Jesus from Outer Space?

I don't think it is possible to disprove a religion from it's Bible based on the stories. I was wondering how you would disprove an imaginary future religion based on the Harry Potter books or how would you convince people in a few hundred years that the novel "Forrest Gump" was not about a real person based on the stories. If a novel is well-written, then I don't think you can disprove it from the stories in it. I am not Christian, and I have never even read the New Testament, so I don't actually care if JC actually ever existed. I just don't think you can show that he never existed based on the New Testament. My understanding of your article is that you are saying that it is possible that the writers of the NT made up JC and somehow how you can show that to be true. I am sure that the stories of the NT could have been made up, but I don't see how that proves they were.

The categories of ‘being much more than human, sent by God into the world’ and ‘human being making many controversial statements’ are not mutually exclusive. We may well think that the first category is empty but if people do consider it to be populated and describe an individual they think belongs to both categories they do not necessarily contradict themselves. If we encounter their literature it is not out of the question for us to think that their descriptions were in fact influenced, even determined, by elements of the real history of a controversial person.
On the other hand I don’t see a way of making it probable, simply from the content of these descriptions, that this sort of ‘determination by reality’ is taking place. There is debate about whether the message attributed to Jesus is political - but if it is that does not show that the writers of the story had a real historical record before them. Angels can give political advice. I’d probably ask for some if an angel walked into the room.
I don’t see why an angel should not be, if he chooses, to all appearances the brother of a real person, full of family resemblance and speaking freely of family history. (My projected best-seller ‘An Angel Stole my DNA’ will cover this possibility in more modern terms. Like my other project, ‘Jesus: Caesar’s Double Agent’, it will make me very rich.). The statement ‘your bro was really an angel’ is very hard to subject to Popperian falsification, at least if you are in a culture where angels are believed in.
So I don’t think that there’s any use in trying to prove that Jesus really existed by considering just what was said about him and I don’t think that the fact that the status attributed to ‘Jesus’ from an early date was a supernatural one shows strongly that those referring to ‘Jesus’ had no remembered or recorded real individual in mind. Existence is not a predicate, as Kant insists so boringly. What predicates need to be true of a person for that person to be/have been Jesus? I don’t think we have got as far as an answer to that question - and that is partly because of the heterogeneous mixture of human and supernatural predicates that have become associated with that name?
The related question of how those who spoke of Jesus knew whereof the spoke has troubled thoughtful Christians from a very early stage, I think.

Richard Carrier, thanks for your analysis. When you write (in comment above), "The Gospels are the only definite source for a historical Jesus we have (everything else either derives from them or is too ambiguous to determine the question)", have you considered and excluded the possibility that Jesus ben Sapphat active in the 60s ce of Josephus became understood to be Jesus Christ? If that were so, then there would be contemporary source material on the historical Jesus not derivative from the Gospels.

Obviously if the chronological framing of the Gospels/Acts for Jesus is unquestioned, then the Gospels/Acts' Jesus could not have derived from Jesus ben Sapphat. But if the chronological framing of the Gospels/Acts is not assumed as a prior starting-point or premise for the question of the earthly existence of the Jesus believed to be Christ; and if per argument the letters of Paul are dated ca. 70-100 ce (with the exception of reading Aretas of 2 Cor 11 as Aretas IV, does anything internal to those letters indicate pre-70 composition or pre-70 activity of Paul believed to have written some of them, at the time of those letters? [and as for Aretas, why not an Aretas V 69-70?]); Revelation is 90s reflecting source visions from ca. 70; and gospels/Acts 2nd ce ... could it be source material for the historical Jesus unaffected by Christian portrayal has been in open view all this time, but unrecognized based upon uncritical assumption of late and actually questionable chronological-structuring portrayals of Gospels/Acts?

I suppose a first question would be: is there evidence that meets historians' criteria that Christian belief in Jesus existed predating 70? Can that be established as a fact by historians' standards?

Then a second question might be: is it plausible, or can it be excluded, that under the right circumstances a figure could immediately, following a death or disappearance of that figure, come to be regarded as divine in heaven and a source of channeled visions of seers (as opposed to assumptions that that process takes some time to develop)?

Suggested answers to these two questions, respectively: no, and plausible. But what would you assess, if you care to say or comment?

I hope everyone here has had a good, even slightly merry, Christmas. Just to say that to my mind the question ‘Did X exist?’ is, since existence is not a predicate, to be regarded as ‘what predicates - or about how many of what reasonable list of predicates - need to be true of some subject for that subject to have, in normal understanding, been X?’. Not all of us might draw up the same list and the normal understanding of what X refers to may be changeable - so there needs to be some discussion at that point. In respect of our list we then need evidence for each predicate which we assign and evidence is harder to evaluate, though not impossible to use, if it comes with a strong and visible ideological purpose. We should note the possibility that many of the predicates are true of more than one subject, that is that ‘X’ may be a composite character.

A thought experiment may shed some light on this issue. Suppose that Christianity had died out at an early stage, all trace of it had been lost and no one had ever heard of Jesus. Now suppose that Mark's Gospel was discovered. What would we make of it? Clearly, it would be possible to regard it as a work of complete fiction. On the other hand it might have at least some basis in fact. So let's test these interpretations. According to Mark, Jesus attracted followers. So if Jesus was a real person, then there must have been some kind of Jesus movement in the first century. But what if Mark is complete fiction? In that case we have no reason whatsoever to think there was ever a Jesus movement. This is a crucial point. If we assume that Mark is fiction, we must have zero expectation of any Jesus movement.

