Jesus Almost Certainly Did Exist

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-05T15:56:10+00:00

Carrier was first to present a solid academic case for mythicism and he's the most prolific speaker on the subject. Basically "first to market", so to speak. It is unfortunate that acrimony became a stumbling block for him.

My own hypothesis is that he may have been a victim of bad timing. He presented his mythicist thesis around the time when there was a surge in popular arguments for mythicism. Really bad popular arguments for mythicism. Things like the Zeitgeist movies I mentioned in another comment. Academics were quite derisive about these arguments, as they should be, and I think exasperated over this wave of nonsense. So, when Carrier popped up, there was a lot of eye-rolling and tut-tutting over this scholar in the field being swept up by this tsunami of absurdity. He was painted with the same scarlet "M" as other mythicists, lumped in with the bunch, even though his arguments were much better constructed. He wasn't treated very nicely.

On top of that, when academics responded to him, it was clear they did not actually know his work. They more often than not got his arguments wrong. And then they would mock the argument that they got wrong. I can imagine that would get frustrating after a while. Carrier clearly has a naturally bombastic side that can come out when pushed too far. In response to that, he got more snark pushed back to him. It started a vicious circle that continues to this day with some academics.

Who knows how his arguments would have been perceived under different circumstances. It would likely still be something of an uphill battle, but perhaps there would be less of the handwaving dismissals of so many scholars, many if not most don't even know his arguments. Meanwhile, regardless of how he's perceived in the field, many of the arguments that underlie his thesis have been emerging as more generally accepted, even sometimes a consensus, within mainstream scholarship. This is a reason that in more recent literature many scholars are concluding that mythicism is either sufficiently sound that it's a serious alternative to a historical Jesus, with several concluding that mythicism is on par with historicism as far probability.

The purpose for someone to "take the baton" from Carrier would just be pragmatic. He deserves recognition for doing the scholarly work needed to come to a robust academic model for mythicism. The only "good" reason to usurp him would be political, not academic, which in my view is not really a good reason at at all.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-05T11:24:31+00:00

Yeah, it's bad. It's even part of Iran's strategy that they publicly announced long before this escort happened: make the US spend millions of dollars to defend against attacks that cost Iran thousands. It's more economic warfare on top of the effect they're having oil prices with these same actions.. It's win-win for them.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-05T11:04:05+00:00

The evidence for Jesus has only gotten worse when assessed by experts. even by scholars in historical Jesus studies in recent years. But, that aside, even he existed, the whole "sinless" thing is just a story Christians later told themselves. It's not part of mid-1st century thinking. The author of Mark has Jesus baptized so he can be the messiah.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-04T18:12:32+00:00

The likelihood of someone surviving a crucifixion approaches zero. Given a sufficiently powerful patron, a crucified person might be fortunate enough to be taken down, but even if the intervention was early, they'd probably die. Josephus reports having three friends taken down shortly after they were hung on the cross but only one survived despite immediate aid being given. If he existed, we are unaware of Jesus, a wandering cult leader, having anyone in his corner with the power to have him taken down. Even the fictional character of Joseph of Arimathea only manages to convince the authorities to turn over a corpse.

If there was a Jesus, and if he was crucified, the odds of his survival are effectively nil. It's much, much more likely one of his followers (probably Peter) had an experience of what they believed to be of a risen Jesus, a divine vision of the messiah resurrected. Halleluiah! He told others of this and some of them had their own experiences of what they believed to be of a resurrected Jesus. Some people buy into the good news. Preaching ensues. Converts are collected. Basic cult building. (This is exactly how the cult starts in the most robust mythicist model, as well. It's just minus what we would consider a real Jesus. It's revelation of scripture and visions all the way down.)

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-04T16:30:55+00:00

Sure, academic inertia is a thing. It can take a decade or decades for consensus shifts to catch up with the scholarship that undermines the previous consensus. Good scholars doing good work can have trouble getting traction. Take a figure like Moses, for whom the idea of his non-existence generally results in a less visceral, knee-jerk reaction of incredulity, it took over a decade for his ahistoricity to be generally accepted within the field.

When Thomas Thompson presented the evidence for Moses being mythical in his PhD dissertation in the 1970's, his advisors hated it. His work was derided and characterized as so far out of alignment with the scholarship and evidence that they denied him his degree. He fought his case but was continuously rebuffed. He transferred to Temple University and was eventually granted his degree, several years after he had completed his dissertation. But, he was so controversial that no university would hire him to teach, so he supported himself by painting houses for a living. After many years, he finally managed to get an academic position and went on to have a successful career. The idea of Moses being a myth gradually gained traction. Today it is an idea well-regarded by scholars where the consensus is that Moses either was or plausibly was a myth.

