Personfied Myth or Mythologized Person
Offline Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. (Galatians 1:18-20)
What writings of the New Testament are actually from Paul? I know of no serious scholars that deny that Paul wrote Galatians. In fact you will read in any search or book that is of any reputable scholar that Galatians is authentic. Paul claims in these verses to have met James, the brother of the Lord.
The mythicist position is one in which there is a claim that no historical person exists behind the myth of the Christian Christ. A mythicist must therefore go against all of of scholarship and state that Galatians is a forgery. Or she must make another statement that is even harder to demonstrate. Paul is lying!!!
Now certainly we can show how wrong Paul is about claims such as a resurrection or the idea that there is a god that requires a human sacrifice. But these are his real beliefs. They are not intentional deception. If he is deluded about such things could he be deluded about something like visiting actual flesh and blood people? Kidding aside these are different categories of knowledge. We are left with whether Paul is telling the truth or he is lying.
If he is lying we are required to prove that Paul is taking a mythological pattern found in the Mystery Cults and attempting to create a historical Jewish figure. He would also have to be lying about persecuting previous followers of the Jesus movement. But if he was making up this account then many could have challenged him. Much of his work presupposes that the recipients know some of what he claims and what has transpired.
Let us assume that this passage is an interpolation as a few scholars have hypothesised. Then we are still confronted with Paul's claim in another passage to have spoken to James, the Brother of Jesus, Peter and John who were disciples and knew Jesus:
Galatians 2.... Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2 I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. 3 Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 4 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5 We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favouritism—they added nothing to my message. 7 On the contrary, they recognised that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.[ 8 For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9 James, Cephas[ and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognised the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. 10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
We can see that he speaks again of a historical encounter with people who supposedly knew Jesus or were in fact related to him. Finally we have Paul stating that he opposed Peter in Antioch, an event that was apparently known or at least verifiable to the recipients of Paul's letter:
11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. 14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
We are left with one more possibility that Paul did meet with James who claimed to be the brother of Jesus but James made it up and the fact that he had a brother. Peter and John went along with it and perhaps much of Jerusalem.
These arguments of Paul are to a historical situation. The followers of Jesus were Jewish and had no teachings from Jesus that they were to stop following the Jewish Law. Why because Jesus was Jewish. He was a human brother of James. They thought that he was a great teacher ( as refelcted in Q) and a blameless man that would return soon at the end of the ages as Messiah and in the general resurrection.
How do we know this? Because there are two major movements from the first century that cause many more by the second century. There is the movement in Jerusalem as pointed to by Paul and headed by the original followers of Jesus. And there is Paul who opposes their understanding of the very person they followed.
The beliefs that we find Paul complaining about that James, John and Peter hold are the same claims that the Ebionites held until the early second century. This view was followed by Theodotus and much of the Roman Church authority until suppressed by the mythically oriented movements that viewed Jesus as God. We find this movement in Paul and the Gospel of John.
In Paul Jesus is not yet God he is the son of God. In the Gospel of John Jesus is viewed as a god or divine in the sense of pre-existence. These late first century beliefs became even more diverse by the second century when docetism ( Christ is God but not human ) became popular and a competition in Rome against the views as expressed by Theodotus. Gnosticism also was on the rise where Jesus only appeared to be a human but wa a Spirit. Another form of Gnosticsm saw Jesus as a human in which the God or Spirit of Christ came down into until the crucifixion. At that time Jesus was abandoned. Finally the Trinitarians showed up to try and account for both a human and God in one person. This occurred late second or early third century.
As we can see the easiest and most logical explanation for the information that we have is the typical and traditional critical historical view. There was a historical person that shows up in the source called Q in sayings. He is made Gentile by Mark. Some of the competing movements have a resolution. The Gospel of Matthew is written for the Jewish Churches while the Gospel of Luke and Acts are written for the Gentile Churches ( for example James M. Robinson, The Gospel of Jesus ). Both allow for the acceptance of Gentiles into the Church. But Matthew requires all of the Law to be followed. Jesus states that he has not come to do away with the law but to fulfil it. Not one iota of it will ever change. For Luke and Paul, Jesus complete s and replaces the law.
