This is the last of three posts covering news in the historicity-of-Jesus debate (for the first see Thallus et Alius and for the second see Notable Books). Here I will discuss two significant developments in the Jesus historicity/mythicism debate, and one more tangentially related.
The biggest news is that the renowned biblical historian and New Testament expert Thomas Brodie (author of The Birthing of the New Testament [2004] and Director of the Dominican Biblical Centre, in affiliation with the University of Limerick, Ireland) has just come out as a Jesus mythicist. He has a new book that explicitly argues that Jesus never historically existed: Thomas Brodie, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Memoir of a Discovery (published by the respected academic press Sheffield-Phoenix). This is a huge development. His conclusion: “it is already possible and necessary to draw a conclusion: it is that, bluntly, Jesus did not exist as a historical individual.” Certainly I will review this book as soon as I receive a copy and get through it.
At the same time, Philip Davies, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, England, published an article with the online journal The Bible and Interpretation, entitled “Did Jesus Exist?,” in response to Bart Ehrman’s book of the same title (which my more avid readers will know I tore up as a total hack job) and the opposing view represented in Thompson & Verenna’s Is This Not the Carpenter? and the subsequent mistreatment of Thompson over this. Davies affirms that he believes in the historicity of Jesus. But he is alarmed by Ehrman’s rhetoric and his implied threats against the professions of anyone who would dare question the historicity of Jesus, and the treatment of Thompson in particular (most chilling given how all this had happened to Thompson before, in the most appalling way: see my next news item below).
Davies writes:
Ehrman’s response to Thompson’s The Mythic Past shows (if it needed to be shown), not that the matter is beyond dispute, but that the whole idea of raising this question needs to be attacked, ad hominem, as something outrageous. This is precisely the tactic [the Old Testament] anti-minimalists tried twenty years ago: their targets were ‘amateurs’, ‘incompetent’, and could be ignored. The ‘amateurs’ are now all retired professors, while virtually everyone else in the field has become minimalist (if in most cases grudgingly and tacitly). So, as the saying goes, déjà vu all over again.
And then concludes:
I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist, or even possibly didn’t exist, but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability.
Davies defends Thompson’s work on this matter, and argues the whole debate should be taken seriously and not condemned as the work of amateurs. He acknowledges that in fact the evidence for historicity is rather weak and extremely problematic, and not at all cut-and-dried, and in no way warrants the kind of rhetoric coming from the likes of Ehrman. He says, in fact, that admitting it’s possible Jesus didn’t exist is the only way the field can maintain academic respectability.
This is almost as huge a development, as Philip Davies is a renowned scholar and (now emeritus) professor specializing in Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls (author of Behind the Essenes: History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls [1987] and Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures [1998]). It is a major turn of events for someone like him to admit that doubting the historicity of Jesus is respectable, and that the rhetoric coming out against it from the likes of Ehrman is an appalling redux of the same nonsense minimalists suffered through in the 70s, high on hyperbole and dogmatism, low in humility, and more concerned with attacking the qualifications of its advocates than actually interacting honestly with their arguments. Amen.
Combine this with Brodie’s defection to mythicism, alongside Thompson’s, and (like Thompson’s) the publicly professed “historicity agnosticism” of Arthur Droge, professor of early Christianity at UCSD, and Kurt Noll, associate professor of religion at Brandon University, and Ehrman’s argument that only amateurs and outsiders take the Jesus Myth theory seriously is now in the dust. There is still, certainly, a litany of crank and amateur mythicist nonsense. But there is also a serious case to be made, by serious and well-qualified scholars. And they need to be paid attention to, not dismissed and mistreated, their arguments straw manned or ignored.
