Dr. Sarah's Friendly Refutation of all Mythicism

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

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Dr. Sarah's Friendly Refutation of all Mythicism

When a new member took the stage today, I felt like I'd read her name somewhere before. Normally that's over at vridar. And indeed! Neil dedicated a blog post to Sarah almost 5 years ago and really put his heart into it.

It makes a wonderful change to read arguments on this topic that are expressed in a civil and calmly reasoned tone.

The reason for this was Sarah's (= Geeky Humanist) post at FreethoughtBlogs.com „Jesus mythicism vs. Jesus historicity: an argument in favour of the latter“.

If Jesus did exist, we have to explain how, within a relatively short time of his death, he was being spoken of as some kind of mythical semi-deity in the writings of some of his followers. If Jesus was a myth from the start, on the other hand, we have the reverse problem of having to explain how he then came to be written about and taught about as an actual person who walked the face of the earth and did normal (as well as miraculous) things. And this, as it happens, gets to the nub of why I believe in a historical Jesus; I’ve found other reasons as I looked into the topic more, but my initial reason is simply that I believe the former scenario is a lot easier to explain with the data we have than the latter. So, I want to explain why.

She is currently engaged in a series of articles on the book by our own R.G. Price.

‘Deciphering the Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed’ review: Preface and Introduction.

Hey, guys, anyone up for a bit more Jesus mythicism debate? Yes… it’s time for me to start reviewing R.G. Price’s book!

A bit of background, for those who don’t know it: A few months back, I wrote a post here about why I’ve always found it more likely that Jesus did exist as some kind of real-life figure, rather than being a completely mythical figure as many non-Christians believe. (That post isn’t a comprehensive list of reasons for believing in Jesus’s historicity, by the way; just the reasons why I thought Jesus likely to be historical even before I started reading up properly on the debate and learning more about it.)

Good luck Sarah!

[Giuseppe]

we have the reverse problem of having to explain how he then came to be written about and taught about as an actual person who walked the face of the earth and did normal (as well as miraculous) things.

For me the only problem in the process of euhemerization is the presence of John the Baptist in the incipit (assuming, for sake of discussion, the Markan priority). When I see other mythological euhemerizing legends, usually the descent of the demigod on the earth happens bluntly by a magical act. While the first action of Jesus in Mark is an ordinary action by a pious Jew.

Premise: I am a fanatic mythicist (and a 'fan boy' of Richard Carrier) only under the premise that Paul's epistles (1) were genuine and (2) dated to the 30-50 CE. If at least one of these two requisites is not more satisfied, then I have already found the historical Jesus: he was better known in Josephus under the name of Jesus ben Sapphas.

[StephenGoranson]

"Fan" Giuseppe declared that euhemerism usually happens "bluntly."
I am not aware of such.

[Secret Alias]

All of the efforts of Irenaeus and his followers were devoted to the "proof" that all the gospels of the heretics resembled Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Once that's out of the way, so too this theory. Poof!

[rgprice]

In fact it was fairly common in literature about recent miraculous events to entirely make up the people involved in them. This is a known tactic. If you make up a story about a real person then there are people who can refute it. For example, if I make up a story about a co-worker of mine and start spreading claims that they miraculously healed someone and they died and came back to life, then that person, or people who know/knew that person can be tracked down and and questioned and refute the story. However if I make up such a story about a person who never existed at all, then there is no one to track down.

It is now recognized that many such stories from he ancient world were written this way. For example, the writer of Letter of Aristeas invented the supposed author of the letter wholesale. The letter isn't forged in the name of a real member of the Ptolemaic court. The letter is addressed to Philocrates from Aristeas. Both people are literary inventions. The names are real, but they don't correspond to any real figures. The letter is a pure forgery.

Yet, we also know that Josephus treated the letter as genuine and wrote about the life of Aristeas, whom scholars now recognize never even existed.