In reality, we have always known that there was a Jesus movement, therefore we rarely stop to consider whether or not this is something that should or should not be expected. If we adopt a mythicist approach to Mark, it is very unexpected indeed. In spite of this it might still be possible to argue that Jesus is a mythical character, but on what basis? If the Jesus movement began in the way that Richard Carrier suggests then the "true" origins of the movement must have been forgotten at an early stage. But why should we believe that? According to Carrier, the Jesus "myth" is similar to other myths - so we have an argument from analogy. But how good are the analogies.

Let's consider what features an analogous case would need to have. The Gospels place Jesus in a clearly recognisable historical setting. Is that the case with the other "similar" myths? According to the Gospels, Jesus attracted followers and we have good evidence of a Jesus movement at exactly the time we would expect. Can we say the same about Hercules and other mythical figures? Only if these conditions can be met would there be a genuine analogy with Jesus. And I don't believe that they can be.

But perhaps it is the case that Paul's letters show us the "truth" about Jesus. Unfortunately, I can't see it. Nor can any expert in New Testament studies. So I for one remain unpersuaded by Richard Carrier's theory.

If you want to propose an analogy to the Gospels, you need to show that the analogy matches the level of verifiable detail that we find in the Gospels. It isn't enough just to show that a mythical account mentions a few real cities or kings. The Gospels contain numerous authentic details. Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod the Tetrarch and John the Baptist were real but relatively obscure people. They were quite important locally but not internationally. The Pharisees and Sadducees were real groups who held the views that the Gospels attribute to them. Capernaum was a real but insignificant town. People from Galilee really did travel to Jerusalem for Passover. The Romans did indeed occupy Judaea and people were likely to question whether it was right to pay taxes to them. There really were debates about observing the Law and, for example, whether or not you could rescue an animal from a ditch on the Sabbath was a real issue. Simon and Mary really were common names at the time, hence the need for various ways of distinguishing between two or more Simons or two or more Marys. The teaching of Jesus was both a recognizable product of that time and also very distinctive, as Geza Vermes and others have argued.

So it's all about the level of detail. Do we see the same level of verifiable detail in any ancient myth? I don't think so. Of course, it isn't surprising that we find so much detail in the Gospels. They were written quite soon after the period they depict. That doesn't necessarily prove that they are historical accounts but it does reframe the debate. You now have to argue that the Gospels are a form of elaborate historical fiction with no real parallel in the ancient world. You can try to do that but the onus is on you to show that they were only ever seen as fiction - and that is impossible. The existence of an organized Jesus movement, which appears to have started at the time when the Gospel story is set, is now fatal to the mythicist case. That is about as surprising as finding that there was an organized Harry Potter movement before the novels were written.

Are the cases of Ned Ludd and John Frum helpful to the mythicist case? Hardly. Do we have an account which shows Ned Ludd recruiting followers? Is it packed with authentic detail? Do we have accounts of the teaching of Ned Ludd or John Frum? Are their teachings revered and likely to be remembered and discussed for centuries? No on all counts. So I remain sceptical of the myth theory.

Richard Carrier 3/14/21 11:54 -- thank you for your reply. I read your references. I don't know whether the following might or might not modify your perspective that Jesus b. Saphat as a figure of interest is "just speculation".

(1) George Solomon, The Jesus of History and the Jesus of History Identified (1880). It is available online at Archive.org. To save time the extensive table of contents pp. IX-XV outlines the argument. Solomon argued there was no evidence in Josephus or otherwise for a Jesus at the time of Pilate, nor for the existence of a Christian sect prior to 70 in addition to the sect of interest to Josephus described as the Fourth Philosophy of Judah of Galilee; that the Gospels' Jesus reflects a combination of two historical Jesus figures from the 60s CE in Josephus, Jesus b. Ananias, and Jesus b. Sapphat, which Solomon argues were literarily combined into the one Jesus of the Gospels. Solomon argued that Christian texts including the letters of Paul were 2nd CE and that Jesus was mistakenly identified as the unnamed Samaritan false prophet executed by Pilate of Josephus, getting the chronology wrong by mistake or ignorance. In more recent times, Theodore Wedeen, "Two Jesuses, Jesus of Jerusalem and Jesus of Nazareth: Provocative Parallels and Imaginative Imitation", Forum N.S. 6.2 (Fall 2003), pp. 137-341, and Frans Vermeiren, A Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity (2017, available on amazon). I differ from Solomon in interpretation of Josephus's Jesus b. Ananias, which I think was already a legendized early form of Jesus of the Gospels also arguably derivative from Jesus b. Sapphat, to be developed in a forthcoming publication. I also differ in dating Paul's authentic letters 70-100 CE, not Solomon's 2nd ce. (I thank Giuseppe Ferri for calling the Solomon 1880 reference to attention.)

