Very nice overview of Bayes Theorem and Historical Jesus

[_Analytics]

I appreciate that this is not snark, and I take your point that I'm not going directly at something he says in the book, and that therefore it seems that I'm not really addressing the issues (which may or may not be true). Before I address one of them, though, I hope you appreciate where I'm coming from, and I also mean no snark and no offense when I say that what you're asking is basically akin to what apologists demand of Egyptologists who don't spend the time refuting John Gee or Hugh Nibley point by point….

First of all, I want to offer you my highest thanks for taking the time to create such an elegant and astute post.

Just to clarify, I don’t mean to come across as demanding anything. Your Gee/Nibley analogy is quite powerful on the point. I hope you can see the subtlety of my position on this. On the one hand I’m saying that yes, much of what Carrier says in his book is convincing to me. But on the other hand, I’m acknowledging that I don’t even begin to have the background required to evaluate this. I do acknowledge that very few people with the correct background buy into what Carrier is selling, but I can’t help but wonder how many of them have seriously considered it.

Personally, I could benefit from the detailed opinion of somebody that is qualified to judge this stuff. Of course that isn’t your problem or anybody else’s. But if there were a 13 page thread on one of Hugh Nibley’s books, it would be nice if Nibley’s critics addressed the actual points that Nibley was making in that book, rather than spending page after page explaining how it must be awful because it was written by Nibley. If you have better things to do, then by all means do them. But if you have time to criticize Nibley, why not focus your criticisms on what Nibley actually says in the book in question?

I don't know any scholar interested in understanding the ancient world rather than using it to prove a point who would define themselves in those terms, so right away I smell an ideological bias.

I agree 100%. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

I suspect that the elements you refer to are either selected (and why only 46?) or constructed to reflect that bias.

I’m not sure I agree. Why should atheists be biased against Jesus existing historically? In the debate Mary linked to on the top of the page, the moderator asked Carrier about this. He said that the best strategy for winning converts to your viewpoint is to agree with your targets on as much as possible (as we were taught as missionaries, “build on common beliefs”). So, if he were motivated purely by trying to win converts to atheism, trying to convince people that Jesus was made up is an absolutely awful way to do it.

The elements he chose are clearly designed to support his point, and I highly suspect that many of them have at least a bit of spin on them to emphasize that.

For example, the only one of his 46 elements I can find on his blog is Euhemerism (element 45), which Carrier describes as "doing what Euhemerus did." That is just a glib tautology, but in using it he makes understanding what Euhemerus did a very important issue and then shows just what it is that he thinks Euhemerism is supposed to be.

But one doesn't get a sense of how difficult it is to recover what "Euhemerus was doing" from what Carrier writes here…..

Again, thank you for taking the time to write this. I’m slightly less dumb for having read it.

Keeping it in context, much of what you say is slightly off point regarding what “element 45” actually is. Carrier doesn’t actually say very much about Euhemerus in the book. Element 45 says that A popular version of [making things up] in ancient faith literature was the practice of euhemerization: the taking of a cosmic god and placing him at a definite point in history as an actual person who was later deified.

(For the record, I am mortified and pissed that he uses the term “euhemerization” with this ironic definition. If it really meant this, the mere existence of the definition would add credibility to his point. I feel like a gullible idiot for falling for that.)

…So we don't even have an original text, but somehow he feels justified in making a statement about Euhemerus's personal beliefs and attitudes, statements like "Euhemerus himself of course did not believe what he claimed. He pretended that that’s how the gods Zeus and Uranus began. He well knew that. Because he completely made up their history himself." What he thought he was doing is totally unknowable with the evidence we have, and it's not clear that he was even doing history in the traditional sense, let alone making it up.

I completely agree that saying we know “Euhemerus made it up” is an unfair, irresponsible, and unknowable thing to say about Euhemerus himself. The actual point isn’t really about Euhemerus. What we think we know is that The Sacred Scriptures said that Zeus and Uranus were once actual kings. The question is where did that idea come from? Broadly there are two possibilities: either Euhemerus (or his sources) had a valid reason to think they really were kings, or Euhemerus (or his sources) “made it up.”

Saying they “made it up” isn’t meant to be disparaging. It’s just pointing out the alleged fact that for whatever reason, people created stories that placed gods in historical contexts.

Even if we're going to be the superficial kind of historian who thinks historical documents speak for themselves and don't require much interpretation, why should we discount earlier writers and privilege a much later source?

