Having spent so much time blogging about mythicism, I felt I would be remiss (or is that remyth?) if I were not to share a few last links that have come to my attention.
Joseph Hoffmann recently touched once again on the existence of Jesus and the Jesus Project. And although the Christian CADRE blog is clearly apologetic in its aims, in their recent post on this topic they seem to be more honest and accurate about the relevant sources and the views of historians than the mythicists I’ve interacted with.
I also want to share links to Neil Godfrey’s latest posts, since they illustrate nicely why attempting to interact with mythicists is probably, ultimately, a waste of time. In one post he even engages in something as childish as switching around elements of my name, calling me “Garth McJames.” Yet he is offended that I don’t take the views he is “defending” (but has yet to present a case for) seriously. He also keeps claiming (falsely) that I have not actually read anything by mythicists.
Although the juvenile tactics of its proponents might seem like sufficient reason to ignore mythicism, in fact there have always been poor proponents of good ideas, and I would hate to see mythicism rejected for ad hominem reasons rather than for the real reason it deserves to be ignored. The real reason mythicism is not worth serious consideration is that there is still no plausible case for mythicism. Godfrey’s best “case” for mythicism thus far has been to assume that Jesus is like William Tell and Rama, neither of whom is a figure the complete ahistoricity of whom is certain, and neither of whom was written about as soon after they were supposed to have lived as Jesus was. If we had someone writing as soon after William Tell was supposed to have lived as Paul did in relation to Jesus, and who claimed to have met his brother, I doubt anyone would seriously question Tell’s existence. But then again, it is still not clear that anyone seriously questions the existence of Jesus.
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