This is the final part of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

All in all, I found this book to be pretty mediocre. Richard Carrier states in his bio on his blog that he is a specialist in Christian origins and with this book he has tried to make a name for himself in the field. But he has failed. Abysmally. This book only goes to demonstrate Carrier’s lack of familiarity with the field he is trying to navigate.

I wasn’t convinced that Bayes’s Theorem is relevant and effectual when dealing with the complexities of historical data, and I really don’t think it is going be useful to historical Jesus research. But even if Bayes’s Theorem truly is a useful heuristic tool and a constructive approach for the study of the historical Jesus and Christian origins, we would need someone who possesses an actual understanding of the field to be able to fruitfully utilize it. This rules Richard Carrier out. He does not possess an expertise in the relevant areas of knowledge (e.g. Second Temple Judaism, New Testament, History of Religion). Thus, he lacks the knowledge required to be able to wield Bayes’s Theorem profitably and any numbers he comes up with to plug into the equation will not hold water.

The author is following this volume with a sequel which shall deal more fully with the historical Jesus (yes this book was just a prelude to whet our appetites). In an earlier part of this review I expressed my concern for how the author will be able to competently handle the composite Jesus traditions and texts. For instance, when it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus, I bet we will not see anything mentioned about how Q portrays Jesus’ death in light of Deuteronomistic theology, whereas the later Matthew instead emphasizes an expiatory nature of Jesus’ death. In fact, I could almost guarantee we wouldn’t see such a thing considering that Carrier says in this volume (pg. 139) that such a view of Jesus’ death (i.e. as an expiatory sacrifice) was not a post-hoc rationalization but something already expected by Jews (yet another example of Carrier’s fundamentalist reading of the Bible).

Furthermore, a little while later he mentions in a footnote that he is “increasingly convinced there was no Q in the traditional sense, but the designation still conceptually defines some source, even it if turns out to be Matthew or some lost Gospel”. Apart from the fact that this doesn’t make much sense (Q is the corollary to the Two-Document Hypothesis and is the material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, so if Q “turns out to be Matthew” then you are actually talking about the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis, not the 2DH and Q), there is also the disconcerting possibility that Carrier will just wind up dismissing Q, or at least rating the 2DH and Q as being improbable, which will then make such issues (e.g. the portrayal of Jesus’ death in Q) irrelevant. This is important because if Carrier considers the initial tradition of Jesus’ death to have already been expiatory in nature, then I’m sure this will be used to increase the probability that Jesus’ death could have been created out of thin air (because Carrier wrongly believes there was already an expectation for the eschatological messiah to be executed as an atonement for sin due to his fundamentalist reading of the Old Testament). He does says that he will revisit the question of Q in the next volume, but I am not holding my breath for an in-depth and well-informed analysis.

I am hoping that the second volume will provide us with filet mignon, but Mr. Carrier is ill-equipped for such a task and will only be able to give us rump roast.

Welcome to part four of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. In his lengthy section on the criterion on embarrassment, Carrier discusses Jesus’ birth in Nazareth. Here is one remark that boggled my mind:

If Mark 1:9 is discounted as an interpolation (via contamination from, or harmonization with, the other Gospels, which we known to have been a frequent occurrence in their transmission), then Mark never actually said Jesus came from Nazareth. (143)

Of course, Carrier doesn’t provide any reasoning to support this verse being an interpolation, which is probably due to the fact that there isn’t any support for such an idea. But hey, why let a little detail like that get in the way. If you don’t like what a text says, just create an unnecessary conjectural emendation out of thin air and proclaim, “Interpolation!” Maybe, if we’re real lucky, Carrier will try and apply Bayes’s Theorem to New Testament textual criticism and come up with his own edition of the Greek New Testament!

Warning – Tangent Ahead: Maybe we could even apply Bayes’s Theorem to theology. I estimate a 5% chance that Mark 16.9-20 is original and thus part of the infallible Bible. Yet, when I take into account the fact that I had a friend called Mark in primary school, that I am old enough to know who Marky Mark is, and that I’ve seen Mark Ruffalo in a few movies, the odds are changed to making the ending of Mark almost certainly authentic and thus giving me an 80% probability that I could play with snakes (as per Mark 16.18) and survive a poisonous snake bite (cf. Acts 28.3-6). I like those odds.

Wish me luck!

Carrier provides a few alternative explanations as to how Nazareth came to be associated with Jesus. He says that there are “several plausible reasons why Jesus would be falsely contrived as a Nazarene” (142). As I said in part III of this review, giving a possible reason is not the same thing as providing a plausible one. Carrier anticipates this criticism by saying that, “Since no prior author mentions a connection between Jesus and Nazareth (Paul, for example, makes no mention of it), such developments are more than merely possible … these are viable possibilities, at least sufficiently probably to require us to rule them out first” (142). So since Paul makes no mention of Nazareth, the three alternative explanations he provides for the Nazareth connection are “viable possibilities”? Seems like quite a stretch, but nevertheless, even if we grant Carrier that, they are still far less probable (barring a brilliant piece of argumentation from Carrier in the next volume) than the notion that Mark is simply stating that, indeed, “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee” (Mark 1.9).

One of the alternatives that Carrier mentions is that the Nazareth connection derives from Numbers 6 and the Nazarite vow. In discussing this option he says that, “a Nazarite vow was most typically of limited duration (a fixed number of days), consecrating oneself to God by certain rituals – most prominently, abstaining from wine (which Jesus indeed vows to do: Mark 14:25; Matthew 26:29)” (142). Yea… those Gospel references are to the last supper where Jesus says he will not drink again of the fruit of the vine. I don’t think his disciples would be terribly impressed with Jesus’ Nazarite vow if he made it the night before he was executed (at least, I doubt they would be impressed enough that they would then remember him as one who made a Nazarite vow). Perhaps a more pertinent passage for Carrier to have mentioned would have been Q/Luke 7:33-34 which depicts Jesus as one who did drink (and thus probably not someone who was under a Nazarite vow).

President Obama and McKayla Maroney are not impressed with Jesus’ Nazarite vow.