The Jerusalem Church produced nothing in writing because they were expecting an immediate return of Jesus. And supposedly James, John and Peter were illiterate peasants. It is after the fall of Jerusalem that any thing other than the Saying of Jesus as in Q are written about him. Mark reflects a time right after the fall of the Temple. Matthew and Luke are decades later reflecting apologetics as to why Jesus had not returned though the Temple had fallen.
As the return of Jesus was delayed and delayed he became portrayed as more and more divine with salvation occurring in believing in "Him" rather than his message. His resurrection was into a Trinitarian dogma instead of a historical event. A failed Jewish teacher who had some good ideas became a mythological God whose following has caused 2000 years of superstition and bloodshed in the name of the Prince of Peace and Christian love.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
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I posted a comment at Debunking Christianity, but I'll repost the relevant link here: http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/brother-of-the-lord-doherty-versus-mcgrath/
I believe you are committing a false dichotomy fallacy here. There are other very plausible alternatives to 'forgery' or 'lying'. How about 'misinterpreted', for example?
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If you read the response from Doherty that I linked to, you'll see it. It's not Paul misinterpreting, it is those who read Paul misinterpreting.
It can be: Written by Paul, about meeting a person named James, who is known as a 'brother of the Lord', and still not mean a literal sibling of another person whose name is Jesus. The Greek could later have been misinterperted as talking about a literal sibling of a person named Jesus. Doherty explains why, in Koine Greek, this ambiguity is plausible.
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I'm not claiming to know Greek. I'm reporting what Doherty himself has said about the Greek.
It appears to me as if you didn't read the link I gave you. Why not?
It would be better if you just read it and get it straight from the horse's mouth than rely on me, an imperfect summarizer.
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Edited addition. Hey natural I did read that link and used MCGrath's argument against a mythicist elsewhere because it is a good one and Doherty's is unpersuasive and begging. at least to me. I am pretty much warring with two mythicists over at Debunking Christianity. And it is tiring and a waste to me. it is like going round and around with Caposkia or Jean Chauvin. Pointless really other than I wrote th articles and have some obligation to Loftus to respond.
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Yeah, there are a lot of kooky versions of mythicism, and hence a lot of kooks who try to defend the kooky versions.
But if you're judging mythicism by the kooks, then you're not playing fair. I would recommend focusing only on the best cases for mythicism and just drop the subject when it comes to the kooks.
I've read (at least summarizations of) different versions of mythicism, and there are only two or three that seem plausible to me.
I don't actively defend mythicism, because I don't have anywhere near the expertise needed to do so.
My position is not that mythicism is necessarily true, or even that it is probably true (although that is what I believe, based on my best intuitive gut feeling about the arguments both ways, not based on a rock solid theory). My position is that: Those who dismiss mythicism as outright implausible on the face of it, are wrong. It seems very plausible to me, and I don't believe in any of the kooky versions, and none of the attacks on the plausibility of it have come anywhere close to convincing me that they have a solid case against it (i.e. a solid case that Jesus almost certainly did exist, and that mythicism requires ignoring hard facts).
For example, you bring up the 'brother of James' thing in Galatians. I will readily admit that it is plausible that a man named Jesus existed who all this was based on, and he had a brother named James who Paul met and wrote about. Very plausible.
But. It is also plausible that the idea of a supernatural Christ Jesus came first, was spread to some Jews, including, independently, one named Paul and one named James, and that James and his buddies either a) called themselves 'brothers of the lord' as a kind of 'gang sign' or whatever, b) promoted James to a leadership position within their sect which called him 'the brother of the lord', or c) James was a bit woo woo and ego-driven, took up the self-applied name 'the brother of the lord', and was charismatic enough to get his buddies to adopt the title, and was influential enough within the growing Christianity that even people outside his sect called him 'the brother of the lord' just like even atheists call the Pope 'the Pope'.