(2) On your certainty that the authentic Paulines, I Clement and Hebrews must be pre-70 because they do not refer to the Jewish War, that is debatable. The counterexample is Josephus's Contra Apion of 90s CE. Apart from a single passing, accidental, mention of the destruction of the temple by Titus at Bk 2.7--if that were not there, as it could easily not have been, it is an accident that it is there--then by your logic Contra Apion must be pre-70, even though it is not. Contra Apion refers in the present tense to the temple and its worship and the offering of sacrifices as ongoing at Bk. 2.1, 8-9, 24. This counterexample seems to remove your basis for certainty for pre-70 datings of the writings you name. On the other hand, arguing in favor of post-70 are I Thes 2:14-16; Heb 12:24-28; 13:12-14, and the supercessionism of Romans and Galatians in which Jewish law is declared obsolete and the temple cult over and not to be restored.

(3) Based on Papias of early 2nd ce being only 2-3 generations removed from the apostles' generation, the apostles were 1st CE not 1st BCE. Since Paul was contemporary to the generation of the apostles, therefore Paul also was 1st CE and not 1st BCE. Since Papias was collecting oral history or hearsay of what the apostles said and sayings and deeds of Jesus as told by the apostles ("disciples"), and shows no knowledge of apostles having said there was no Jesus, and since the ancient opponents to Christianity leveled many criticisms but never claimed Jesus's non-existence as one of them, that seems prima facie to argue there was a Jesus known to the apostles 2-3 generations before Papias, at the time Josephus has a Jesus active in Galilee with parallels to the stories of Jesus of the Gospels.

(4) The case for a short-lived, otherwise uncorroborated Aretas V of 69-70 CE--this is original from me--is not yet published. I start from the well-known problems with making sense of Aretas IV controlling Damascus in the 30s CE in light of 2 Cor 11:32. Then I argue to establish plausibility for an Aretas V at 69-70 following a death of Malichus II in the last year attested for him, sometime in his Year 31 argued to be the year 69-70 (Nisan to Nisan). It happens that 69-70 was a time when Nabatean forces were actively allied with and provided military units under the command of Vespasian and Titus. In that context Roman control of Damascus could well have been implemented by Nabatean auxiliaries under Roman command such that Paul's claim to have escaped a commander under king Aretas controlling the walls of Damascus could be other language for Roman control of Damascus in 69-70, in a way that was not the case with Aretas IV. This in turn opens up a new reading of Galatians' chronology which will await forthcoming publication for the full argument. Briefly, the conversion of Paul of Gal 1:15-17 becomes dated ca. 67-68, the meeting with the pillars of Gal 2:1-9 becomes a pre-siege diplomatic meeting of Paul meeting with the government of Jerusalem under Simon bar Giora and Simon's assistant commanders, two Idumean brothers named James and John (War 4.235; 5.249; 5.290; 6.380). The writing of 2 Corinthians 11 becomes dated early 80s. I will argue that the visits to Jerusalem of Gal 1 and Gal 2 may be two versions of the same visit even though presented by Paul as two, and that Gal 2:1 should be read with the visit at the beginning ("during") rather than at the conclusion of the fourteen year time-span of that verse.

(5) Lactantius, early 4th ce, quoted Sossonius Hierocles as saying Jesus commanded nine hundred robbers (Divine Institutes 5.3). That is transparently an ancient historian claiming that Jesus of the Christians was “Jesus, the brigand chief on the borderland of Ptolemais … with his force, which numbered eight hundred … band of brigands” (Vita 104-111). That Jesus fairly clearly is Jesus b. Saphat. Of course Sossonius could have been mistaken. But was he?

I do not accept for a moment that the "hyper" details are not relevant. For one thing, the reason why we have such details is that the Gospels were written quite soon after the time when the story is set by people who had information about that period. Were ancient myths written quite soon after the time when the story was set by people who remembered the period? There is no reason to think so. Therefore we are comparing two very different kinds of literature. To declare that those differences don't matter is, frankly, absurd.

It should also be pointed out that the canonical Gospels are radically different from the apocryphal gospels. For example, the Sophia of Jesus Christ gives only the vaguest sense of its setting. The only place that it mentions is the Mount of Olives, which the author thinks was in Galilee.

But I am not saying that the existence of detailed accounts proves that Jesus existed. The crucial point is that the accounts were produced by an organised movement which apparently began at the time when the story was set. That is another feature that must be replicated by any proposed analogy. So pointing out that works of fiction may have verisimilitude is not relevant unless there was also an accompanying movement.

The fact remains that your case is based on an obviously flawed analogy.

Richard, at first I was taken aback by the combination of (a) total rejection of and disinterest in even looking at a book directly and integrally material to your "On the Historicity of Jesus" work and niche in scholarship, sight unseen--on the stated grounds that it was written in the 19th century, combined with (b) the over-the-top bludgeoning, name-calling, and lecturing posture as if to a student when I am a colleague and a peer in a closely-related field to yours.

To get one thing out of the way quickly, scholars in collegial settings discuss unpublished work all the time. Scholars informally and formally routinely consider, respond to, and discuss ideas and proposals on the basis of experience with primary sources with no conscious restriction in conversation to "only what has been peer-reviewed published". Most papers presented at scholarly conferences, and much of the informal conversations at such and otherwise, concern work that has not yet been published. Comments to articles on this site at their best are something like those informal conversations and feedback at conference presentations.

