We have reached the end of Part 1 of Earl Doherty’s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man – The Case for a Mythical Jesus. In assessing the case and claims he has offered so far, I found myself inspired by GakuseiDon’s comment mentioning Michael Shermer’s Baloney Detection Kit (inspired by Carl Sagan’s). I thought I would apply that kit to Doherty’s book thus far, as a way of assessing what it has offered as well as bringing in an additional perspective to help me and others evaluate my own impressions.

Here are the questions Shermer encourages skeptics to ask, with answers based on what Doherty has written in the first part of his book.

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
    Michael Shermer rightly points out that everyone makes mistakes, and so errors do not automatically relegate one to crackpot status. That is fortunate for me, as I have made errors, even in print, and although I would have expected that all bloggers would know better than to throw stones in the glass house of blogging, I’ve still encountered some who are ready to treat a late-night post or failure to proofread carefully as evidence of thoroughgoing incompetence. Be that as it may, frequent errors do undermine credibility, and it is not clear in every instance whether Doherty’s failure to discuss evidence that undermines his claims represents an oversight or an attempt at spin. Presumably, at the very least, he is hoping to make a strong enough impression based on partial evidence, that the reader will be willing to ignore or reinterpret the evidence against mythicism if and when he discusses it later in the book.And at least with respect to the reading of later doctrine back into New Testament documents without discussion of other possible interpretations, Doherty is open to the charge of unreliability with respect to his failure to discuss major interpretative issues and offer justification for his own conclusions.

2. Does this source often make similar claims?
    Yes.

3. Have the claims been verified by another source?
    I know a blogger and some commenters who finds Doherty’s views persuasive, and Doherty clearly found a couple of scholars to say favorable things about his work. Does that count in Doherty’s favor? It is hard to say. Neil Godfrey appeals frequently to a seemingly favorable statement by Stevan Davies, but elsewhere in the same discussion forum Davies indicates that he had not read Doherty’s book and describes it as equally nonsense viz-a-viz the dominant scholarly paradigm. And so the favorable statement is about what Davies had been told about Doherty’s stance, not about the actual articulation of it in detail in his book. While Doherty should not be blamed for what one of his supporters has done, this still serves as a cautionary reminder that quotes in favor of a fringe view sometimes are not what they initially appear to be.
     I can only submit to the reader what I have been presenting in my blog series along with specific examples and illustrations: that I have been looking at Doherty’s claims closely and have found them wanting in the best of cases, in many others at best possible but unproven, and in still others patently false. So far there have been responses to my blog series which have nit-picked the tone and the wording of some of the posts, but have done nothing to salvage Doherty’s substantive points, as far as I can see. And it is not clear that other mainstream scholars who have looked at Doherty’s claims in detail speak in favor of the details, however much their words may have contained enough that is favorable to serve as a blurb.

4. How does this fit in with what we know about the world and how it works?
    There is nothing in principle impossible with the core assumption of mythicism, namely that people invent stories and religious beliefs. Few things are strictly speaking impossible, so that isn’t saying much, but neither is it a criticism. Mythicism is not disqualified as baloney on the basis of this criterion, however much it might be on the basis of others. But if we are asking not merely whether mythicism is baloney but whether it is correct, then the issue is not whether the invention of stories ever happens (it surely does), but rather, since it does not always happen, the appropriate historical question is whether the evidence suggests it has happened in this case.

5. Has anyone, including and especially the claimant, gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has only confirmatory evidence been sought?
    As I have shown, evidence that runs counter to Doherty’s assumptions has been ignored, misconstrued, dismissed, or postponed for later discussion in the book thus far.