Carrier then demonstrates more of his fundamentalist reading of the Bible:

Yet Matthew even claims a Nazareth origin derived from prophecy – in fact, not the town, but the epithet, which could thus have been Mark’s source as well (see Matthew 2:23). Unless Matthew was lying, we are obliged to agree that Mark (or his source) could have had that same prophecy in mind. (144)

Carrier compares Mark’s reference to Nazareth with Matthew’s reference to Bethlehem. In other words, since Matthew wanted to have Jesus born in Bethlehem (in order to ‘fulfill prophecy’) and thus created an elaborate narrative which achieved this purpose, Mark likewise created the notion that Jesus came from Nazareth due to a (now lost) prophecy which Mark needed to be fulfilled. Note that Carrier says: “Unless Matthew was lying”!? Yes, the author of Matthew probably was lying. There was no prophecy concerning a Nazareth origin (James McGrath’s review of Proving History makes the same point). Carrier’s readiness to accept that Matthew was correct is like a fundamentalist Christian who does likewise (lest Matthew be a liar and biblical inerrancy a falsehood). But Carrier has an obvious agenda in this book and so has to clutch at whatever straw he can find, even if it includes ditching scholarship and reading the Bible like a fundamentalist.

Another display of ignorance from Carrier is his brief foray on how Mark presents Jesus speaking of “the Son of Man”. There is no mentioning of the possibility of an Aramaic Vorlage underlying the Greek phrase (ο υιος του ανθρωπου), making Carrier’s discussion on all this pretty meaningless. In a footnote he does list a few of the most recent scholarly volumes on the the issue, but evinces no real knowledge about this controversial topic. It’s like he searched Amazon for the phrase ‘Jesus Son of Man’, saw the recent volumes by Müller, Casey, Walck, Hurtado and Owen, and just threw them together in a footnote to make it look like he knows what he is talking about.

Following this is a discussion on the betrayal of Judas Iscariot (still in the context of the embarrassment criterion). In order to support a point he is making, he says: “‘Iscariot’ is (as many scholars believe) an Aramaicism for the Latin ‘Sicarius’” (154). Unfortunately, he doesn’t mention the other, more plausible, etymology of “Iscariot” (that it’s derived from “man of Kerioth”). Though he says he will deal with this again in the next volume, so maybe we will see something more substantial then.

On the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Carrier says:

The betrayal story also makes no historical sense. The authorities did not need Judas (much less have to pay him) to find or identify Jesus (Mark 14:10-11, 14:43-50). Given what Mark has Jesus say in 14:49 (and what Jesus had been doing in Jerusalem only days before), the authorities knew what he looked like, and they could have seized him any time he appeared in public. (153-54)

Yes they could have seized him in public at any time they wanted, especially if they wanted to risk a deadly skirmish. As Stephanie Louise Fisher points out in her review of Proving History, this sort of thing had occurred in the past during the time of Herod Archelaus.

Carrier then puts the icing on the cake with:

The fact that Jesus’ betrayer’s name essentially means “Jew” should already make us suspicious. (154)

The fact that Jesus’ betrayer has an extremely common name should make us suspicious?! Merciful Mother in heaven, someone buy this guy a clue. Or at least buy him the Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, part 1: Palestine 330 BCE – 200 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), and point him towards pages 112-25. Judas/Judah was a common name. Why? Geez, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob being called Judah! There is nothing suspicious about Jesus’ betrayer’s name unless you’re Richard Carrier and trying your hardest to fantasize up some reason as to why the Judas betrayal story was a myth.

I think the author has been spending too much time on Fantasy Island with these two guys.

Carrier then briefly deals with other criteria of authenticity such as coherence and multiple attestation. His discussion on the criterion of Aramaic context left a lot to be desired. Why? Because he pretty much just dismisses the possibility of the Greek text of the Gospels containing any Aramaisms, saying that any would just be the result of a Semitized Greek.

The last part of this review (a brief summary) will be posted tomorrow.

This is part III of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Chapter 4 of Proving History discusses how all valid historical methods represent different applications of Bayesian reasoning and that methods which contravene Bayes’s Theorem are unsound. Chapter 6 tackles deeper issues regarding the application and applicability of Bayes’s Theorem. In between these two chapters is the glorious Chapter 5. This chapter provides us with the author’s analysis of the criteria of authenticity, seemingly with the intention of demonstrating that 1) they are useless, and 2) Bayes’s Theorem should be employed instead. I myself am not a huge believer in the criteria of authenticity and I think that the criterion of embarrassment in particular can be far too easily abused. I would prefer to read historical Jesus studies which focus on other methods (such as Dale Allison’s Constructing Jesus which I mentioned in Part I). Though I do think that some criteria can be used beneficially; there is something good to be said about the cumulative weight of the criteria when applied to Jesus traditions.

The author begins with a brief look at the criterion of dissimilarity. He then launches into an approx. 45 page assessment of the embarrassment criterion, examining several Jesus traditions that have been supported as authentic due to this criterion. At one point the author says:

Quite simply, it’s inherently unlikely that any Christian author would include anything embarrassing in his Gospel account, since he could choose to include or omit whatever he wanted … In contrast, it’s inherently likely that anything a Christian author included in his account, he did so for a deliberate reason, to accomplish something he wanted, since that’s how all authors behave, especially those with a specific aim of persuasion. (134)

So an author would never include anything that could be viewed as embarassing?! Brilliant logic. I wonder if Carrier would be consistent and apply this principle to all ancient texts? Or should this piece of delicious logic only apply if it is a “Christian author”?

Carrying on from the previous quote:

… (and as we can plainly see, all the Gospel authors picked and chose and altered whatever suited them – even Mark excluded a vast amount of material found in Matthew, Luke, and John, so unless that was all fabricated after Mark, Mark left out quite a lot that would have been as available to him as it was to them). (134)

Unless that was all fabricated after Mark!? Of course a lot of it was fabricated! Sheesh. This displays the mindset of the author which I saw in a few places throughout the book: He approaches the biblical text like a fundamentalist!

A few pages later is another example of this fundamentalist approach to the biblical text (as well as his general lack of knowledge of biblical studies):

Religions frequently rally around apparently embarrassing yet entirely false myths, often in defiance of common sense. The Jews were no exception. Contrary to current assumption, the execution of their messiah was believed to have been predicted by Daniel (Daniel 9:26; even more clearly in the Greek), yet he was widely recognized as an inspired prophet of God. (137)

He restates the important part a little bit later as well:

The fact that the OT very clearly did predict the execution of the messiah (Daniel is explicit, and had already convinced the Jews of Qumran) likewise refutes Meier’s claim that OT support must have been for sought for after the fact. (139)

Carrier says that “the execution of their messiah was believed to have been predicted by Daniel (Daniel 9:26; even more clearly in the Greek)”, and that “the OT very clearly did predict the execution of the messiah (Daniel is explicit, and had already convinced the Jews of Qumran)”. Ummm, that’s the conclusion you would arrive at if you only read commentaries on Daniel by fundamentalists. If you read some more balanced literature, you will see that the “messiah” in 9:26 is Onias III. And it wasn’t understood by pre-Christian Jews as indicating that a future eschatological messiah would arrive on the scene and be executed.