I know the question is rhetorical, but Carrier isn’t actually taking Plutarch at his word. He is quoting Plutarch because he happens to independently agree with Plutarch’s opinion on the matter. No doubt you’ll find Carrier’s argument simplistic, but for the record, his actual argument is that we know that the real-world histories of Zeus and Uranus were made up because “there is no plausible case to be made that either Zeus or Uranus was ever a real person.”

But is that what Euhemerus was doing? Actually, no, so what was he doing? It's a tough question, but he wasn't making up history, wasn't a bullshitter trying to dupe people (the terms Carrier uses)—at least not according to the most authoritative study of Euhemerus's Sacred History by Marek Winiarczyk. Euhemerus's work was probably a travel novel describing a journey to a fabulous island. On that island he finds an inscription of Jupiter, to which he then applies a (then) common interpretation among intellectuals that already had a long history (at least two centuries before Euhemerus), namely that gods were nothing more than people whose deeds over time took on the status of myth, and who were often divinized in the sense that they received cultic honors. That is something that happened in Euhemerus's own Hellenistic environment and which was an aspect of Mediterranean religious life for hundreds of years after Euhemerus….

To make sure I understand you point, are you basically saying that Euhemerus’s story about Jupiter and Neptune wasn’t meant to be taken literally, and that the audience that heard it understood that it wasn’t meant to be taken literally? Rather, it was some sort of allegory to teach or illustrate religious beliefs about something else?

Since I assume he uses Euhemerism as a way to understand what the gospel writers were doing (if not, why does he bring it up in the book?), let's ask: are gospel writers doing that?

To be clear, I’ll reiterate that that the actual allegation of “element 45” is that it was common to take gods and demi-gods and for whatever reason, “make up” stories that put them on earth. It just occurred to me that even Joseph Smith did this. The archangel Michael is a demigod, and it was Joseph Smith who put him in an earthly context by claiming he was Adam, right?

In addition to Jupiter and Neptune, other examples mentioned of fictional gods and heroes being put into “made up” historical contexts were Hercules, Romulus, King Arthur, Ned Ludd, Abraham, and Moses.

So tying this in with Carrier’s theory, if there were Christians in the first-half of the first century that believed in a mystic Christ—a Christ like in the oldest parts of the Ascension of Isiah where Christ descends from the seventh level of heaven to the firmament to be crucified on a tree by demons—is it conceivable that one of the Christians may have written an allegory for religious purposes that put Jesus in a historical context like others did with Neptune, Jupiter, Michael, Hercules, Romulus, King Arthur, etc.?

While it's true that ancient people tied elements of their own physical environment to their gods (e.g. Apollo was born on Delos), are there any examples of this in the very immediate past and with such specificity?

Romulus was placed in history at the beginning of the Rome. If Christians at the end of the first century had the same impulse, they would have placed Jesus at the beginning of Christianity—two or three generations earlier.

If I made 46 posts at a rate of, say, 3 a week, each dedicated to one of his numbered “elements,” would you read them and offer some indication of the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim?

Probably not. It's a lot of time and there's no payoff for me. Why should I think any of the other 45 are going to be any better than his simplistic reading of Plutarch…..

His “simplistic reading of Plutarch” isn’t the basis of element 45.

What am I going to learn from this exercise? And why, by the way, does he limit himself to 46 elements? Why not 4,600?

You would learn what his argument actually is--something that I’m not convinced you understand right now. The “46 elements” are the basis of his argument.

Yes, of course that is a red flag. But if Carrier were wrong, it would be nice for somebody to create a compelling rebuttal. The fact that nobody seems willing or able to do so is another flag in its own right.

Replace "Carrier" with "Gee" or "Nibley" and you have a sense of how that sentence reads to me. Professional academics with the competency to make that rebuttal will have no professional pay-off for doing so and little personal payoff if their goal is understanding rather than ideology….

Touché.

[_Kishkumen]

Analytics, I am neither Symmachus nor do I have much time to respond, but there are a couple of apparent misunderstandings you are operating under. There was no universal cosmology in Early Greece, nor a universal theology, which would require that someone transport Zeus and Herakles from a mystical realm to this one. Euhemerus' cosmic framework is consistent with options that were already out there. Romulus is simply a founder figure whose name was derived from the name of the city he founded. There was no mystical Romulus who was given a new, mortal identity. Philosophical schools begat the theological and cosmlogical constructs people tend to assume were/are universal categories. Euhemerus did not innovate in attributing divine honors to mortals or in claiming that the gods walked on earth. Nor did he deviate from some kind of universal Platonic orthodoxy. He simply shared his romance about a journey to a fictional place Zeus had founded before he received divine honors. It could be a form of utopian story in the tradition of Plato's Atlantis.