6. In the absence of clearly defined proof, does the preponderance of evidence converge to the claimants conclusion, or a different one?
    A different one. I don’t think that even most mythicists would say that it is as a result of specific positive claims and evidence that the mythicist case is made, but that it is largely a matter of how to interpret the lack of evidence in places where some expect to find it. If there are a few verses that might seem to directly support mythicism, depending on one’s interpretation of them, the same can surely be said even more so with respect to the case of mainstream secular history’s conclusions. The preponderance of evidence, even on the most sympathetic reading of the evidence Doherty has focused on, raises the question of why Paul does not unambiguously quote Jesus and discuss events in the life of Jesus more clearly and/or more frequently. This is genuinely a question for which we should seek an answer. But the fact that mythicism takes the question seriously and claims to have answered it does not mean that mythicism has in fact answered it in a way that follows or coheres with “the preponderance of evidence.”
     This is a point that I think many supporters of mythicism are confused about. Having made an attempt to answer a question, or even having provided something that constitutes a potential answer to a question, does not mean that one has provided the best answer, much less the clearly correct one. Mainstream historical study has provided answers too, and if those answers to the specific question of Paul’s silence can be demonstrates to be inadequate, it does not follow that mainstream historical scholarship is wrong about Jesus’ existence. One should not make a claim akin to that made by creationists, that if there is doubt about the adequacy of a particular explanatory mechanism or a particular aspect of evolution, then the whole theory is placed under a question mark. Mythicism does not only have to provide what seems like a plausible answer to the matter of Paul’s relative silence; it needs to fit well with all the relevant evidence, and account for it in a more satisfactory way, before it can claim to have something better to offer than the mainstream scholarly paradigm. And however much mythicists may hope to get there, it should be clear to everyone that mythicism is not there yet.

7. Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of others which lead to the desired conclusion?
    In Doherty’s book there is an attempt to give the impression that appropriate research tools are being used. But having reached the end of part 1 with the discussion of substantial amounts of counter-evidence still being postponed leaves me no choice but to describe Doherty’s approach as unscholarly. So too is the failure to provide essential contextual and linguistic information on terms being interpreted, such as Messiah, when Doherty’s interpretation of them differs from generally accepted views of their meaning as evidenced by texts from the relevant period in history.
     Doherty has been appealing to readers practically from the outset to accept his paradigm, even before he had finished the first part of his case in its favor. That is not part of the accepted rules of reason and research, and runs counter to the principle of critical thinking that encourages us to refrain from drawing conclusions before we have considered all relevant evidence.

8. Has the claimant provided a different explanation for the observed phenomena, or is it strictly a process of denying the existing explanation?
    Doherty has done both, and so on this point Shermer’s criteria are favorable to him.

9. If the claimant has proffered a new explanation, does it account for as many phenomena as the old explanation?
    No it does not. It has thus far left all the references to what seem like details of a human life in Paul’s letters unaccounted for. In essence, Doherty offers an “explanation” that is supposed to account for what we do not find in Paul’s letters, and in the process he renders much of what we do find in Paul’s letters unintelligible.

10. Do the claimants personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa?
      My impression is that it is biases that drive the conclusions. I know that Doherty would say the same about mainstream scholarship.
      In some instances, Doherty’s bias might seem scholarly, but on closer examination it turns out not to be. Let me give an example of what I mean, where Doherty appears to have taken a legitimate principle of caution from scholarship and turned it into an end in its own right. Doherty takes the concern to avoid simply reading later material from the Gospels (or even later Christian orthodoxy) back into the epistles, and on the one hand, fails to do so consistently (he reads later Christology back into the New Testament), while on the other hand, he changes the caution against inappropriate anachronism into a principle that demands that one interpret the epistles in a manner that is at odds with what we find in the Gospels even when the two naturally converge or agree. That seems to me a principle that has no justification, at least when used in that manner. While one should not read later sources back into earlier ones when there is reason to think that the earlier source may have held a different viewpoint, it is nonsensical to demand that earlier and later works from the same religious tradition must hold different views. This is, in essence, the same error that some scholars committed in turning the criterion of double dissimilarity into a positive principle. And so it is an error that even scholars have fallen into, but the fact that Doherty in places resembles scholarship at its worst does nothing to improve the overall impression of what he is doing.

I invite others to take up the tools of the Baloney Detection Kit (whether Shermer’s or Sagan’s) and evaluate Doherty’s claims for themselves, as Shermer himself would encourage you to do.

Magic tricks are fun, and having had the privilege of knowing a magician or two, I’ve also had the occasional trick explained to me. For some, knowing how any trick works seems to “spoil the magic,” but from my perspective, understanding how some tricks work only tells you what you should have known already – that you are being deceived. When you realize how that is being accomplished, I find that you appreciate the magician who can do it successfully even more.