Also, in a footnote to the first quote Carrier references 11QMelch ii.18 as making a connection between “the dying messiah of Daniel 9 to the suffering servant of Isaiah 52-53” and also points to a blog post of his which discusses this. No, the Qumran community did not connect a dying messiah of Daniel 9 to the suffering servant of Deutero-Isaiah. Carrier is wrong about a precedent for a dying messiah being found in 11QMelch. Of course, though, a lack of precedent does not necessarily mean that no one could have invented it. The tale of an eschatological messiah dying a shameful death that was ultimately redemptive could, in fact, have been invented without prior precedent. Though saying it is possible is not the same as saying it is plausible. And Carrier has utterly failed to show that it is a plausible hypothesis.

For anyone desiring to read a thorough refutation of Carrier’s nonsense about pre-Christian Jews already having a belief in a dying Messiah, then see Thom Stark’s lengthy (and humorous) postings here, here, here, and here. If you read those links you will also see more of Carrier’s gross incompetence when it comes to biblical studies, such as when Carrier says, “I also suspect the original meaning of “Christ prince” in [Daniel 9] verse 25, otherwise a strange construction, means two people, the Christ and the Prince, since those two are then mentioned together again in verse 26.” Yes, it is a strange construction if you know nothing about Hebrew.

More to come in Part IV…

Welcome to Part II of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

In chapter 2 the author provides twelve axioms (pp. 20-37) and twelve rules (pp. 37-39) of the historical method. Nothing terribly controversial about these except for, as the author himself admitted, the second part of the first rule which states that one must “Obey… Bayes’s Theorem”.

I will quote the second rule because not only is it a very sound piece of advice to follow, it also represents what I think is a deficiency in this book.

Rule 2: Develop wide expertise in the period, topics, languages, and materials that you intend to blaze any trails in, or else base all your assumption in these areas on the established (and properly cited) findings of those who have. (37)

I enjoy studying early Christianity. It may seem like a simple field of research to the lay person, but in reality it is complex and requires a multi-disciplinary approach. You have to deal with literary and non-literary sources: the former necessitating specialists in philology, palaeography, papyrology, and codicology; the latter covering such disciplines as epigraphy, archaeology, and numismatics. If one desires to study Christian origins then one has to study many diverse areas, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Nag Hammadi library (and, of course, the relevant languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic). When it comes to historical Jesus studies, one has to deal with composite texts and traditions. Does the author, Richard Carrier, demonstrate that he is knowledgeable in this area? We will see in Part III of this review. But first a quick overview of chapter 3.

Chapter 3 contains an introduction to Bayes’s Theorem. It is quite an informative chapter and I think the author did a pretty good job of dumbing it down for the mathematically challenged (such as myself). Of course, the author could be making horrendous mistakes in his application of Bayes’s Theorem, but since I am mathematically naïve I would not be cognizant of the fact.

In regards to the results obtained from using Bayes’s Theorem, Carrier states that we know they “are always necessarily true –if its premises are true”. What he means by ‘premises’ is “the probabilities we enter into the equation” (45). Yet as the author states, quantifying the relevant data so as to be able to input it into Bayes’s Theorem is a subjective endeavor, though he argues it is not an arbitrary one. He also says that “you must have reasons for your subjective estimates” and that “if you do have sufficient reasons, you need to ask if those reasons will be accepted by other reasonable people”. If they are, this “would then actually make them objective, since by definition objective reasons will be accessible and verifiable to all reasonable observers, who will thus all come to the same subjective estimate” (82).

Carrier seems to have high hopes concerning the ability of people to reach an agreement regarding the “subjective estimates” we should be plugging into Bayes’s Theorem. Color me a pessimist, but I am skeptical that such an agreement could be reached. As I noted in Part I of this review, it is silly to think that scholars with various ideological viewpoints would arrive at the same results by using the criteria of authenticity. The same holds for Carrier’s method of Bayesian reasoning. The different ideological stances of the people applying Bayes’s Theorem is going to generate disagreement on how to quantify all the relevant data.

Additionally, I’m curious as to how how he himself is going to quantify all the data appropriately? How is he going to handle the composite texts and traditions? Will he be able to adequately separate the primary traditions from the secondary? How is he going to deal with the multitude of issues (e.g. matters of provenance, chronology, linguistics, etc) related to the Gospels, the Pauline epistles, and other Jesus traditions? How is he going to handle alternative positions on an issue? Will he simply accept the consensus and ignore any dissenting views? How is he going to work in the fact that he is not competent when it comes to Second Temple Judaism? Will it give his “subjective estimates” a large enough margin of error to make the results meaningless? I guess we will just have to wait until the second volume is released. Though from what I saw in this volume, I am not going to set my hopes up too high.

Is Bayes’s Theorem a practical and effective tool to use in historical studies or does it just provide only a veneer of rigor and logic? This is a question perhaps best left to the mathematically literate of us. I have found one review of Proving History from someone who seems relatively clued in on mathematics (I would also encourage the interested reader to read Carrier’s response to that review, as well as the great comment discussion that ensued). That same blogger also makes further posts on the subject here and here (the latter link is particularly interesting in my opinion). If anyone knows of other reviews which focus on the Bayesian reasoning of Proving of History (whether they support Carrier’s thesis or not) then drop a comment and let me know!

I will finish this part of the review with a quote from Ian’s blog post:

So, what can we learn?

Well, for one, the inputs to Bayes’s Theorem matter. Particularly small inputs. When we’re dealing with rare evidence for rare events, then small errors in the inputs can end up giving a huge range of outputs, enough of a range that there is no usable information to be had.

And those errors come from many sources, and are difficult to quantify. It is tempting to think of errors only in terms of the data acquisition error, and to ignore errors of choice and errors of reference class.

These issues combine to make it very difficult to make any sensible conclusions from Bayes’s Theorem in areas where probabilities are small, data is low quality, possible reference classes abound, and statements are vague. In areas like history, for example.

Stay tuned for Part III of this review.

I was recently browsing the latest books on Amazon concerning historical Jesus studies and came across Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, written by the well-known blogger, Richard Carrier. I’ve read another book of his before, Why I am Not a Christian, which I consider to be by far the worst book I’ve read on the subject matter of atheism. So naturally I didn’t have my hopes up high for Proving History. Despite an early optimism brought on by a bold thesis in the first chapter followed by an insightful second chapter, I was eventually let down due to the author’s inelegance in his attempts to weave his way through the topic of Christian origins. It was like witnessing a fish out of water.

Why did I bother to read this book? In a nutshell, I find it strangely fascinating that there are people who believe that Jesus was not a historical figure (or who, like Carrier, seriously entertain the idea). This view seems to have gained ground in the online atheist community (e.g. I’ve come across many atheists on the anti-intellectual circlejerk known as r/atheism on Reddit who are Jesus mythicists). Though, of course, there doesn’t seem to be any scholars (in the relevant field) who argue for such a position.

