bjs1 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 13, 2025 10:36 pmThe only support mythicism has today is internet posters and amateur historians who have not done their research. Hardly any mythicists have advanced degrees in history or even in the languages required to study that time period.
Whether or not you believe this literally, it's hyperbolic to the point of being false.
First, This appeared to be true for a while, but it has turned more and more into a case of special pleading that borders on No True Scotsman. In addition to the much-maligned, but qualified Robert Price and Richard Carrier, more qualified scholars have thrown their hats in with mythicists (or "Jesus minimalists"). As a first pass, you can look at the contributors to
Is This Not the Carpenter?, edited by Thomas L. Thompson. At some point, apologists will have to move beyond
ad hominem if they actually want to engage with the subject.
Second, the argument that scholars like Ehrman make against mythicism, isn't the one that apologists would like them to be making. While most scholars claim that Jesus was a real guy, that doesn't necessarily extend to the Gospels providing a historical view of him. In the conclusion to Ehrman's
Jesus Before the Gospels, he discusses why he's disheartened by a particularly narrow view of gospel history:
The Gospels are shared memories of the past. Yes, they can be scrutinized by historians who want to get a better sense of what actually happened in the life of Jesus. Thats what I do for a living. But if they were only that, they would be dry, banal, and frankly rather uninteresting to anyone except people with rather peculiar antiquarian interests. The Gospels are more than historical sources. They are deeply rooted and profound memories of a man, memories that ended up transforming the entire world.
It is easy to make the argument that the historical Jesus did not transform the world. He does not transform the world today. You may wonder how that could possibly be, if Christianity became the religion of the West. Look at it this way. There are two billion people today who are committed to the memory of Jesus. How many of those two billion have what I, as a historian, would consider to be a historically accurate recollection of the basic facts of Jesuss real life and ministry? Some thousands? Its a tiny fraction. The historical Jesus did not make history. The remembered Jesus did.
For me as a historian it goes without saying that we should pay close attention to what can be learned about the historical Jesus. But we should not neglect the remembered Jesus.
Does it matter if Jesus really delivered the Sermon on the Mount the way it is described in Matthew 5"7? It matters to me historically. But if Jesus didnt deliver the sermon, would it be any less powerful? Not in the least. It is, and in my view deserves to be, one of the greatest accounts of ethical teaching in the history of the planet.
Does it matter if Jesus really healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead? Does it matter if he himself was raised from the dead? To me as a historian it does. But if these stories are not historically accurate, does that rob them of their literary power? Not in my books. They are terrifically moving accounts. Understanding what they are trying to say means understanding some of the most uplifting and influential literature the world has ever seen.
Does it matter if Jesus considered himself to be God on earth? As a historian, it matters to me a great deal. But if he did not"and I think he did not"the fact that he was remembered that way by later followers is terrifically important. Without that memory of Jesus, the faith founded on him would never have taken off, the Roman Empire would not have abandoned paganism, and the history of our world would have transpired in ways that are unimaginably different. History was changed, not because of brute facts, but because of memory.
Keep in mind that this is the very champion of apologists against Jesus mythicism. Ehrman still believes that Jesus was a really real guy, but that's where his overlap with the apologetic view ends: even if the existence itself of Jesus isn't a myth, the stories told about him are still legend.
bjs1 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 13, 2025 10:36 pmThis is not surprising. Once we do the research, we find that the overwhelming evidence is that Jesus existed.
I'm not sure the evidence is even whelming. The evidence for a historical Jesus hinges on a few extrabiblical attestations. Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius all appear to mention Jesus, but each of these has issues. On balance, most historians consider them to tip the scales to the existence of a historical Jesus, but "overwhelming" is the same kind of hyperbole you've already been engaging in. At the very least, it's almost certain that none of those references as we have them are unaltered. Later Christian apologists at least embellished them. The best claim, then, is that though the evidence has been doctored, there's enough of a historical core to conclude that Jesus was real.
The majority of scholars believe that even though the Jesus of the Bible is legendary, there's a real Jesus of history. My claim is that the stories of Jesus are theological to the point of eclipsing the historical and a real Jesus is so anemic in detail, that his existence is unnecessary and lacks explanatory power. Even if Occam's razor can't quite remove him, it cuts him up pretty badly.
bjs1 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 13, 2025 10:36 pmEven if you don't believe everything attributed to Jesus, the basic outline of his life is well established. Almost no one who has done their research opposes the idea that Jesus was a wandering preacher who redefined the Jewish law, challenged religious authorities, taught in parables, was eventually crucified by the Roman government, and gathered disciples who later worshiped him as the incarnation of the Jewish God.
If you've done the research you imply you have, you should have plenty of specific details to add to back up your general and thus far unsubstantiated claims.
bjs1 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 13, 2025 10:36 pmBart Ehrman, one of the top New Testament scholars in the world today and an outspoken atheist and critic of the Christian faith, said this about mythicism:
"This is not even an issue for scholars of antiquity.... The reason for thinking Jesus existed is because he is abundantly attested in early sources.... If you want to go where the evidence goes, I think that atheists have done themselves a disservice by jumping on the bandwagon of mythicism, because frankly, it makes you look foolish to the outside world. If thats what youre going to believe, you just look foolish."
What I find particularly funny about this is that Ehrman made this claim and others like it before he did his later research on memory.
Jesus Before the Gospels shows a distinct softening of his earlier positions. He's hardly a mythicist in any sense, but it's been interesting as his career and research interests have progressed, to see just how some of his earlier views have been changed by his own later research.
