{"id":2812,"date":"2019-12-26T17:41:09","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T17:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2019-12-26T17:41:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-26T17:41:11","slug":"tim-oneill-the-biblical-history-skeptics-on-mythicism-by-dr-richard-carrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=2812","title":{"rendered":"Tim O\u2019Neill & the Biblical History Skeptics on Mythicism (by Dr. Richard Carrier)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In April of this year the Biblical History Skeptics\u00a0talked shop for three hours<\/a>\u00a0with Tim O\u2019Neill (this<\/a>\u00a0Tim O\u2019Neill) and I was invited to talk shop about that with Godless Engineer last month. The latter video has now gone live and you can\u00a0watch it here<\/a>. Following is a companion article reiterating and expanding on what we discuss in that video. So if you prefer starting with video discussions, you can go watch that, and come back here for the footnotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction & Summary<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Here I address the roughly half of that BHS video that criticized challenges to the historicity of Jesus, on which I completed a fan-funded postdoc research project and published the first peer reviewed book in nearly a hundred years (On the Historicity of Jesus<\/a><\/em>), including an associated peer reviewed book on method (Proving History<\/a><\/em>) and a collection of related peer reviewed journal articles (Hitler Homer Bible Christ<\/a><\/em>). Godless Engineer and I will do a future video on the other half of theirs, which addressed questions in the history of science, the subject of my Columbia University dissertation\u2014which I later adapted into two books (The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire<\/a><\/em> and it\u2019s more focused prequel Science Education in the Early Roman Empire<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In general, though, throughout this three hour video I found Tim O\u2019Neill not to be the raging, lying, ad-hominem-spewing crank he usually is. Instead he is polite and reasonable throughout, and merely wrong a lot, in a totally ordinary way. Half the things he and his hosts, Chris H. and Bryan G., say are still incorrect (and I include them all together as O\u2019Neill only rarely corrects their mistakes). But only from incompetence and amateurism, rather than dishonesty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview also convinces me O\u2019Neill is not a fake atheist or a crypto-Catholic as we have sometimes suspected. He\u2019s definitely an atheist and a skeptic, and ultimately a sincere guy who just happens to be highly triggered by bullshit, and thus sees bullshit even where it isn\u2019t. And I now think that\u2019s what trips him up; that and his arrogance and bad temper, which when triggered can cause him to slip into lies and ad hominem\u2014none of which you see in this video, because he\u2019s among friends and thus never confronted with any of his mistakes. But mostly it appears O\u2019Neill\u2019s heart is in the right place: when he sees modern myths presented as facts by his fellow atheists, he rightly wants to call them out\u2014but then too quickly buys into exactly the contrary myths. Which is very ironic, considering he actually points out the common folly of others doing that in this video. Yet he does that himself more than once in this very same video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first half hour of which is introductory and useful to get a sense of who O\u2019Neill sees himself as and what he is doing. During which he admits he\u2019s \u201cnot a scholar\u201d but \u201can interested amateur\u201d (Bryan and Chris do likewise in their YouTube channel\u2019s About page<\/a>). He makes several reasonable points about Catholic apologism and why atheists need to be criticized when they also get history wrong. I agree and have often taken on, for example, bad Jesus mythicism myself, as well as the same inaccurate claims this gang tackles in the history of science (though my conclusions differ).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here I\u2019ll list the mistakes they make in their video, that Godless Engineer and I discuss in our video, on the subject of mythicism\u2014and also some of the things they get right. But you\u2019ll notice a common theme: their reading of sources is often lazy and thus inaccurate (they clearly don\u2019t read anything carefully, yet time and again arrogantly mock others for reading those same sources correctly, an embarrassing combination) and rather than settling on reality, which usually lies in a nuanced middle, time and again O\u2019Neill leaps all the way from one incorrect position to exactly the opposite incorrect position. For example, as I\u2019ll discuss in a future article, it is true Christians did not burn the library of Alexandria (and I\u2019ve always said so); but neither did any of the other people he claims did, after making a total hash of his source materials. The same thing happens with his treatment of Jesus mythicism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preliminaries<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Any of you who have ever read his articles and tweets on Jesus mythicism may be shocked to hear Tim O\u2019Neill explicitly says in this video that he \u201cwould never say mythicism is out of the question,\u201d that \u201cit\u2019s absolutely possible,\u201d that he agrees it\u2019s \u201cnot a ridiculous idea,\u201d and that he merely thinks it\u2019s not \u201cthe best idea.\u201d This is a stark example of how he comes across as reasonable in this video in direct contrast to the irrational vitriol you find him spewing everywhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any of you who know how to read a price point on Amazon may also be shocked to hear my book on the historicity of Jesus can only be procured for the outrageously high price of \u201ceighty dollars.