Richard Carrier Video: Why He Thinks Jesus Didn't Exist (Long)

[josephpalazzo]

Considering that the christians had 2000 years to fabricate, consolidate and brainwash, it will take some time to undo the greatest hoax of all times. But we are slowly getting there.

[Mike Cl]

Considering that the christians had 2000 years to fabricate, consolidate and brainwash, it will take some time to undo the greatest hoax of all times. But we are slowly getting there.

this is a very dangerous thing for me to do, but according to my memory, the Germans started questioning whether or not jesus was a man in the 1800's.  The movement has been slowly, every so slowly, gaining momentum.  Hopefully, Carrier's book will light a fire.

[Mike Cl]

Took a quick look around the internet for some reviews of Carrier's book.  Found this:

As a result, this work far outdoes anything the typically-amateurish mythicists have produced to date, but is also methodologically superior to the work of more respected and mainstream historicist scholars. My only real criticism is that the minimal mythicist theory fits the evidence so perfectly which some may see as suspicious. This could be because the theory is simply true, or because it has been carefully crafted for this purpose, and suffers from a lower prior probability as a result (cf. apologists who inadvertently damage their hypotheses by inventing evidentially-unsupported excuses to counter the evidences of evil and hiddenness, in arguing over God’s existence). It is up to historicists, however, to show that this theory is inherently implausible. As Carrier concludes, ‘the ball is now in your court’ (p. 618). On the Historicity of Jesus is clearly and convincingly argued, extensively researched, solidly referenced, and is essential reading for those open to questioning the historical Jesus, and to those who want to learn how historical theorising ought to be done.
Raphael Lataster
University of Sydney

What’s this book about? Let me quote the Goodreads description.
The assumption that Jesus existed as a historical person has occasionally been questioned in the course of the last hundred years or so, but any doubts that have been raised have usually been put to rest in favor of imagining a blend of the historical, the mythical and the theological in the surviving records of Jesus.

Carrier re-examines the whole question and finds compelling reasons to suspect the more daring assumption is correct. He lays out extensive research on the evidence for Jesus and the origins of Christianity and poses the key questions that must now be answered if the historicity of Jesus is to survive as a dominant paradigm.

Carrier contrasts the most credible reconstruction of a historical Jesus with the most credible theory of Christian origins if a historical Jesus did not exist. Such a theory would posit that the Jesus figure was originally conceived of as a celestial being known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture; then stories placing this being in earth history were crafted to communicate the claims of the gospel allegorically; such stories eventually came to be believed or promoted in the struggle for control of the Christian churches that survived the tribulations of the first century.

Carrier finds the latter theory more credible than has been previously imagined. He explains why it offers a better explanation for all the disparate evidence surviving from the first two centuries of the Christian era. He argues that we need a more careful and robust theory of cultural syncretism between Jewish theology and politics of the second-temple period and the most popular features of pagan religion and philosophy of the time.

For anyone intent on defending a historical Jesus, this is the book to challenge.


Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginoferr/2014/09/11/book-review-on-the-historicity-of-jesus-why-we-might-have-reason-for-doubt/#ixzz3Fn78TT9E




Four Reasons I Think Jesus Really Existed
 

by Trent Horn   
Filed under Historicity


A small handful of scholars today, and a much larger group of Internet commenters, maintain that Jesus never existed. Proponents of this position, known as mythicists, claim that Jesus is a purely mythical figure invented by the writers of the New Testament (or its later copyists.) In this post I’ll offer the top four reasons (from weakest to strongest) that convince me Jesus of Nazareth was a real person without relying on the Gospel accounts of his life.
4. It is the mainstream position in academia.
 
I admit this is the weakest of my four reasons, but I list it to show that there is no serious debate among the vast majority of scholars in the fields related to the question of the existence of Jesus. John Dominic Crossan, who co-founded the skeptical Jesus Seminar, denies that Jesus rose from the dead but is confident that Jesus was an historical person. He writes, “That [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be" (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 145). Bart Ehrman is an agnostic who is forthright in his rejection of mythicism. Ehrman teaches at the University of North Carolina and is widely regarded as an expert on the New Testament documents. He writes, “The view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet” (Did Jesus Exist?, p. 4).
3. Jesus’ existence is confirmed by extra-Biblical sources.
 