Carrier's use of Plutarch is a form of proof texting. Plutarch does not "agree" with Carrier. Either Carrier has misunderstood Plutarch or he is wrenching the passage. Symmachus has explained the significance of what Plutarch is saying from Plutarch's point of view as a Platonist. Carrier is no Platonist.

[_Analytics]

Analytics, I am neither Symmachus nor do I have much time to respond, but there are a couple of apparent misunderstandings you are operating under. There was no universal cosmology in Early Greece, nor a universal theology, which would require that someone transport Zeus and Herakles from a mystical realm to this one.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I'm confused about why you would think that I believe there was some universal cosmology in early Greece, or a universal theology that would require a specific doctrine, etc.

My main point with this is to clarify what "Element 45" actually is. Element 45 is the claim is that the writers of ancient faith literature frequently made up stories about gods that put them into historical contexts. From the quote that Symmachus provided, Plutarch is claiming that that is what Euhemerus did. Plutarch takes issue with it because he's a Platonist, and Carrier takes issue with it because he's an atheist. But they both agree Euhemerus did make up a story that put the gods in a historical context.

From my perspective, it isn't obvious that Euhemerus is in fact the one responsible for this happening, but that doesn't really change the point: somebody decided to make up a story that put the gods in a historical context.

Clearly, Carrier isn't capturing the subtle details of everything we know about Euhemerus and why he did what he did, but that isn't Carrier's objective.

His blog entry defending his idiosyncratic definition of "euhemerization" is a defensive and arrogant distraction from the actual point of the "element."

[Guest]

My main point with this is to clarify what "Element 45" actually is. Element 45 is the claim is that the writers of ancient faith literature frequently made up stories about gods that put them into historical contexts.

First, what on earth is "ancient faith literature"? It looks like an anachronistic term that does not fit ancient mythography. Faith is a Christian concept that cannot be read back into early Greek literature.

Second, what I am trying to say is that the gods were not "put" into a historical context. They were assumed to be in a historical context. The Greeks lived in a world filled with gods all around them.

I am sorry I treated your post like a reflection of your own views. The important thing here is that we get past the misconceptions that arise from your description of element 45. If you are accurately representing it, then it is rife with problems.

From my perspective, it isn't obvious that Euhemerus is in fact the one responsible for this happening, but that doesn't really change the point: somebody decided to make up a story that put the gods in a historical context.

Greek literature arguably begins with Homer, who reported on the involvement of the gods in a real-world situation that was assumed by subsequent historians to have happened, albeit not exactly as Homer described. In other words, once again, there is no call to imagine that Greek authors took beings who were imagined to occupy some different plane of existence and inject them into historical circumstances. They were always viewed as belonging in historical circumstances, as far as we can tell. It was later philosophers who theorized that the gods must be different from Homer's description. They removed the gods from the world of human experience and placed them on other planes, far removed from the world of mortals. It is true that Hesiod wrote about the wickedness of human beings separating gods from humankind, but that is in no way a universal Greek belief either. Even here, however, the narrative occurs in one world with a shared chronology (it occurs in time, not outside of it) and connections by genealogical descent. Most Greeks did not utterly separate gods from history or gods from humankind.

[_Analytics]

My main point with this is to clarify what "Element 45" actually is. Element 45 is the claim is that the writers of ancient faith literature frequently made up stories about gods that put them into historical contexts.

First, what on earth is "ancient faith literature"? It looks like an anachronistic term that does not fit ancient mythography. Faith is a Christian concept that cannot be read back into early Greek literature.

Second, what I am trying to say is that the gods were not "put" into a historical context. They were assumed to be in a historical context. The Greeks lived in a world filled with gods all around them.....

You explained this quite well. I stand disabused of element 45. My sincerest thanks.

[_Symmachus]

Hi Analytics,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I think this thread is the first time we have really interacted, but I have followed your posts since I've been reading this board, and I feel honored that you give the same meticulous and lucid attention to my posts here that I've seen you give others over the years.

Just to be clear, if I'm not getting his argument all the way, it's because I don't have access to it. I am responding to what I can access, which his blog and what I've seen described. My basic understanding is that the Bayesian probability stuff is used to measure mathematically the relative probability of a series of hypotheses against a given set of evidence. I can't judge his application of that.