Likewise with the story of Bouplagos and Publius. This story, written in the 1st century BCE, describes a Roman "officer" named "Publius" who fell into a prophetic fit and predicted the doom of the Roman army as well as hi sown death. He was then stalked down by a wolf and eaten, leaving only his head, which uttered more prophecies.

As noted by the classicist William Hanssen, "the narrator, by giving only the first name of the possessed man, wishes to avoid clearly identifying him as Publius Scipio [a well known Roman general] or as any other prominent Roman, for to do so would make the entire account easily falsifiable, since the narrative would be plainly inconsistent with the known facts of the man's life. ... In choosing the name Publius the author wishes at least a thought of the historical Scipio to pass across the mind of the reader, suggesting, if not actually portraying, historical fact in the same spirit perhaps as the author of Philinnon, who creates an atmosphere of historicity in his fiction by employing proper names that are appropriate to Macedonia in the time of Philip."

And these are just two quick examples. The fact is that such stories were typically written this way, about figures whose identities could not be verified. By just entirely fabricating whole people, there was no one to contest the facts of the claims. It is widely recognized that writers at this time wrote miraculous stories about people who never existed and filled them with elements of historical fact in order to give their fictions, "an atmosphere of historicity."

Thus, we are left with the question regarding Jesus. If there was a real Jesus, who didn't do all the things claimed of him in the Gospels, then where are the accounts of his life? Where were the followers disputing the identify of the Gospel Jesus? The reality is that there is one and only one biography of Jesus known and that is the biography we read in the Gospels. Every single Gospel tells the same basic story. They all describe the same basic Jesus. Because the only description of "Jesus Christ" comes from the Gospels. There never was any alterative Jesus. Ironically, Christians themselves have long made this point. When the claim has been made that the "real Jesus" didn't actually do these things. The apologists said, "That can't be, because every account of the life of Jesus agrees that he did." Its like the empty tomb. The apologetic claim is that the tomb has to have been left empty, and thus Jesus has to have risen, because no tomb of Jesus was ever known. So, since, even when 2nd century Christians went looking for the tomb of Christ no one had any idea where such a tomb ever was, they concluded that it was proof he had really risen from the grave and left the earth because if he were actually a mortal man who had remained buried then his tomb would have been venerated, so the fact that his tomb was entirely unknown meant he was really God!

[dbz]

• Dr. Sarah has the following open question:

So the question is not just ‘why would someone write fictional biographies about the imagined earthly life of a heavenly being just to show him making pronouncements to people?’, it’s also ‘having done that, why would they not even show him making the pronouncements they wanted made?’ But, if the gospel authors were working with stories handed down about an actual Jesus, it makes complete sense; they’re not writing his life from scratch, they’re trying to portray an actual person of whom they have some records as holding a viewpoint he didn’t actually hold.

---

Comment by Dr Sarah June 25, 2023 at 5:29 am per "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023.

Which implies that if gMark is a Pauline gospel then it should of made it more clear to the plebes that Torah law is not necessary for redemption now and other talking points.

But I suggest that gMark was not intended as an encyclopedic recapitulation of every point made by Paul. Rather every iota of gMark (as R.G.Price opines) implies why the Temple cult perished do to ignorance or outright antipathy towards key talking points made by Paul!

[Giuseppe]

"Fan" Giuseppe declared that euhemerism usually happens "bluntly."
I am not aware of such.

think about the Zeus' descent to earth to impregnate unsuspecting mortal women. Was it "bluntly" enough?

[rgprice]

• Dr. Sarah has the following open question:

So the question is not just ‘why would someone write fictional biographies about the imagined earthly life of a heavenly being just to show him making pronouncements to people?’, it’s also ‘having done that, why would they not even show him making the pronouncements they wanted made?’ But, if the gospel authors were working with stories handed down about an actual Jesus, it makes complete sense; they’re not writing his life from scratch, they’re trying to portray an actual person of whom they have some records as holding a viewpoint he didn’t actually hold.

---

Comment by Dr Sarah June 25, 2023 at 5:29 am per "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023.

