This is a great question, and is at the heart of my tendency to lean towards mythicism.  The example I've been giving recently is that Wonder Woman is a historical figure if our only criteria are that the myth had to be based on someone who lived.  Wonder Woman was inspired by her creator's wife, and is therefore historical, even though none of the circumstances or deeds of Wonder Woman's mythology actually happened.

There might be a typical or traditional answer to this to be gleaned from careful study of other mythological stories based on historical figures, but I can't think of any that rival the Jesus story in any way, so I just have to go with my own sense of reason on the matter.

For me to consider Jesus historical, I would need evidence of:

1) A man named (or renamed) Jesus or a linguistic equivalent

2) who lived in or slightly before the first century CE

3) in the same or similar region

4) who amassed a considerable number of followers before his death, preaching some form of anti-establishment message

5) and upset the Romans to the point where he was murdered by them.

The thing is, except for possibly the name part, my standards are extremely low.  I don't demand that any of the gospel accounts of miracles have any basis in fact.  For that matter, I don't even demand that his own followers believed him to be resurrected.  That sounds like an add-on to me.  I would rather expect that a historical Jesus would have predicted his own death, seeing that he had riled the Romans, and the part about predicting the resurrection would have been added on by those preaching him as a god much later.

Here's where a slight wrinkle can cause the mythicist position problems: If the characteristics are too weak, such that the person is unlikely to have ever been recorded in history (aside from the subsequent stories in the Bible), then it could be argued by the Jesus historian that 'the real Jesus' really did exist, but he just happened to be lost to history. And so, the Jesus historian could claim that the mythicist position (i.e. that there was no 'real Jesus' and the story is purely myth) fails to make its case.

It seems to me that for the mythicist position to be argued positively (rather than just passively), the characteristics need to be sufficient such that the person would more than likely have been recorded in history. For example, it is more than likely that a greek ruler, named Alexander, who conquered large parts of Asia, would have been recorded in history, simply because of the magnitude of these characteristics.

How would you respond to that argument, seeing as you yourself hold that your characteristics are insufficient to believe that the historical Jesus would have been recorded in history?

The point being that I'm looking to see how *strong* the Jesus mythicist case can be made. So, a weak version "my minimal characteristics are so weak that such a person may not have ever been recorded, and so I can only argue that there is no good reason to believe he existed," is inferior to a stronger version "my minimal characteristics make it likely that this person would have been recorded and history, and so I can therefore argue that it is more likely than not that this person never existed." Let's call these Weak Mythicist and Strong Mythicist. How strong can the strong mythicist position be made?

I guess I'm looking for the knife-edge. Sufficiently strong to make the strong mythicist case, but minimal so that the strong mythicist case has the greatest possible impact.

Here's my dream case: We put out a 'Jesus Challenge', similar to Randi's challenge. We raise a million dollars and put out a reward. "Whoever can demonstrate, using only valid historical methods, in a peer reviewed journal, that there was a person who met these minimal characteristics in history, will get the $1 million."

So, the knife-edge is: How low can we set the bar so that the offer is as enticing as possible, while at the same time being nearly impossible to meet by coincidence (by a person who did not actually inspire the gospels), while at the same time being the most acidic lemon juice in the paper cut by making it clear that such a person SHOULD be able to be found in historical records if he really existed. The longer such a challenge stands, the more embarassing it becomes for Jesus historians.

Hazindu, here is the scenario I am imagining *could* have happened: A real person, not a God, just a real person, just happened to be in the right place at the right time, doing the right things that just happened to inspire the idea of Jesus. There was one particular individual who was the inspiration of the stories. The stories got pumped up and embellished, as ancient stories do, and we have the magical fictional mythological gospels. But it all started with one ordinary human.

Now, as far as I know, the mythicist position is that, in fact, there was no such person, but the idea of Jesus Christ is entirely a fictional character, not based on one original human, but based more on his mythological role. A Captain Kirk instead of a Captain Blackbeard.

So, the point I'm trying to make is that if there was such a human, the minimal characteristics should be able to identify him without ruling him out by being too strict. If there wasn't, then the absence of any evidence of him should be able to prove the mythicist case as strongly as possible.

With that in mind, I don't think your characteristic #1 is appropriate, since it seems reasonable to me that there could have been a single individual who inspired the Jesus idea who was not in fact threatened as an infant. I agree with your #2 and #3. I think your #4 is too specific. To me it only seems important that he was killed somehow, not necessarily that the method was crucifixion.

Whether his name could have been Emanuel is an interesting question. What do Jesus mythicist experts opine on that topic? Is it critical his name was Jesus, or could it have been otherwise, and he got renamed to Jesus later on, either during his life or afterwards as part of the legend-making?

I'm not a Jesus Mythicist.  To be one, I'd have to have enough knowledge to make the claim, and I don't.  I don't know if there's a word for what I am.  I think of myself as a Jesus-was-irrelevant-if-he-existed-ist.

Basically, I think it's essentially irrelevant -- except to historians -- whether or not there was a historical Jesus.  The complete lack of contemporary evidence for Jesus points strongly to one of two conclusions:

1) There was no historical Jesus.

2) The historical Jesus was insignificant.

Either way, it hardly matters.  Why spend millions of hours digging for an insignificant homeless guy?  If there was a Jesus, he was nothing like the Gospel Jesus.  I'm convinced the Gospels are midrash, and that the author of Mark was a Hellenized Jew who thought up a very clever story melding myths from both cultures.  I do have enough knowledge to make that claim, by the way.

