworks we move on. The interest has shifted focus.
A few scholars have attempted to move away from the great man perspective but with limited success, in my view. That’s another discussion entirely.
Is it really possible for a field that sees itself as owing its very existence to “the great man” himself ever break away from that focus?
When you speak of reception history do you specifically have in mind the recent volumes edited by Chris Keith et al.?
“A few scholars have attempted to move away from the great man perspective but with limited success, in my view. That’s another discussion entirely.” (just predicted the topic of a paper I have in submission right now lol)
“Is it really possible for a field that sees itself as owing its very existence to “the great man” himself ever break away from that focus?”
No, which is why I think Jesus studies should just be dissolved entirely, and NT studies in general needs to be folded into Classics, so we can finally treat theology and history as different fields, and not this mixed up hodge podge we have in NT studies.
“When you speak of reception history do you specifically have in mind the recent volumes edited by Chris Keith et al.?”
Somewhat (though they still fall prey to going “Jesus was the cause of X thing in this source” but I think it is more in the right direction). I also think proper literary studies of the gospels are also in order (a la Thomas Brodie, Robyn Faith Walsh, etc.). A refocus of the field reading Christian literature as literature. Also sociological studies (e.g., how the gospels respond to their own day, and use Jesus as a puppet for their own manipulations and responses to circumstances of those time periods) would be useful, especially in light of material conditions (because I’m Marxist of course).
I don’t know the details of your paper, obviously, but my view on what is done in that direction will continue fail as long as room is kept for the elephant who must be no more than scarcely mentioned.
As for the reception history to which I referred — yes, it all comes across as an act of devotion to “the great man” behind it all.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that whether Jesus was a historical figure cannot be determined, but that whether Jesus was a historical figure is ulrtimately irrelevant.
I hope that I interpret your words correctly.
If I interpret your words correctly, though, would your position not be itself controversial among mainstream biblical scholarship, which has settled upon the conclusion that Jesus’s historicity is settled and, if I understand correctly, that only cranks and pseudoscholars would question whether Jesus’s historicity has been settled?
I hope that I am not misrepresenting or offending anyone in this controversial discussion.
Actually I think my position is no different from that of many New Testament scholars who concede that the historical Jesus is unrecoverable and irrelevant since the only Jesus who has impacted history has been the Jesus of the canon. The question is simply ignored by many. But yes, to the extent that some contentious scholars with whom I have crossed swords in the past – e.g. James McGrath, James Crossley, Chris Keith — I am viewed with suspicion and even a certain hostility by some. Last time I looked my blog was listed as a “conspiracy theory site” by a community of biblical scholars. But in reality, I see no difference between my view and the one I encounter in much of the scholarly literature.
As you know, I try to apply the (empirical — see Part 2 of this series) methods of research as they are taken for granted among historians and from that perspective it is safe to say that we have no evidence for a historical Jesus — so from a historian’s perspective the question simply does not arise. (The only historians who have taken up the question, to my knowledge, are those who have immersed themselves in the biblical studies literature and embraced its flawed methods of criteriology and now, I presume, memory theory.)
Most biblical scholars appear to be simply unaware of how different their methods are from those of other historians. Philip Davies upset the status quo among Old Testament scholars when he forcefully pointed out the circularity of those scholars in assuming that there was some historicity behind the narratives of David and Solomon. The exact same error is being committed by New Testament scholars who assume a historical origin to the gospel narratives. If losing David was too much for some, how much more would the loss of a historical Jesus be felt.
I think Thomas Brodie had it right when he saw that what mattered for Christian belief was the story itself. One sees Church signs encouraging passersby to look to the Jesus in heaven, the Jesus of the gospels, the Jesus of their prayers and songs. That’s the only Jesus who really matters to most people. And I simply have no interest whatever in addressing that Jesus, not even to debunk him. Live and let live.
I was asking Chrissy Hansen, but your answer is interesting also and I apologize for not clarifying whom I was addressing.
>Philip Davies upset the status quo among Old Testament scholars when I forcefully pointed out the circularity of those scholars in assuming that there was some historicity behind the narratives of David and Solomon.
Surely you mean when he forcefully pointed out the circularity of those scholars in assuming that there was some historicity behind the narratives of David and Solomon.
Of course. Corrected it, thanks.