Which implies that if gMark is a Pauline gospel then it should of made it more clear to the plebes that Torah law is not necessary for redemption now and other talking points.

But I suggest that gMark was not intended as an encyclopedic recapitulation of every point made by Paul. Rather every iota of gMark (as R.G.Price opines) implies why the Temple cult perished do to ignorance or outright antipathy towards key talking points made by Paul!

Nice call out dbz. But here Dr. Sarah is falling into another typical apologetic trap: Assuming that the agendas of the Gospel writers were shared and assuming that the agendas of any given writer corresponds to the agenda of what became orthodox Christianity. This also related to the supposed criterion from embarrassment.

The problem here is that there is no reason at all to think that the writer of the Gospel of Mark didn't write exactly what he wanted to write. The criterion of embarrassment assumes that certain claims would have been embarrassing to the writer, and thus the fact that the writer wrote them anyway proves that it must be true, or else the writer would have excluded the claim to avoid embarrassment, but presumably he didn't because it was a "known fact".

This is, of course, preposterous, because it assumes that the claim would have been embarrassing to the writer BECUASE it was embarrassing to later Christians. A key example here is Peter's denial and abandonment of Jesus.

Apologists claim that the fact that the Gospels say that Peter denied Jesus and abandoned him means that the accounts must be based on historical fact, because the abandonment of Jesus by Peter was an embarrassment to the church, so the fact that it was recorded means it must have been true.

But, this all assumes that the writer of the story had the same perspective and agenda as the later church, for which there is no evidence at all!

Rather, it is quite clear that the writer of the Gospel of Mark was opposed to Peter and had every intention to undermining his authority and credibility. For the writer of Mark, Peter is a foil. The writer of Mark wasn't embarrassed to say that Peter abandoned Jesus, he was intentionally throwing him under the bus!

And why, of course?

Galatians 2: 11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood self-condemned, 12 for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. 13 And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?”

Because the writer of Mark is a "Paulinist", writing a polemic allegory that identifies Paul as the one and only true apostle who is the only one who received and revealed the true gospel of Jesus Christ. That later Christians were embarrassed by this has nothing to do with the agenda of the original writer.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

But here Dr. Sarah is falling into another typical apologetic trap ...

I think you should be fairer and refrain from such reviews. I haven't read much of Sarah's post but she doesn't do that. Correct?

I find Sarah to be a nice challenge to get your point across to someone outside of the Mythicist bubble (and our bubble).

[rgprice]

Another thing to consider is that we really have no idea what the context was for the original material. Under my proposed model, the Gospel of Mark was an introduction to the Pauline letters, but we have no idea who the audience was or how this material was used. Was this part of a mystery cult? Was it intended for initiates? Mark contains many "hidden" references to other material, especially the Jewish scriptures. Were these hidden codes that were supposed to be taught to initiates?

What's clear is that all of the original context is lost on later readers. It seems to me that originally there was this collection that consisted of the "Gospel of Mark" followed by the Pauline letters. That collection was then modified and became the "Gospel of Luke" followed by the Pauline letters. That collection was then modified and became Marcion's Gospel followed by the Pauline letters. But yet, none of the Christians that we learn anything from ever had knowledge of these smaller collections, other than Marcion's. All of the Christians we learn anything from either don't know any Gospels at all or they know of a collection containing four Gospels.

So what this tells us is that an entire segment of early Christian history has been entirely lost and the provenance of these materials was completely unknown to the readers we hear from. The communities in which the original smaller collections were produced were entirely unknown to Roman Christians. Roman Christians view the four Gospel collection as original and authoritative, while denouncing the works that were actually more original. I believe this was generally a product of innocent confusion. Someone created the larger collection and forged material to insert anti-Marcionite material. That wasn't "innocent", it was a conscious fraud, but I think the recipients of this fraud were truly duped. I think when we get to Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, they were duped by these works, along with everyone that followed them. They were intentionally misled into thinking that their documents were genuine and that earlier documents were actually later forgeries.