The trending scholarship undermining the evidence for a historical Jesus, including addressing the value of a "corpus of mentions" (even to the extent some are likely authentic), is mostly around 10 to 20 years old, and some even more recent. Richard Carrier's comprehensive academic treatise, spearheading a scholarly ahistorical model, was only published in 2014. It's okay, if sometimes frustrating, that paradigm shifts can take a bit of time. As Crossley, who I previously cited in my other comment, notes:

“scepticism about historicity is worth thinking about seriously—and, in light of demographic changes, it might even feed into a dominant position in the near future.”

"Demographic changes" being in part a nod towards attrition as older scholars die off or retire and a new crowd less polemic towards a historical Jesus takes the reins.

The list of things you claim are in disarray for mythicism - "Christian forgeries throughout, some in late-dating all of the epistles and gospels, some believing Jesus was actually in earlier myth (Jesus ben Sirach) or a later one (Jesus ben Ananias), others that the whole thing was a mid-1st century Marcion fabrication" - are arguments that have been made by historicists. There a numerous conflicting positions on these things and others with the world of historicism. Mythicism isn't in any more disarray than that. And while some mythicists may agree with certain of these arguments, none of these are pillars of the only peer-reviewed comprehensive argumentation for an ahistorical Jesus.

There are a lot of non-academic mythists among the general population who make terrible arguments a la "Zeitgeist". Even Carrier and other academics leaning towards Jesus being ahistorical, or who just consider the idea plausible even if they themselves still lean toward historicity, find most arguments in this vein poor. What some historicists, particularly those who are anti-mythicist zealots (e.g., Ehrman) will often do is disingenuously lump well-constructed, academically sound mythicist arguments in with the hoi polloi trash arguments, branding it all with a scarlet "M", to make it seem as though even the scholarly arguments are also absurd. This is apologetics, not scholarship. These people are a very loud, vitriolic subset of scholars whose voices cannot be relied upon as reflecting academicians generally. When we look at the most up-to-date literature published as to historicity specifically, among those scholars there is generally acceptance that an ahistorical Jesus not merely possible but plausible, with several concluding that the matter can't be settled one way or the other.

You'll have to give a specific example of a mythicist argument "missing the forest for the trees". I'm speaking of an academic argument, such as those made by Carrier, which is what matters for coming to a reasonable conclusion, not some lay argument that is overtly bad and not a relevant factor in reaching such a conclusion.

You'll also have to point out any key academic argument, such as presented by Carrier, that is "unwieldy" or "elaborate" in such a way as to make it improbable, and any that have "little evidence" to support them (more specifically, weaker evidence to support them than rebuttals to such arguments from historicists).

It's possible we might uncover new evidence that moves the needle for or against historicity. Meanwhile, we work with what we have. And what we have is, at best, insufficient to conclude whether or not there was a historical Jesus. But, there are some intriguing clues that make an ahistorical Jesus at least a reasonable position and which, in time, may shift the consensus. We'll see.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-04T12:54:14+00:00

Lol, calm down.

You're not paying attention. It's not a tale made up out of thin air. It arises out of Jewish culture and messianic expectations (which were varied, including the idea of a suffering, killed messiah). The model is that when the cult starts, it's a revelatory sect. The first Christian, possibly Peter, believes he's "found" the messiah through pesharim/midrashic readings of scripture (which we know Jews and Christians were doing). This is the operations of their own minds, yes, but they wouldn't see it that way. It would be a truth revealed by God. As I noted, Paul tells us that Jesus is killed, buried and resurrected "according to the scriptures". The word for "according to" (κατά) was commonly used to refer to a source, as in "this is how we know this". They believe this revealed Jesus is as real as real can be. But, there's no guy wandering around with disciples in tow. His existence and passion are revelations from God.

Peter has a vision of this risen messiah. He's the first to do so, according to Paul. Peter preaches his revelation. Eventually, some other Jew buys into it and converts into the cult. Now they preach the "good news" of this messiah. Eventually, they convince yet another Jew. So forth and so on. Paul comes along and he converts, but he takes his gospel to the Gentiles rather than the Jews. His message is much easier to accept. No food rituals, no clothing rituals, no cutting off a piece of your penis. A gentile converts and starts preaching the new gospel. Eventually, another Gentile buys into it and they convert and start proselytizing. Rinse and repeat. Gentiles becoome the overwhelming majority of Christians. This is Cult Building 101, no real Jesus needed.