[Note: I read this on the Kindle, so forgive me if any page numbers are incorrect]

This book is the first of a two-part volume. This volume introduces the problem with historical Jesus studies (as Carrier sees it) and offers up a solution… Bayes’s Theorem. The second volume (not sure when it is slated to be released) will then rigorously apply Bayes’s Theorem to historical Jesus studies.

The author begins in chapter 1 by providing his assessment of the state of historical Jesus research. He states quite unequivocally that:

The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. (11)

…..

The quest for the historical Jesus has failed spectacularly. Several times. (12)

The “criteria” that the author mentions are the criteria of authenticity (e.g. dissimilarity, embarrassment, multiple attestation, and so forth). As Carrier notes, these criteria have been railed against by many scholars as having deficiencies and limitations, with some maybe even being outright useless. However, not all of them would then agree with the conclusion that the author derives from this – that the field of historical Jesus studies has “failed spectacularly” and “been left without any valid method”. Carrier quotes a couple scholars as follows:

As Helmut Koester concluded after his own survey, “The vast variety of interpretations of the historical Jesus that the current quest has proposed is bewildering.” James Charlesworth concurs, concluding that “what had been perceived to be a developing consensus in the 1980s has collapsed into a chaos of opinions.’”

That snippet from Charlesworth is from the introduction to Jesus Research: An International Perspective. Of course, while Charlesworth will readily acknowledge the diversity of views on the historical Jesus, he doesn’t see it as implying that the field of historical Jesus studies has “failed spectacularly” and has “been left without any valid method”. In the chapter this quote was taken from, Charlesworth discusses the profitability of “Jesus Research” (which seems to be his preferred term for the “third quest”) and says: “Imagination and reflections on topography, archaeological discoveries and realia help produce a more reliable depiction of Jesus…. The life and mind of Jesus from Nazareth is no longer lost in the fog of theological pronouncements.”

A peculiarity I found in this opening chapter is that it seems like Carrier is equating historical Jesus studies with the methodology of the criteria of authenticity (which were employed by Käsemann in the ‘second’ or ‘new’ quest and by many in the ‘third’ quest). But not every historical Jesus study is reliant upon these criteria and other methods are being employed. In fact, Charlesworth briefly mentions a few in the chapter Carrier just quoted (e.g. Gerd Theissen and his emphasis on sociology). One that wasn’t mentioned by Charlesworth (no doubt because it hadn’t been published yet) is Dale Allison’s most recent work, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. In this volume Allison, who once embraced the criteria of authenticity, instead utilizes a contemporary cognitive study of memory and applies it to historical Jesus research. Using the Kindle search function I saw that Constructing Jesus is mentioned in one footnote by Carrier, though only in passing and not in any meaningful sense.

Carrier states his thesis again:

When everyone picks up the same method, applies it to the same facts, and gets a different result, we can be certain that the method is invalid and should be abandoned. (14)

This is a non sequitur. Carrier is arguing that since historians have used the same method (i.e. the criteria of authenticity), yet do not arrive at the exact same conclusion, this must mean “the method is invalid and should be abandoned”. But that conclusion does not follow. A more logical reason to explain the inconsistent depictions that emerge of the historical Jesus is the inevitable human element present in such undertakings. The scholars that are employing the criteria may hold different presuppositions which affect how they apply each criterion. Additionally, the data derived from applying the criteria can then be arranged in multitude of ways. The disparity in results is due, in part at least, to the unavoidable element of subjectivity in such an endeavor.

On a related note, I’m curious as to exactly what degree of accord amongst scholars is required before one can say that the method is valid? Does it have to be a sure and hard consensus? If so, can the unanimity be in regards to only a somewhat broad outline? e.g. that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who preached concerning the imminent inbreaking of God’s kingdom. Or do they have to agree on the historical Jesus down to every jot and tittle? I ponder this because apparently the unanimous consensus that there was indeed a historical Jesus isn’t enough to quell the doubts of some (e.g. Richard Carrier).

Carrier also says in this chapter that:

Historians must work together to develop a method that, when applied to the same facts, always gives the same result … The solution I propose involves understanding and applying Bayes’s Theorem (14, 16)

After reading this initial chapter I was very skeptical concerning the efficacy of the Bayesian approach the author puts forward as the panacea to historical Jesus studies. Needless to say…. [SPOILER ALERT]…. once I finished reading the book, my skepticism was unabated.

In Part II of this review I will offer up a few thoughts on the use of Bayes’s Theorem for historical Jesus studies, but since I am not a mathematician or historian by anyone’s standard, the usefulness of any comments in this regard will be severely limited and I can only leave it up to History to decide whether Carrier’s method is valid or not. I do, however, have a little bit of knowledge when it comes to early Christian studies and so in Part III of this review I will provide some comments to Carrier’s immediate forays into this area.

Title: ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus

Editors: Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas S. Verenna

Bibliographic info: viii + 266 + 13

Cover: Hard

Publisher: Equinox, 2012

Buy it at Amazon

With thanks to Equinox for the review copy!

Read Part II of the review.

The third and final section of this book, The Rewritten Bible and the Life of Jesus, consists of five essays. The first chapter in this section, the ninth in the volume, is James Crossley’s, “Can John’s Gospel Really Be Used to Reconstruct a Life of Jesus? An Assessment of Recent Trends and a Defence of a Traditional View.” Despite what the title may convey (“defence of a traditional view”), Crossley is not advocating that the Gospel of John provides an accurate presentation of the historical Jesus, as the traditional view is actually the opposite. This chapter is in large part a critical appraisal of the view that the Gospel of John is from an eyewitness to Jesus, specifically as it is put forth by Bauckham in his recent volume on the subject.

The second essay, “Psalm 72 and Mark 1:12-13: Mythic Evocation in Narratives of the Good King”, is by one of the editors, Thomas L. Thompson. He begins by providing a four-point analysis of Mark 1.12-13, saying:

Although lacking a proper narrative, it, nevertheless, offers four clearly presented and distinct thematic elements of a plot-line: (1) the spirit who drives Jesus into the desert; (2) the forty days he is tempted by Satan; (3) he lived with the wild animals and (4) angels cared for him. Although each of these elements has been clearly related in what remains a mere paraphrase of a story, the significance and function of this clustering of motifs is uncertain, implicit or blind. (186).