But I can competently judge how he reads ancient evidence, and it's that initial reading, pre-math, that I'm talking about. One example is enough because I find it unlikely that he could be both a crappy reader of Plutarch but a brilliant reader of every other ancient text; it also seems to me unlikely that he would apply a completely different mode of reading in his book. It doesn't really matter whether Euhemerus is a big part or a small one. I think what you're asking me, basically, is to refute—to show where he is wrong in a very specific way—and what I'm telling you is that his whole mode of approaching these texts is shot through with modern assumptions about how they function.

I completely agree that saying we know “Euhemerus made it up” is an unfair, irresponsible, and unknowable thing to say about Euhemerus himself. The actual point isn’t really about Euhemerus. What we think we know is that The Sacred Scriptures said that Zeus and Uranus were once actual kings. The question is where did that idea come from? Broadly there are two possibilities: either Euhemerus (or his sources) had a valid reason to think they really were kings, or Euhemerus (or his sources) “made it up.”

Saying they “made it up” isn’t meant to be disparaging. It’s just pointing out the alleged fact that for whatever reason, people created stories that placed gods in historical contexts.

The important question I'm not trying to raise is not whether a given story was invented or not invented, but whether or not the manner of its invention fits the way that other stories in that environment were invented. If you read these texts with essentially modern assumptions about what they're doing, you will miss that question (as I think Carrier does).

The way people invent a story in one culture will not be the same that people invent it in another, so if we are claiming it was invented in culture X, the manner of its invention should match what we know of story invention in that culture. The process of inventing a story has to happen within certain acceptable parameters in order to establish a threshold of plausibility for that story. Those parameters and that threshold of plausibility are culturally specific. For example, if somebody today were going to invent a story set in antiquity, they would know that, in order to establish its plausibility, they would have to get the historical context right. If there were anachronisms, that would be a sign that it was made up and it would lose its plausibility. This is why I can't accept the Book of Mormon. But for many early readers of that book, the horizon of plausibility was very different, and for modern Mormons it's different still (basically, you just have to feel good about it while reading it).

Story invention in antiquity also had thresholds of plausibility that any story-inventor had to meet. Lack of anachronisms was not one of them. For one thing, the conception of massive cultural change over time is not something that existed as it does for us, and history was viewed cyclically rather than linearly, so anachronism did not pose problems and thus did not diminish plausibility. As a result, modern historians can detect when a story might be invented in an otherwise sober text from antiquity because they can track the anachronisms (Ammianus Marcellinus's Gallic excursus is a great example). We should therefore expect a made up story to contain a host of anachronisms, but the gospels contain very few and these are not wild anachronisms (which actually helps us date them relative to each other and relative to other events). Adding accurate historical details would not help meet the threshold of plausibility, since anachronism was irrelevant.

But a more fundamental fact is that these invented stories were derived deductively from a given set of premises. In that sense, there often were valid reasons for thinking gods had a human past, even if not sound reasons (to steal your distinction again). And even when, say, ancient historians are asserting that their account is true, they almost never use any kind of evidence in our sense to support that, and when they dispute with other historians, they do so like Plutarch does: they make some kind of moral or ethical argument, not an evidence-based one. There is nothing at all like a recourse to a body of evidence, the way historiography has functioned since the mid 19th century. That is an important point because, in order for the mythicist scenario to be plausible, they have to explain why the story-inventors went through all the trouble to compile and include accurate information for the first century context, especially when that information would have been out of context in the second century and in some cases quite inaccessible. Their scenario implies that whoever made up these stories was trying to meet a a modern threshold of probability.

So saying "made up" is not quite accurate; rather these stories were "thought up." Euhemerism (following the traditional definition of that philosophical position and not the idiosyncratic and tautological one used by Carrier) is basically deductive in that sense. So, for example, etymology, or more accurately pseudo-etymology, was a very common way of Euhemerizing divine beings or heroes (but always in the distant past). If the name of the divine or heroic being was similar to some mundane word, it was perfectly plausible that there was some connection. Etiological stories were another common one. The first chapters of Genesis are teeming with this stuff. When we turn to the Gospels, though, the only place we have material like that is in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, both of which are the most obviously made up stories about Jesus—and both of which contain the most easily identifiable anachronisms. That's not a coincidence. But then both the anachronisms and the usual modes of story-invention diminish, and meanwhile the testable historical details increase in frequency. The way that it was invented matters, and a story invented to humanize a god in antiquity should have at the very least some etymology, etiology, and anachronism.