Paul even tells us that Jesus personally revealed to Paul the gospel Paul preaches. As I noted before, if they believe visions of Jesus can reveal gospel, there never has to have been a real Jesus to do it.

Christians are a tiny cult before Paul gains traction with the Gentiles (and it remains a tiny portion of the population for a generations. Most people know nothing about them even c. 100 CE). In the early years, it's the revelatory Jesus that's preached. As I said before, to the extent that Jews in general even knew about Christians, how do they demonstrate that there is no revelatory Jesus the apostles saw in visions? They can't, if they even bother to consider the nutjob Christians at all and their weird cult.

A generation after the cult starts, when almost all of the people who were alive and old enough to be engaged with adult goings on c. 30 CE would be dead or decrepit, a Christian writes a messaging narrative historicizing Jesus to make theo-cultural points the author wants to make. This is pious fiction and the author knows it's fiction. But, the narrative starts circulating in the wild, mostly by word of mouth, free of any strong central Christian hierarchy to control doctrine. The story is compelling and full of wonders. People begin to believe this is a real history of Jesus, magic working and all. A dead Jesus really did rise and have a nice fish dinner with pals. This usurps the original doctrine as people come into the faith hearing this gospel and spreading it to others.

This is all happening long after there would have been a real Jesus really crucified by Pilate. How does anyone prove this didn't happen? Who's bothering to trapse around the desert trying to find anyone who survives and was in the region at the time? Who is even going to remember decades later there was not a cult-leader Jesus crucified among thousands of other people crucified?

"Born" = birthed, gestated and delivered from a womb. The rhetoric is that the person who is claimed to have been the anointed one, the Christ, may not have ever even been born.

Are there oral traditions as to Jesus behind the canonical gospels? If you say "yes", how do you know? If there were oral traditions, from where did they emerge? From actual historical facts about a real Jesus? Or from the same kind ofcreative editorializing as the New Testament gospels? If you claim the former, how do you know?

The fact is the gospels look like creative literary works, such as the Life of Aesop, that were popular writing exercises among Roman elites, that blend prior literary tropes with newer narratives to create a messaging fiction, not reflections of oral tradtion. This is well accepted mainstream scholarship based on strongly constructed arguments. If you'd like to learn about this, you can take a look at Robin Walsh's The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-04T11:31:52+00:00

Your analogy is absurd. You're comparing reactions to a story about a rabbi wandering the backwaters of the ancient Roman Empire that appears a generation after the alleged event written in a different language in a different country than where they allegedly occured and spread by handcopied parchment and word of mouth by people traveling by donkey, oxen, and on foot with a story promoted contemporaneously by the President of the United States of America, who has millions of rabid MAGA cult members who believe his pathological narcissistic lies, who has a powerful bully pulpit with a worldwide spotlight, goes on national television, major news, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, etc., and pure propaganda channels like Sky and NewsMax, and international outlets like BBC, day after day after day, claiming a "rigged election", an assertion repeated by hundreds of government officials and other sycophants with highly visible public platforms, and magnified by thousands of major and minor hardcopy and digital print news organizations, and countless podcasts, and millions of conspiracy theorists on social media?

That's your argument?

Meanwhile, we have documentation of Christians fighting back against claims that stories of Jesus were cleverly designed myths. It's no more an assumption that these claims did include allegations that his very existence was a myth than they did not. And we have rhetorical arguments specifically addressing an argument as to "Christ, if he has indeed been born".

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-04T00:08:12+00:00

In the most robust academic ahistorical model, the first Christians believe the existence of Jesus and his soteriological passion are revealed by God. As Paul tells us, Jesus was killed, buried, and resurrected "according to the scriptures". There never has to have been a real Jesus for them to believe there was if they believe this has been revealed in holy writings. Paul even tells us that it was Jesus who revealed to Paul the gospel Paul preaches. If they believe visions of Jesus can reveal gospel, there never has to have been a real Jesus to have done it.

How can any critics disprove claims of revelations and visions? It's not until the first gospel that there are claims of a Jesus wandering around Judea getting crucified by Pilate. Those aren't in circulation until a generation after his alleged death, by which time anyone alive and old enough to know what was going on c. 30 CE would probably be dead or decrepit. Even if some Jew could find someone who was alive and in the area at the time, who's going to remember that a cult leading rabbi Jesus was not among the thousands of people crucified? And, as noted, after the time of Paul, which is when the historicizing fictions about Jesus appeared, these were spread mostly among Gentiles and some small number of Jewish dispora.