\u201d They go on about this for a couple of minutes. Which is weird. Because it\u2019s totally false. And it\u2019s hard to fathom how they made this mistake. But it is presciently illustrative of their sloppy incompetence throughout this video, exemplifying their inability to even take the time to correctly read a price list on Amazon or anywhere else Historicity of Jesus<\/em> is sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those anchored to reality, you\u2019ll find my book On the Historicity of Jesus<\/em> (hereafter OHJ<\/em>) has always been available for $35 or less <\/a>in paperback, $26 or less<\/a> on kindle, and $15 or less<\/a> for the format Bryan even said he preferred: audible. The latter even read by me\u2014which was quite a feat, representing over thirty hours in a professional recording studio, which my audio publisher, Pitchstone, fully funded, and for which I wasn\u2019t paid (I only get a royalty per unit sale). I even wrote a letter to my publisher making a social justice argument that my book be simultaneously released in the more affordable paperback edition, contrary to the usual practice of academic publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I point this out because this seemingly trivial error is actually a paradigmatic example of how these guys get everything else wrong. They get basic obvious facts wrong (like, what my book costs) and then also<\/em> get totally wrong the phenomenon they actually mean to criticize (the overpricing of academic monographs). They thus end up mocking the wrong target, and thus end up looking ignorant rather than savvy. When just working a little harder, just a little, they\u2019d have avoided both mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A real<\/em> example of what they meant to criticize is how Brill only released Raphael Lataster\u2019s new peer reviewed book on historicity in hardback at the far more inaccessible price of $210<\/a>; which is not at all unusual<\/em> for academic monographs today. The scholars writing books for academic presses rarely have any say or control over that, so it\u2019s ignorant of these guys to criticize the scholars<\/em> for that; it\u2019s an abuse committed by publishers<\/em>, publishers our present system essentially forces scholars to publish with to get peer reviewed. I have often<\/em> publicly condemned this trend\u2014by correctly targeting the actual perps: academic publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this is a reminder of a lesson all three need to learn: before resorting to criticism (much less ridicule), make sure you actually know what you are talking about<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agreements<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

But first, where we agree. They say many things I\u2019ve even said myself. For example, I wrote a whole article making their same point that using Jesus mythicism to combat Christianity is not a valid strategy: see Fincke Is Right: Arguing Jesus Didn\u2019t Exist Should Not Be a Strategy<\/a>. That Jesus didn\u2019t exist is far<\/em> less certain a conclusion than that he didn\u2019t rise from the dead. So you should be arguing the latter, being on much stronger ground there, with less to defend to reach the conclusion. That\u2019s why in every<\/em> debate I\u2019ve done on the resurrection of Jesus, I\u2019ve always<\/em> stipulated Jesus existed as a working assumption. Likewise any other claim in Christian theology or doctrine: you can far more easily and far more effectively take these down without<\/em> arguing Jesus didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also agree with O\u2019Neill\u2019s psychological analysis of most (particularly amateur) mythicists: their justified sense of betrayal and anger after realizing the religion they\u2019d been sold is a lie makes them more prone to believe mythicism, to add \u201cthe lie of historicity\u201d to their list of grievances. After all, they rightly don\u2019t trust anything or anyone anymore in connection with Christianity. But then O\u2019Neill falls into the fallacy fallacy<\/a>: just because someone reaches a conclusion fallaciously does not mean the conclusion is false. There are atheists who are atheists for fallacious reasons; that doesn\u2019t mean there is no valid case for atheism. Ditto mythicism. As I discovered to my own surprise, having for years been hostile to mythicists myself\u2014until I did a thorough fact-check and found that even after getting rid of all the bad and misinformed arguments for mythicism (and there are a great many of those!), what remains is still a reasonably strong case. I didn\u2019t expect that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And O\u2019Neill and I agree on many of those bad or misinformed arguments. When all three go into attacking Atwill, they are singing<\/a> my own tune<\/a>. I likewise don\u2019t buy the more exotic arguments of Robert Price, such as that all the letters of Paul are second century forgeries (that\u2019s fairly unlikely<\/a>). When shortly after the start of the second hour O\u2019Neill goes into \u201cfalse parallels\u201d drawn by amateurs and cranks between Jesus and other gods, I agree with all his examples; and with how he explains Jesus\u2019s virgin birth legend as an amalgam of pagan and Jewish ideas. There are valid parallels to be found, more than O\u2019Neill seems to recognize, but not as many nor of the same kind nor of the same purpose or significance as many amateur mythicists have claimed. (See my more recent articles on Dying and Rising Gods<\/a> and Virgin Births<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When O\u2019Neill says debates aren\u2019t a great way to advance discussion, I have often made exactly the same point. O\u2019Neill and I agree on how Christianity came to dominate the Roman Empire and subsequently the Western world (e.g. see Chapter 18 in my book Not the Impossible Faith<\/a><\/em>). O\u2019Neill concurs with me that we should not be reading the Gospels as literal, documentary accounts, but as symbolic myths, whose details are selected to sell ideas, not history. (We only disagree on just how much actual history we can be confident they used to do that with.) And I agree with his skepticism of the claim that Nazareth didn\u2019t exist when Jesus would supposedly have been born there. Its existence isn\u2019t even relevant (see OHJ<\/em>, index, \u201cNazareth\u201d). But there isn\u2019t any good evidence it wasn\u2019t there either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then they get lots wrong\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeds of David<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neill and gang like to make fun of the idea that the earliest Christians may have thought Jesus\u2019s mortal body was literally manufactured directly from David\u2019s sperm (as prophecy had to be taken to say to evade being falsified by history) simply because they think it\u2019s weird. But in so doing they only illustrate how out of touch they are with what was considered weird in antiquity<\/em>. The cosmic sperm hypothesis is actually ordinary in the context of the kinds of beliefs people then held. They also thus demonstrate their lazy incompetence in reading even the scholarship they intend to critique by never noticing what I\u2019ve repeatedly said on the point: that mythicism does not require the cosmic sperm hypothesis. So they don\u2019t listen to why it\u2019s plausible; and they don\u2019t listen to why it\u2019s not even a necessary hypothesis. (See The Cosmic Seed of David<\/a> and, for related treatment, Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegory<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I note in OHJ<\/em>, Irenaeus documented many far weirder beliefs about Jesus\u2019s cosmic birth, and Jewish lore already had precedents for it. But I should have also mentioned as precedent the Babylonian Talmud, Niddah<\/em> folio 16, where we are told an angel takes up every \u201cdrop\u201d of semen to heaven \u201cand places it in the presence of the Holy One\u201d and asks, \u201cSovereign of the universe, what shall be the fate of this drop? Shall it produce a strong man or a weak man, a wise man or a fool, a rich man or a poor man?