I don’t normally link to the blog Metacrock, since the number of typos even in the title of a post is usually enough to put me off. But as there’s a recent post on mythicism, interacting with Earl Doherty and bringing Helmut Koester into the picture, it seemed worth linking to.

Meanwhile, Vridar is continuing to post, and I honestly can’t figure out whether there is a point to these posts and if so what it is. There’s a post on E. P. Sanders and the criterion of double dissimilarity, but it is unclear what problem, if any, Neil Godfrey has with this particular tool of historical-critical inquiry, and what if anything he would recommend historians use in its place. And I found it particularly ironic that, after describing a tool Sanders uses to assess authenticity – admittedly an imperfect tool, but a tool nonetheless – Godfrey then states that Sanders has no method for assessing historicity!

There’s also a post on John the Baptist, in which Godfrey claims that “The Gospel portrayal of John the Baptist is drawn entirely from passages in the Jewish scriptures, as shown above. It does not come from oral tradition or any kind of historical memory.” It is impressive, if he’s right, that the Gospel authors managed to invent a figure with the same name and same practice as a figure mentioned by Josephus! If this were actual historical research, some explanation would be offered not only of the differences between Josephus and the Gospels, but also of the points of intersection, however minimal. That the Gospel authors present John, Jesus, and others using details and typologies from the Jewish Scriptures is not news to anyone who has kept abreast of the field. And it doesn’t seem to have any obvious bearing on whether the figures depicted in this way, through a Scriptural lens, actually existed.

I said I was going to stop posting about mythicism until I have time to interact with representatives like Thompson and Doherty in more detail. But I figure it can’t hurt to link to posts by the defenders and/or proponents of mythicism, when they illustrate so nicely why that enterprise is problematic.

And before you ask, no, the title of this post isn’t a pun. No, really it isn’t.

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.

I think, with Neil Godfrey’s help, I finally understand mythicism. It is a belief system in which, when asked about the historical figure of Jesus, you answer by mentioning William Tell, Rama, the God of the Bible and Atlantis. You then assume that these figures are comparable to Jesus of Nazareth in terms of the historical evidence. You then once again blame the other party for unfairly demeaning this viewpoint.

Oh, and don’t forget to cite Wikipedia and yourself as your sources, just to bolster your credibility.

This interaction has been interesting, but it has already begun to become repetitive. I have some exciting projects that I’ve begun or will be beginning work on, with which I expect to do one thing that mythicists tend not to: submit them for peer review. And so I expect to focus in the coming weeks and months on those and other more interest and challenging tasks.

Discussion of mythicism continues around the blogosphere. Eric Reitan has posted on the topic of mythicism. Neil Godfrey also has posted two rejoinders. I was rather disheartened to read a comment there from someone who said he reads my blog regularly and was disappointed at what he perceived as my closed-mindedness about the existence of Jesus. That is of course a response (yes, I know, here we go again) which one will often hear from creationists, expressing their dismay that a scientist whom they respect somehow failed to perceive just how powerful the criticisms of evolution are that have been offered by Behe, or Dembski, or whoever else.

The truth is that I am perfectly open to the possibility that Jesus might not have existed. If the evidence leads me there, I will go there. The problem is that the lack of certainty here, the lack of a persuasive explanation there, a significant disagreement among experts over there, all that does not make the existence of Jesus unlikely, any more than similar points about evolution somehow undermine the strength of that best-tested of scientific theories. Lack of evidence is simply lack of evidence – a good theory has to actually account for the evidence we do have. Indeed, perhaps comparing mythicism and historicism to theories in the natural sciences will be helpful. A theory is a framework within which to integrate, explain and account for a wide array of data. Both mainstream and history and mythicism claim to offer that. I certainly may have missed something important (who isn’t capable of doing so?), but from my perspective, mythicism doesn’t account in anything near as straightforward and plausible a manner with the relevant data as does mainstream scholarship on the historical Jesus.

What I’m hearing from mythicists lately sounds like an ironically inverted altar call: only doubt, and the truth become clear. The problem is that I have doubted and continue to doubt. And it is skeptical, critical investigation of the evidence that persuades me that Jesus almost certainly existed, just as it has led me to accept that there are plenty of things in the New Testament Gospels that Jesus is alleged to have said and done which he almost certainly didn’t do. The failure of mythicists to acknowledge that it is possible to genuinely question Jesus’ existence and be persuaded by the evidence that he existed presumably explains why they have felt no need to offer a coherent, plausible account of Christian origins from a mythicist perspective. Like fideists in Christianity, the mythicist standpoint seems to say “Simply doubt, and you will know the truth.” Well, I have doubted, and doubt has not led me to mythicism, but to the conclusion that it is more likely that Jesus existed than that he didn’t.