The first century Jewish historian Josephus mentions Jesus twice. The shorter reference is in Book 20 of his Antiquities of the Jews and describes the stoning of law breakers in A.D. 62. One of the criminals is described as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.” What makes this passage authentic is that it lacks Christian terms like “the Lord,” it fits into the context of this section of the antiquities, and the passage is found in every manuscript copy of the Antiquities.

Titus Flavius Josephus (37 â€" c. 100)
According to New Testament scholar Robert Van Voorst in his book Jesus Outside the New Testament, “The overwhelming majority of scholars hold that the words ‘brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,’ are authentic, as is the entire passage in which it is found” (p. 83).
The longer passage in Book 18 is called the Testimonium Flavianum. Scholars are divided on this passage because, while it does mention Jesus, it contains phrases that were almost certainly added by Christian copyists. These include phrases that would never have been used by a Jew like Josephus, such as saying of Jesus, “He was the Christ” or “he appeared alive again on the third day.”
Mythicists maintain that the entire passage is a forgery because it is out of context and interrupts Josephus’ previous narrative. But this view neglects the fact that writers in the ancient world did not use footnotes and would often wander into unrelated topics in their writings. According to New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn, the passage has clearly been subject to Christian redaction, but there are also words Christians would never use of Jesus. These include calling Jesus “a wise man” or referring to themselves as a “tribe” which is strong evidence Josephus originally wrote something like the following:
 
“At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who received the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) has not died out” (Jesus Remembered, p. 141).
 
Furthermore, the Roman historian Tacitus records in his Annals that after the great fire in Rome, Emperor Nero fastened the blame on a despised group of people called Christians. Tacitus identifies this group thusly: “Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius.” Bart D. Ehrman writes, “Tacitus’s report confirms what we know from other sources, that Jesus was executed by order of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, sometime during Tiberius’s reign" (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to Early Christian Writings, 212).
2. The Early Church Fathers don’t describe the mythicist heresy.
 
Those who deny that Jesus existed usually argue that the first Christians believed Jesus was just a cosmic savior figure who communicated to believers through visions. Later Christians then added the apocryphal details of Jesus’ life (such as his execution under Pontius Pilate) in order to ground him in first century Palestine. If the mythicist theory is true, then at some point in Christian history there would had to have been a break or outright revolt between new converts who believed in a real Jesus and  the “orthodox” establishment view that Jesus never existed.

St. Irenaeus (2nd century â€" c. AD 202)
The curious thing about this theory is that the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus loved to stamp out heresy. They wrote massive treatisescriticizing heretics and yet in all of their writings the heresy that Jesus never existed is never mentioned. In fact, no one in the entire history of Christianity (not even early pagan critics like Celsus or Lucian) seriously argued for a mythic Jesus until the 18th century.
Other heresies, such as Gnosticism or Donatism, were like that stubborn bump in the carpet. You could stamp them out in one place only to have them pop up again centuries later, but the mythcist “heresy” is nowhere to be found in the early Church. So what’s more likely: that the early Church hunted down and destroyed every member of mythicist Christianity in order to prevent the heresy from spreading and conveniently never wrote about it, or that the early Christians were not mythicists and so there was nothing for the Church Fathers to campaign against? (Some mythcists argue that the heresy of Docetism included a mythic Jesus, but I don’t find that claim convincing. See this blog post for a good rebuttal of that idea).
1. St. Paul knew the disciples of Jesus.
 
