Richard Carrier has produced an update on mythicism and its subordinate propositions and critics. It is the must-read book of the 2020’s for the mythicism/historicity debate. No matter which side you’re on, if you want to know about mythicism as an historical hypothesis in modern scholarship, read this book! He has well-detailed, well-cited discussions of all the recent scholarship pertinent to this question, and it is one good-news story after another for mythicism.
Many a Christian apologist, from Josh McDowell to Lee Strobel to J. Warner Wallace (and occasionally even secular scholars like Robert Van Voorst) have trumpeted extrabiblical evidence as effectively proving a historical Jesus, whereas both Carrier and many other writers (including many layman) have complained that these extrabiblical references are unimpressive; too weak and problematic to settle the debate. Now, at last, it seems that secular scholarship is acknowledging the validity of this conclusion reached by so many different laymen from simply reading these references and applying common sense.
One surprising omission is Anthony Barrett’s Rome is Burning, a Princeton-published scholarly book that cites and quotes Carrier (as well as fellow mythicist Earl Doherty) and which endorses a similar (albeit more expansive) interpolation hypothesis for Tacitus’ reference to Christ (chapter 5, esp. pages 168-173, see also Neil Godfrey’s blog posts on the book). John Drinkwater of the University of Nottingham doesn’t quite endorse the interpolation hypothesis but nonetheless says, “Lay readers should be aware of the range of problems that have to be explained away by special pleading if the passage is to be accepted as authentic.” I remember the good old days when it was said (mainly by Christian apologists) that only amateur cranks and obsolete scholarship of the 19th century concluded the Tacitus passage about Jesus was a forgery. Now another academic publication of the highest order argues it is! I like to think of Carrier’s work on Tacitus as a demonstration that at least the Pilate line is an insertion, and Barrett’s points (which are carefully argued involving much data and consideration of various explanations) as a demonstration that other aspects of the Testimonium Taciteum have a high chance of being interpolation also, which in turn reinforces suspicion about the the Pilate line. While belief in an expansive interpolation faces the objection that Tacitus’ style is unique and the passage is supposedly “just like Tacitus,” Barrett, I think reasonably, considers it feasible that a crafty forger may be behind the passage. Carrier has a separate citation in the book for forgers often going out of their way to conceal themselves and not to write passages that stuck out like a sore thumb lest others suspect forgery (Duh!) and that certainly deserves consideration here; what has been previously parodied as “the clever interpolator hypothesis” is, in fact, historically plausible, and crafty interpolation must indeed be considered when the content and verbiage of the text are not attested anywhere, including numerous sources that either should or could have known of them, for 200 and 300 years, respectively.
That Paul’s account of the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11) is a vision which the gospels later transform into an historical scene, with others present, is important. It’s important not merely as a rebuttal to the argument that this passage is evidence of a historical Jesus; it’s important because if a vision can be transformed into an historical event then a mythical Jesus, a being known purely from visions in Paul’s letters, could be transformed into a pseudohistorical person in the gospels.
Just as important is the ever-strengthening case for 1 Cor. 2:6-8 meaning the demons killed Jesus Christ. Not only does this answer an argument for historicity, it also can be used to positively argue for mythicism. Even granting that we may never be able to prove Paul doesn’t think human beings were involved in the death of JC, we can never prove he thinks they were, and all that is evident to us today is that first Christian description of the crucifixion is a myth, a myth because demons killing Christ cannot possibly be an empirically verified fact. This must count as a feather in the mythicist cap, adding modest weight to the position at least.
On page 262, Carrier, commenting on the Christian apologist Ignatius, infers that ‘someone was denying’ that Jesus was literally born to a woman. Correct. We have ancient Christian sources that affirm this denial: “born not from a woman was he, but from a heavenly place he came down.” (Acts of Peter 24). I suspect the Book of Hebrews also denies this in a subtle way.
Carrier wisely restricts himself to arguing that Romans 1:3 means no more than Jesus somehow “came from the seed of David,” and that mythicism logically entails it because of the prophecy that Christ would come of the seed of David, and that exact details of how they thought this happened (whether by sperm being taken up to the sky and stored supernaturally and later used to make his body or some similarly literal supernatural story, or from Jesus being symbolically a son of David) need not be at issue, the Christ myth theory need only posit that somehow-or-other, they believed it. I agree. I have continued to research this topic and at some point I will publish on how there were numerous ancient deities and religious figures who were thought to be miraculously made from seed. Recently, Mike Jones did an interview about ‘Allah’s sperm bank‘ highlighting the existence of passages in Islamic sources that talk about celestial semen. It’s a nice museum of mistakes for critics of Carrier and his theories on Romans 1:3. I will number Jones’ mistakes for clarity, there are five. Jones (1) drops the ball in thinking Carrier’s theory requires a cosmic sperm bank (magical creation from semen could encompass all kinds of beliefs, including the idea that it was preserved inside of David as a mummy and later extracted by an angel and taken to the sky to create a body) but (2) also fails to understand, I think, that finding an idea like this in another ancient Abrahamic faith certainly supports the plausibility of another ancient group coming up with a similar idea. Jones (3) also fails to grapple with the examples (Aphrodite, Sayoshyant, Osiris, King Erichthonius, Mithras) of supernatural figures that magically sprang out of semen (which are much closer analogies to what is proposed for Jesus than a generic cosmic sperm bank). Jones (4) does not discuss the hypothesis that Romans 1:3 is speaking nonliterally about ancestry, which is also a possibility Carrier allows. Jones (5) also does not discuss Carrier’s logical entailment argument (hinted at above).
As Romans 1:3 is one of the hardest passages for mythicist theories to explain, and Richard has done an admirable job of showing it and some other weaker passages are compatible with mythicism.
Recommended for history geeks everywhere!
The Obsolete Paradigm of an Historical Jesus
Other Sources Cited
Barrett, A. (2020). Rome Is Burning: Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.