The fact is your lack of knowledge of the argument of the George Solomon 1880 book, let alone addressing it, is a material omission in "On the Historicity of Jesus". It was a good-faith material omission since I have no doubt you, like I until recently, had never heard of it at the time you produced "On the Historicity". That however is not the case now, you have heard of it, and have given every indication that it is beneath you to look at it, or to understand its argument.

Whether after looking at it--if you do five years or ten years from now if ever--you do not find it convincing or that you disagree with it is beside the point here. The point is Solomon 1880 is not crank. It is as materially relevant to your niche of work as a published piece of work can be, but it was missed by you because not in the world of discourse with which you were familiar when you did that work.

The over-the-top bludgeoning response combined with "I will not even look at it" (paraphrase) comes across as a reaction of perceived vulnerability. It is especially odd given what you wrote in "On the Historicity of Jesus", pp. 428-429, in which you yourself say that the Gospel of Mark's Passion Story of Jesus is drawn directly from Josephus's figure Jesus b. Ananias of the 60s:

"So the entire narrative of Mark is a fictional, symbolic construct, from beginning to end (. . .) Indeed, even how Mark decides to construct the sequence of the Passover narrative appears to be based on the tale of another Jesus: Jesus ben Ananias, the 'Jesus of Jerusalem', an insane prophet active in the 60s CE who is then killed in the siege of Jerusalem (roughly in the year 70). His story is told by Josephus in the Jewish War, and unless Josephus invented him, his narrative must have been famous, famous enough for Josephus to know of it, and thus famous enough for Mark to know of it, too, and make use of it to model the tale of his own Jesus. Or if Josephus invented the tale, then Mark evidently used Josephus as a source. Because the parallels are too numerous to be at all probable as a coincidence. Some Mark does derive from elsewhere (or matches from elsewhere to a double purpose), but the overall scheme of the story in Josephus matches Mark too closely to believe that Mark just came up with the exact same scheme independently. And since it's not believed that Josephus invented a new story using Mark, we must conclude Mark invented his story using Josephus--or the same tale known to Josephus."

That is reasonable and accurate analysis. But what you have not realized and evidently have not the least interest in learning, is that the stories of Jesus of the Gospel of Mark also draw no less substantially from Jesus b. Sapphat of the 60s, and are no less compelling as direct derivation, as you acknowledge in the case of Jesus b. Ananias of the 60s.

Again, the Jesus b. Sapphat source of Jesus stories of the Gospels is absolutely not crank. I know crank and this isn't. It is no more crank than Jesus b. Ananias as source of Jesus's trial and apocalyptic. Yet Jesus b. Saphat does not even appear in the index to your 696 pp "On the Historicity" addressing the question of whether the Christian Jesus was or was not a figure in history--not even mentioned in that entire study. With respect, failure to even mention, let alone address, Jesus b. Saphat in 696 pages addressing every other conceivable aspect to the question in "On the Historicity" is sort of like missing the barn door, or not seeing an elephant in the room. This is why I say your lack of discussion of the content of Solomon 1880--I do not mean agreement, but understanding and addressing the Jesus b. Saphat connections at all--is a material omission in your otherwise highly worthy discussion.

Both my m.a. advisor at Cornell, Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena, and then Thomas Thompson at Copenhagen with my dr. degree, talked a lot about the sociology of scholarship, not simply the content of scholarship. My first publication foray crossing over from Qumran to Christian origins is, "Was Josephus's John the Baptist Passage a Chronologically Dislocated Story of the Death of Hyrcanus II?", published in the 2020 Thomas Thompson festschrift and accessible on my page on academia.edu.

Back to tone, I will leave this discussion since the bludgeoning and threat-attack mode is so offputting. You can have any last word if you like. You will get no war from me.

Sorry, Richard, but my point still stands. Firstly, scholars make a definite distinction between the canonical and the apocryphal gospels. Secondly, I remain to be convinced that any work of fiction before the last few centuries genuinely resembles the Gospels in terms of setting the scene. But let's say that some works of fiction do. That would just be the first step in an argument from analogy (as I have explained) and it is one at which ancient mythology falls.

Why are some people so stubborn and try to prove capriciously that Jesus existed
For all practical purposes, Jesus does not answer prayers or appear to anyone unless you are on drugs. All double blind major studies showed that prayers never get answered.
Why not discuss that Jesus was born from a Virgin and prove the science of Genetics is wrong. Oh by the way he had exactly 12 Apostles like Mithra. All historians forget to mention him before the Gospels were written, even though he destroyed the temple, his death caused the sun to eclipse and caused earthquakes. His miracles are so many according to John that all the books of the world can not contain it. Yet, Christians were numbered at the end of the first Century. Wow, the Writer of the Gospels easdroped on Jesus praying by himself and knew what he told God

Richard Carrier, responding to your 5 points at 3/22 12:24. On 1 and 4 I agree with your statements strictly construed however they somewhat miss the point that I was in mode of informal discussion not formal proof. It would be as if you were to raise a topic with some interesting points still under consideration and someone blasts you because it is not formally proven, therefore should not be voiced. The same applies in part to your point 5, in which your entire point is an eloquent argument in agreement with me that Sossianus or whoever was Lactantius's source cannot be considered hard evidence ("could be mistaken" as I put it), given the uncertainties you rightly name (and expressed better), though I do not agree that it therefore logically follows that it is not of interest or improper to mention. As for 2 and 3:

2 -- You missed my point, which is the main reason I did not respond to this one earlier. You argue eloquently that Josephus wrote post-70 which is what I know and said and never said otherwise, therefore your argument establishing that point is both correct and immaterial to the actual point. The actual point is the dating not of Josephus but of Paul's letters. You agree with 100% of mainstream scholarship that those letters (referring, with you, to the genuine letters) were written 50s CE, not one decade earlier or one decade later. The problem is, nothing in Paul's letters with the exception of the claim of an Aretas IV allusion at 2 Cor 11 establishes a pre-70 date directly at any point in those letters, nor have you cited any. You cite an indirect argument from silence, a lack of unambiguous backward allusion to events of 70 in Paul's letters. On Aretas IV, I have submitted an article to a peer-reviewed journal removing the Aretas IV argument for date of Paul's letters by establishing (per argument of my journal submission) from Nabataean evidence that there was another Nabataean king between Malichus II and Rabbel II, ca. 69-70 CE, who may have been named Aretas, the leading candidate for the name, thereby raising another first-century CE possibility for the Aretas referent at 2 Cor 11. All of the argument for the existence of the additional Nabataean king at ca. 69-70 CE whose most plausible name candidate was Aretas, is established independently of 2 Cor 11. There is no reason anyone, whether yourself or any other, should accept that until and if it is vetted through peer review and published (and even then only if the argument holds up to further critical reading and review), but for purposes of this discussion I ask you to assess (if responding to me) how secure you believe the argument for the 50s dating of Paul's letters stands minus the 2 Cor 11 Aretas argument. Does your 50s dating of Paul's letters stand without need of 2 Cor 11, in other words--given that that is the only hard-date argument internal to the letters for a pre-70 date of letter-writing activity of Paul. (Thomas Thompson at Copenhagen has stated for the record that he finds my submitted article proposing a 69-70 CE Aretas V "an entirely convincing hypothesis that should be published".) Again, no reason for you to accept that at this point, not asking you to, but am asking, as a thought experiment, for you to segregate out 2 Cor 11 from your argument-structure for the 50s CE date and assess whether your conclusion on that stands unaffected if 2 Cor 11 were to be removed.

Concerning the argument from silence, that argument may not be as secure as you assume. Who can forget John A.T. Robinson's argument that ALL New Testament writings including the Gospels and Acts are pre-70 because there is no unambiguous backward allusion to 70 in ANY New Testament writing. The same fallacy which applied in the case of John A.T. Robinson's argument with respect to his argument for pre-70 Luke-Acts is paralleled with respect to pre-70 dating of Paul's letter-writing. (Admittedly, the 2nd CE legendary book of Acts retrospectively implies that Paul's letter-writing activity was pre-70, as do the legends of Paul executed by Nero, but those are impeachable on grounds I do not think need to be argued here with you [and there is no space to do so anyway].)

As brought out by Paul George in "Jesus of the Books" (2018): "The humiliation and defeat of the Jews [of 70] is a past event in Paul's writings. Four years after the end of the Great War in 1918, Pope Pius XI issued his first encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio. In this work of about 11,500 words the Great War is mentioned 14 times. Nine years later the same term gets only one mention in his much longer Quadragesimo Anno. Both encyclicals deal with similar themes. Using the writings of the Pope as a guide and noting the indirect references to the War in Paul, we can reasonably speculate that he was writing about 10 years after the event.”

Very relevant here is Etienne Nodet, "On the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple", in A. Giambrone, ed., Rethinking the Jewish War. Archaeology, Society, Traditions, Leuven, Peeters, 2020, 236-248; and Anthony Giambrone, "Temple Arsons and Murder of the Prophets: Early Christian Responses to Jews an the Jewish Revolt(s)", in Giambrone, Rethinking the Jewish War, 249-275. The key point of the articles of Nodet and Giambrone is that the notion of a final and permanent destruction of the temple cult came about, not as usually supposed, by and following the destruction of 70, but rather by the actions of Hadrian of ca. 130. Before that time, between 70 and 130, there are hints that there was operation of the temple cult at Jerusalem with expectation that a building would be rebuilt. In this context the lack of mention in Paul's letters of a permanent destruction of the temple cult is an argument in favor of Paul's letters being pre-Hadrian but not pre-70. Both Nodet and Giambrone criticize modern scholarly and ancient post-Hadrian conflation of the effects of 70 (Titus) and 130 (Hadrian) in the worlds of texts and memory from the second century CE forward.

3 -- on the dating of the era of the apostles in Papias 1-2 generations before Papias as circular argument, while I follow your point partway, there is this: Papias claimed he knew the daughter of one of them, a daughter of Philip, one of Papias's claimed sources. That seems to be a non-circular claim of a date for the apostles one or two generations prior to Papias, depending on the age of that daughter. Nothing in Papias distinguishes the father of Philip's daughter from the apostle by that name in Papias's list of seven names. That there was an originally single figure artificially become and presented as a doublet of two Philips in Acts is argued convincingly by Christopher Matthews, Philip Apostle and Evangelist: Configurations of a Tradition, 2002, Brill.