Almost all mythicists concede that St. Paul was a real person, because we have his letters. InGalatians 1:18-19, Paul describes his personal meeting in Jerusalem with Peter and James, “the brother of the Lord.” Surely if Jesus was a fictional person then one of his own relatives would have known that (note that in Greek the term for brother could also mean kin). Mythicists offer several explanations for this passage which Robert Price considers to be part of what he calls “The most powerful argument against the Christ-Myth theory.” (The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems, p. 333).
Earl Doherty, a mythicist, claims that James’ title probably referred to a pre-existing Jewish monastic group who called themselves “the brothers of the Lord” of which James may have been the leader (Jesus: Neither God nor Man, p. 61). But we have no corroborating evidence that such a group existed in Jerusalem at that time. Furthermore, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for professing allegiance to a certain individual, even Christ, and as a result creating division within the Church (1 Corinthians 1: 11-13). It is unlikely Paul would praise James for being a member of such a divisive faction (Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, The Jesus Legend, p. 206).
Price claims that the title could be a reference to James’ spiritual imitation of Christ. He appeals to a nineteenth-century Chinese zealot who called himself “Jesus’ little brother” as proof of his theory that “brother” could mean spiritual follower (p. 338). But such a far removed example from the context of first century Palestine makes Price’s reasoning pretty hard to accept when compared to a plain reading of the text.
In conclusion, I think there are many good reasons to think that Jesus really did exist and was the founder of a religious sect in first century Palestine. This includes the evidence we have from extra-Biblical sources, the Church Fathers, and the first-hand testimony of Paul. I understand much more can be written on this subject but I think this is a good starting point for those who are interested in the (largely Internet-based) debate over the historical Jesus.


So, the natives grow restless.

[josephpalazzo]

Four Reasons I Think Jesus Really Existed


by Trent Horn   
Filed
under Historicity



3. Jesus’ existence is confirmed by
extra-Biblical sources.

The first century Jewish historian Josephus
mentions Jesus twice. The shorter reference is in Book 20 of his Antiquities of
the Jews and describes the stoning of law breakers in A.D. 62. One of the
criminals is described as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose
name was James.” What makes this passage authentic is that it lacks Christian
terms like “the Lord,” it fits into the context of this section of the
antiquities, and the passage is found in every manuscript copy of the
Antiquities.

This reference from Josephus has been debunked by many.

See: http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm

http://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/18412-debunking-the-historical-jesus

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.ca/2008/11/why-josephus-so-called-testimonium.html

Furthermore, the Roman historian Tacitus records in his Annals that after
the great fire in Rome, Emperor Nero fastened the blame on a despised group of
people called Christians. Tacitus identifies this group thusly: “Christus, the
founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in
the reign of Tiberius.” Bart D. Ehrman writes, “Tacitus’s report confirms what
we know from other sources, that Jesus was executed by order of the Roman
governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, sometime during Tiberius’s reign" (The New
Testament: A Historical Introduction to Early Christian Writings, 212).

Tacitus is just writing what he had heard from other christians.

See: http://jmcfarland.hubpages.com/hub/Debunking-the-Historical-Jesus-Part-1-Tacitus-and-the-Tallmud

[stromboli]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_historical_existence_of_Jesus_Christ

Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth (the Christ) as portrayed in the Bible is only found in three places: the Bible itself, other early Christian writings, and references by the various early churches (c. 100 CE) to the long-dead leader of those churches. The only known possible contemporaneous (i.e. someone who lived during the supposed time of c. 6 BCE to c. 36 CE) source regarding Jesus is Paul who expressly states that he got his information through revelation, not any human being.[1]
The increasingly common view of Jesus among New Testament scholars as of 2007 is that "historical research can indeed disclose a core of historical facts about Jesus" but "the Jesus we find at this historical core is significantly different from the legendary view presented in the New Testament".[2] Some scholars have gone as far as to say there were several possible "Jesuses" candidates with no indication of which (if any) is "the" historical Jesus.[3][4] Ironically, based on some of the definitions provided, [5][6][7] these could be said to qualify as Christ Myth Theory positions!
A small minority, past[8] and present,[9] believe there is insufficient justification to assume any individual human seed for the stories, representing an extreme in the other end of belief. It should be noted that at least one anthropology paper states in both its abstract and main text "there is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived".

You are dealing with 2 issues: One, the fact that Messianic figures were apparently rampant about the time (60-80 CE) that rebellion was fomenting among the Jews, leading to the temple destruction in 70 CE and the fall of Masada. The second is the attribution by historians to the many similarities to previous or known deities- I cited Romulus as one previously, but there are several- so that any claim laid on either the mythicist or historicist position is actually closely entwined. The mythicist position essentially says that no one person fits the description of the Jesus figure, whereas the historicist position is that it did.

