‘Deciphering the Gospels’, by R. G. Price, argues the case for Jesus mythicism, which is the view that Jesus never existed on earth in any real form but was an entirely mythical figure in the same way as Hercules or Dionysus. (The author is not the same person as Robert Price, also a Jesus mythicist author.) I’m an atheist who holds the opposing (and mainstream) view that Christianity started with a human Jesus. In other words, the Jesus referred to as the founder of Christianity was originally a 1st-century human being, about whom a later mythology grew up, whose followers became the original group that would mutate over time into Christianity. I’m therefore reviewing Price’s book to discuss his arguments and my reasons for disagreeing.

The first post in this book review is here. Links to the posts on all subsequent chapters can be found at the end of that post.

Chapter 10: Non-Christian Accounts Of Jesus

While this is the sixth (and last) post addressing this chapter, it’s the third of three posts on the specific topic of Josephus’s mention of ‘Jesus called Christ’ in the middle of an incident related in Antiquities 20. I’d recommend reading all three posts in sequence, so, if you haven’t already done so, the first on the ‘Jesus called Christ’ topic is here and the second is here.

In wrapping up and summarising the previous post, I pointed out that by far the most likely reason why Josephus’s works contain the mention of ‘Jesus called Christ’ is because this is indeed what Josephus wrote, and that the various alternative explanations that Price tries to give are, for one reason or another, highly unlikely. That being so, why is Price so reluctant to accept this phrase as being genuine to Josephus?

Of course, the obvious reason is that if Price can’t find a way to explain that phrase away it puts a huge hole in his theory. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to theorise that perhaps that’s his main reason for trying so hard to believe in improbable alternative explanations. However, for completeness, I’m going to go through the reasons he’s actually stated and give my responses.

Nothing in this chapter or the passage has any relationship to “Jesus Christ,”

… you mean, apart from the literal relationship that the passage states that one of the people mentioned has to Jesus called Christ? The James mentioned is being identified by his relationship with his brother, Jesus called Christ. What part of that does Price feel doesn’t have any relationship to Jesus called Christ?

and the use of “Christ” as an identifier is quite odd, for Josephus never explains what this term means.’

Price seems to be completely misunderstanding identifiers. Identifiers were the equivalent of our use of surnames; they were ways of specifying which of many possible people of a given first name was the one to which the speaker or writer was referring. As such, writers would no more expect to have to explain the backstory of identifiers than we would expect to explain the meanings of people’s surnames when we introduce them. (Hands up; anyone here found it strange that in my many mentions of Price, it at no time even occured to me to explain that the surname ‘Price’ derives from ‘ap Rhys’? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) In fact, we see this elsewhere even in Josephus, when at the end of the first chapter of Antiquities 20 he refers to ‘Joseph called Cabi’ without ever explaining what ‘Cabi’ means or why the Joseph in question was called this.

One argument against this being authentic is that Josephus doesn’t use the term Christos anywhere else, so it does not appear likely that this is original.

Why? Phrases can be quite identifiable (such as ‘called Christ’ appearing almost nowhere in Christian literature other than quotes from non-Christians, meaning that the use of that particular phrase indicates a strong likelihood of a non-Christian author). However, the most likely reason why Josephus wouldn’t use the word Kristos anywhere else is because no-one else at the time was well-known as being called Kristos and so the need never came up. (To go back to the previous example: Joseph also never elsewhere uses the term Cabi, but I don’t believe this has led anyone to conclude that his mention of ‘Joseph called Cabi’ is an interpolation.)

There are also no other examples in the works of Josephus of identifying someone in the manner that is used here if “who was called Christ” were talking about a different person from Jesus son of Damneus (i.e., mentioning the person being related first, and then the subject after, with an explanation of who the person being related is in between).

Since there are also apparently no examples in Josephus’s works of using identifiers in the bizarre way Price is trying to claim (either using an identifier only on the second mention of someone rather than the first, or using two different identifiers for the same person without clarifying that they refer to the same person), the ‘Josephus never does this elsewhere!’ argument doesn’t hold up the way Price wants it to. It did, however, make me realise another thing that Price doesn’t seem to have considered; that the argument that a Christian scribe changed the line here also works perfectly well for explaining how a sentence that did originally contain the phrase ‘Jesus called Christ’ could have ended up in the form we had today.

Let’s hypothesise, for example, that Josephus’s original text did have this mention, but written with the more expected ordering of ‘and brought before them James, the brother of Jesus called Christ, and some others’. A Christian scribe copying this, his mind on the importance of Jesus, then unthinkingly changes the order to put Jesus first: ‘the brother of Jesus called Christ, James by name’. Hey presto; a scenario that solves the problem of why Josephus would put Jesus’s before James’s, does so without requiring us to hypothesise that Josephus did something more unlikely, and does so using an mechanism (change made by a Christian scribe) that Price himself thinks could easily have happened.