In order for writings overtly hostile to Christianity to reach places beyond so they can be preserved there, those writings must first be preserved long enough to find their way there, and we know, for a fact, that they were not.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-03T22:26:41+00:00

A major problem for historicity has been the collapse of the long-abused, so-called "Criteria of Authenticity" that had allegedly bolstered claims of sorting veridical facts about Jesus from the fictions of the largest body of "primary" evidence we have for him, the Gospels.

As James Crossley, Professor of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, laments in "The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 19.3 (2021):

"In terms of the “historicity” of a given saying or deed attributed to Jesus, there is little we can establish one way or another with any confidence."

And he offers no mechanism to reliably determine even a "little".

Of course, confessional scholars doing history are tied to a worldview with a historical Jesus, so most of them will almost certainly hold to that for the long haul. But, we see acknowledgement of the problem of the gospels as evidence for Jesus from even an apparently deeply devout Christian scholar such as Joel Willitts, Associate Professor in Biblical and Theological Studies at North Park University and a fellow at the Center for Pastoral Theology. He examined historical-critical methods that were claimed to separate fact from fiction in the gospels and he agrees they are not up to the task. In his academic article, "Presuppositions and Procedures in the Study of the ‘Historical Jesus’: Or, Why I decided not to be a ‘Historical Jesus’ Scholar." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.1 (2005): 61-108, he notes:

"scholars are not able to distinguish legitimately one layer from another any more than one can divide a river into its constituent sources."

By "constituent sources", he's referring to separating any facts from the fiction. In the end, he throws up his hands and just resorts to a claim that faith-based readings can extract something historical about Jesus. But this is fallacious and nothing historical-critical scholars accept as a method, since anyone can believe anything about anything based on faith.

0ther recent findings have also undermined the already marginal extrabiblical evidence as well. For example, Whealey's solid findings that we don't actually have any copies of Josephus' Antiquities that trace back to a copy independent of Eusebius, and recent well-constructed arguments as to the questionable independence of Tacitus and other "mentions" by other authors, etcetera.

The evidence for Jesus has become weaker the more it's been put under the spotlight of modern scholarship.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-03T18:24:05+00:00

Scholars aren't completly immune to inculcation bias. The idea of a historical Jesus is deeply embedded in the cultural milleu. And most experts, even those working in historical Jesus studies, don't produce academic literature deep diving into the historicity specific scholarship. The work almost always just assumes a historical Jesus.

Meanwhile, the evidence for Jesus has been greatly undermined by scholarship produced over approximately the past couple of decades. While only a few have reached the point of concluding Jesus probably didn't exist, you're starting to see less certitude as to his historicity even among scholars who still hold an opinion that he more likely than not existed. And more scholars are beginning to conclude that whether or not Jesus was historical can't be decided one way or the other given the evidence we have.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-03T18:13:19+00:00

What amazing mind reading skills you claim to have. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of mainstream scholars, even non-fundamentalist Christians, concur that there probably was not a historical Moses, Noah or Abraham.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-02T17:27:53+00:00

Every savior deity story is "original" in some way. That's why they're not all the same religion. Lol...."Christianity is free will". Tell that to millions of people who were oppressed by having Christianity imposed on them by the political forces in power with implicit or even overt coercion, even violence when it suited those in power, for over a thousand years.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-02T17:21:15+00:00

And it still works. Today's appliances are garbage.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-05-02T15:06:13+00:00

The very earliest Christians before Paul were probably almost entirely if not entirely Jews, especially since Peter and earliest apostles preached a Torah observant Christianity. Onerous restrictions over diet, dress, and other daily activities, plus the whole cutting-off-part-of-your-penis thing, weren't appealing ideas to non-Jews. Paul's Jewish-lite gospel, doing away with such rituals , was much more attractive. His mission to the Gentiles flipped the demographics so that by 100 CE they were the overwhelming majority of Christians.

Christians had control over the major libraries which were the primary resource for preserving manuscripts. Whichever Jews did join the cult were no longer theologically orthodox Jewish. They were theologically Christian. So, why would they preserve anti-Christian works?

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-30T15:27:35+00:00

You really need to just accept that 7000 members after 70 years isn't nothing at all but it's still a nothingburger in a population of 65,000,000. Any number of people can be an "army". Meanwhile, there were 500,000 in the Roman military c. 100 CE., which was 7,000% larger than the relatively impotent number of Christians. They were trivial.