Paul may simply have been relating the fact that he met this James and was simply trying to most-clearly communicate this fact in his letter to his intended audience, the recipients of the letter. Perhaps Paul and his audience shared a certain lingo such that 'the brother of the lord' was the best way to communicate the identity of the James in question. Perhaps the 'the' in Greek is not exactly the same 'the' we read in English, and there is some ambiguity as to whether it means "the actual sibling of the lord, James" or "a specific (hence 'the') member of the group identified as 'brothers of the lord', James".
I don't know Greek well enough (much at all, actually, except when it comes to parsing English word-roots and scientific terms and whatnot) to know whether the latter is really plausible or not.
But, I do know that Doherty, one of the few non-kooky mythicists, does think it's plausible, and on the other hand I know that people such as McGrath--who are pre-disposed and have a long history of simply brushing off mythicism as prima facie implausible--simply dismiss it as implausible without giving a good reason why.
So, I examine that situation and say to myself: Am I going to go along with the anti-mythicists and dismiss it without a good reason presented? Or am I going to wait and see if someone who actually knows some Greek and can give a good argument against the plausibility of Doherty's point can actually come out and make that argument?
And so, knowing how people can be biased, even when they are on the side of reason, such as yourself, I choose the latter.
Dismissing non-kooky mythicist arguments without even attempting a decent counter-argument does not impress me at all. In fact, it tends to make me think the one doing the dismissing is either biased or hasn't bothered really investigating the non-kooky mythicist arguments.
There are two basic issues here:
1) Is mythicism the best explanation?
2) Is mythicism even a viable, plausible explanation worth serious consideration, discussion, and examination of the evidence?
Mythicists attempt to make their case for 1.
But, instead of countering the mythicist arguments, mostly all I hear are dismissive brush-offs against 2.
So, I'm at the stage of agreeing with 2. I'm not at 1. So, I'm interested in whether you can argue against 2 without just brushing it off, or whether you can argue against 1.
You appear to be at 2, and against it. You are making claims that it's not even plausible. Well, it is to me. If that's where you want to leave it, fine, but I'm not convinced.
If you want to convince me against 2, you need to make a stronger argument against the plausibility of mythicism.
I kind of see it like Lamarkism vs. Darwinism (before Darwin). Prior to Darwin's evidence, which was long and difficult in the gathering, most people who weren't caught up in kooky ideas like creationism thought Lamarkism was most plausible. They simply could not see any plausible mechanism for adaptation to arise seemingly out of nowhere.
Lamarkists attempted to argue against the basic implausibility of undirected evolution.
But all this amounted to was the fallacy of Argument From Incredulity: "I can't think of how it might work, therefore it cannot work." This is not a convincing argument to someone aware of this fallacy.
I'm open to the 'Lamark' version or the 'Darwin' version. Neither has a rock-solid case, although the 'Lamarkists' think (and claim) that they do.
I'm leaning toward the 'Darwin' case, and hoping some people will take it seriously enough to really investigate it and see what the actual evidence really shows, rather than just asserting that 'of course' it all supports 'Lamark'.
Until someone definitively shows that mythicism is actually implausible (and not just attacking with an argument from incredulity), or begins actually taking it seriously enough to investigate it and gather the evidence to make a solid case against mythicism, then I don't see any reason why I shouldn't stick where I am.
For example, you (or someone else) might start by checking into Doherty's claims about ambiguous use of 'the' in Greek. Find an expert in Greek (who is not pre-disposed or biased against mythicism) and ask them if Doherty's interpretation is plausible or not. You could even disguise the question so it's not apparent that it's about mythicism by changing it to 'the brother of the Argonauts' or something like that. Not a perfect replacement, but it's a start.
All (any) of that would be far more convincing to me than "Doherty's is unpersuasive and begging. at least to me."