In my view, it makes no difference ultimately because the end result is the same, a fiction created either out of whole cloth or one based on an obscure and unknown person. The major difference is that Christian scholars can claim some authenticity to their statements, where with mythicism they cannot. Either way, a messianic symbol was imbued with supernatural and mythic powers to perform a certain set of tasks.

However, Jesus is at the core of Christian theology. His existence and death is a critical point for virtually all Christians, and his life being exactly as detailed in the Gospels is important to many Christians. As a result nearly all debates gravitate to the Triumphalist-Jesus of Bethlehem end of the spectrum; "Either side of the historicity debate will at times engage in a fallacy here, citing evidence supporting the reductive theory in defense of the triumphalist theory (as if that was valid), or citing the absurdity of the triumphalist theory as if this refuted the reductive theory (as if that were valid)"[17]
For example, Remsburg's list of 42 historians during or shortly after the supposed times of Jesus who should have, but did not record anything about Jesus, apostles, or any supposed acts that we find only in the Bible (which was improved upon in 2012 with the book No Meek Messiah, augmenting the number of "Silent Writers" to 146.[18]) often used by armchair Christ Mythers was arguing against the Triumphalist-Jesus of Bethlehem and not against the Reductive-Jesus of Nazareth. Remsberg in fact, stated there were was just enough evidence to show that the Triumphalist-Jesus of Bethlehem was a historical myth on the "a real event distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false" side of that definition.[19] Remsburg was not saying Jesus the man didn't exist but rather the story of Jesus in the Gospels had no more historical reality than the stories of George Washington and the Cherry Tree, Davy Crockett and the Frozen Dawn, Jesse James and the Widow, or the many Penny Dreadful-Dime Novels starring people like Buffalo Bill, "Wild Bill" Hickok, and Annie Oakley.

The central piece to the mythicist argument is that, at no point, was an eyewitness account ever given. In terms of time, only Paul could have lived when Jesus die, but he received all of his teachings through revelation, as did all the other teachers of the New Testament- the Epistles of Peter and John are considered either forgeries or manufactured accounts. And as JP indicated, the accounts of Josephus and Irenaeus may be suspect

Irenaeus fails history... badly
The Irenaeus example Price provides is actually far worse than Price presents it. The actual passage in Demonstration (74) is "For Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar, came together and condemned Him to be crucified." and this one sentence is so full of historical inaccuracies that it is unbelievable that few have pointed them out.
The key issue is the title "King of the Jews". When Herod the Great died, his kingdom was broken up between this three sons: Herod Archelaus (Ethnarch of Judaea 4 BCE â€" 6 CE), Herod Antipas (Tetrarch of Galilee 4 BC - 41 CE), and "Herod" Philip II (Tetrarch of Batanea 4 BCE â€" 34 CE). Archelaus was removed 6 CE with Judea governed by Roman prefects until Herod Agrippa I came to power 41 CE. Furthermore, while some later books have called Herod Agrippa II "king of the Jews", he in truth never ruled over the Judea province.[78]
So the only Herods close to the supposed life of Jesus (c6 BCE to c36 CE) that were "King of the Jews" (ie ruled the Judea province) were Herod the Great and Herod Agrippa I. Moreover, we have a reasonable history of Herod Agrippa I from 34 CE (death of John the Baptist) to his death in 44 CE:
Due to expressing the desire for Tiberius to hurry up and die so his friend Caligula could become emperor, Herod Agrippa I was thrown in prison and not released until 37 CE when Caligula came to power. By that time Pontius Pilate had been replaced by Marcellus.
While Herod Agrippa I did come to Judea as governor in the final year of Caligula's rule (41 CE), he answered to Prefect Marcellus, who in turn answered to Tetrarch Herod Antipas.
Due to Herod Agrippa I's advice Claudius became Caesar in 41 and as a reward a year later Marcellus and Herod Antipas were replaced by Herod Agrippa I resulting him being "like Herod the Great before him, king of the Jews." [79]
So why was Irenaeus so sloppy in his history? One possible answer is in Against Heresies 2:22:4, where Irenaeus argued that Jesus had to be a minimum of at least 46 if not 50 years old when he was crucified. Irenaeus himself quotes Luke, establishing that Jesus was about 30 when he was baptized and when this was: "fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (c29 CE).
Even if you push Jesus's supposed birth date in Matthew to c6 BCE (Herod the Great killing children two years old and younger), putting Jesus at 34 in c29 CE (there is no year zero), you don't get to the required minimum 46 years of age until 41 CE, which requires the Caesar to be Claudius (41-54 CE) and the Herod "king of the Jews" to be Agrippa I (42-44 CE). That leaves the problem of Pontius Pilate, who not only had been recalled to Rome in 36 CE, but with a Herod "king of the Jews" in charge would not have been needed.