Lastly, Thomas Verenna also just published an article for The Bible and Interpretation, “On Academic Integrity and the Future of Biblical Studies in Confessional Institutions” (October 2012), discussing a recent blowup in the academic community over the attempt to censor (indeed, to materially punish) a noted scholar of biblical antiquity (Christopher Rollston) merely because he made a well-reasoned and well-researched argument that some of his colleagues didn’t like–namely, that the Bible marginalizes women in a way that is not an admirable “biblical value” we should want to follow (a shocking notion, apparently, to some of his Christian peers). His article makes many progressive statements about the struggle for women’s equality as well as very interesting scholarly observations about the Biblical text: see Christopher Rollston, “The Marginalization of Women: A Biblical Value We Don’t Like to Talk About,” Huffington Post (8/31/2012).
So here we have a poignant current event touching on institutional sexism (a problem of recent interest here) and academic freedom (the latter of relevance to the historicity debate). Thomas Verenna gives more than just this latest example of the use of the ad baculum fallacy by religious academic institutions to keep scholars in line. It’s deplorable. We certainly don’t want secular scholars using the same tactic. For further links and discussion on the Rollston affair, see Verenna’s blog [here] and [here].
It’s also worth reading Thomas Thompson’s past account of how vicious the deployment of this fallacy was in the 1970s against his work establishing the ahistoricity of the biblical patriarchs (which is just one step away from Jesus mythicism), exhibiting a good series of examples of how scholars across the board can try to destroy your career (tactics that every scholar knows can be used against them now if they should admit to the ahistoricity of Jesus, for example, which can explain why so few have weighed in on the debate publicly–in fact I would take good note of every detail of his story, for example how even institutions can be punished for supporting an unpopular scholar, and thus can be intimidated against hiring them: the same could be done again). And yet now (as Davies pointed out) Thompson’s view is more or less mainstream (just read The Bible Unearthed). Jesus Mythicism could one day follow in the same footsteps. But maybe not for lack of attempts to prevent it. Let’s see.
21 comments
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Enopoletus Harding
October 23, 2012 at 2:39 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
-Really? One (Jesus) is mentioned in a non-biblical source less than a hundred years after his supposed death. The others (the Patriarchs) are mentioned in non-biblical sources over a thousand years after their supposed deaths. A length of time over a thousand years is, in my opinion, quite a large step.
Richard Carrier
October 24, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Not really. You over-estimate the evidential significance of a time gap. By your reasoning, we should believe the Roswell flying saucer and alien bodies were real because there are corroborations of these details in print within just 40 years.
What we want to know is not how much time lapsed (even Moses could have been fabricated within a generation of his alleged existence, if anyone had thought of it then) but how improbable the evidence we have is, given the competing hypotheses (historicity and ahistoricity).
When you understand this, you see why it puts OT minimalism just one step away from NT minimalism: that of establishing an insufficient difference in those improbabilities favoring historicity (which would entail agnosticism), or even a difference that favors ahistoricity (which would entail some form of Jesus mythicism is, to some degree, more likely than historicity).
Elle87
October 23, 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I know this has little to do with historical matters, but…
There is something that bugs me in these recent works concerning historicity that you mentioned, expecially about Crossan and Brodie’s arguments, at least according to their amazon description. They seem to claim that, even if the gospels are proved to be mostly (if not completely) ahistorical, even if it is likely that Jesus did not exist as an individual, being a Christian is still possible. Which I suppose would mean going back to the very first interpretation of Christianity, a religion completely based on revelation and scripture(according to the hypothesis you have expressed in the past).
While I acknowledge this might be possible, I think there are at least two issues. First of all, most apologists, priests and lay christians take historicity for granted and consider the fact that Jesus physically came back from the dead to be fundamentally important. Secondly, this would essentially destroy the argument I (sometimes) hear from believers about Christianity being “superior” to other religions because God decided to be physically part of human history; basically this would make it no more “plausible” than the other thousands of beliefs that do not involve an incarnated God directly involved in human history.
All in all, this would seem like some kind of post hoc rationalization. I don’t know how many christians would be willing to accept it.
Richard Carrier
October 24, 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You are quite right. This is “liberal theology,” of a sort already well refuted by Hector Avalos in his relevant sections of The End of Biblical Studies.