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Jews could so readily come up with this bizarre idea, then the idea that God could store<\/em> one of those drops from David that the angel would thus have delivered for inspection\u2014all to effect His secret plan to defeat Satan and fulfill an otherwise failed prophecy\u2014cannot even be called strange. It\u2019s no weirder than the \u201cfact\u201d that Paul relates without blush that God \u201cstores\u201d our future resurrection bodies for us up in heaven (in 2 Corinthians 5) or that God manufactured Eve\u2019s body from Adam\u2019s rib. Likewise, Zoroastrianism, which originated the entire idea of an eschatological messiah subsequently taken up by Judaism, embraced essentially very same belief: that the messiah would be born from the sperm of the ancient Zoroaster stored for thousands of years in a sacred lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Paul could just as easily have meant Jesus came from the seed of David in whatever nonliteral, allegorical way he believed Gentiles came from the seed of Abraham. And either way, even the Gospels <\/em>make clear that Jesus did not come from the \u201cSeed of David\u201d the usual way\u2014they explicitly make clear Joseph never imparts that seed to Mary, yet both Matthew and Luke make explicitly clear their genealogy through David is only of Joseph (not Mary, contrary to Christian apologists who hope you don\u2019t know how to read). They thus both depict God manufacturing Jesus\u2019s body in Mary\u2019s womb. What seed then did he use? And how did it derive from the belly of David? Whatever answer you give for them, would then apply to Paul. Either way, you don\u2019t get \u201cJesus was a descendant of David.\u201d And thus you can\u2019t get to historicity this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t legitimately mock an idea if you ignore every fact that renders it plausible. And yet this is how they operate throughout the video: leaving out everyhing that makes an argument plausible or sound, and then make fun of it for lacking anything making it plausible or sound. You just aren\u2019t going to learn the truth through this method. You\u2019re better off ignoring their ignorant pronouncements and just reading OHJ<\/em> or whatever is my most recent article on the point. Judge for yourself\u2014with all<\/em> the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mettinger on Marduk<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good illustration of all these same mistakes, born again of lazy reading, is how they completely bungle what I and Tryggve Mettinger said about the status of Marduk as a dying-and-rising God. It starts with a false assertion about the content of my book. First they correctly state that I survey the mytheme of \u201cdying and rising gods\u201d in \u201cElement 31\u201d on page 168 of OHJ<\/em> and there say I will reference it again later; then they incorrectly<\/em> state that despite saying that, I never do\u2014claiming I then make no use of it. That\u2019s false. I reference it quite prominently and significantly on pages 212 and 611 of OHJ<\/em>. Did I say lazy? A simple search of the very affordable kindle edition could have corrected them and prevented their embarrassing mistake. For example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They then falsely claim that Mettinger denied Marduk was a dying and rising god. That\u2019s false. To the contrary, he argues in various of his writings that Marduk is often coterminous with Ba\u2019al (or Baal), and then goes on to demonstrate Baal was indeed a dying and rising god, contrary to mistaken interpretations by earlier twentieth-century scholars. Which leads us to two really funny things about their video rant over this: (1) they cite the page number in my book where I discuss this, but somehow completely failed to notice what I plainly write there, \u201cMarduk (also known as Bel or Baal, which basically meant \u2018the Lord\u2019)\u201d; and (2) they later go on to admit that the evidence for Baal being a dying and rising god is actually pretty good<\/em> (Mettinger, they say, is \u201cmore correct than Mark S. Smith\u201d on this, timestamp 2:16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So in their lazy ignorance, they simultaneously make fun of me for defending a thesis that they later admit is sound! Not only do they actually agree with what I say about Marduk, aka Baal<\/em>, but they agree Mettinger refuted Smith\u2019s previous misinterpretation of the Baal myth and thus updated and corrected previous scholarship on this point, exactly as I say in OHJ<\/em>. Wow. Own goal, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This typifies their criticism of my book: they don\u2019t even read it, screw everything up about it, get key facts wrong, and make fun of me<\/em> for being the incompetent one, when I\u2019m the only one who handled this material competently. For example, they try to claim I cited scholars arguing for this conclusion about Baal who actually argues against it, depicting this as some sort of mistake. It\u2019s not. Because it\u2019s not what I did. Because they don\u2019t read<\/em>. I only cite Mark Smith (and Frymer-Kensky) to indicate the now-obsolete works Mettinger refuted<\/em>, which nevertheless still contain the very evidence that proves Mettinger\u2019s point. My footnote on this, the very footnote this gang is going on about, literally begins: \u201cPrevious attempts to deny that these were dying-and-rising gods have been thoroughly refuted by Tryggve Mettinger,\u201d followed by my citation of Mettinger. I then list the previous scholarship he refuted<\/em>. Why are they complaining about this? Because they didn\u2019t read the note and thus get completely wrong what it said and who it is citing for what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also don\u2019t discuss the evidence, by the way. For any<\/em> dying and rising god claim. They just arbitrarily side with outdated scholars, the very ones they later admit are obsolete and incorrect, rather than with the most recent and up-to-date scholarship. Which is the exact opposite of how one usually should employ scholarship. If you wish to insist that the latest scholarship has not superseded the old, you need to explain why. You need to actually mention and address the evidence<\/em>. Really. That\u2019s Competence 101.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliade on Zalmoxis<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