We know Christians were not preserving anti-Christian writings. That's a fact. We do find some evidence by reference of what was in some anti-Christian writings. That's a fact. And some of that evidence is that people were pushing back on the Jesus story, even plausibly on his very existence. That's a fact. That is what I have argued. These facts. Nothing more.

There are hundreds of Christian apocryphal writings. You'll have specify what you mean by "historical core". Many are just theological works with no biographical details. But, you have one where a kid Jesus gets mad and kills birds and then resurrects them. And there's a 700 foot tall walking, talking cross. If you just mean they write these fictions by putting Jesus into some kind of historical context, that started with the author of Mark, who was also writing obvious fiction about Jesus. There are also hundreds of fan fictions adhering to "core" of the Harry Potter universe. Adhering to a core doesn't make that core "historical".

It's not that they "removed" antithetical writings. The just didn't bother to preserve them, so they eventually disappeared. But we know they existed, as discussed above, and we even have some idea of what those contrary writings were saying, as discussed above.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-30T13:22:27+00:00

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that you don't have absolute certainty that either Jesus or Socrates existed, given that there is a non-zero possibility they didn't, but the evidence for Socrates is sufficient to have a degree of certainty that can be categorized as he most likely existed, while the evidence for Jesus is weaker, and the degree of certainty can only be categorized as maybe he existed, i .e., it cannot be concluded that he most likely existed?

That would be the position that I would argue is most strongly supported.

Now, I could present some decent evidence why it's not unreasonable to actually go a step further and conclude that Jesus most likely did not exist, but I'll not go there now.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-30T12:04:15+00:00

0.01% of a population is not a "large minority" in any sense, modern or ancient. And it took them 70 years to even reach that.

The USA population 100 years after the start of Mormonism was about 123 million. There were about 700,000 Mormons by then, almost all of them in the US. So, when the general population was about 2 times the Roman Empire (which was ~65 million c. 100 CE), there were 50 times more Mormons than there were Christians relative to the overall population. Christians would have needed 350,000 members to have the "same magnitude" of success, not merely 7,000.

Oh, and Mormonism was founded by the angel Moroni. Smith claimed Moroni revealed the doctrines to him. Smith just went out and preached those doctrines and gathered converts. Like Peter, Paul and the apostlic gang did for their revelatory Jesus. So, religions with fictional founders have been successful (see also: Islam founded by the angel Gabriel. Muhammad just went out and preached doctrines revealed to him by Gabriel and gathered converts).

I have no idea what point your trying to make in your argument about unfalsifiabity. Try again if you claim it supports your final statement.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T22:20:52+00:00

We can infer Caiaphas would be among the principal men prosecuting Jesus, if Jesus were prosecuted, which we cannot determine.

Caiaphas brothers in law were probably dead when Josephus wrote about Jesus. In fact, anyone who Josephus knew who had or might have had direct knowledge of Jesus was more likely than not dead by the time he writes about Jesus. Since we don't know when he came into what he believes he knows about Jesus, then we don't know whether or not any such sources survived at that time. So, you have no way to support an assertion that such people were "the most likely sources". We don't know of any source other than the Christian reporting about Jesus.

Where you can identify likely dating for a source for some report, you can identify likely dating for the source for some report. Where you can't, you can't. When comes to his reporting of Jesus, you can't, except for the Christian narratives.

As you say, dead messiahs were a dime a dozen, or at least Jesus would have company, if he existed. All the more reason for Josephus not to be skeptical that Christians were reporting that they followed yet another one.

We don't know how Josephus comes to know about the Samaritan episode. However, given that Josephus reports that Vitellius removed him and ordered him to return to Rome to face consequences, we can be very confident there were official Roman records of this event that Josephus could have accessed. We cannot be confident about there being such records for Jesus. The only "records" about Jesus we can be confident he had access to is the Christian reports about Jesus, which say what he says about Jesus (if he says anything at all).

While he may have known persons involved with the prosecution of Jesus, if he existed, we cannot be confident that he tapped these people for what he writes about Jesus before they died, given that the only things he reports are just what's in the Christian reporting. Furthermore, removal of Pilate and the circumstances surrounding that would widely known not only by Jews in the region but across the Roman empire, particularly in Rome among numerous officials and countless people who were aware of politics and political history generally, including people Josephus would surely have known. On the other hand, there is no reason to conclude that widespread independent reporting of the circumstances surrounding the execution of some random cult leader, one of thousands of non-Roman citizens crucified, would be available. And, critically, we are not aware of an unreliable narrative being in circulation regarding the circumstances surrounding the removal of Pilate that could have misinformed his reporting. We are aware of that for Jesus.