What Richard Carrier offered is what some creationists have offered. Mythicists have begun to police their own ranks and point out that mythicists themselves are guilty of using arguments that are problematic and thus unpersuasive. This is a good first step towards intelligent dialogue. Until well-informed mythicists begin to address the constant repetition of half-truths, falsehoods, mistakes and irrelevancies that typify many mythicist web sites, blogs, and commenters, it will be hard for anyone to take seriously the claim that they represent a phenomenon radically different than young-earth creationism. The only difference that seems clear at this stage is that one calls for a leap of faith, the other for a leap of doubt. But mainstream science, history, and scholarship in general is not about leaps but about careful step-by-step examination.

I am grateful that Neil Godfrey reminded me in a recent post of yet more parallels between mythicism and creationism. First, it seems that one can never successfully keep one’s denial of mainstream scholarship limited to one specific, narrow field. Knowledge is so intertwined that one cannot deny biological evolution without challenging our conclusions about geology, for example. And one cannot deny the existence of Jesus without also challenging (among other things) what we know about ancient Judaism and the variety of “messianic” beliefs and ideas found in ancient Jewish literature.

Neil quotes several scholars whose conclusions reflect our mainstream understanding: there wasn’t one single concept of “the messiah” in the Judaism of this period, not every Jewish author or movement shows evidence of being interested in such a figure, and even those who did use the term did so in different ways. This is common knowledge to anyone familiar with the current state of our knowledge about ancient Judaism –  and very much beside the point as far as my argument about the unlikelihood that any ancient Jews would invent a crucified Messiah.

In connection with my argument about the historical Jesus and the crucifixion (to which Neil was responding) what matters is that we do know a great deal about a range of mediator figures and human deliverers that a wide range of Jews were expecting. And those who were expecting God to restore an anointed one descended from David were expecting the restoration of the role denoted by that anointing (from which the terms “messiah” and “christ” derive), namely the institution of Jewish kingship. We have evidence for such “messianic” beliefs in the Judaism of this period, and conversely, we have no evidence whatsoever from pre-Christian Judaism for the view that the restored Davidic king would die at the hands of his enemies.

The closest one can find is perhaps the reference in Daniel’s pseudo-prophecy to the anointed high priest Onias being killed (Daniel 9:26). And it should be noted that there we are dealing with a brute historical fact that the author had to find a way of making sense of, not a mythical invention of an executed messiah.

Another major category of resemblance between mythicism and creationism is the failure to realize that what they accuse their opponents of doing, they are doing themselves. Neil claims that Jesus was a “God” for Paul. New Testament scholars are aware that there are no unambiguous or undisputed references to Jesus in this way in Paul’s letters. Mythicists are reading later Christian theology into Paul’s letters – the very thing they accuse “historicists” of doing. To the extent that they are willing to adopt what is (at best) a minority position on the existence of Jesus, because they think the majority is misled by Christian assumptions, why would they not adopt the minority view that questions traditional interpretations of Paul in the same sort of way? Paul certainly shows evidence of exalting Jesus to a heavenly status, and perhaps (depending on the authenticity of Colossians) also depicts him not only as Wisdom but as one “in whom the fullness of the godhead bodily dwells.”

Finally, when we look at the aforementioned mythological Wisdom language Paul (or someone writing in Paul’s name) applies to Jesus, two major questions arise. First, what is the point of identifying a well-established mythological figure with a newly-invented one? Why did Paul not just talk and write about Wisdom, as other Jews were doing? The flexibility of the figure of Wisdom can be seen by comparing the identification of Wisdom with Torah (see below), the universalization of Wisdom (as in Wisdom of Solomon), the esoteric approach (as in 1 Enoch), and even Wisdom as fallen mother of the demiurge in Gnosticism. Given this adaptability, the question arises why early Christians, if mythicism is true, would have created a new mythical figure and then identified that figure with Wisdom, rather than simply talk about Wisdom. This too is something mythicism needs to explain in order to seem plausible. Once again, the closest parallel from Judaism is perhaps the identification of the Messianic Son of Man as “full of wisdom” in the Similitudes of Enoch. But there too we are dealing with a figure that the author expected to appear in history in the future.

Second, in Jewish literature we find such Wisdom language applied to Torah (Ben Sira 24:1-23). Following the “logic” that at least some mythicists seem to use, this would seem to allow one to draw the conclusion that the Torah did not exist, since it is spoken of using mythological terms and identified with a pre-existent heavenly figure. If that conclusion seems too bizarre to contemplate, then perhaps it is time to double check the methods that seem capable of leading to such strange conclusions. For it isn’t clear why the penchant in ancient Judaism to identify or connect tangible things and people with things intangible and mythical should have any bearing on whether or not the existence of a person or thing is probable.

Neil Godfrey, on his blog Vridar, has engaged some of what I’ve written about Joseph of Arimathea in The Burial of Jesus. I may try to continue the interaction at some point (particularly having just discussed a book that challenges the classic criteria of authenticity), but for the moment, I just wanted to draw attention to his post and invite readers to pay a visit over there!