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Here are some other possible ways to show the implausibility of 'the brother of the lord' being just a religious label:
If James had ever been reported as telling anything about Jesus himself, or his life, like, "And one time Jesus got up to leave the room, and Peter asked if he was coming back, and Jesus said, 'Of course! I'm just going to take a dump, I'll return before anyone in this generation passes away,' and we all laughed like crazy. That Jesus, what a joker he was."
If James had shown Paul Jesus' collection of toy crosses that he had carved as a young man learning the carpentry trade. Or anything like that.
If James had recounted how his mother Mary had weeped after Jesus' death or anything like that.
Like, literally, anything like that. Something to indicate more than just a claim of brotherhood, which can simply be symbolic/religious, as is obvious if you look at many religions today and in the past.
Anything, rather than nothing but argument from incredulity.
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Well, personally, I never really found all that much merit in the mythicist position. At best, they are arguing from lack of evidence. That would not go terribly far in a court of law. Really, we know that before the earliest known manuscripts were created, the stories were copied over and over and occasionally embellished by the copyists. Is it just possible that there really was an itinerant preacher (or even several whose stories were merged) who just did not make a big enough splash during the time to get noted by ancient sources?
Speaking of which, I would also touch on the idea that essentially all modern scholars accept Galatians as an authentic pauline source. Fine, drop that line in but on what assumptions is that based?
Well, about half the epistles along with acts appear to have an internal consistency which suggest authorship at the hands of a single source or at least a very small number of authors who are well known to each other. That and the general disorganization in the movement places authorship at the first few decades of the movement.
That is all guesswork though. The first time that they actually seem to have existed is about CE 150 or so when some of the early bishops mentioned their existence.
After that, the next time that they appear in the historical record is about a century later when the first powerful bishops such as Irenaus and Esusebus emerged and wrote that those works existed then. That is really the first time that they are documented.
Past that, in about CE 200 or so, the first actual text exists, which is split across two different museums. So by the time that the texts are known to exist, it is already common to refer to any christians as brothers or brethren.
Being an argumentative lot, the people who actually do textual criticism can't come to a consensus on what the actual original text may have said. So even if the original was written by Paul or one of his scribes, basing an argument on what his actual words might have been is possibly of little value since we can't be exactly sure what those words may have been.
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"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Actually, it goes quite far, if you're on the defence against a crime. Prosecution has no evidence, no conviction can result. Prosecution has failed to prove its case.
The legal principle is called corpus delicti: A person cannot be convicted of a crime, if it cannot be proven that a crime has actually been committed.
Here, the 'crime' is that James 'was the actual sibling of a person named Jesus, on whom Christianity is to some degree based.'
The prosecution's evidence is that people called James 'brother of the lord'. Although, they also called other people 'brother of the lord' too, but when translated to English, only James gets to keep the title, and the others are 'demoted' to 'our brother so-and-so'.
Now, if James never actually had a brother named Jesus, then he couldn't have committed the 'crime' of being the actual sibling of Jesus. And, strangely, the prosecution has failed to actually produce evidence to that effect.
It's like a murder without a body or a theft with no valuables missing.
And BTW, a true mythicist argument cannot just be a negative dismissal. It needs to make a positive case for something, for how the myth was developed, for example. Doherty's case is an example of a positive case. I don't think he's made a rock-solid defense of it, but he has made positive claims, not just negative, absence-of-evidence challenges. Mythicism puts forth a positive claim: Not just that Jesus might be a myth, but that Jesus is a myth.
Some things that might be associated with such a positive claim: What kind of myth was it? What were its sources of typical mythical story elements? Who (individual or group) developed the myth? What is the symbolism of the myth? What was the myth intended to convey? What background philosophical beliefs were incorporated into the myth? Etc. Some of these questions, Doherty provides a positive argument for, and various kinds of evidence which I am in no way of evaluating as to their worth.
Richard Carrier also makes a positive case for mythicism, though I am much less familiar with the details of his, because I think he's still yet to publish it. (Actually, I seem to recall that his hypothesis is very minimalist, only claiming very little beyond mythicism.)