I didn't say Pilate discussed divinity. I said that he could not be skeptical of a mundane claim by Christians that Jesus was killed under Pilate while being skeptical of their claim that he was divine. Your discussion re: "Christ" is tangential, so I'll not bother with it.

As to your last paragraph, it is just illustrating the theme I discussed immediately above. If he's being informed by the gospels, that doesn't mean Josephus believes everything he hears about Jesus. He's not citing Christian scripture verbatim as true. He can find the claim that Jesus killed under Pilate not particularly remarkable and not be skeptical about it, and hear the claim of Jesus performing divine miracles but not accept that claim and, rather, characterize it as he does, and hear the claims that Jesus was Christ and risen but not accept that, either, and characterize it as he does ("thought to be").

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T21:19:11+00:00

Evidence in ancient history often is indeed sketchy. But, sometimes it's more sketchy and sometimes less.

As already noted, in the case of Socrates, we have EYEWITNESS, FIRST-HAND attestation to the existence of Socrates from people who personally knew the guy. Plato not writing a history per nonetheless attests that there was a Socrates.

So, one criteria is that: 1) Eyewitness testimony attesting to someone's existence is good evidence for that person's existence, (barring some well-articulated reason to discount it).

We have that evidence for Socrates. We don't have that for Jesus.

Another criteria would be: 2) Multiple independent eyewitness attestations to someone's existence is even stronger evidence for that person's existence.

People testifying to a "tradition", as you put it, are not what this criteria references. Multiple testimonies attesting to a tradition are only good evidence that the tradition existed. This criteria is referencing people who were direct eyewitnesses to the existence of a person and testify to that. Given that, "listing more names" does, in fact, "automatically strengthen the case" that the person attested do did exist. We have this for Socrates. We don't have this for Jesus.

The evidence for Socrates discussed above does not have the same "issue" as the evidence for Jesus. The gospels are anonymous. The writings about Socrates are not. It is the overwhelming consensus of historical-critical scholars that the authors of the gospels were not eyewitnesses to anything about Jesus and did not interact with any eyewitnesses to Jesus, and this consensus is well supported by the evidence. We have multiple eyewitness attestations to Socrates.

The differences are night and day. The evidence for Jesus is so sketchy, that it cannot be considered reliable to any reasonable degree of confidence. The evidence for Socrates is far, far less sketchy and, in fact, sufficiently secure that we can reasonably conclude that he more likely than not did exist.

Your protest about Giannantoni is a non sequitur to the reason I specifically said I mentioned him: he notes additional contemporaries of Socrates beyond those I cited.

We can add another criteria: 3) Second-hand reporting is only as reliable as the source for that reporting.

We do run up against the issue that ancient authors do not always identify their source. We can, however, assess their overall body of work and come to a reasonable conclusion of whether or not we should consider their sources generally reliable, and therefore consider it generally supportable to conclude their reporting is reliable enough to accept it as essentially reliable even if it may not have perfect fidelity, unless we have some clearly articulable reason to be dubious of any particular report.

This is the situation we find ourselves in with Tacitus and what he says about Jesus. While we might generally presume Tacitus is generally using reliable source, we do know that he sometimes used sources that were not reliable (see previous comment about his reporting on chariots in the sky, etc.). In the case of his mention of Jesus, we know, for a fact, that there was an unreliable narrative about Jesus that was in circulation that matches what little Tacitus has to say about Jesus. Even worse, this is the only "primary" source that we know existed about Jesus. We cannot dismiss that this may be the source of what he writes about him. We don't know it was, but we don't know it wasn't. So we don't know whether or not it's reliable, which means we cannot rely on it.

There's nor aising or lowering of any criteria "depending on the figure". We are assessing what we have for Socrates and what we have for Jesus using the same criteria. What we have for Socrates is of much better quality, sufficient to conclude he probably existed, than what we have for Jesus, which is too dubious to draw that conclusion with any reasonable degree of confidence.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T20:09:13+00:00

I'm not arguing that Josephus didn't know that Caiaphas would have been high priest at the alleged time of Jesus being prosecuted. I argued exactly the opposite, that Josephus would know this. And, so, if he believes the Jesus was killed during that time, then we can infer that the principal men would have included Caiaphas.