It is very curious that these elements (and others) are so little represented in the gospels, then, but on the other hand the amount of accurate detail in the gospels is astonishing for an invented text: about how the Roman government worked in Palestine in first century (which was radically different from how it worked in the second century!), the sheer existence of the synoptic problem, the nuances of the Jewish communities in the first century that didn't exist in the second—one could go on, but the basic point must be grasped that the amount and level of detail in the gospels would mean, if Carrier is right, there must have been at least one researcher (probably more) with a curiously anachronistic post-enlightenment sense of historiography who was endowed with philological skills unparalleled in antiquity. The closest match I can think is someone like Jerome, but even he lacks the kind of modern methodological rigor that this would require, not to mention a devotion to accuracy that most ancient historians didn't even have, let alone somebody of less than elite education.

I mean, take the gospel of Matthew (and I emphasize this is just one example of many). The sayings of Jesus there (especially chs. 5-7) have a close parallel in style and argument to the Mishna, which is one of the reasons why scholars think this gospel was produced by a community of Jews, a group unlikely to believe in a mystical deity of the sort that's been discussed here, let alone a mystical deity that they then humanize. When Jesus says "what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven," he is using Mishnaic and not biblical terminology ("bind" in the Mishna is an idiom for "forbid," and "loose" an idiom for "permit"). The Mishna was thought of as a hedge around the Torah, and Jesus's sermon on the mountain is in fact constricting that hedge in the same way that the Mishna does ("adultery is a sin, but I say you can't even lust"). That's Mishnaic dialectic, and somehow that mode of interpreting Jewish law was put into the human story invented by a non-Jew to make his celestial god more believably Jewish. And as we would expect in a very Jewish text, there is nothing about mysticism Jesus is not cast as a god but as a human messiah. How easy would that task have been to get all that right?

Probably easier for me than for someone in the second century. I have on my shelf a complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud which contains most of the Mishna; I have Josephus on the shelf next that, so I can get a fuller picture of the religious conflicts in the first century in Palestine (religious conflicts that had long died out by the second century). I have Aramaic and Greek grammars and dictionaries within arm's length to help me read the hard parts or clarify words. But for someone in antiquity, who is a Greek speaker, they would have to spend significant time living among Jewish communities, learning Aramaic and studying the Mishna. That is so unlikely to have happened in second century Palestine that I can barely entertain the thought. The animosity between Jews and non-Jews in the area was the source of some of the most inhuman violence imaginable, and we know that curses against non-Jews (and probably Christians, interestingly enough) were introduced into Jewish liturgy at this time. And what I mean by "study the Mishna" is important; the Mishna was not even written down fully until the the third century, so the only way to access this text was by learning it from those who preserved it in their memories and passed it down orally. We know that such a process was not easy; it was not even easy to be accepted as a student by these teachers (the Tannaim). If someone were a devotee of a mystic celestial god and wished to humanize that god, why go through all of that trouble just for chapters 5-7 of Matthew? (leaving aside all the other deeply Jewish qualities of the book, and ignoring the fact that the gospel of Mark is clearly written by someone who doesn't know much about Judaism)

Alternatively, perhaps he was Jewish and deeply learned in Tannaitic method. If so, he must have been one of Tannaim, or at least in their circles. If that were so, how did this person simultaneously cultivate a rigorous monotheism with an anti-materialist conception of god that Jews in the second century were willing to die for while at the same time worshiping a mystical celestial god whom he felt needed to be rendered material by given a human backstory? That's as likely as David Duke being president of the NAACP.

This is why there is no real parallel to what Carrier is talking about, no other example in antiquity can be found. The examples you mention (Romulus etc.) don't work because there is nothing like this level of detail. The Gospels fit neatly into the first century and would be totally anachronistic in the second. So our philologist Christ-worshipper and / or schizophrenic Jew was an anachronistically inductive thinker who reconstructed the first century through piling up evidence that he painstakingly accumulated while ingratiating himself among the authorities in the Jewish communities in Palestine. For the mythicist position to be plausible to modern historians of this period, all of that would have to be true about the way these stories were made, and all in order to meet a threshold of plausibility for a modern reader but not an ancient one.

In addition to Jupiter and Neptune, other examples mentioned of fictional gods and heroes being put into “made up” historical contexts were Hercules, Romulus, King Arthur, Ned Ludd, Abraham, and Moses.