But he employs an interesting statistical tool called Bayesian inference to provide a systematic framework for evaluating different pieces of evidence for or against the various competing hypotheses about Jesus' life. For example, his framework could be used to compare the hypotheses: A) Jesus was an unknown carpenter who said some wise things, B) Jesus was a travelling rabbi, C) Jesus was a wise teacher D) Jesus was a crazy doomsday prophet, etc.
Along with all those hypotheses, you can simply toss in yet another one: M) Jesus was originally a supernatural concept, embodied in an imaginary person (like God itself), and then later embedded into history by gospel writers.
Using Bayesian inference, you mathematically evaluate the evidence according to its likelihood under each of the hypotheses, add up all the probabilities, and end up with an optimal estimate of the probability of each hypothesis (A, B, C, ..., M, ... etc.) being true. I eagerly await to see Carrier's analysis. It will be ground breaking, even if he doesn't manage to prove his case. But, honestly, I think he'll be able to do it.
The benefit of such a mathematical/statistical framework is that these days with computers, you can just update it and improve it with each new bit of evidence, and you'll get the best running estimate of the probability of each hypothesis. Instead of relying on fallible and oft-biased human intuition, which is good but has trouble handling complex scenarios like all the various conflicting claims about Jesus, we can get a mathematically precise and verifiable answer to the question of which hypothesis is really the best. It will be something like this: Given all the evidence presented to this model, the probabilities of the various hypotheses are:
A: 0.00015%
B: 0.00762%
C: 0.00001%
D: 2.80188%
...
M: 85.6324%
...
One of my favourite conundrums of the historical Jesus hypothesis is the apparent paradox: If Jesus was a super famous 'healer' like Benny Hinn (why his religion became so big), then where is all the evidence that you would expect of someone who was super famous? If Jesus was not famous at all (why Paul knew nothing of his life), then how could he have inspired a huge religion, and also how could we know anything definitive about his life? And the middle ground is even worse: Jesus was moderately famous, in which case we expect both evidence from his fame, and evidence that Paul knew of him as a person. It's a no win situation here, for the historicist.
I don't know if there's a specific name for this idea, but one of the ideas I had for explaining how 'historical' is a word that cannot be applied to Jesus, even if there really was a human named Jesus who inspired it all, goes like this: There are three kinds of people in the study of history:
1) people who existed and we have evidence of their existence independent of the stories about them,
2) people who never existed, but were originally fictional characters, who later became believed to have been historical; no good evidence would be expected for the existence of such myths/legends, beyond the stories in which they appear, and
3) real people who actually existed, and actually had major historical influence, but about whom we have not one single bit of evidence of their identity as persons.
Julius Caesar is of the first kind. Paul Bunyan, Robin Hood, King Arthur, etc. are of the second kind. The first person to invent the wheel, or the bow and arrow, or to cook food, are examples of the third kind.
Basically, my idea is this. If we call the first kind 'historical people', the second kind 'mythical' or 'legendary people', and the last kind 'ahistorical people' (i.e. people who really existed, but are completely lost to the study of history), then Jesus is either type 2 or type 3, and so, even if mythicism is wrong, the 'historical Jesus' hypotheses are also wrong.
It could simply be the case that Jesus was an ahistorical person, of whom we know exactly 0 personal details. He may even have been a she for all we know.
Well, I for one can go along with this kind of reasoning in the short term, since historical studies of the Bible are lacking in tools like Bayesian inference at the moment, and so there must be some kind of proxy for establishing what 'mainstream' biblical studies tell us. I'm fine with that.
But I expect it will change radically in the next decade. Computers are too easy and too plentiful. The only way to move beyond the kinds of intuitive standards that mar biblical studies is to be able to quantify evidence and hypotheses in order to produce a true synthesis of the field, and that can only be done with Bayesian statistics, which computers are well-suited for.
Consider the incredible advances that have occurred recently with computer-aided genetic studies, such as the Human Genome Project. That kind of revolution is about to happen to historical studies, including of the Bible, in my opinion.