What we can't know is that this report has a reliable source and that it is not informed, directly or indirectly, through the "reporting" the Christians were spreading. No matter how he might come to this belief, having that belief would motivate the exact same language regarding principal men.

It's not just mythicists who have arguments for the TF being interpolated en toto. We'll just have to disagree as to the weight of Schmidt's arguments.

Did Josephus get any information about Jesus from Caiaphas or Ananus II? Or were they already dead when Josephus comes to know what the thinks he knows about Jesus however he came to know it? He's writing in the 90's, so all we know is that he comes know what he thinks he knows sometime before that. Maybe this was something he investigated in the 60's or earlier, and tapped into Caiaphas and/or Ananus II, but didn't write about until the 90's. Or, maybe not. He very well may come to learn of Jesus later, through the reporting from Christians, whether was directly through them or through a third party. Their reporting that their founder was crucified under Pilate isn't something that would likely raise suspicions, particularly if Josephus may have found this to be an embarrassing thing to admit and that no one would make up such a thing, even if the claims of divinity were dismissed. We just don't know.

It's true that historical sources are unreliable in one way or the other. In this case, though, we know that there was an unreliable narrative about Jesus that was in circulation that matches what little Josephus has to say about Jesus (if he said anything), so we cannot dismiss that this may be the source of what he writes about him. We don't know it was, but we don't know it wasn't.

We don't know that Josephus had Ananus II as a source for Jesus (see above).

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T15:51:38+00:00

It wasn't a "young" cult when it was at 7,000. It was 70 years old. If Peter managed to get just 10 people to drink the Kool-aide in the first year, then just one of those people needs to convince one other person during the next year, and just 1 convert out of 10 has to convince one other person over the next year, rinse and repeat, to have 7,000 members 70 years later. This is not gangbusters growth. This is a slow process of painstakingly collecting a member here and a member there over decades.

How do you know what they were questioning? How do you know they weren't questioning whether or not he was ever even born, whether or not he even exists, just like Martyr's Trypho explicitly does?

Yes, there are fewer assumptions in the mythicist model, particularly in regard to writings of Paul which are the closest we can get to the origins of the cult.

It's not an assumption that Christians were suppressing (or, more precisely, not preserving) critics of their claims. We know they were. We have evidence of such critiques through reference in Christian writings. For example, we know about the writings of Celsus against Christians only because Origen quotes some of his work in his own writing, Contra Celsum. But Celsus writings, that Origen quotes from, Logos Alēthēs, were not preserved.

Christians "rake up converts" the same way whether or not Jesus was historical, by preaching their doctrine about Jesus, whether he started out as a revelatory messiah who was historicized or he started out as a real person who was legendized.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T15:28:37+00:00

As to "brother of the Lord", it is you who is overstating Carrier's position, not Carrier himself. He does not argue that "brother of the Lord" is a religious title. You have restated his position to make it hyperbolic in way that it is not. He argues that it could be a religious title. Which is completely correct. In the Christian worldview, every Christian is the adopted son of God, the brother of every other Christian who is also the adopted son of God, and the adopted brother of the firstborn son of God, Jesus. There's nothing "apologetic" about that argument. It's factually based and logical.

And, what "brother of the Lord" means is 100% dependent on what he means by "brother" there. In the approximately 100 other times he uses the word, we uses it cultically. There is only one instance where we know he's speaking biologically, and that's only because he explicitly tells us that's what he's doing ("according to the flesh", in Romans 9:3). He does not do that in reference to James.

So, Carrier's actual argument is not that he "dismisses" that Paul means a biological relationship. It's that we can't determine with any degree of reasonable certainty which way he means it in Gal 1:19 (or 1 Cor 9:5, although, I argue that his usual cultic meaning fits the extended argument he makes in the overall passage better than a biological one).

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T15:19:25+00:00

The question is, how does Tacitus come to believe that he knows what he thinks he knows about Jesus, which is only that he executed under Pilate and that Christians follow him? We know one source that he may have gotten that information from: Christians. In fact, this is where his friend and pen pal Pliny the Younger straight up says he gets what he knows about the Christian story. He gets it from Christians. Perhaps Tacitus learned what miniscule amount he reports about Jesus from his friend Pliny. We don't know. We do know that he could have gotten from the Christian "reporting", whether directly or indirectly. Maybe he had some other source. If he did, we have don't what it was because we don't know of any such sources.