Thompson then goes on to show how the Lukan (4.1-13) and Matthean (4.1-11) counterparts to Mark 1.12-13 incorporate these four points into the subject matter of their Gospels. He then turns to demonstrating how two ancient Near Eastern tropes are identifiable in Mark 1.1-13, tropes which “evoke an implicit mythic narrative” (192). The first is found in the opening proclamation of the Gospel: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God” (Mark 1.1), key words being “good news.” Thompson says:

Supporting this opening with the story of John in the wilderness, allegorically illustrating Isaiah’s voice, which identifies Jesus as the promised messenger sent to guide Israel, is the trope, with historical roots in ancient Egypt’s royal ideology and specifically witnessed in celebratory proclamations of the accession to the throne by Pharaohs Merneptah and Ramses IV. […]

The ‘good news’ announced and inaugurated in the proclamation of Ramses IV are illustrated by an eightfold list of the reversals of fate and fortune. […] A typical list of such reversals is not used in Mark’s introduction, but is rather only implied by the proclamation of the ‘good news’. (193)

The second ANE literary trope that Thompson finds in the opening of Mark is the “plot-opening theme of ‘past suffering’” which is found in many royal biographies of the ANE. He goes on to explain that “in surviving and overcoming this crisis, the long-suffering king is presented as fit to take the throne, when he is called and chosen by the divine at a divinely appointed time” (194).

Thompson then goes on to explain how he thinks that the figure of Job supports his observation of these two tropes underlying the fourfold cluster found in Mark 1.12-13. This is then followed by a look at how Psalm 72 “can be seen as embodying the central thematic and interrelated character of various elements which we have seen in both John 29 and Mk 1:12-13” (198) and that that it “helps us to identify more clearly both the discourse and the mythic symbol system which Mark’s brief sketch of a narrative holds implicit” (198).

I wasn’t convinced that Mark 1.12-13 was an intentional invention based off of the ANE tropes found in Psalm 72. And I think saying that the proclamation of “good news” (euangelion) in Mark 1.1 is drawn from an ANE literary trope, as found in Psa. 72.1-4, is ignoring what is the more pertinent source for Mark’s use of euangelion, which is the use of euangelion in Roman imperial propaganda (and possibly its usage in Isa. 52.7), for one can marshal a strong case that Mark is deliberately rivaling the propaganda of the Roman imperial cult throughout his Gospel. Regardless, Thompson’s use of ANE literary tropes is interesting and I’m sure you can make many more links between the New Testament and the ANE, such as the concepts underlying NT Christologies (e.g. the divine warrior, priesthood, royalty). I think that Thompson’s book, The Messiah Myth, is essentially a longer and more comprehensive examination of Jesus and ANE tropes.

The next chapter is “‘Who Is My Neighbour?’: Implicit Use of Old Testament Stories and Motifs in Luke’s Gospel” by Ingrid Hjelm. This is similar to Thompson’s chapter in that she investigates the use of the Hebrew Bible in the creation of stories in the Gospel of Luke (with a particular focus on the story of the Good Samaritan). Her overarching thesis is that the author of Luke is attempting to create Jesus as a Moses or Elijah redivivus, albeit in a much more subtle way that the author of the Gospel of Matthew did so. This is followed by Joshua Sabih’s “The ‘Īsā Narrative in the Qur’an: The Making of a Prophet.” Sabih discusses the presentation of Jesus (‘Isa) in the Qur’an, arguing that the narratives of ‘Isa in the Qur’an do not stem from the New Testament portrayal of Jesus, his demonstration of which being quite informative.

The final chapter of this volume is K.L. Noll’s essay “Investigating Earliest Christianity without Jesus.” He opens the chapter by saying that “any quest for a historical Jesus is irrelevant to an understanding of the earliest social movements that evolved into the religion now called Christianity” (233). At first glance I thought this was going to provide what, for me at least, is a key deficit in Jesus mythicism – the failure to provide a scenario that explains how the figure of Jesus arose that is more plausible than simply positing the existence of a historical Jesus. Unfortunately this chapter doesn’t explore that question, as the author is instead attempting to demonstrate  that “Jesus, even if he existed, played no role in the formation of the movement that bears his name” (233).

The (novel) way Noll approaches this is by using the concept of memes to discuss how early Christianity could have evolved without a historical Jesus. By the way, the concept of meme is taken from the work of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkin, not those humorous meme pictures you see pop up on your Facebook feed. By placing Bauckham (and his work on eyewitnesses and the Gospels) in dialogue with Thompson (and his work of ANE literary motifs in the Gospels), Noll attempts to show that the search for this historical Jesus figure is, at best, a very difficult one, as “[t]he moment Jesus died, the memes that he carried in his head died with him, and he became irrelevant to the movement that he might have begun” (257). A pretty useful analogy Noll uses, which explains what he is driving at in his essay, is that “Paul was the father of Christianity just as mitochondrial Eve was the mother of all humanity” (258).

In his conclusion, Noll contends that:

This essay demonstrates that Jesus was irrelevant to the construction, consolidation and transmission of the various early Christianities known to us from the sources […] To the extent that the Jesus of the canonical Gospels preserves any DNA  from pre-Gospel stages of the religion’s evolution, that DNA derives from Paul, not from the Jerusalem pillars … and certainly not from a hypothetical historical Jesus” (266).

So the Gospels can’t be mined for any genuine information regarding a historical Jesus? Is that a correct implication from what he is saying there? I wasn’t sure, but if it is, I don’t think he presented a compelling case for such a strong conclusion.

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, though it did not give me cause to doubt the existence of a historical Jesus. If anything, it only showed me how the case upon which mythicism stands requires forced, counter-intuitive, and strained readings of the data in order to arrive at the conclusion (such as arguing that Paul did not believe Jesus to be a historical person). Furthermore, the only real argument for mythicism seems to be the idea that since the New Testament authors use literary tropes and the Hebrew Bible in order to form their presentation of Jesus, that this means he must have been a created character with no underlying historicity. This, coupled together with a severely lacking and forced case for Paul not believing Jesus to be a historical person, is essentially what the force of the mythicist position seems to be. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in historical Jesus studies, as some of the contributions in it are interesting to read and/or directly relevant to the issue. I don’t think, though, that it is going to lead to a paradigm shift in early Christian studies nor cause many to rethink their position on Jesus’ historicity.

One last thing. The price of this volume is ridiculously high. I wouldn’t recommended spending a hundred dollars on it (the only book I would personally spend so much on is a good reference book like a Greek lexicon). However, one can always go to the Amazon page for this page and click on the “I’d like to read this book on Kindle” link. Perhaps the publisher will get it done.

Title: ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus

Editors: Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas S. Verenna

Bibliographic info: viii + 266 + 13

Cover: Hard

Publisher: Equinox, 2012

Buy it at Amazon

With thanks to Equinox for the review copy!