They do this again with my treatment of Zalmoxis. They ignore all the actual evidence. Then claim I didn\u2019t read one of my cited sources, Mircea Eliade, on the status of Zalmoxis as a dying and rising God. But in so doing they only demonstrate it\u2019s the other way around: they<\/em> didn\u2019t read Eliade carefully, but so lazily as to incompetently misread what he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is what Eliade says about Zalmoxis in the work I cite: \u201cthe \u2018revelation\u2019 that he [Zalmoxis] brings to the Getae is communicated through a well-known mythic-ritual scenario of \u201cdeath\u201d (occultation) and \u201creturn to earth\u201d (epiphany),\u201d and features in Zalmoxis\u2019s case \u201cthe return of Zalmoxis in the flesh.\u201d Eliade then compares this story with that of Aristeas, another person who died, visited the afterlife, and came back to life to tell of it. Eliade says \u201cZalmoxis\u2019 disappearance, his \u2018death\u2019, is equivalent to<\/strong> a descensus ad inferos<\/em> as a means of initiation,\u201d which he accomplished so that \u201cby imitating the divine model, the neophyte undergoes a ritual \u2018death\u2019 precisely in order to obtain the non-death, the \u2018immortality\u2019 which the sources emphasize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note the key word here: equivalent to<\/strong>. Eliade does not say this was<\/strong> a katabasis<\/em> (what the words descensus ad inferos<\/em> means: a descent to the underworld without dying, the most famous exemplar being Odysseus). Eliade says the death and resurrection of Zalmoxis performed the same function<\/em> as a katabasis<\/em>. And Eliade goes on to show the pattern extends across many examples of resurrections and descent stories. He is explaining that the commonality extends to both<\/em>. He is not saying they are therefore literally identical. Death and resurrection is one way<\/em> to accomplish a visit to the dead. Nowhere does Eliade say that Zalmoxis \u201creally\u201d just descended to the underworld alive. He instead simply accepts what we\u2019re told: that the Getae believed Zalmoxis had died and risen from the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only is this surely what they believed because that\u2019s what Herodotus reports they believed, but also because the only version of the story in which Zalmoxis doesn\u2019t die is the one Greeks made up<\/em> to mock the Getae as dupes for believing Zalmozis died\u2014and to mock the Getae, they borrow a story from their own legends about Pythagoras. And in that version, their polemical mockery<\/em> of Getan belief, Zalmoxis does not<\/em> descend to hades at all: there is no<\/em> katabasis<\/em>. In fact we have no account of Zalmoxis that involves a katabasis<\/em>. None. Not from the Greeks. Not from the Getae. To the contrary, the only way the Greeks could accuse Zalmoxis of faking<\/em> his death by hiding in a cave is if the Getae\u2019s actual belief was that he died<\/em>. Exactly as Herodotus said it was. And Eliade says nothing to the contrary. (See my whole section on Zalmoxis in Chapter 3 of Not the Impossible Faith<\/a><\/em>, where I show Christian apologists making the exact same mistakes as these atheists just did.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than reading the actual sources carefully, and actually reading Eliade\u2019s statements carefully and in the context of his whole thesis, they instead try to \u201creinterpret\u201d Eliade\u2019s use of scare quotes around \u201cdeath\u201d to somehow try and deduce that he was claiming Zalmoxis wasn\u2019t believed to have died. But that is clearly not what Eliade anywhere says. Those scare quotes are used solely to carry Eliade\u2019s point that his thesis was of a universal trope that includes<\/em> both actual deaths and<\/em> descents alive. He is not questioning that the Getae believed in the death of Zalmoxis. He is highlighting its ritual universal meaning in the context of different ways of visiting the land of the dead. Indeed he links them all by connecting this trope to a universal shamanic system of beliefs in which the soul leaves the body to visit the land of the dead, which as Eliade himself says, is pretty much what it means to actually die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Eliade says: \u201cZalmoxis was compared to Cronus or to certain specialists in ecstasy (ecstasy being considered a temporary death<\/strong>, for the soul was believed to leave the body).\u201d This is what Eliade is saying the Getae taught about Zalmoxis: he died; then rose back to life; then taught his followers how this could obtain immortality for themselves. That\u2019s what a dying and rising savior god is. By definition. A story everyone knew who learned Greek to the level exhibited by Paul and the authors of the Gospels, because Herodotus was a standard school text at that level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 2:15 O\u2019Neill tries to criticize comparing Jesus to Osiris by relating all the differences in their stories, such as how they died and how they rose, but those differences are irrelevant. They both die and rise from the dead. And thereby become personal saviors that people baptize themselves into to receive eternal life, or take communion to the same end, or both. There is no possible way to claim this is just a meaningless coincidence. Particularly as this trope extends across numerous other ethnic mystery cults, including that of Zalmoxis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Risen Savior Cults<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