Notably, Kurt Noll’s argument (in Is This Not the Carpenter) for why Jesus was historicized in the first place, is also why he “needs” to be historical even now: because if he’s not, then the entire foundations of every sect’s claim to authority is destroyed; and just anyone with any interpretation of scripture or new revelation of Jesus has the same authority as any priest or scholar or governing council.
Churches cannot abide that. They couldn’t then; and they can’t now. Instead, just as they did back then, churches today fabricate the historical Jesus they need to have existed. And that only maintains the veneer of respectability if historicity as such is beyond doubt.
Nathanael
November 11, 2012 at 1:55 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
There are churches which could abide that. After all, the Unitarian Universalists already declared that everyone was going to heaven, and then concluded that that meant that every religious tradition was equally worthy of study, most of them decided that everything in the Bible was mythical long ago, and so they have ended up in a position where their authority depends not at all on claiming to have unique accuracy.
But yeah, I’m picking nits and coming up with outliers.
Mark Erickson
October 23, 2012 at 8:56 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
So, what are your personal thoughts, desires and/or prospects at joining the academy officially?
Richard Carrier
October 24, 2012 at 1:16 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I’m not against it. And I do apply for local jobs as they come available. But I have my reservations. I just hope I’ll be free to voice them.
ABCXYZ
October 23, 2012 at 9:06 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Dr. Carrier, I’ve been meaning to ask you this. Assuming that Jesus existed, what historical reconstruction of him do you think is most likely? Revolutionary Zealot? Apocalyptic preacher? Cynic sage? Essene? Some combination of these? Something else altogether?
Richard Carrier
October 24, 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I don’t think we can recover any useful knowledge about a historical Jesus, even if there was one.
The Gospels are complete fabrications, and the Epistles say nothing about the man’s words or activities when he was alive. The Jesus that launched the church was a revealed being (as Paul repeatedly says); thus even if he existed, everything we “know” about him comes not from that man, but from the post-mortem hallucinations (feigned or real) of his “followers” (and we’re not even sure in what way or to what extent they were his “followers” before that, since no one in the Epistles ever talks about what happened before his death).
I used to think the Apocalyptic Prophet thesis was the most likely, only for the reason that all the others had even weaker evidence to stand on. But now I know even that is based on apocalyptic revelations, and thus even that can’t be reliably linked to a historical Jesus even if we confirmed there was one. At best we can say “maybe.” Which is pretty useless.
Nathanael
November 11, 2012 at 1:57 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Even the Sayings Gospel appears to be mostly rehash of sayings which are even older.
I’ve always wondered where the extreme hostility to divorce came from, though.
Richard Carrier
November 29, 2012 at 7:34 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Nathanael: I’ve always wondered where the extreme hostility to divorce came from, though.
If I were to speculate, I would guess it’s connected to the pervasive hostility to sexuality that characterizes the entire early Judeo-Christian tradition. That’s how it is framed in the Gospels: divorce is okay until you start banging someone else, then it’s dirty filthy adultery. So, evidently, it was women having multiple partners that disgusted them (likewise men, but there was always much less shaming of serial monogamy among men, so really the sense of equality of outrage there was half-hearted).
There was also the notion that what God unites, man cannot disunite; so as marriage became a “mystery rite” (i.e. a sacrament) it became problematic to allow divorce, since that flew in the face of their theology, and since the theology was more important, liberty had to go whenever it was in conflict with it.
Remember, religious morality is not based on a principle of harm reduction. It’s based on a principle of not angering god. Thus the utility or justice of divorce was not a factor to them. That it offended god was all that mattered; just like picking up sticks on Saturday for the Jews. No connection whatever with social utility or harm reduction or any sane principle whatever. Just a random superstitious taboo that separated “us” (the goodies) from “them” (the baddies).
sawells
October 24, 2012 at 8:21 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I had no idea that the historical reality of patriarchs like Abraham was still a respectable position until so recently. That’s scary.
lpetrich
October 24, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Interesting news. I find it remarkable that some reputable Biblical scholars in academia are willing to take Jesus mythicism seriously.