Well, this creates a problem.  In order to try to prove the nonexistence of Jesus, you have to invent a Jesus to disprove, which seems a bit silly to me.  If there was a historical Jesus, and he was insignificant, disproving a significant Jesus is really not doing anything at all.

Of course, history is not the same as a logic text.  Some people never existed.  It's not really proving a negative, though.  It's proving enough positives to assert a negative.  That is, we can find enough positive evidence that Dudley the First was king of Nod in 1450, so that proves that Crumb the Second was just a legend, since they both could not have existed at the same time and been king.

Like I said, I'm not a mythicist.  I'm an "Irrelevantist."  The argument doesn't particularly threaten my position.  I'm not even sure it demands a response from me.

It all depends on which Jesus you're looking for.  A strong mythicist position towards the Gospel Jesus is well justified by the total lack of contemporary evidence.  A strong mythicist position for any historical Jesus at all is very hard to justify because it's damn hard to prove that the author of Mark wasn't thinking of his crazy uncle Ahab when he wrote the Gospel.  This is why I keep bringing up Wonder Woman.  I'm perfectly happy to grant that at some point, one of the early authors of some Jesus text or other might have used a human model for parts of the story.  However, the evidence for midrash is so compelling that we have to admit that such a human model was not, in any meaningful sense, the Gospel Jesus.

It's a damn compelling argument.  Jesus Historians have to make up new historical criteria so that they can claim a historical Jesus is likely.  That's a bad sign.  Basically, every Jesus historian I've ever read resorts to a kind of special pleading.  That is, they say, "Jesus is unique in history, so we get to use unique criteria to justify his existence."

Furthermore, the analyses of the Gospels that I've read make very compelling arguments that nearly every element of the story is midrash.

Furthermore, there are no comparable mythological figures of which I'm aware that were actually based on a real person.  Every other story that is equally laden with magic, mysticism, and god figures turns out to be fiction.

Good luck with this.  Not even Christians can agree on who Jesus was.  Personally, I think it's kind of silly to invent someone to disprove when all the evidence points to the myth being fabricated in the first place.

That's actually what I think you'll have a hard time doing.  I've heard Christians say with a straight face that it adds to the miracle of his existence that there was no evidence for his existence.

I totally agree.  The thing is, this isn't old news.  It's just very poorly distributed news.  The problem I see is that Jesus historians are very biased towards his existence, and their sheer numbers give apparent credibility to a hypothesis that has always been shaky at best.

I suppose.  I just think you'll run into the same problem that Randi runs into.  The "true believers" will think you're shifting the goalposts.

 Well, you'll never get the bible literalists to care because they don't give a damn about reason or evidence, so you need to try to extract from the Gospels all the parts that can't be traced to midrash and have a reasonable chance of having a historical referent.

This kind of proves my Irrelevantist position.  The amount of material that isn't midrash is extremely limited.  At best, maybe we can say that the historical Jesus would have been a teacher with followers who got himself killed.  That narrows it down to any one of a hundred figures at any given moment.

If you accept some of the midrash, you're just arbitrarily inventing a figure, which is what I think is a silly idea.

I think you might be focusing too much on the idea of whether a real/physical Jesus existed.

I think the positive mythicist case (the one Carrier and Doherty argue) is made through studying the writings of Paul and the gospels. Essentially, you show that is was more likely that Christianity started as a mystery religion based on a spiritual saviour. Although you cannot disprove the existence of physical Jesus directly, especially if he was an insignificant preacher, you can however try to show that he didn't need to exist as a real person in the first place, and if the overall hypothesis which does not require a real Jesus is strong (i.e. legitimate reading/interpretation of scripture, proper historical method applied, is plausible/has historical precedence, etc), then you have a good mythicist case.

I agree, actually. My point is more to get a rise out of Christians who believe there is solid evidence of Jesus than to present the stronger (but more complex) argument that the religion started on a spiritual basis. Of these three arguments:

1) There's no good evidence Jesus existed

2) If Jesus did exist, there should probably be evidence, but there isn't. Therefore it's more likely he didn't.

3) The religion itself didn't need a real Jesus, and is more likely to be based on a spiritual Jesus.

I'm targeting argument #2, simply because it is easier to make that argument, and would be really irritating to a Christian who doesn't even accept argument #1.

this is the most likely case if one only considers the gospels (particular luke-acts and john) and the pauline and non-pauline epistles.  however, i think to totally chalk up the origins of christianity to mystery religions is to deny not only the historicity of jesus but of any jesus movement among first century palestinian jews.  the closest thing in rabbinic judaism to mystery religion is the kabbalah, and we have no evidence of kabbalah in the first century (in fact, christian gnosticism may have been a big influence on its first formations centuries later).  scholars who argue for a jesus movement usually identify it as an apocalyptic sect, which bears little resemblance to a mystery religion. 

of course, the NT is pretty much the only source we have that tells us such a movement existed, so i suppose this isn't such a hard step to take.  however, the question remains, why, with so many extremely popular mystery religions already existent at the time (mithras, isis, etc.), would someone go out of their way to make a new one with a mythological foundation in a backwater province among the lowest classes of a despised people group?  who would make up such a story? 

i've always found the most plausible explanation to be that christianity is an accretion of mystery religions, neoplatanism, etc., etc. over a historical core of a failed first century apocalyptic movement with a charismatic leader who may or may not have been executed for trifling with the roman authorities (the implications that the jewish sanhedrin had any hand in it were probably polemic).  then again, i believe that almost all myths began with some kind historical catalyst, which is probably impossible to trace.