Belatedly thank you for your time in commenting, referring to content not tone :-)

According to Greg Doudna, the real inspiration for the Jesus movement was Jesus ben Sapphat, who was active in the 60s. I would be interested to know the reasoning behind Greg's proposal. Firstly, why was he looking for the "real" Jesus and where did he expect to find him? The search for the "real" Jesus is usually based on the assumption that the Gospels have at least some historical basis - that a man called Jesus actually lived at the time when the Gospels say he did. If that assumption is abandoned, it is difficult to see what could guide the search for the real Jesus. How would you know when the real Jesus lived? Potentially, there could be an answer to that question if we knew for certain that Paul was active after AD 70. But we don't know that, and Greg's attempts to demonstrate this must be regarded as speculative at best. We might still have something to go on if we could find a Jesus who corresponds closely to what Paul says about Jesus. Does that apply to Jesus ben Sapphat? Let's start by asking whether this Jesus died by crucifixion (and not just whether this *might* have happened). As far as I can tell, there is no clear indication that he did.

It appears that there is nothing to guide Greg's search for the "real" Jesus. So here is the problem. It is easy to claim that you have found the "answer" to a problem when your search for the answer was completely unconstrained. In those circumstances you can seize on pretty much anything and then engage in speculation to "demonstrate" that your answer is correct.

Well David M., you are probably familiar with the story of Josephus in Vita (420-421) in which Josephus sees three acquaintances crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem. According to his story, he went to Titus in tears and got the three taken down from the crosses and given medical attention by the Romans. It was too late for two who died from their ordeal, but one, Josephus says, lived.

Not everyone will interpret that story in Vita the same way but here is how I read it. I think Josephus's story appears in legendized form in the later Gospel story of the three crucified one of whom lives. I think Josephus bar Matthias appears as the character Joseph of Arimethea, the leading figure among the Jews said to be secretly a supporter of Jesus who carries out the identical function of having one of the three taken down from the cross to live again. I think the Josephus Vita story and the later Gospel crucifixion story are versions of the same--one developed from the other--and that the origin of the Passion story of Jesus, so central to Christianity, is no earlier than the time of the siege of Jerusalem, 70 CE.

What Josephus does not tell in Vita is the identity of the one Josephus saved from death on the cross other than Josephus’s claim that he knew him. Here is the speculative leap, that the name given to the figure in the Gospel version, Jesus, may reflect the name of the one Josephus saved in Vita, based on a backward reasoning that if the three-and-one crucifieds of Vita and in the Gospel version correspond, and if Josephus appears as a character under his own name, by analogy the name of the central figure in the legend, Jesus, could similarly reflect the proper name of the one saved from the cross in Vita. The major Jesus figure at the time of the Revolt, terror to the Romans and Roman-sympathizers, active in Galilee at the same time as Josephus who worked with him and covered up personal dealings with him,* was Jesus ben Sapphat, whose fate after the Roman conquest of Galilee is untold by Josephus. q.e.d. a person of interest.

(*According to Josephus, governing in Galilee, he had secret dealings with Jesus ben Sapphat active in Galilee in the runup to the Roman arrival. But when Josephus later responded in Vita to accusations that he had destroyed the palace of Herod in Tiberias, Josephus gave an “I was only giving orders” defense, blaming Jesus ben Sapphat for doing that.)

Then a lot else converges on the First Revolt as the context underlying the founder-figure claimed by Christians. The era of the apostles seems to be about this era, on the basis of Papias and Philip's daughters, as well as stories in Papias of persons healed by Jesus living into the time of Hadrian. I suspect the "pillars" of Jerusalem at Gal. 2:1-9 may be the government of Jerusalem during the later stages of the Revolt, Simon bar Gioras, James b. Sosa, and John of Gischala, and that Paul appears in Josephus as Saul the Herodian kinsman of Agrippa II of the 60s--that Eisenman got that one right. That is, ancient diplomacy and realpolitik underlying the legends and rhetoric of the visit to the pillars.

It is already uncontroversial that much of the Gospels' Jesus material reflects First Revolt-era contexts--the rending of the temple veil; the signs in the heavens; the Olivet prophecy; the denarius tribute story, and on and on, to which for reasons just given the crucifixion and bodily resurrection of Jesus may be added. It is not such a great leap therefore to consider that the whole of Jesus-story origins, not just some of it, may be from that date era and that the earlier Pilate time-setting is mistaken and anachronistic as told in Christian origin traditions set in texts in the second century CE. Unless there is a sound basis to know that Christian belief in a crucifixion and bodily resurrection of a Jesus was held by persons pre-70, why not consider?

Whereas there is no significant Jesus known in the 30s external to Christian legend, there is this Jesus active at the time of the First Revolt who has some similarities to Jesus of the Gospels and whose name would be in agreement with the backward argument for the name “Jesus” as the name of the one who survived the cross of 70. This is largely uncharted territory--so uncharted that it never occurred to Mr. Carrier to consider or refute in his voluminous Bayesian analysis work dealing with the Jesus question, and apparently incapable of reasoned or at least civil response, he responds now with invective (on his blog). (Spock arched-eyebrow here.) Lena Einhorn, A Shift in Time, argues for artificiality of the 30s date setting of the Jesus stories in the Gospels and that those stories reflect contexts of the later procurators closer to the time of the First Revolt.

