Tag: historical-jesus

Richard Carrier’s new mythicist book about the historical Jesus

I finished reading Richard Carrier’s new book, “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus,” a couple of days ago. It did change my mind about the relative merits of the theory Jesus was only seen in visions versus the theory that Jesus was a real person. The evidence I thought was the strongest for the latter theory, passages in the letters of Paul suggesting he thought of Jesus as historical, is more ambiguous than I believed. The passages were those indicating Jesus was “born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4), saying Jesus was of the Jewish race “according to the flesh” (Romans 9:5), and referencing “Jame, the brother of the Lord” (Galatians 1:18-19). Carrier’s arguments about those passages are very detailed and as far as I can tell sound.

I am not yet ready to lean definitely toward the mythicist position, but I do want to think this through more carefully. When I first looked into the work of Carrier and other mythicists about 15 years ago it left me doubtful that anything about an historical Jesus could be recovered. Subsequently I set aside my interest in the subject for a while. I have to admit that in the meantime my mind reverted back to the assumption Jesus was historical, probably less due to intellectual conviction than because that assumption had been part of my imagination for so many years.

My page on this site about the historicity of Jesus will have to be revised. My arguments there no longer seem sufficient to wave aside the mythicist position so easily. But I will keep my other pages mostly intact for now. What I intended with this website wasn’t really about whether Jesus was historical, although I am interested in the question. What I intended was to assess what the teaching of Jesus was. I want to do that both for its contribution to my own spiritual life, as the gospels have inspired me since I was a child, and as a means of discussing what look to me like erroneous versions of his teachings.

I will have to approach that question differently than I had planned though. Rather than trying to excavate a presumed teaching behind the various sources about Jesus, I’ll examine his teaching as presented by various authors, such as Paul and the authors of the four canonical gospels. Whatever points the sources have in common will be of interest, whether Jesus was historical, the product of visions, or a literary character of longstanding cultural influence.

So that is where I am at now. I’ll do a bit of rewriting of the current pages to clarify my intentions, and then resume my explorations into the endlessly fascinating topic of Jesus and the origins of Christianity.

More on the Temple event and the death of Jesus

Over the weekend I was a virtual attendee at the New Insights on the New Testament Conference 2025. I saw four good presentations by outstanding Biblical scholars, and one half a good presentation when the presenter’s internet connection from Europe lagged too much to understand him.

Two of the presentations were particularly relevant to my page on this website about the Execution of Jesus. Paula Fredriksen gave a thorough discussion of the episode of Jesus’ disruption at the Temple. Helen Bond talked about the last 24 hours in the life of Jesus. I was gratified that neither of these presentations conflicted with the findings on my page! I did slightly revise the page and added a bit of new material to it in light of what they had to say.

Helen Cook emphasized that we don’t know for sure that the Jewish council that condemned Jesus was an official gathering of the full Sanhedrin, and that Jesus’ hearing before Pilate was not a formal “trial” in the way we are accustomed to think of them. Pilate could have condemned Jesus simply on the basis of reports about him if he deemed it necessary; he brought Jesus in for questioning to get a better sense of the person he was dealing with.

I thought both points were sound and so revised my page to remove references to the Sanhedrin and to change the word “trial” when it appeared to “questioning” or “hearing.” Small change but I don’t want my page to have even small inaccuracies when I become aware of them.

Paula Fredriksen had a lot to say about Herod’s Temple and how it functioned. She doubted that Jesus would not have been arrested right away if his disruption actually happened, as there were soldiers watching everything from easy vantage points around the court of the nations where the financial transactions were taking place. As the gospel accounts of the incident conflict on when it happened–John moved it way back to the beginning of Jesus’ public life rather than at the end–she regards it as a separate story from the narrative of Jesus’ final days which the gospel authors placed where they did for literary purposes. Specifically, she suggested Mark inserted it between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his arrest as a transitional device between Jesus’ conflict with Pharisees in Galilee and his conflict with the high priests in Jerusalem. She said it made more sense for Jesus to be arrested quickly after his entry into Jerusalem to avoid any potential problems before they happened. She also used this to explain why Jesus’ disciples were not also arrested.

I thought that was an interesting suggestion and incorporated some of it into my own discussion of the arrest of Jesus, as you will see if you take another look at the final paragraphs.

Unfortunately, none of the presentations were on the resurrection, which I am currently working on. Yeah, I know I keep promising it will soon be ready to publish, but it is getting close. Stay tuned.

Alan