These are not anywhere near analogous (well, I don't know anything about Ned Ludd so maybe that's spot on; I don't know). Kishkumen has already pointed at the problems with citing Romulus (an etymologically derived story, by the way, that is full of anachronisms!), but realize that none of these are situated in a context in anything like the level of detail and specificity of the gospels, as I hope you can see in at least one highly significant case.

[_Kishkumen]

Sorry to gush, here, but that explanation of why Carrier is wrong is beautifully reasoned and explicated. Bravo, Symmachus.

[_Morley]

What a great thread! I've learned so much. Thank you to all who have taken the time and care to post such well-informed opinions and arguments. And thank you for doing it in such a way that it's accessible to those of us without the otherwise prerequisite background.




edit:

The same goes for the thread 'Doherty's Mythicism.' Again, thanks.

[_Maksutov]

What a great thread! I've learned so much. Thank you to all who have taken the time and care to post such well-informed opinions and arguments. And thank you for doing it in such a way that it's accessible to those of us without the otherwise prerequisite background.




edit:

The same goes for the thread 'Doherty's Mythicism.' Again, thanks.

I agree. This is the board at its best.

[_Analytics]

Hi Symmachus,

Thank you for another wonderful post. I’d like to respond by clarifying a couple of details about the Bayesian analysis we are talking about.

Carrier sets up two competing hypotheses that are defined as broadly as possible. The “Jesus was Historical” hypothesis is the hypothesis that the following three statements are all true:

1. An actual man at some point named Jesus acquired followers in life who continued as an identifiable movement after his death.
2. This is the same Jesus who was claimed by some of his followers to have been executed by the Jewish or Roman authorities.
3. This is the same Jesus some of whose followers soon began worshiping as a living god (or demigod).

(Note to Kish: when Carrier said multiple guys named Jesus were probably crucified every year, his point was that if the historicity hypothesis was too general, it would become meaningless)

Conversely, the “Jesus was a Myth” theory is that all five of the following are true:

1. At the origin of Christianity, Jesus Christ was thought to be a celestial deity much like any other.
2. Like many other celestial deities, this Jesus ‘communicated’ with his subjects only through dreams, visions and other forms of divine inspiration (such as prophecy, past and present).
3. Like some other celestial deities, this Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in a supernatural realm.
4. As for many other celestial deities, an allegorical story of this same Jesus was then composed and told within the sacred community, which placed him on earth, in history, as a divine man, with an earthly family, companions, and enemies, complete with deeds and sayings, and an earthly depiction of his ordeals.
5. Subsequent communities of worshipers believed (or at least taught) that this invented sacred story was real (and either not allegorical or only ‘additionally’ allegorical).

The reason I mention this is because much of your prior response seems to be criticizing the idea that cynical 2nd century mysticists “made up” the gospels. That isn’t the theory. Dick Carrier (hereafter referred to simply as “the Dick”) says he thinks Mark was written around the year 70 c.e. Most of the arguments you made pertain to when Mark was written, not whether it was originally intended to be read as an accurate story about a real person. On that basis, much of it doesn’t refute or contradict the Dick’s theory.

There is nothing at all like a recourse to a body of evidence, the way historiography has functioned since the mid 19th century. That is an important point because, in order for the mythicist scenario to be plausible, they have to explain why the story-inventors went through all the trouble to compile and include accurate information for the first century context, especially when that information would have been out of context in the second century and in some cases quite inaccessible.

As an example of this, let’s consider Mark 15: 6-15:

6 Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7 A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8 The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.

9 “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, 10 knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.

12 “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
13 “Crucify him!” they shouted.

14 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”

15 Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

So here is a question. Was there really a custom where the Roman Prefect would ask a mob of Jews every festival which prisoner to release, and if the mob chose a insurrectionist and a murder as the prisoner to release, he’d say okay, and set the murderer free?

I’ve heard there is absolutely no historical basis for this—it’s a totally false representation of what Roman Prefects would do and did do. So if Mark wrote his gospel in the year 70, wouldn’t all Romans see this was a patently false custom?

The Dick expresses an incredible amount of respect for the Gospel of Mark as literature. He claims that its literary qualities proves that it is obviously intended to be an extended allegory to teach the gospel and is not intended to describe actual events. He explains in great detail that this alleged event has rich symbolic meaning, and was obviously invented to teach religious truths—not describe how the Roman penal system worked around the festivals.