Thanks for the reply, Greg. In my opinion, the argument you have presented is a poor substitute for an actual reference to a crucified Jesus. I don't see much of a parallel between the story recounted by Josephus and the Gospel account of the crucifixion. In one case someone is trying to save people from crucifixion and in the other someone is trying to ensure that a victim of crucifixion gets a proper burial. I certainly wouldn't be inclined to use the Gospel story to tell us something about Josephus' experience that he doesn't tell us himself. Furthermore, you infer that the person saved from crucifixion would have been Jesus ben Sapphat. So here is the question. Why would someone who has been saved from crucifixion be the inspiration to Paul and others? Why would people regard what happened to him as a "resurrection"? This seems like the swoon theory. But the bottom line is this. We have no statement to the effect that Jesus ben Sapphat was crucified, much less that he was subsequently resurrected.

You say that the Gospels reflect a later time - i.e., AD 70 and later. However, that is no mystery. This is the time to which the writing of the Gospels is usually dated. Regarding Papias, it is plausible that one or two of Jesus' disciples were still alive in the late first century. At the time when Papias is writing this period has passed and he writes about it in the past tense.

Good comments David Madison. Some final ones from me.

-- Game-changer: Kenneth W. Clark, "Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70", NTS 6 (1960); 269-80. The temple cult continued operable in Jerusalem in the 70-135 period and ended with Hadrian, not earlier in 70. A misbegotten scholarly construction that the temple cult and sacrifices in Jerusalem ceased in 70. Very convincing, after reading this one wonders how could scholars have thought otherwise all this time? Gone are all the arguments for pre-70 dating of Hebrews, many other texts, on the basis of speaking of the temple cult as still operable.

-- The differences you cite between the two versions of the three-and-one crucifieds (Vita, and the Christian Gospels' Passion story), accurate observations, ironically give weight in favor of argument that the Passion legend version reflects two hearsay versions of an event rather than a mimesis phenomenon in which the Gospel version was inspired literarily by the story in Vita. This is if the premise is accepted that Joseph of Arimethea is Joseph b. Matthias based on roles and description, proper name and garbled pronunciation of patronymic. In this light the Jesus crucifixion/resurrection Gospel story derives from a point of view of observers who saw bodies taken down from crosses looking all to be dead and then one seen alive again, interpreted as miracle and evidence of divine favor and significance, many ancient parallels in which unusual events are interpreted as omens or signs of cosmic significance.

-- Jesus b. Sapphat is on the short list of major figures or leaders of the Revolt. Josephus gives the fates of most of them, but Jesus b. Sapphat is among the smaller number of major figures of whom Josephus does not tell their fate. This heightens the focus on the reasonable question whether the Vita version of the underlying story whose version in the Christian Passion features a "Jesus", reflects Jesus b. Sapphat.

-- that Jesus b. Sapphat independently has other similarities to the Gospels' Jesus is illustrated by the George Solomon 19th century book named earlier, in which Solomon was able to make that argument entirely apart from identification of the Vita crucified as Jesus b. Sapphat. The only published argument in print to my knowledge which proposes the Vita crucified survivor story was Jesus b. Sapphat is the earlier-cited Vermeiren, Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity (2015). That is, Jesus b. Sapphat as the origin of the crucified/risen Jesus of Christian origin-tradition claim was not even voiced, let alone considered or discussed or refuted, prior to 2015 (to my knowledge).

-- The Gospel episode of the Gesarene demoniac and the 2000 pigs (Mk 5) already has a literature in existing NT scholarship identifying key essentials of that story as a story reflective of the time of Vespasian and Placidus's Fifth Legion in Transjordan in 68 CE--a story of a massacre of a Roman military unit by one reading of the swine into the sea--at the same time Jesus b. Sapphat is active and engaged in combat with Roman legions in the region. Josephus does not specifically situate Jesus b. Sapphat in transjordan, and the victories the Jewish rebels did inflict on Romans told by Josephus are situated by Josephus in Galilee not in transjordan, but those may be quibbles in light of the similarities in context and name of the warrior figure Jesus on the Jewish side opposing the Romans compared to Jesus of the Gospel story of the same 68 CE context.

-- The outer space preexistence and post-existence of Jesus Christ in Christian texts neither argues positively or negatively with respect to the Jesus b. Sapphat hypothesis, since on the one hand, the cosmic Christ can be argued to account for creation of all of the stories of the human figure Jesus, but on the other hand, is also not inconsistent with an actual human figure being reified in status and memory by supporters into such cosmic categories. There is a potential falsification of the Jesus b. Sapphat hypothesis however, not if a cosmic Christ idea can be shown to exist pre-70 but if a pre-70 cosmic Christ can be shown who was named "Jesus".

-- The Christian Passion story appears to have combined or melded into one fictitious combined story the trial of Jesus b. Ananias of ca. 62 CE per Josephus--who was released by Roman procurator Albinus [presumably with the help of a bribe] against the wishes of fellow Jewish accusers calling for his death--and Jesus b. Sapphias crucified per the Vita-story/reconstruction argument. That is, the Barabbas version in which Jesus is freed after a trial, and the crucified Jesus, combined into a single Passion story. That Josephus's 60s Jesus b. Ananias is the story of Jesus's trial in the Gospels is now mainstream NT scholarship at this point in the wake of the good work of Weeden.