This is why Irenaeus as a source is suspect. As to Josephus-

The first thing one notices about this paragraph is that it breaks the flow of the chapter. Book 18 (“Containing the interval of 32 years from the banishment of Archelus to the departure from Babylon”) starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 CE and discusses various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes and a sect of Judas the Galilean, to which he devotes three times more space than to Jesus; Herod’s building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on. Chapter 3 starts with sedition against Pilate, who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem. The Jews protested; Pilate sent spies into Jewish ranks with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre. Then in the middle of all these troubles comes the curiously quiet paragraph about Jesus, followed immediately by: “And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...” Josephus would not have thought the Christian story to be “another terrible misfortune.” It is only a Christian (someone like Eusebius) who might have considered Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy. Paragraph three can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter; in fact, it flows better without it.[10]
Then there is the issue of how many people do not mention it even when it would have been in their best interests to do so: Justin Martyr (c100 - c165), Theophilus (d. 180), Irenaeus (c120 - c203), Clement of Alexandria (c150-c215), Origen (c185-c254), Hippolytus (c170 - c235), Minucius Felix (d. c250), Anatolius (230-280), Chrysostom (c347-407), Methodius (9th century), and Photius (c820-891). There are many places in Origen's Against Celsus where he should have mentioned such a passage but didn't.[11]
Structurally there is much wrong with the passage. Josephus doesn't explain things as he does in passages of other would be messiahs. Things such as what deeds and to what Jesus won over people are missing.[12]
The term "Christ" only appears in the Testimonium Flavianum and in a later passage regarding James “brother of Jesus” (see below). But the purpose of the work was to promote Vespasian as the Jewish Messiah (ie 'Christ') so why would Josephus, a messianic Jew, use the term only here. More over the Greek word here used is the same as in the Old Testament but to Josephus' Roman audience it would read as the ointment rather than anointed one resulting in many a Roman scratching their head in befuddlement.[13]
Josephus was in Rome from 64 to 66 CE to petition emperor Nero for the release of some Jewish priest that Gessius Florus sent there in chains.[14] Josephus makes no mention of the further misfortune of Jesus' followers that Tacitus and Suetonius record. If the Testimonium Flavianum was genuine in any way Josephus certainly have mentioned the further misfortune of Jesus followers under Nero since he was right there in Rome for two years when it was supposedly going on. So either the Testimonium Flavianum is a fake or the Tacitus and Suetonius accounts repeating are urban myth--both sets of accounts cannot be true.

Lol, yada yada.  By way of summation I would simply say that either position, historic or myth, does not point to a real messianic figure. At best, an obscure figure who will never be known was picked on as the model for the messianic figure who became Jesus. And that mythical notions of previous beliefs of virgin birth, miracles, rising from the dead and so forth were attributed to him. So debate on, I'm done. 

[Mike Cl]

Those two reviews of Carrier's work were found quickly.  One day I will take an inventory of the positive reviews and negative reviews.  I'll be most interested in the negative reviews for I'd like to know how one could give a negative review--and what proof they would offer.

What struck me about the negative review I posted was that it was introduced in the typical way--Carrier is not the scholar we are and he cannot possibly know all the stuff we do, so he can't really know what he is taking about--and he is an outsider.  The implied--he can't possibly know the truth, only we can 'cause we are on the inside.   And the flock gobbles it up.

[stromboli]

Carrier gets attacked because, despite his accreditations, he does not currently reside at a university. That and the fact he is using methodology that is new and therefore novel. And I agree, the attacks against him are largely against him being an outsider and therefore we can invalidate him. I think he will gain more credibility because the "historicity" book is clearly written to refute his critics, and as far as my humble self is concerned, he succeeded.

[Mike Cl]

Only up to pg 200, but, yeah, has he ever succeeded!