Read Part I of the review.

The second section of this book, Paul and Early Christianity: Historical and Exegetical Investigations, is comprised of three chapters. I was intending on writing out lengthy reviews of each chapter but, due to tiredness, I have instead opted to only do so for the third essay, though I will provide a very brief summary of the other two chapters.

The first chapter in this section is from Robert Price and is called “Does the Christ Myth Theory Require an Early Date for the Pauline Epistles?” In it he discusses Marcion’s connection to the Gospels and the relationship between the Gospels and Paul’s epistles. The next chapter, the seventh of the book, is by Mogens Müller. It is titled “Paul: The Oldest Witness to the Historical Jesus.” As the title suggests, he believes that the writings of Paul can be used to support the case for a historical Jesus. Here is a nice quotable snippet:

Paul is the oldest witness to the transformation of the historical person, that is, Jesus of Nazareth, into a heavenly saviour, although this transformation occurred in such a way that Jesus, as a historical person of the past, has nearly disappeared. (118)

Thomas Verenna is the author of the eighth chapter, “Born under the Law: Intertextuality and the Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus in Paul’s Epistles.” Before I get into the arguments provided in this chapter, I have to get something off of my chest. Footnotes! While I am a footnote enthusiast there is such a thing as too many footnotes. Many of the footnotes in this essay were simply too long and/or superfluous. For instance, footnote #11 takes up about a third of a page and is simply on the use of the word “Christian” as a designation for Paul or anyone in the first century. My favorite is footnote #38 which begins with “I would like to briefly comment on this section…” and then continues to take up about half a page!

The key thrust of Verenna’s essay is that “Paul did not believe his Jesus was ever historical in the first place” (132), mentioning in an accompanying footnote that he isn’t necessarily arguing against the historicity of Jesus, but only that one cannot find such a historical figure using Paul’s epistles. He sets out using “a method formed from analyzing intertextuality” (132), with the intent of showing that “what Paul is interpreting, what he is expressing, is not an earthly figure, but an allegorical one” (133). Thus, this essay is “an attempt to look past modern interpretations of Paul, which are far too focused on discovering what he has to say about an assumed historical entity – Jesus – and less about discovering how Paul’s initial audience would have understood his meaning” (135).

Verenna first discusses the crucifixion of Jesus in the (genuine) Pauline epistles, with his contention being that there “is little doubt; Paul knew of a crucifixion, though he never suggests it happened on earth” (140). At one point in this section he says:

In Sumerian mythology, there is a tale of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, her crucifixion and death, her resurrection and ascension; after this ascension she appears to local deities … It is well known that this story had already permeated Jewish society long before Christianity; Ezek. 8:14 states that women were mourning for Tammuz at the north gate. Tammuz was the one God who refused to bow down at first in front of Inanna after she had arisen and ascended. As a result, she banished him to the nether world. (141-42)

I am curious as to how one can say that Inanna was “crucified”, as all that I can find on this story is that after she was killed, her body was hung on some type of hook (and it sounds like all this occurred in the underworld). The translation Verenna quotes says that “the corpse was hung from a stake”, but I can’t see how this is a legit reason to say that Inanna was crucified (unless one has a pretty loose definition of the term). The only reasoning I can see behind the use of “crucified” is similar to that found when parallelomaniacs fabricate parallels between Jesus and other deities in order to give the reader the “oh my Gawd!” factor when they discover that early Christianity wasn’t without its antecedents. Also, are we meant to think, based on this single verse in the Hebrew Bible, that the story of the “crucifixion” and “ascension” of Inanna had “permeated” Jewish society before Christianity came along? Seems almost like a sly attempt of trying to sneak in some parallelomania whilst maintaining plausible deniability. This discussion of Inanna, however, is accompanied by a (lengthy) footnote in which the author adds the disclaimer that he is neither advocating “parallelism” nor the idea that Paul had access to this Inanna narrative. So what was the point of brining up Inanna? He explains:

The purpose of this exercise is to bring to light the fact that a story about a crucified God who rose from the dead and ascended does predate the Passion narrative and Paul’s crucified savior. When scholars rely upon the probability of the historicity of the crucifixion because they cannot understand how a Jew in antiquity would worship a crucified Messiah, they are really only showing how little they understand the socio-cultural landscape of the ancient world. (143)

Apart from rejecting the notion that the story of Inanna is about a “crucified God” who existed before Christ, I nevertheless agree that it is a good example, and one of many which could be pointed to, showing the prevalence of a dying-and-raising/death-and-rebirth motif in Paul’s cultural milieu. But surely that is nothing strange or amazing, right? I thought this was pretty uncontroversial stuff. Heck, isn’t this motif perpetually present in the cycle of nature (i.e. the death of winter and rebirth of spring)? Regardless, if one wants to attempt to show how the concept of a dying-and-rising god was not unknown in Paul’s day, one could do it in a manner which doesn’t smack of parallelomania.

Verenna continues by saying that “Paul’s crucifixion account did not come from a historical event, but from the Hebrew Bible” (144), specifically singling out Psalm 22. But I didn’t see a case being made arguing that the Hebrew Bible was the source for Paul concocting his Jesus. Instead, the logic seemingly was that if Paul used the Hebrew Bible to speak of Jesus then Paul must have created him, i.e., correlation must equal causation.

Verenna then turns to building a case in order to support the idea that Paul never envisaged Jesus’ crucifixion as being an actual historical event. He discusses how Paul speaks of being crucified with Christ in a spiritual sense (e.g. Gal. 2.20) and that when taken in conjunction with Paul’s “esoteric language” in 1 Cor. 2.6-8 (which apparently implies that Paul is talking about a “mystery rite”), we can safely arrive at the conclusion that Paul always meant a spiritual sense when he talked about the crucifixion. The main point in his argument for this is that the archons (“rulers”), whom Paul says are responsible for crucifying Jesus (1 Cor. 2.8), are in fact spiritual beings, not actual people (e.g. Pontius Pilate). He also sees the archons as being the same as the stoicheia (“elemental spirits”) in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2.

