One category of mythicists, like young-earth creationists, have no hesitation about offering their own explanation of who made up Christianity. They may not always be very specific (or even remotely plausible for that matter) but they do not hesitate to offer an “explanation” of sorts: Christianity began when people borrowed motifs from myths about Horus, Osiris, Mithras and various other figures to create a new dying-and-rising deity.
Other mythicists, perhaps because they are aware that such a scenario makes little historical sense and yet have nothing better to offer in its place, resemble proponents of Intelligent Design who will say “the evidence points to this organism having been designed by an intelligence” and then insist that it would be inappropriate to discuss further who the designer might be or anything else other than the mere “fact” of design itself. They claim that the story of Jesus was invented, but do not ask the obvious historical questions of “when, where, and by whom” even though the stories are set in the authors’ recent past and not in time immemorial, in which cases such questions obviously become meaningless.
I hesitate to interact further with Neil Godfrey’s treatment of E. P. Sanders’ arguments, since Godfrey appears to understand the criteria of authenticity as though they are tools of literary rather than historical criticism, showing coherence (or lack thereof) with other parts of a narrative rather than with other historical data. And in two of my recent publications I address the temple incident and the saying about its destruction and rebuilding (in Who Do My Opponents Say That I Am?: An Investigation of the Accusations Against Jesus and John, Jesus, and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel).
But even if I were to grant that Neil Godfrey’s recent arguments against E. P. Sanders wee persuasive, all they would have accomplished so far is to indicate that the evidence is inconclusive regarding the historicity of these particular incidents and sayings. In order to conclude that these stories are most likely not historical, we need some further argument. In short, there needs to be a willingness to discuss the designer(s).
Historians are interested in literature that doesn’t actually relate historical stories. A historian of early Christianity will be interested in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or the Acts of Paul and Thecla, even if they are persuaded that they do not contain any genuine historical information about Jesus or Paul or Thecla. Because when we situate them in their historical context, they tell us about the time in which they were written, the views and beliefs that Christians had in that period. And that contributes to our understanding of history.
If the Gospels were pure fabrication, I would still want to understand when they were written, and what sorts of communities produced them. Historians don’t just look at texts to get information from the details of the story about the time in which the story is set. Even when historians feel there is little or no valuable historical information in a story, they still study it carefully to learn about the author (even if we don’t know his or her name) and the time in which it was written.
Thus far, I’ve only encountered two sorts of mythicism. The creationist sort that posits implausible scenarios and doesn’t seem aware that you cannot simply redate events in the history of Christianity without correlating this with what we know about the earlier or later period you are moving events or composition to. The other sort sometimes points to genuine historical uncertainties – but then fails to follow through by asking the next question any historian would ask: If not then, then when?
Mythicists seem to be united in believing they have something to say, an insight into history that historians have missed. But as long as they fail to follow through and undertake a complete historical investigation, they shouldn’t be surprised that the impression given is that they are really motivated by polemical aims of some sort or other, rather than a genuine concern to clarify our historical understanding of Christian origins.
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