At timestamp 2:17 they falsely claim there is no evidence of beliefs in dying and rising gods still extant in the Roman Empire. Thus demonstrating they didn\u2019t read OHJ<\/em>, where I extensively show this is false with regard to Romulus and Adonis and Asclepius and Hercules and Osiris and Dionysius, for all of whom I cite Imperial sources (including sometimes even pre-Christian sources). Cicero. Plutarch. Lucian. Origen. And more. All make very clear these were still going beliefs, and widely known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, we actually don\u2019t know the Zalmoxis cult that Herodotus recorded wasn\u2019t also still going, or that the Baal or Hercules-Melqart or Inanna-Adonis cults that were still practiced in Syria and Tyre, for example, didn\u2019t still include the death-and-resurrection element that had always been central to them before. So in another sign of their incompetence, they conflate our having no sources on what these cults were teaching with evidence they weren\u2019t teaching certain things. That\u2019s not valid reasoning. The latter cults were still salvation cults and still practiced and popular. So might also have been Zalmoxis cult. We cannot say what they weren\u2019t teaching; and it\u2019s not plausible that they\u2019d have abandoned this popular element of it. So their reasoning isn\u2019t even sound in these<\/em> cases; while their premise is completely false in the others, for which we do<\/em> have sources testifying to their resurrection aspects still going strong in the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the case of Baal, that god this gang even admitted might indeed have been a dying and rising God as Mettinger correctingly demonstrated. Baal had been adapted into the central figure in the Roman-era mystery cult of Jupiter Dolichenus, about which we have no texts\u2014so we cannot say what they \u201cweren\u2019t\u201d teaching about Baal. Whereas being a salvation cult built on a legendary dying and rising god, it seems strange to suggest they would have jettisoned the idea. In Not the Impossible Faith<\/a><\/em> (which I cite in OHJ<\/em>) I show how the theme of resurrection was actually rising so much in popularity in the early Roman Empire that it was even being made fun of, such as in plays where pet dogs rise from the dead, or Petronius\u2019s Satyricon<\/em> where the hero goes on a sacred quest for the resurrection of his penis. If something is so ubiquitous people are even making fun of it, you can\u2019t be arguing it wasn\u2019t culturally influential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair, it\u2019s Chris and Bryan who screw this one up the most. O\u2019Neill sort of corrects them at one moment, by admitting the dying-and-rising-god trope did exist and did influence Christianity somehow, but he doesn\u2019t explain further, merely saying there is a difference between \u201cinfluence and derivation,\u201d although it\u2019s not clear what he thinks that difference is, and he never says. But like he himself said for the virgin birth mytheme, where the Christian idea was a syncretism of pagan and Jewish beliefs about miraculous births of heroes, O\u2019Neill should realize it\u2019s the same for the resurrection of Jesus: as the particularization of a mytheme, it is produced by a syncretism of pagan and Jewish beliefs about resurrection and its relationship to salvation. Indeed, so popular was this juxtaposition all around them, it\u2019s more amazing it took so long<\/em> for the Jews to come up with one of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting Syncretism Wrong<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Around this point they totally botch the idea of syncretism. They falsely claim that when syncretism occurs (when a dominating and a local religious tradition are combined to form a new religion) there are always \u201cleftovers,\u201d random flotsam and jetsam retained for no particular reason. No. That does not happen. And that they think it does shows they have not studied this phenomenon at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syncretism always transforms what it borrows, and creates an amalgam, in which only what is wanted is kept<\/em>. The example they give to the contrary only illustrates their ignorance; for it\u2019s of a completely different phenomenon: the beast Leviathan being in the Bible is not<\/em> a product of syncretism. It\u2019s a fossil. Yahweh isn\u2019t a syncretism with<\/em> Baal. Yahweh is an evolution of<\/em> Baal. Baal simply means Lord. It was a generic name for God among all the Canaanite tribes. Yahweh is simply the local name of the local Baal of one of the tribes of the Canaanites. The Jews were not syncretizing some other native religion of their own with Canaanite religion. The Jews actually were<\/em> Canaanites<\/a>. They then wrote stories claiming to be from somewhere else to justify their genocide of neighboring Canaanite tribes. Yahweh keeps many of the features of Baal and his lore because Yahweh was<\/em> Baal. He was not \u201cmerged\u201d with Baal. So this gang doesn\u2019t seem to understand the difference between the evolution of a local religion, and actual syncretism between a local and another, usually dominating society\u2019s religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a correct example of syncretism, you should look at how Judaism was transformed by exposure to Zoroastrianism: before it had no end-times apocalypticism, no Satan as the enemy of God, no resurrection (at all much less at the end of days), and no flaming hell where sinners are tormented after death, nor even much of any idea of the dead living in heaven. The original Jewish belief was of the dead remaining forever asleep, their souls only capable of awakening by witches; and only the rarest of heroes got to live in heaven, and not by dying, but by being taken up while still alive (like Elijah and Enoch and in some legends Moses). But after becoming subject to the Persians, Judaism adopted all those things from Persian Zoroastrianism, after modifying them to suit Jewish ideas and sensibilities and contexts. There are no \u201cleftovers.\u201d There is only what they borrowed, and how they changed it by merging it with their local ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar misunderstanding, O\u2019Neill says (around timestamp 2:19) that the Gospels share no narrative elements with other dying-and-rising tales. That\u2019s been thoroughly refuted under peer review by Richard Miller, and others. See OHJ<\/em>, \u201cElement 47,\u201d for example (in Chapter 5). The most similar storyline is of Romulus, for whom there were still publicly enacted passion plays, which Mark 15-16 tracks aspects of in outline. Mark simply combines this with emulations of the legend of Jesus ben Ananias and scriptural and Judaic material. But you can\u2019t say the similarities with Romulus and other pagan translation stories are just a coincidence. Again, they borrow what they like, change and add what they want, and leave out what they don\u2019t. Thus explaining why there are no dildos and dismemberments and other borrowed ideas from Osiris myth, for example: those narrative details were the least palatable to Christians when Mark wrote. They had no use