Let me emphasize from the outset that I am talking about a particular brand of mythicism, one well represented in discussions on blogs like Vridar as well as by commenters here at Exploring Our Matrix.
It is the type of mythicism which asserts that it is impossible to deduce the historicity of events on the basis only of details in texts.
I can see how this principle, having been adopted, would lead naturally to Jesus agnosticism. If you view it as in principle impossible to argue historical probability or improbability when there is no evidence outside of texts, then there is no way to deduce the likelihood of the existence of a Socrates, John the Baptist, or Jesus.
But doesn’t that axiom also make it in principle impossible to argue, on the basis of those same texts alone, that it is more likely that a figure did not exist? Is this sort of mythicism breaking it’s own rules? How is it that one supposedly cannot argue for a figure’s historicity being probable from texts alone, and yet it is supposedly possible to argue that the figure being a literary creation is more probable? The latter is no less an example of teasing out from a text things about it’s authorship that involve historical deduction of precisely the sort historians use to deduce the likelihood of historicity. Unless one views such historical-critical use and analysis of texts as possible, then it is no more possible to say “these texts are not based on oral traditions or memories” than to say that they are.
I realize that not all mythicists claim to adhere to the axiom I am discussing here. But I recommend that those mythicists who do espouse the principle I mentioned – that you cannot evaluate the historicity of someone when all you have is a story – follow it more consistently and move into the camp of those agnostic about the existence of Jesus. If, on the other hand, you really do believe that it is possible to make a case from the stories themselves about how they were created, and whether their main character was entirely or largely fictional as opposed to a fictionalized or mythologized depiction of a historical individual, then please clarify how you can know this if it is impossible to evaluate historicity on the basis of texts alone.
I think it is time for such mythicists either to acknowledge that something about historicity can be deduced from texts, or to stop doing so themselves. But at present, the principle that you cannot deduce historical likelihood from texts seems to be one that some mythicists cite in order to shut down conversation, but which they do not themselves actually apply to their own position and arguments.
What do others think? Am I right that this principle and mythicism are inherently incompatible?
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