Here's an evolution-inspired hypothesis that I came up with recently:
If you recall (or find out about) co-evolution, it works when two or more (but usually two) species each evolve in response to changes in the other species. For example, in symbiosis, each species provides some benefit to the other. So, those individuals who provide a bigger benefit to their symbiotes in turn gain a bigger benefit for themselves, and the same is true for the other symbiote species. So, A evolves to be friendlier to B, and B evolves to be friendlier to A, until eventually neither A nor B can live without the other.
Co-evolution can also occur in mutually hostile species, like predator prey, or parasite host relationships.
The point is, co-evolution is pretty powerful, and tends to 'amplify' the speed of evolution of each species, and it is often the root cause of sudden, major shifts in a species' evolution.
Now, imagine that from a wide variety of random sects of Christians, two or three or a few sects started to gain a foothold and a following.
Along comes the Markan gospel.
"Damn! That's good! We need one of those!"
So, various groups start not only copying Mark, but spinning off their own fan-fic versions of it. The two or a few larger groups adopt their own idiosyncratic copies with various bits added to them.
Call them the L and M groups, for Luke and Matthew.
Group L releases L 1.0, which polishes up Mark a bit, with some new WiseSayings included in the documentation.
Group M says, "We better get our shit together, now the Ms are trying to corner the market!" So, they produce M 1.0, which is another rip off of Mark, and takes some of the WiseSayings out of L 1.0, adding in a bunch that the L group forgot about in their rush to meet the shipping schedule deadlines.
So, people start to sway toward the Ms. The Ls retaliate with L 1.1, which includes most of the WiseSayings from M 1.0, but changes around the orders of things and modifies the meanings of various stories.
And on and on, you have two 'species' of gospel, co-evolving with each other, trying to out-compete the others for market share (metaphorically speaking of course).
Hard-core Markan purists, in the mean time, preserve (mostly) the original inspirational Mark.
After a few decades, you end up with Mark, Classic Edition, and the two major competitors Luke System X and Matthew Vista(tm), which are basically the same, but idiosyncratically different, and each have their loyal fan-base.
So there it is, my evolutionary hypothesis of the co-evolution of the 'Q document'.
If Acts and the epistles you're talking about had some kind of similar development over time, then that might explain the 'internal consistency' you mention. I know a lot less about these than I know about the Gospels (which is actually quite little, to be honest). Just providing some food for thought.
The inability to come to consensus is a symptom of gut/intuition-based reasoning based on bias and logical fallacies, of which faith is a perfect example.
Whenever I see a lot of people disagreeing about basic facts, such as what Jesus said, or what he did for a living, or anything about his life, this to me is a strong sign that nobody has a bloody clue what the truth is, and they're all just putting forth their own pet theories based on nothing but their imaginations and wishful thinking. Like asking 10 people what they see in the clouds in the sky, and getting 11 different answers.
It is not unlike the problem of the many gods: If faith was a way of knowing, then those with the most faith should all agree on what god is; but the biggest disagreements are between groups with the greatest faith! Hence, we have many gods. If faith was a way of knowing, we would end up with eventual consensus on god(s).
The funny thing is that the group that does come to consensus about gods, from a hugely varied personal backgrounds, are the atheists, and their consensus is that there are no gods at all.
My hunch is that the same process is occurring with mythicism. None of the historical-Jesusists can agree on their Jesus, and the stronger their opinions, the greater their disagreements.
The kooky mythicists also diverge greatly in their theories, because they're not basing them on evidence-based reasoning, but on gut/intuitive woo woo notions of 'secret truths' and 'mysterious conspiracies' and whatnot.
But non-kooky mythicists like Carrier and Doherty tend to be a lot more conservative in what they claim (Carrier being the most conservative I know of). As such, they are able to limit the faith-based or gut-level disagreements, and oddly enough, they come to get closer and closer towards consensus. This is the pathway forward in this overall debate. And it doesn't look good for historicists.