Concerning 1 Cor. 2.8, Verenna notes that the only other place Paul uses archon (Rom. 13.3) is to denote earthly rulers. But he believes that Paul is using it here in 1 Cor. 2.8 to speak of spiritual beings due to it being used in the phrase “the rulers (archōntes) of this age (aiōnos).” But if one looks at how aiōn is used elsewhere in surrounding chapters, one sees that it is referring to the earthly realm (“the debater of this aiōn” 1.20;  “wisdom of this aiōn” 2.6; “he is wise in this aiōn” 3.18). Another thing is that the plural, archōntes, is a typical Greek expression for ruling authorities, examples of which are seen in Acts 3.17 and 13.27. Lastly, the context of 1 Cor. 2.8 makes it pretty clear that Paul is speaking of earthly rulers. In 1 Corinthians 1-2 Paul is discussing the folly of man’s wisdom (read 1.20–2.8 with an eye for the use of the word “wise”). A reference to spiritual rulers would be out of place here, but a reference to earthly rulers makes perfect sense; it is as if Paul is saying, “Human wisdom is useless and dumb. Heck, look at the so-called wisdom of our own rulers! They crucified the Lord of glory! Their wisdom is worthless!” Oddly enough, I don’t remember Verenna referencing any of the scholarly literature that has been published specifically on 1 Cor. 2.8, nor even general commentaries on 1 Corinthians.

At one point Verenna mentions a text discovered at Nag Hammadi, called Hypostasis of the Archons, which apparently “[lends] more credibility to the argument that this was a common understanding of Paul’s message in 1 Corinthians” (149), and “that at least some early Christians knew of this interpretation” of Paul’s understanding of the archontic rulers as spiritual entities, not earthly people. The Hypostasis of the Archons is, however, simply too late to be of any use for interpreting Paul’s epistles, not to mention that Paul wasn’t Gnostic (though I think Verenna labels him as such).

After the discussion on the crucifixion, Verenna turns to the allegory of the two women in Galatians 4. I found it hard to wrap my mind around this one. He says that “[t]he law is the spiritual custodian of the flesh, a teacher which Paul feels leads one to life. It is through this custodian, the spirit, per Paul, that we are also saved” (152). Paul feels that the law leads one to life? Paul equates the spirit with the law? It is through the law that we are saved? Huh?

While correctly noting that Gal. 4.21-31 is an allegory (which is pretty obvious as that is what Paul himself says), Verenna says that the phrase “born of a woman” (Gal. 4.4), which is in reference to Jesus, is also just an allegory, with the “woman” being a reference to Sarah, “the Jerusalem above” of verse 26. I really don’t get the logic behind this one. Assuming Verenna’s allegorical reading of 4.4 is correct, this would mean that when Paul says Jesus was “born of woman, born under the law” (4.4), the “woman” Jesus is born under would have to be Hagar, not Sarah! (because Hagar is figurative for Mount Sinai, i.e. the law!; see verse 24).

Turning to another issue, Verenna again uses allegory (not an intertextual method drawing upon emulation/imitation) to discuss Paul calling Jesus the “the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1.3).  He says that the reader has two options:

(1) we are left to believe that either David was literally Jesus’ father (the Greek is […] literally ‘of the seed/sperm of David’), which would mean that Jesus’ mother was impregnated by one of David’s celestial ‘seeds’ or that (2) Paul means this allegorically. (152-53)

What about option (3): Paul is not using an allegory but believed Jesus to be descended from the house of David. While Verenna does mention that Paul doesn’t say “from the seed of Joseph, descendant of David” (153), he forgets to mention that Paul was Jewish and so saying “seed of David” doesn’t necessitate that Jesus would have had to been the result of a Mary and David hookup. Also, in footnote 55 Verenna says [in regards to my third option]: “In fact, to interpret this passage in that manner is to read Paul through the lenses of the Gospel genealogies” (153). Huh?! Or maybe it is simply interpreting Paul through ideas current in Second Temple Judaism, e.g., the belief of a coming Davidic messiah. The promises regarding the Davidic dynasty (e.g.  2 Sam 7; cf. 4QFlor) and other references to a Davidic “prince” (e.g. Ezek. 34.23, 37.24), as well as a multitude of other passages (e.g. Ps. of Sol. 17), show that there was a prevalent hope within streams of Judaism during Paul’s time which expected and hoped for an eschatological messiah who would come from the lineage of David. The argument for an allegorical reading here in Rom. 1.3 is worse than the one presented for Gal. 4.4.

Verenna also discusses Paul’s references to the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11) and to “James, the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1.19). In regards to the latter, Verenna relies upon the (pretty lame) argument that “brother” here refers to the practice of believers calling each  other that. Instead of admitting the simple and obvious truth that Paul is referring to James as the physical brother of Jesus, Verenna instead opts to speculate that “[t]he use of the language [adelphos] may be similar to a type of rank in the mystery religions of the day” (157). Unfortunately, he also opted to ignore why Paul would have singled out James as being a figurative “brother” when speaking of him in conjunction with two other figurative brothers, Peter and John.

An overarching drawback I found with this essay (apart from the footnotes!) is that when I finished reading it, I had no idea what the “method formed from intertextuality” even was. The author does talk a little bit about “imitation” and “emulation” towards the beginning, though didn’t really seem to offer a definition of what these concepts are. The closest I could find was when he said: “Emulation, in this study, means establishing intertextuality” (137). By the time I got to the end of the chapter, I still hadn’t figured out how imitation and emulation had been used as a heuristic device to demonstrate that Paul didn’t believe Jesus to be historical. It seemed to me that the author was simply arguing that since Paul spoke about Jesus in a manner which employed the Hebrew Bible, coupled together with Paul speaking of Jesus in allegorical and spiritual fashion, that this must led one to the conclusion that Paul only envisaged Jesus as a fictional character.

It was a spirited attempt by Verenna to prove that Paul didn’t believe in a historical Jesus, but ultimately it was utterly unsuccessful.

Read Part II

Title: ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus

Editors: Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas S. Verenna

Bibliographic info: viii + 266 + 13

Cover: Hard

Publisher: Equinox, 2012

Buy it at Amazon

With thanks to Equinox for the review copy!

In participating in the biblioblogging world over the past few years, one of the stranger things I have learned is that there is a very small (and some might say negligible) group of people (comprised of legit academics as well as passionate and educated laypeople) who believe (or lean towards the idea) that there was no actual historical figure behind the religious figure of Jesus. Instead, they view Jesus as being an entirely mythical character (this view is commonly known as Jesus mythicism or the Christ-myth theory). This present volume, comprised of thirteen essays, is by no means a case for Jesus mythicism, but is meant to be an open discussion giving a fresh examination of historicity issues surrounding Jesus without necessarily relying upon the assumption of a historical Jesus. In fact, some of the contributors to this volume unhesitatingly believe in a historical Jesus, others do not, and others are agnostic on the issue.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section, Into the Well of Historical Scholarship, consists of five essays which shall be discussed in this first part of my review.

