Unpopular Opinion
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Going from memory here, I heard it years back. Robert M. Price's podcast The Bible Geek covered the argument against a historical Jesus in an episode, noting that a major pillar in the argument is an obituary written by Josephus. Wikipedia has a page on Josephus's account.
Price's argument, such that I remember, has to do with the fact that Josephus' account outright calls Jesus the Messiah, despite supposedly being written in the first century CE when this would have been a niche argument, suggesting that this account was not actually written when it purports to be. But I haven't listened to Bible Geek in a long time, all of this could be a misrepresentation.
Yeah afaik the earliest record of the gospels and Jesus date to 90AD, which is of course beyond the memory of a single generation. Either the stories were passed down orally that long (telephone game), or the whole thing was really invented around that time, since there are multiple written records suddenly appearing in the early 2nd century.
The creation of Christianity around 90-120AD makes more sense than anything to me, given the geopolitics of the time.
A stroll through any necropolis back then would reveal many tombs marked Yeshua and Miryam and Yosef. Just common names. If someone were to invent myths around that time, they might just pick names like that, especially given the hebrew meaning of Yeshua (salvation through god).
I not a biblical scholar so grains of salt.
What I remember from Bible Geek (and/or Human Bible, another podcast he did) was that the earliest of the gospels actually dates to the 4th century CE, and that three of them are likely derivative works from an earlier book, lost to us, that scholars call "Q." I think it was John that was the only gospel thought not to originate from it.
Addition: looking it up, here's Q source on Wikipedia. It states that Matthew and Luke are thought to originate from Q, but not Mark or John.
The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written about 70 CE. (There’s also evidence that a “Q source” and a “sayings source” were floating around earlier - the commonalities in Luke and Matthew) Paul’s epistles are even earlier; Galatians was written somewhere 40-60 CE. Paul’s epistles are written to communities of Christians, meaning that that Christianity has already spread by then.
It's not quite certain that Jesus and Paul actually met in person. So all his writing might be apocryphal. His word might have become christian canon, but he is not really a source one can trust.
While Jesus and Paul likely never met in person, the point is that Paul is writing to established Christian communities within a few decades of Jesus’s death. There are already churches with established leadership and community structures.
Interesting, thank you for the missing detail there. I didn't realize Paul's writings were that early, but, he would have been 65-70 at least by then? I suppose that's possible.
Price is specifically referring to the “Testimonium Flavianum“ there, which most scholars agree was altered. The part of The Antiquities that refers to “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” most scholars think is original, and I don’t know if Price has made an argument about that quote.
Price is probably the only person with enough background to be a mythicist, but his arguments still just don’t seem to match how people act. “Oh, the Egyptians have Osiris, let’s make up our own god who gets resurrected!”
The evidence just seems more likely to show that the man existed, and had more elaborate details added to his biography as time went on. You can see a much higher “Christology” as you read each Gospel in the order they were written (details in the resurrection story, how many angels were at the tomb) until you get to John which makes Jesus the logos itself. The story needs to start with some sort of nucleus, something real, that has things added to it step by step.
Isn't that pretty much the whole origin of the roman pantheon? They heard about the cool greek gods and made their own copies.
That’s a common misunderstanding/simplification. It’s more “wow, these gods are kinda similar to ours, so they must be the same.” Portable Orange on YT has a good and well sourced video, and I think reading Dr. Devereaux’s blog posts is a good way to understand some ideas about ancient polytheism. Neither of these are published journal articles or books, but they both thoroughly cite their sources.