for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that of course all relates to Mark\u2019s<\/em> construction of a myth. And this is where they also get confused quite a lot, mistaking the original sect\u2019s beliefs with what legends got spun out for it a lifetime later in the Gospels. These narrative details in Mark did not likely exist in Christianity before his creative application. Christianity began, as we can plainly see in Paul, with a much more esoteric and mystical dying and rising savior myth. It had more in common with the cosmic myths of Osiris, which were advocated by a priesthood whom Plutarch tells us also derided the vulgar myths about dildos and dismemberments as convenient falsehoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding what the Gospel authors are doing with analogous myths in the constructing of their own requires reading what<\/em> I actually say<\/em> about this in OHJ<\/em> (particularly Chapter 10). These guys didn\u2019t. Because they are too lazy to develop anything like a competent critique. Likewise understanding how the general tropes of mystery religion surrounding Judaism at the time influenced their construction of a mystery religion of their own\u2014a process not the same<\/em> as what\u2019s going on in the Gospels\u2014requires actually reading what I separately say about that<\/em> (particularly in Chapter 4). Again, these guys just didn\u2019t. So they have no relevant critique to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Euhemerization<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

They not only get Syncretism wrong, they get Euhemerization wrong. You can see my two articles<\/a> on that<\/a>, for a complete discussion. But here, for example, they get wrong the story arc for the myths of Baal. They incorrectly start with the earthly myths of Baal as a historical king, when in fact Baal was originally a sky god\u2014a celestial\u2014not someone who did things on earth. The latter<\/em> was a later invention, placing the originally celestial Baal into human history as a historical agent and weaving stories about him with mytho-symbolic content\u2014the usual first stage of euhemerization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baal did<\/em> also get euhemerized further\u2014and today we would instead say rationalized<\/em>\u2014into a regular king about whom, it was then claimed, those legends then arose. If that had actually happened it would be called deification, not euhemerization; it\u2019s only euhemerization when that isn\u2019t<\/em> what actually happened. Euhemerization is the opposite of deification, by representing a historicized mythical God as a king deified, when in truth no such person ever existed to be deified. He began a sky god. Placing him on earth came later. That\u2019s ancient euhemerism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mythicists point out it appears that Jesus followed the same arc: he starts out as a celestial revelatory being in Paul, gets euhemerized into a mytho-symbolic historical actor in the Gospels (just as happened to Baal; and likewise Osiris, etc.), and then later gets rationalized into a regular guy about whom those legends arose. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing to Jesus ourselves since the 19th century. But there is no actual evidence that \u201crationalized Jesus\u201d ever existed, any more than \u201crationalized Baal\u201d or \u201crationalized Osiris.\u201d Our earliest evidence places these figures in outer space, celestials, known only by revelation. Likewise our earliest evidence placing Jesus on earth does so in exactly the same way Baal originally was: as a mytho-symbolic supernatural hero who ascends to celestial glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here it becomes clear these guys rely too much on an argument from ignorance that is a particular<\/em> folly when you aren\u2019t studied enough in the context to have a reliable intuition in the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neill asks, for example, why Jesus is characterized as an apocalyptic prophet if he has been euhemerized. The answer is the same as for everyone else euhemerized: Osiris gets euhemerized as a Pharaoh; Romulus as a Roman aristocrat; Hercules as an itinerant warrior. Mythologers choose the model that most resonates with their religion and message. Christianity was from the beginning an apocalyptic cult preaching that Jesus had revealed to them from on high that the end was nigh and that his resurrection was the \u201cfirstfruits\u201d of the general resurrection at the end of days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So obviously when they euhemerize Jesus, that\u2019s going to be the model they would use: not a warrior (that was exactly the opposite message the Christians wanted to send), not as an aristocrat much less a ruler from the privileged class (that was also exactly the opposite message the Christians wanted to send), but as a Prophet of Old, on the model of Moses and Elijah, whom the Gospels directly model Jesus after. And the closest analog in their own day were the apocalyptic prophets. And so that is what Jesus became. When they wanted to modernize their scriptural heroes, that was the analog that made the most sense, that would carry the most resonance with their intended audience and their messaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, O\u2019Neill also asks why Jesus is in Galilee. He evidently doesn\u2019t know scripture required him to be. Or that such a location was remarkably convenient for Mark\u2019s messaging. As I show in my article on Mark\u2019s Use of Paul\u2019s Epistles<\/a>, the very passage of Isaiah, Isaiah 9, that predicts the messiah will come out of Galilee calls it \u201cGalilee of the Gentiles,\u201d perfectly suiting Mark\u2019s repeated messaging that the Gentiles will be saved along with the Jews (see Chapter 10.4 in OHJ<\/em>). Thus Galilee allows Mark to have Jesus interact as often with Gentiles as with Jews and still be solidly in the Holy Land and in agreement with scripture. It also gives him a body of water in the middle of it all to emulate the miracles of Moses in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, Paul never shows any knowledge that Jesus ever had any connection with Galilee. That idea first appears with Mark. And the other Gospel authors entirely get it from him. There is no other source for it. So it\u2019s actually one of the least credible facts claimed about Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Anything in the Gospels True?