No my position is not particularly mainstream. I hold that not only is the debate on Jesus’ historicity irrelevant, that the whole of Jesus as a persona at the origins of Christianity (mythical or historical) is completely irrelevant… so the whole of the Quest for the Historical Jesus is, in and of itself, a waste of time. Essentially, I’m advocating that we dissolve the entire subfield, or at the very least relegate it to only studying the reception history of Jesus (e.g., how Jesus was perceived in sources, rather than trying to reconstruct an historical individual/mythical deity).
It is my position that the entire debate is wrongly hinged on the assumption that Jesus’ historicity is important for understanding Christian origins, which I think is just completely invalidated by a more critical sociological approach to Christian origins, and also is irrelevant to how we deal with our extant sources (gospels and what not). I’m essentially taking the Soviet approach. After the Christ-Myth debate in the Soviet Union more or less settled at the end of the 1960s, scholars like Livshits just dismissed the importance of Jesus (regardless of whether he lived or not) altogether as being irrelevant for critical evaluations of Christian origins.
IMO, I think the entire debate (regardless of who is right) is misguided and none of the problems in this field will be fixed by just creating a “Quest of the Mythical Jesus” in place of a historical one. It will just be the same roundabout circus this one already is. Best to just dump all of it and do away with Jesus once and for all.
Hello Neil
I’ve been a reader of yours for many years. I’m struggling to understand your point here, perhaps some examples will show that, as I understand it, the ideas set out here have some very odd consequences if applied to other situations, so here goes:
1. On circularity
• I find a reptile-like bone in an old strata of rock
• On this basis, I hypothesise that ‘dinosaurs probably existed’
Does it then follow that I cannot use the (dinosaur) bone as evidence for dinosaurs, since it is the very presence of the bone which caused me to think there might be dinosaurs in the first place? This doesn’t seem right.
I mean, presumably all good theories came about because there was evidence to support them. If that evidence is then disallowed, well, I don’t know what to think.
2. On ‘predictions’
I feel like this is a confusion of terminology. Instead of thinking of Bayes as providing a ‘prediction’, which is unintuitive when applied to past events, why not think about it as a ‘likelyhood’ instead?
Lets go back to my dinosaur bone example.
It happened in the past, so we cannot *know* that dinosaurs existed. Like any historical event.
But in actual reality, either dinosaurs did exist, with a probability of 100%; or they didn’t, with a probability of 0%.
It makes no sense (on my reading of your argument) to claim a probability of 60%, or to gradually increase it as we find more bones (because these are ‘expected’). Either dinosaurs existed, or they didn’t, and we simply cannot know.
We are also unable to say whether it is more likely that giant clowns with yellow fingers roamed the earth instead. Because probabilities don’t apply to historical events.
I feel like I must have misunderstood your point because it seems to me to suggest a theory of knowledge where any evidence used to generate a hypothesis is ruled out, and anyway, nothing is more or less likely than anything else!
Hi Geoff. You are certainly correct and I agree fully with your point that we should not rule out evidence that is used to generate a hypothesis — no data of any kind should be ruled out if it can be shown to have any relevance to a hypothesis. I was writing in the context of the previous four posts where I addressed Carrier’s notion of history. Carrier was attempting to verify the strength of his hypothesis for the nonexistence of Jesus by saying that his hypothesis “predicted” the kind of evidence he found in, for example, various canonical and extra-canonical epistles.
My point was that his point was invalid because his hypothesis “predicted” no such thing. He did not formulate a hypothesis from thin air and then think in abstract terms that if it were true he would expect to find certain kinds of data in the sources. No, the hypothesis he began with was arrived at AFTER and IN RESPONSE TO other persons reading the sources and concluding that they all indicated “mythicism”. So the hypothesis was built on a reading of those sources. The hypothesis was itself arrived at because of those sources.
Therefore it is invalid to turn around and claim that the hypothesis “predicted” those sources. It did not. The sources were the reason for the hypothesis in the first place.
This may sound like a semantic quibble, but what Carrier is trying to do is to place historical hypotheses on the same level as scientific hypotheses. The theory of relativity, we know, predicted the result of the Eddington experiment about light bending near the sun. But historical hypotheses can predict nothing comparable at all. All the data is already studied and because it is well known the hypothesis of mythicism is arrived at. If the light bending near the sun had been known before Einstein produced his theory of relativity, and if he used that known observation to support his theory, then he could not say that his theory “predicted” that particular observation of the light bending.