The initial chapter in this volume is, “A (Very, Very) Short History of Minimalism: From the Chronicler to the Present”, by infamous biblioblogger Jim West. He begins by providing his working definition of the term “minimalism”, saying that it is “the supposition that the biblical text cannot rightly or honestly be mined for historical reconstructions of ancient Israel or earliest Christianity” (27). The thrust of his contribution is that the biblical authors weren’t terribly concerned about relating actual history, but were instead only doing theology:

[T]he purpose of the Bible is not to offer twenty-first century historians fodder for their reconstructive mills. It is to speak theologically to ancient (and I would also say, modern) communities of faith. (27) …

The Bible’s aim is not to tell a historical tale; its aim is to tell a theological tale. (30)

To demonstrate his point West uses the conflicting accounts in 1 Chronicles and 2 Samuel regarding the causation behind David taking a census of Israel (2 Samuel says it was Yahweh and 1 Chronicles says it was Satan).  He also draws upon the apostle Paul and how he says that “though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Cor. 5.16). He believes that this verse, while demonstrating that Paul shows scant concern for the historical Jesus, nevertheless does not challenge the historicity of Jesus. Jim West’s contribution provides a refreshing attitude towards the biblical text that I wish more people in the church possessed, though without the duplicity found in some who, while saying that the biblical text is only concerned with theology and not history, nevertheless still expects one to believe in the historicity of all the biblical narrative.

Roland Boer provides the content for the second chapter which is titled, “The German Pestilence: Re-assessing Feuerbach, Strauss and Bauer.“ Boer provides a pretty interesting discussion on the role that religion and the state played in historical Jesus conflicts in 19^th century Germany. In a nutshell, Boer discusses the materialization of radical biblical criticism and its interplay with public life in 19^th century Germany, specifically honing in on the impact of Ludwig Feuerbach, David Strauss, and Bruno Bauer. Quite an interesting read.

The third chapter, “‘Jesus Who Is Called Christ’: References to Jesus outside the Christian Sources”, is written by Lester Grabbe. This chapter discusses whether there is support for the existence of a historical Jesus in the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Josephus. Grabbe concludes that the source of Tacitus’ reference to Christ (in Annales 15.44) “is unlikely to have been Christians” (58) and that “it seems likely that Tacitus’ source is Roman” (59). I think Grabbe could have fleshed out the argument for his conclusion on Tacitus better, as well as discussed alternative hypotheses for the source. Grabbe also says that Suetonius “may possibly have had some independent information on Jesus” (59), and that Pliny “gives no information about the historical Jesus beyond the traditional beliefs of Christians themselves” (61).

The bulk of this essay is on Josephus and the Testimonium Flavianum, a subject on which one can still find literature being written about it, with the most recent journal article on it (that I am aware of) being Ulrich Victor’s Das Testimonium Flavianum: Ein authentischer Text des Josephus (Novum Testamentum, 2010). This essay isn’t referenced in Grabbe’s essay though, perhaps because it wasn’t available when he was writing this chapter. Grabbe rejects the conclusion held by a few that the TF is a complete fabrication, instead believing that Josephus did mention Jesus, albeit the version preserved in the extant manuscripts is an embellished version of the text. Grabbe’s overall conclusion is that Josephus and Tacitus obtained their information about Jesus independently of one another and that their “independent references to Jesus make it very likely that such an individual existed and was known as the founder of the Christian sect” (69). I don’t quite get the logic of this. I mean, sure it would provide support of the belief that Jesus was known as the founder of the Christian sect, but not necessarily that such an individual actually existed.

Chapter four, “The Grand Inquisitor and Christ: Why the Church Does Not Want Jesus”, is from the pen of Niels Peter Lemche. This essay discusses the hostility that has been directed towards scholars who have suggested in the past that Jesus wasn’t exactly as the Gospels depicted him. Quite an interesting read. Apparently being a minimalist can be a danger to your health and career!

The final chapter of this section is Emanuel Pfoh’s, “Jesus and the Mythic Mind: An Epistemological Problem.” Pfoh starts off with a disclaimer that he isn’t a scholar in regards to early Christianity or the New Testament. Instead, he specializes in the historical anthropology of the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages (i.e. 3300-600 BCE). The “epistemological problem” that Pfoh discusses is that the figure of Jesus needs to be understood within the context of the mythic Near Eastern world, specifically in that there needs to be a “critical understanding of the nature of ancient literature and the intellectual world supporting such” (79).

Pfoh brings up how scholars, such as Bultmann and his demythologization project of the Gospels (see pg. 83), attempt to separate the historical wheat from the mythical chaff of the New Testament in order to arrive at the historical Jesus of history. This exercise, according to Pfoh, runs up against a wall. He says:

The problem of the figure of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is, for the historian of ancient personalities, analogous to those made by ancient Egyptian or Assyrian depictions of the kings. If such personalities are constructed within the realm of mythic motifs, distant from an historicist recalling of reality, how can the modern historian deconstruct what is portrayed in ancient stories and attempt a separation of the ideological features of the given figure and its individual features, without ‘breaking’ it? Regarding Jesus, then, how can we know the ipsissima verba et facta Jesu when all we have is a mythic set of stories (the Gospels) whose narrative patterns and thematic motifs depend on ancient literature which addresses comparable themes? (85)

I think Pfoh’s argument is pertinent, but only to the degree that it undercuts the efficacy of historical Jesus studies. It can’t, however, be used to support the case against a historical Jesus. In order for that, one would need to posit a legit case of how such a mythic figure arose (sans having a historical Jesus). And that is why I just really can’t take Jesus mythicism seriously. I haven’t come across such a hypothesis. Having a historical figure as the impetus behind the Jesus of the Gospels and Pauline epistles is a much more simple hypothesis, and one which explains the data better, than positing the idea that he was a wholly mythic figure. I must point out that Pfoh isn’t saying that his argument denies the existence of a historical figure. He is actually aware of the limitations of his argument and in fact says that:

There might have been a person called Yehoshua bar Yosef in the first century and the Gospels might have built their stories on some of his activities, but we cannot base a historical reconstruction of his life on the Gospels’ stories. (86)

Pfoh concludes his chapter by saying:

My opinion is that such an inquiry is doomed to failure due to clear methodological and epistemological reasons: we cannot test a mythic figure historically, an individual who — despite his central religious role in early Christianity’s rise in the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia — does not reflect the world of historical evidence but dwells rather in the ancient world of tradition and faith, miracles and beliefs, a world in which whatever the figure of Jesus might embody does not need our tests for historicity in order to exist! … But of a person named Jesus who inhabited that society’s historical world, we cannot have concrete historical knowledge of him. All we have are ancient presentations of faith in a mythic figure. (92)

What value do the chapters in this section provide for anyone investigating the question of the historicity of Jesus? Well, even though they are were all interesting to read, it is only really the contributions of Grabb and Pfoh that are directly relevant in this regard.

Read Part II