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neill gets a little muddled on the point but if you follow him all the way through he does outline correct options for explaining the content of the Gospels, rightly criticizing the black and white fallacy of saying there are only two possibilities: it\u2019s all fictional or it\u2019s all true (I don\u2019t actually know any atheist who says that, but still, if any do, they\u2019re wrong). It could instead be that some of it is true. There is also, however, a fourth possibility O\u2019Neill completely neglects: that we don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might<\/em> be all false. That\u2019s different from saying it is<\/em> all false. Its being all false is compatible with all the evidence we have, far more than O\u2019Neill seems to realize (he shows no sign of having read Chapter 10 of OHJ<\/a><\/em> or Chapter 5 of Proving History<\/a><\/em>). And we all agree it\u2019s unlikely to be \u201call true,\u201d as that requires latching onto a barrel full of absurd improbabilities, as O\u2019Neill himself points out. So the question is: Can we know if anything in the Gospels is<\/em> true? That the answer is \u201cno\u201d is not the same thing as saying \u201cwe can be certain it\u2019s all false.\u201d And I think O\u2019Neill is confusing the two; yet we are saying the former, not the latter. Most of us are simply saying \u201cwe can\u2019t discern whether anything in the Gospels is true, therefore we can\u2019t use them as evidence for the historicity of Jesus, even if<\/em> anything in them happens to be true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neill does sing many a standard tune<\/a>, such as that there are a number of things in the Gospels that evince historicity, because each such supposed thing \u201conly really makes sense if it did<\/em> happen.\u201d He immediately uses the example of the baptism of Jesus by John\u2014and gets everything wrong about how Mark constructed that story. Which is ironic because O\u2019Neill just correctly discerned how the Barabbas narrative is obvious rhetoric. He doesn\u2019t seem to know why the John the Baptist story is, too. And this is the thing: for every<\/em> example one might cite, when you correctly examine what\u2019s actually in these stories and how they are placed, they all<\/em> fall apart as obvious rhetoric and theological devices. There is nothing left over. And that\u2019s why we can\u2019t use the Gospels as evidence of anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my book Proving History<\/a><\/em> I have a whole section on this (index, \u201cJohn the Baptist\u201d). And for that I found and cite numerous peer reviewed treatments of the John the Baptist scene that plainly point out that Mark has obviously invented it to suit his purposes\u2014contrary to those who don\u2019t notice this and thus mistakenly think it goes against Mark\u2019s interests. It doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s an etiological myth, a category of myths that explain the origins and meaning of rituals\u2014in this case baptism, in which Mark has the famous John \u201cthe Baptist\u201d declare Jesus his superior<\/em> and successor<\/em>. Which is not a statement against interest; it\u2019s exactly what Mark would want<\/em> to invent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark then uses John as a deus ex machina<\/em> by which Jesus can go through a baptism and thereby represent for Mark\u2019s readers what a baptism is\u2014which is an adoption by God to become a Son of God (making this Mark\u2019s birth narrative for Jesus), and an anointing of the messiah, and at the same time a symbolic death and resurrection. Which is why Mark has Jesus begin his story with a symbolic death and resurrection, and end his story with an actual death and resurrection, so readers would get the point what a baptism is: what Jesus went through, so shall you. There are many elements borrowed and reversed between the two stories as I show in OHJ<\/em>. There is nothing here Mark wouldn\u2019t readily invent. So we can\u2019t<\/em> know that any of it is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even that this event takes place in the Jordan: Josephus makes no mention of John ever baptizing in the Jordan. No other source does. It appears to be a Markan invention. Mark is reversing the \u201cMoses in the wilderness\u201d narrative, where the Jews went through temptations in the desert and failed, then crossed the Jordan into the holy land. In both cases by \u201cJesus\u201d miraculously parting the Jordan: Joshua, remember, is the same name. Mark has Jesus \u201cpart the Jordan\u201d symbolically through baptism. He even retains the literal reference to a \u201cparting\u201d with the parting of \u201cthe heavens\u201d that Mark adds to the story. The Jesus story then reverses the Joshua story: Jesus leaves<\/em> the Holy Land to reenter the desert and be tempted and this time succeed<\/em>, thus reversing and thereby undoing the failure of the Israelites of old. As several peer reviewed scholars have noted, the specific temptations are even paralleled; and like the Israelites, Jesus is miraculously fed in the desert. This is as obviously myth as the Barabbas narrative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Neill correctly explains why later Gospels wanted to change Mark\u2019s story; but none of those reasons make Mark\u2019s story any more likely to be historical. Later authors are simply trying to explain or improve on Mark, or rewriting Mark to match newly evolved beliefs. That only tells us that Mark\u2019s version was getting play, so they needed to address it, to \u201cfix\u201d it. As they do with everything else in Mark. That does not mean any such story ever preceded Mark. And we have no evidence at all that it did. And what we have no evidence of, we ought not assert as known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, around timestamp 2:35 O\u2019Neill claims we have a more human Jesus in Mark and a more divine Jesus in John and that this is the opposite of what we should expect on mythicism. But that\u2019s incorrect. Jesus in Mark never behaves like a human: even when he isn\u2019t doing works of wonder, he is acting very strangely compared to any real person; moreover, he is a supernatural being from the very start, parting the very heavens, defeating the Devil, and he continues as such in every subsequent chapter. If you count up incredible events, and divide by number of words, there actually is no greater miraculism in any other Gospel. The rate of the amazing per thousand words is the same, or as near enough as makes no statistically significant difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does<\/em> change is that Mark never says he is writing true stories, and he even implies in Mark 4:9-13<\/a> that he is not. Matthew then sort of implies he is writing up a record of events, but only very weakly, by