Faith leads to discord. Evidence leads to accord. At some point, absence of evidence (especially when such evidence is to be expected) becomes evidence of absence.
While this is true, it does not leave the situation hopeless. We can never be 'exactly sure' of just about anything in history. But we can have probabilistic degrees of certainty. And we can work with such probabilistic uncertainty very handily with the modern rigourous axiomatic system of probability and statistics, of which Bayes' Theorem is the most relevant to this discussion.
For those interested in refreshing their memory on Bayes' Theorem, I wrote this intro to it a while back: The Bible, History, and Bayes' Theorem
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I'm not understanding what you mean there. What is not a defeater of what? What makes a rational case for what? Too many pronouns, and you quoted my entire post, so the context is overwhelming and I can't pin down your pronouns.
(BTW TG, I've noticed more grammar and spelling/typo things in your posts recently. How are you doing? Dealing with chemo or pain killers or something? Hope you're okay.)
I'm confused. You said 'does not seem plausible' here:
Since you seem unfamiliar with Carrier, and since he's the least possible to label kooky, I'll focus on him:
A brief summary from a talk, relevant as an example of a non-kooky mythicization timeline and recommended readings: http://www.stanford.edu/group/rt/CarrierHandout1.pdf
Carrier's review of Doherty: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.html
Carrier interviewed on Common Sense Atheism: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=10150
Another podcast interview from Mindcore: http://mindcorepodcast.blogspot.com/2011/01/does-god-exist-interview-with-atheist.html
Carrier reviewing other mythicists: http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/scholars-addressing-jesus-myth-studies-richard-carriers-reviews/
Let me know if you need more. You can google for his blog, which is semi-regularly updated. Gotta run right now, tho.
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<vroom vroom!> Okay, great, we finally get to the part where James reveals his biological sibling....
<screech! skid! halt!>
How do you know Jesus never went against kosher, when you haven't even demonstrated he existed yet?
Again, begging the question, presuming the conclusion, cart before the horse.
Does James say, "My brother Jesus--you know, the guy who the Romans crucified, and who you worship--never went against kosher, and since I'm his brother, I'm the go to guy on this info, see? So you better start koshering up, buddy."
Something like this would establish that James really believed he was a biological sibling of Jesus.
But, from what I can see, you are already assuming that James is Jesus' brother, and then saying, "Well of course, when James says Paul should kosher up, he must have gotten that idea from Jesus, because magically I know that Jesus really existed and also that he never went against kosher."
It may very well be, but I don't see how it has any bearing on the historicity of Jesus or James as his sibling.
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OK, I am not really trying to argue that the source document is not of a single origin along with the other undisputed epistles and book of acts.
Rather, I am observing that the above is consistent with a single origin and that might be Paul or at worst Paul and his scribes. I am observing that we don't have an actual source until about CE 200 or a mention that the documents existed prior to CE 150.
Really, given the known issue of scribal errors, trying to make a case for a historical dude based on one word, which can be demonstrated to have been in common use communally by the time the documents are known to exist is not a great case.
Let me offer a new idea: Perhaps in between Paul and the document known as P46, there was an intermediate Latin translation. I am not saying that there is such, only that there could be.
Now, the Koine for “James brother in Christ” might have turned into “James fideo Christus” or something along those lines. Then a Greek merchant in Rome hears about the book and says “Hey, let me copy that.” How does he write it?
If that happened, then what comes of your argument that P46 might say “James brother of Christ” become? Especially in light of the confusion that was in the first link that Natural posted?
OK, I have no problem with the authorship being of limited, even single origin. Probably right around the time when Paul might have been alive.
Now, that begs the question of whether it really was Paul. The best that I can tell you is that this was likely the work of someone who was an antagonist to and coexisted with the “real” apostles. Well, if we are going to go with the single origin hypothesis then we can assume that it might have been Paul. I know of no other candidate (although there might have been others). Unless another is identified in the future, let's just go with the idea that it probably was Paul.
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