-- Imagine the coincidence, so far: the most critical elements of the single Christian Passion story--the trial with a merciful procurator seeking to release against Jewish accusers, and the resurrection after being crucified with two others-reflect a Jesus and a Jesus both of 60s told in Josephus. Both of these origins to the Passion Story Jesus are named "Jesus" in history of the 60s (versus no known historical Jesus of the 30s independent of 2nd CE Christian origin claims). How is it that two Jesuses of history (Weeden suggests Jesus b. Ananias could be non-historical though he assumes the 30 CE Jesus still is, but never mind that), both of the 60s, when combined produce the Christian Passion Story of Jesus? What is going on there?

-- Here is where I will go a step further, not as claim of certainty but as suggestion or a probing: a suggestion that Jesus b. Ananias is indeed highly fictionalized as Weeden says, but--(drawing on that very argument) is a version of Jesus b. Sapphat. The existence of multiple and divergent tellings of figures in Josephus is well-established as a phenomenon from many comparative examples of doublets in Josephus, likely originating from Roman collection of multiple stories of the war and siege from Roman prisoner interrogations (which Josephus likely played a key role), lots of hearsay and garbling of facts and names. So here is my hypothesis going into the prosopography: "Sapphat" or something close to that is the true proper name of this Jesus's patronym, which may or may not be related to "Sepphoraeus" the patronym of Judah of 4 bce (War 1.648-655), if one wants to see a link of this Jesus to the zealot hypothesis. "Sapphat", a Greek name, also could fit into a known pattern in which Jewish (hebrew) names sounding alike phonetically were often attached to the same person, e.g. "Joseph" the patronym of Jesus of the Gospel story. Then concerning Jesus b. Ananias, and the reason underlying why he was accused and tried, argued for linking him (maybe) to the "Egyptian" of the 50s who Lena Einhorn, as well as rabbinic legends, also suggest was Jesus of the Gospels. I think the "Egyptian" could be Josephus's wilderness "Bannus" as well, and I have a speculative possibility for the meaning of "Bannus" to add to the other creative suggestions which have been proposed by others: it was a Jesus but not just any Jesus, a Jesus who was considered like the mighty conquering Joshua bar Nun of old, therefore given a nickname/pun "bar Nun" or "Bannus". Then at the later time of the siege of Jerusalem, this figure Jesus's nickname, "bar Nun" or "Bannus", was misheard or misunderstood as "bar Ananias". (Lots of examples in Josephus of garbled spellings of proper names.) As for the objection that Jesus b. Ananias died from being hit by a stone from a Roman catapault, that account of his death need merit no more confidence of having actual truth to it than the very parallel and similar report of Josephus's own death from being hit by a stone in the head. The report inside besieged Jerusalem concerning Josephus's demise, witnessed by many inside the walls of Jerusalem, was simply mistaken in Josephus's case, and there is no obvious reason to know whether such a similar report was true or mistaken in the case of Jesus b. Ananias either (though it makes a good story as Josephus tells it). Jesus b. Sapphat was a real figure; Josephus knew him and tells of him. Jesus b. Ananias in Josephus on the other hand is total hearsay, reified hearsay, said by Josephus to have been legendized into an omen of the outcome of the Revolt itself. The Christians who wrote these two Jesuses into the Passion Story thought they were the same Jesus. Whether these were two variant versions of one Jesus of the 60s, or two actual Jesuses of the same proper name of the 60s literarily combined into one in the Passion Story--either way--this is a possible origin of the Christian Jesus which has not been properly considered.

-- To bring this home to the mythicist issue under present discussion, the issue in the end would be: does the historical Jesus(es) of the 60s precede the attachment of cosmic Christ attributes to such a figure, or does a cosmic Christ, already named Jesus and already crucified and resurrected in heaven and of no historical existence, take on features of Jesus(es) of the 60s secondarily. But either way, in this reconstruction the 30s Jesus disappears from history, is gone. May productive discussion flourish.

Thanks again for the engagement, Greg. Just a few observations. One is about methodology. In your scenario, the true origins of the Jesus movement can be discovered by, as it were, decoding the Gospels, which are really telling us something about events that happened several decades later. Is this a reliable method? People will have to make up their own minds about that.

You say that the differences between the Gospel crucifixion account and the story in Vita are due to the fact that the Gospel account combines two versions of Josephus' story, which arose through hearsay. This obviously makes things much more complicated. It also makes it much harder to be sure that the story in Vita had any influence on the Gospel story.

And things become more complicated still. You are struck by the fact that the Passion account is based on the experiences of two people called Jesus - Jesus ben Sapphat and Jesus ben Ananias. But then it turns out that Jesus ben Ananias may actually be another version of Jesus ben Sapphat. It may be worthwhile to remind ourselves at this point that your claim about Jesus ben Sapphat has not been established.

My concern is about the speculative nature of this endeavour. There doesn't seem to be any way of anchoring this in reality.

Um.. so is jesus a alien or not?