adding references to the events he relates fulfilling prophecy. Then Luke<\/em> is the first author to actually claim to be writing history, and to structure his narrative to resemble a history. But he\u2019s still cagey as to whether he means that literally or not. John<\/em> is then the first author to ever say that his stories are literally true and that he is telling those stories so you\u2019ll believe that they actually happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to O\u2019Neill, this sequence among the Gospels is the exact opposite of what we\u2019d expect on historicity. We should expect to start with more mundane recollections and memoirs, more historical accounts, and move over time to increasingly mythical, legendary, and allegorical accounts. Instead the first ever account to place Jesus in earth history is completely mytho-allegorical all the way through. And never says it\u2019s otherwise. That\u2019s weird. And that\u2019s why we doubt any of it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nazareth Question<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The same goes for the idea of Jesus hailing from Nazareth. That actually isn\u2019t evidence it\u2019s true. Because that was predicted in scripture every bit as much as an origin at Bethlehem was. The first author to try and make both prophecies fit together is the very author who tells us both origins came from scripture: Matthew. The passage he refers to is either now lost or has become altered, as we know happened a lot (see \u201cElement 9\u201d in Ch. 4 of OHJ<\/em>). So it is not<\/em> the case that the only place the idea could come from is Jesus really hailing from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also wasn\u2019t originally \u201cJesus of Nazareth.\u201d The actual word was Nazorian in Greek, which doesn\u2019t mean a person from Nazareth. The Christians themselves were called the Nazorians, as Luke reveals in Acts, yet they didn\u2019t come from Nazareth either. It clearly meant something else. The original meaning is now lost, though various scholars have proposed different possibilities (I discuss all this in Proving History<\/em>, and a little more in OHJ<\/em>; see in each, index, \u201cNazareth\u201d). Mark appears to have simply picked the closest sounding town to that epithet in Galilee, and thus chose that town to base Jesus in. We have, again, no evidence anyone ever associated Jesus with Nazareth before Mark did. And what we have no evidence of, we ought not assert as known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice I actually agree with O\u2019Neill that we can\u2019t say Mark\u2019s single verse mentioning Nazareth is an interpolation. Unless we have independent evidence making that likely, its probability remains the base rate of interpolation, which is at best 1 in 200 and at worst 1 in 1000. So any theory that requires that verse to be an interpolation is not likely to be a probable theory. We simply don\u2019t need this conjecture. Matthew already tells us it was derived from scripture, and he couldn\u2019t get away with saying that if it wasn\u2019t true; likewise the label attributed to Jesus already clearly doesn\u2019t match the town, thus linking it to that town was evidently an afterthought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same goes for the theory that Nazareth \u201cdidn\u2019t exist.\u201d Here they all rightly criticize that idea\u2019s most fanatical proponent, that piano teacher, Rene Salm. I share the same opinion they do. His crank theory that Nazareth didn\u2019t exist in the early first century is simply not tenable on present evidence. We might not be able to establish with certainty Nazareth did<\/em> exist then, but we have enough evidence to grant that odds. So no argument that requires Nazareth not to exist can carry much probability either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, to be fair, they were not being wholly judicious in their reasoning here. One of them says he contacted the excavators of a farm house near modern-day Nazareth, but it does not seem to occur to him (or any of the others) that that is not evidence Nazareth existed. Farm houses were everywhere. They don\u2019t have signs on them that say \u201cthis house is within the town limits of Nazareth.\u201d They have no labels on them at all. And that farm house wasn\u2019t even in what we now call Nazareth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So they\u2019re being a little gullible here. And I say that, let me remind you, as someone who doesn\u2019t buy<\/em> the argument that Nazareth didn\u2019t exist. But we have to be fair to the evidence: we don\u2019t really have all that good archaeology for Nazareth; we can\u2019t even establish that the town currently called Nazareth, is the one anciently called so. But there are reasons why this is that don\u2019t permit the likes of Salm to jump to the conclusion that there was no Nazareth at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frankly, one of the best evidences for Nazareth is the inscription listing where Jewish priests were taken in after the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., because among the towns listed is indeed Nazareth. There is no way a town could be developed enough to take in priests in the year 70 that hadn\u2019t been around for at least a century. Salm has had this pointed out to him, and he promptly invented conspiracy theories about that inscription being forged. You just can\u2019t win with nutters like that. So I\u2019m totally on the same page with O\u2019Neill there. The error is to conflate the likes of him, with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In the end, it\u2019s clear Tim, Chris, and Bryan have\u00a0some lessons to learn<\/a>. They need to actually read the things they intend to critique, they need to actually read their own sources more carefully, and they need to get more informed about what they are speaking on. And above all, they need to learn how to be their own best critics, so as to catch and thus avoid the kinds of errors and fallacies they keep relying on. These are lessons\u00a0nearly every critic<\/a>\u00a0needs to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April of this year the Biblical History Skeptics\u00a0talked shop for three hours\u00a0with Tim O\u2019Neill (this\u00a0Tim O\u2019Neill) and I was invited to talk shop about that with Godless Engineer last month. The latter video has now gone live and you can\u00a0watch it here. Following is a companion article reiterating and expanding on what we discuss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[86,73,138,315],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2814,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}