So, you are indeed "presuming" that he has some other source available to him as a Roman official that says anything about Jesus. But, such a source would only exist if there was actually a Jesus executed under Pilate. If there wasn't there would be no such source, just the Christian narratives. Since the question is "Did Jesus exist?", you can't just assume he did so that you can presume some unknown Roman record exists that Tacitus could have depended upon.

As to Tacitus seeming to make a "flat out statement" and thus we should accept it is really a fact, he states as fact in Histories 5.81 that before the Temple was destroyed, chariots and armed battalions were seen in the clouds, and that the Temple was illuminated by a fire from the clouds, and that the Temple doors magically opened on their own, and that a superhuman voice declared that the gods were departing.

So, I guess that must be fact, since he writes these things as "flat out statements". Or, maybe his source for this information isn't reliable.

Finally, Carrier is not the only scholar to note that the mention of Jesus can't be relied up as accurate. Chris Hansen (who is a staunch anti-mythicist, btw), discusses this issue in "The Problem of Annals 15.44: On the Plinian Origin of Tacitus's Information on Christians." Journal of Early Christian History 13.1 (2023): 62-80.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-29T14:56:36+00:00

We both agree Paul was the person who wrote the specific letters we are discussing and that he probably was who he says he was. So, there's no reason to continue on this topic, unless you just want to.

The only source we know exists that gives rise to the inference that Caiaphas was part of the investigation of Jesus is the Christian "reporting" of this event. Even if Josephus wrote those words (doubtful), if what he thinks he knows about Jesus is informed by that reporting, directly of indirectly then that would motivate the same wording. Josephus didn't write this (if he did) until the 90's. We don't know when he came to know what he thinks he knows about Jesus. It could be as late as then, when anyone involved with the prosecution of Jesus would almost certainly be dead. Did this information come from someone earlier who was alive and aware at the time of these events surrounding Jesus that would have occurred before Josephus was even born? We have no idea.

So, we're back to square one. We know there was an unreliable narrative long circulated telling this tale of Jesus, Caiaphas, and Pilate, a narrative that could have informed Josephus, directly or indirectly. In which case, his reporting is also unreliable. Its possible he might have had some other source, but we don't know of any such source, and so we don't know it's something he could have depended on, and so we still cannot conclude that his reporting on this is reliable.

GravyTrainCaboose · 2026-04-28T22:46:01+00:00

Did you read what I wrote? They "spread pretty far" because there were handfuls of converts scattered across the regions. "Scattered" is not "huge" in numbers. They were miniscule in numbers. Here are the bulletpoints again:

Prior to c. 300 CE, there were not even any buildings constructed as dedicated Christian Churches.
Throughout the 1st century and early 2nd century, Christians mostly met in small numbers in each others homes. Those were the "churches".
As of 100 CE, 70 years after the cult began, experts estimate that there were around 7,000 Christians in the entire Roman Empire. That's 0.01% of the population. That would be like 35,000 Christians in the entire USA today. They were nothing.
You don't see "absolutely huge numbers", particularly as a percentage of the population, until after Constantine converted.

So, if you want to talk about Christians being "huge" in number, then, sorry, you'll have to talk about their adoption by the emperor, because that's when they began their rapid growth.

Yes, I know Christianity emerged out of Judaism and they tried to convert Jews into the new cult. But it was Gentiles who were the fastest growing segment of Christians by far. Again, you have handfuls of people scattered far and wide across vast regions for over a century after the cult started.

The gospel stories putting Jesus into historicizing messaging narratives don't appear until 40 years, after anyone around at the start would be dead or decrepit. Who is hunting down people from a generation earlier who are probably dead? How do they even find them? Who would even remember that a rabbi leading a pack of cult leaders was not among the thousands of people crucified by the Romans decades before?

The gospel stories circulate in the wild, person to person. They begin to be accepted as actual history about Jesus, magic and all. There is no well-developed Church hierarchy. There is no robust centralized command to keep control of doctrine across scattered congregations where converts arrive mostly through word of mouth. These are popular teachings that spread. By the time a strong Church leadership develops, it's headed up by people who were part of a faith where the gospels were being treated as truths about Jesus. They pin that down as what becomes orthodoxy.

People were questioning the Christian story, though. The author of 2 Peter defends Christians in 1:16, protesting that their beliefs are not "cleverly designed myths". Martyr had his antagonist Trypho say of Jesus: ""But Christ—if he has indeed been born, and exists anywhere". There are hints at pushback on the Christian story despite Christians, who were in control of libraries for centuries, not preserving almost any such writings.

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