Godfrey’s Razor Meets Procrustes’ Bed

Neil Godfrey has a “response” to a recent post of mine on mythicism. He equates what seem to me to be distinct scenarios. On the one hand, we have something that is well-documented and much-studied, the drawing on literary prototypes in storytelling. This is what Allison’s study (which Godfrey cites) highlights in Matthew’s Gospel, taking the already-existing figure of Jesus, and traditions about his teachings, and drawing on earlier stories about Moses to highlight similarities and differences between the two.

On the other hand, we have what mythicists claim took place, which is the invention of a brand new fictional central character in a wide range of stories, based on supposed sources of inspiration in Scripture the connections with which are sometimes so slim that they are akin to claiming that a story of a thief stealing gold from a vault was inspired by “Goldilocks.”

I assume that all non-mythicist readers, and perhaps even some mythicists who are coming to their senses, will have no difficulty seeing that the abundant examples we have of the first sort of instance – creating new stories from Scriptural inspiration and/or retelling traditional material in dialogue with Scripture – do not constitute evidence that anyone invented anyone – much less a crucified Messiah – entirely or almost entirely from raw ingredients in the Jewish Bible.

Apart from illustrating confusion between these two scenarios, I didn’t find anything new or helpful in the post – just the same old claims, and the same old quotes from the same old sources.