Or, alternatively, the suggestion of a marginal note. Maybe Josephus only knew that one of the executed people was the brother of that strange rabbi who started a cult years back, and thus the line he originally wrote was ‘and brought before them the brother of Jesus called Christ, and some others’, and then, some years down the line, a Christian scribe (or even a non-Christian scribe who happened to know the story) added ‘James by name’ as a marginal note that another scribe later copied into the text. Since Price is happy with the idea that a marginal note could have been copied into the text, why not hypothesise that it was copied into a text that originally included the ‘brother of Jesus called Christ’ line?

Price, of course, is not going to want to consider either of those possible suggestions, because he’s only interested in explanations that let him conclude that Josephus wasn’t talking about Jesus the founder of Christianity. He wants to be able to explain this line away and go on with claiming that no historians of the time ever mentioned Jesus so that he can further claim that this supports mythicism. But, unfortunately for Price’s argument, the evidence does still point to this being an original line from Josephus that most likely referred to the person that Price is trying to claim never existed.

The other arguments against this being original deal with the structure of the sentence, the subject matter of the passage, the fact that even if Jesus Christ existed he would be an odd person for Josephus to use as an identifier for someone else, especially by brotherhood, and the fact that if this were talking about “James the Just” (which it almost certainly isn’t for reasons we shall see), then this James himself would have been more famous than Jesus at this point in time, so this association would have made no sense, as James himself, according to Christian legend, was a community leader and well-known person, though there is no reference to him in the non-Christian literature (unless this is a reference to him).

I’m quoting this sentence in its entirety because I cannot resist pointing out the irony of arguing that Josephus wouldn’t have used a cumbersome sentence. Yes, clearly we can work from the assumption that writers would avoid using cumbersome sentences… oh, wait. Anyway, let’s break it down:

The other arguments against this being original deal with the structure of the sentence,

As above.

the subject matter of the passage,

I think this is another attempt on Price’s part to claim that Jesus had nothing to do with the subject of the passage apart from, y’know, the fact that he was apparently the brother of the main person executed and very plausibly the indirect reason why this group was in trouble in the first place. If so, it’s about as logical as asking why the second Jesus was identified as Jesus ben Damneus when Damneus had nothing to do with the passage. Jesus’s name is being used as an identifier of one of the people who is involved in the subject matter of the passage, and this was a normal way for people of that time to write.

the fact that even if Jesus Christ existed he would be an odd person for Josephus to use as an identifier for someone else, especially by brotherhood,

Why?

and the fact that if this were talking about “James the Just” (which it almost certainly isn’t for reasons we shall see), then this James himself would have been more famous than Jesus at this point in time, so this association would have made no sense, as James himself, according to Christian legend, was a community leader and well-known person, though there is no reference to him in the non-Christian literature (unless this is a reference to him).

James would have been known for being Jesus’s brother, and he was a community leader in the community founded by his brother. Identifying him by his brother makes perfect sense; for those of Josephus’s readers that knew of him, it would have been in the context of being Jesus’s brother.

The real question, however, is if this is James “the brother of Jesus Christ” of the Gospels, and Christians claim that the Gospels are true, then that would mean that this James would have to be in the line of David as well, and thus, if anything, it would have made more sense to qualify James by his father, Joseph, who would had to have been in the line of David, and thus would have been seen as prestigious name worth mentioning.

Oh, come on; this doesn’t even make sense from the Christian point of view. Supposedly Jesus was not only in the line of David but also the culmination of it as the awaited king; identifying James by him would have made perfect sense. It makes even less sense from the skeptic point of view, since the whole highly contradictory claim to the line of David is pretty clearly a retcon by people already convinced of Jesus’s messiahship.

Likewise, if this was “James the Just,” then why not identify him by his supposed prestigious position in society, instead of a link to being the bother [sic] of Jesus?

Because his prestigious position a) seems to have existed only within the nascent Christian movement and b) was because of being the brother of Jesus.

Anyway, that seems to exhaust Price’s attempts at explaining why he doesn’t think the phrase could be genuine. He goes on to put forth the arguments for alternative sources of the phrase that I covered in the previous post, and then to the conclusion of the whole chapter:

Chapter conclusion

…in which he makes one of his typical leaps from claiming something might have happened a certain way to declaring that it definitely did:

With all of this, we can see that there are certainly no solid independent attestations to the existence of Jesus Christ in the non-Christian literature. Modern scholarship recognizes that the Testimonium Flavianum is the only reasonably possible independent witness to Jesus Christ in the non-Christian literature, and there is nothing else aside from that one passage that could even claim to confirm his existence.

This is, quite frankly, absolute rubbish. Modern scholarship certainly has not discarded the Tacitean passage or the ‘called Christ’ line, and, whatever shade Price tries to throw, the idea that these passages aren’t even claims to Jesus’s existence is just plain silly. What we have is what we’d expect for someone who was a real figure with some relatively minor influence two thousand years ago; a couple of mentions by historians. I realise that’s inconvenient for Price’s theory, but, since he can’t produce anything solid by way of alternative explanations, he’s stuck with the fact that, within decades of the time Jesus is said to have lived, non-Christian historians are at least mentioning his life. Which is hard to explain under mythicism, but about what we’d expect to see from a Jesus who actually existed.