Why might that be? Could it be recognition that over a century of historical-Jesus questing has yielded very confusing results? If most of what we have on Jesus Christ is hard to distinguish from his early followers’ imaginations, then could it be that there was no historical one there? Or if there was, then could it be next to impossible to learn anything about him?
Richard Carrier
October 24, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Your speculations have merit, IMO.
lpetrich
October 31, 2012 at 3:22 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
To expand on that, I’ve found Against Mythicism: A Case for the Plausibility of a Historical Jesus – Butterflies and Wheels – someone who compares Jesus Christ to Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, who was turned into a messiah figure by the Rastafarians of Jamaica. A messiah figure who had almost nothing in common with the real Haile Selassie, someone who was very well-documented by ancient-history standards.
I think that if one’s case for historicity rests on comparing Jesus Christ to Haile Selassie, then one is conceding that the Gospels are a *very* poor source.
BTW, I’ve discovered that Wikipedia’s contributors have created a List of people who have been considered deities – a rather big one, even with it having several groups of deified people, like Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, etc. Jesus Christ is also in that list.
Richard Carrier
November 1, 2012 at 1:14 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Indeed. I like that Haile Selassie analogy so much I even quote it and cite it in my next book. It’s a good example of why mythicists need more arguments than just “the Gospels are myth.” But it also shows why historicists are really straining credulity when they try to argue for historicity from the myths in the Gospels. If all we had were the myths about Haile Selassie, we simply would not know whether he existed or not.
extian
October 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Dr. Carrier, I realize this is probably old news, but have you checked out the Wikipedia page on the historicity of Jesus? It’s chock full of many questionable assertions, including the use of Josephus and Tacitus as evidence for the historical Jesus and describing Jesus’ baptism and execution as undeniable historical events. Any chance you could get your hands on that page to offer some balanced perspective?
Richard Carrier
October 24, 2012 at 1:27 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Anything I did to it would get deleted with claims of me being a biased meddler. Someone who doesn’t have a polarizing reputation would have to do it. And even they would have to spend all the necessary time fighting the deletions and reversions and arguing for their edits in the talk section. It would probably take several months of concerted effort to effect any real changes on that page. I am all for anyone who is honest and balanced taking on that task. I just don’t have the time or patience for it anymore myself.
Jacob Aliet
October 24, 2012 at 1:38 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Thanks for this summary Richard.
shadowspade
October 30, 2012 at 7:10 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Thank you for this summation Dr. Carrier. I have admired your work for some time. Living in a very heavily religious area I often get into debates about the historicity of Jesus with friends and family. They are all shocked to learn that we have no contemporary sources about Jesus. What fascinates me is that when they learn this these heavily religious people quickly retreat to a position of “well it was a tiny sect and Jesus wasn’t well known and nobody paid any attention to him.”
What strikes me as odd about this is that if you truly believe in the Gospels, well then you have to believe Jesus did some very amazing thing and the idea that these miracles weren’t written down boggles the mind. I know this is a strained analogy but I often compare Jesus to Superman. I mean if you take away Superman’s strength, invulnerability, flight, super vision and super hearing well; what’s the point? If you take away all of Jesus’s notoriety, if you say he was just a small time rabbi who did nothing really remarkable; what’s the point?
I bring this up because I see this in the Christian apologists all the time. When they finally have to admit there are no contemporary sources they always go back to the idea that maybe Jesus was just this little known rabbi that only a few people followed, which to me nullifies their entire argument anyway.
Richard Carrier
November 1, 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Indeed. That’s a point well worth hitting repeatedly. The “little known Jesus” only makes sense for secular historians. It makes zero sense for people worshiping him as God.http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/wp-admin/edit-comments.php#comments-form