I’d like to explain how one of mythicism’s classic tricks works. I’m sure that some mythicists, like many magicians, would prefer that the illusion not be ruined, and so if you’d rather enjoy the illusion of mythicism rather than know how it works beneath the level of appearances, stop reading now.

In a recent guest post on Neil Godfrey’s blog, Earl Doherty claimed that there is “a subtle piece of question-begging going on” when mainstream scholars argue that it is less likely that a crucified Davidic Messiah was invented from scratch, and more likely that Christianity interpreted an actual historical person who was crucified as somehow nonetheless being the Davidic Messiah.

Watch carefully. Here’s what Doherty goes on to write:

The latter alternative is only more likely if indeed such a man existed. One cannot assume he did so, or adopt as an axiom that the Gospels represent the story of a real man, and then on that basis declare the latter alternative as more likely. The question is: does the evidence in the record as a whole indicate that such a man did live and that the Gospels are meant to be history? Mythicism makes the case that both answers are “No.” One cannot appeal to the Gospels as history to prove that the Gospels and their central character are history.

Did you spot when the goal post was moved? If not, then the sleight of hand was effective.

Watch how this trick is done in slow motion.

First, question-begging, for those unfamiliar with the term, is basically a way of denoting circular reasoning: the argument for X in fact presupposes X to be true. This is a not-uncommon claim that mythicists make, in particular in the following form: that one only concludes that the Gospels and other sources are about a real historical figure if one presupposes that they are about a real historical figure. If you don’t read the text assuming that a character is historical, then you not only won’t conclude that he is historical, you won’t be able to draw that conclusion.

So where does the question-begging or circular reasoning occur in mainstream scholarly treatment of these sources? It doesn’t. In fact, mythicists presume that reasoning from texts to decisions about historicity is not circular, until the discussion gets to material that makes a historical Jesus seem likely.

What they do is readily discuss the letters of Paul as though it is possible to determine from them whether Paul and the movement he was a part of thought Jesus was a real person. What they hope you will not notice up their sleeve is this: In your average letter, written to someone you know or who can safely be assumed to share important major assumptions with you, you are incredibly unlikely to emphasize that a person you refer to actually existed. But in the case of mythicism, the lack of repeated clear statements of Jesus’ status as a historical figure is highlighted as though it were evidence for mythicism, and no mention is made of the fact that this could simply represent a failure to state the obvious.

Reading any letters in this way, one could draw all sorts of highly improbable conclusions. It would receive nothing but derision in any field of historical study if someone, purporting to be making a historical argument, said “When the author says that person X spoke to him, it might be a reference to a dream or vision, since the author nowhere explicitly states that person X was made of flesh and blood and spoke to him audibly in his presence with eyewitnesses present.” It isn’t an argument, just an observation of typical characteristics of letters, interpreted in a bizarre way as though they were proof of something.

And one suspects that if Paul did emphasize Jesus’ existence, this would be taken as proof that Jesus’ existence was in doubt, since why else would he have needed to emphasize it?

Heads I win, tails you lose.

But apparently discussing those textual sources, the letters from which mythicists feel they can make their case due to these characteristics, is not inappropriate or question-begging. What is allegedly inappropriate is treating texts which are from only decades later, from the same movement, but which clearly envisage a historical Jesus, as though texts can provide historical evidence.

The goal post has moved. Did you see it this time?

If texts cannot provide a basis for drawing conclusions about the historicity of a figure they mention, then there was no need for any of this discussion of details of Paul’s letters that mythicists engage in without objection. But if mythicists in fact stated that outright, they would (1) end the conversation too early, (2) leave the question of the historicity of Jesus as simply unanswerable, whereas they want to answer it in the negative, and (3) risk giving the impression that they are not in fact giving the data its due attention. And so they only bring in the alleged circularity of arguing from a text about the historicity of a figure mentioned in them late in the game – they move the goal post only once you’ve kicked the ball and it is headed towards it.

Mythicists are good at what they do. Just as magicians can convince people that they have supernatural powers through sleight of hand, mythicists manage to persuade people that they are actually discussing evidence in a serious manner using historical methods. There are other equally impressive tricks they use, but hopefully in illustrating this one, you will be ready to appreciate the illusion, and appreciate the tricks as tricks, not as scholarship.